[78] For information about particular nations that interested her, she read Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville's Memoirs de Chine to learn about the vast and wealthy Chinese empire that bordered her empire; Franois Baron de Tott's Memoires de les Turcs et les Tartares for information about the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean khanate; the books of Frederick the Great praising himself to learn about Frederick just as much as to learn about Prussia; and the pamphlets of Benjamin Franklin denouncing the British Crown to understand the reasons behind the American Revolution. She called together at Moscow a Grand Commission almost a consultative parliament composed of 652 members of all classes (officials, nobles, burghers, and peasants) and of various nationalities. Catherine had been targeted for being unmarried.[137]. Catherine tried to keep the Jews away from certain economic spheres, even under the guise of equality; in 1790, she banned Jewish citizens from Moscow's middle class.[112]. In addition to the advisory commission, Catherine established a Commission of National Schools under Pyotr Zavadovsky. Catherine the Great. "[6] Although Sophie was born a princess, her family had very little money. "The circumstances and cause of death, and the intentions and degree of responsibility of those . She launched the Moscow Foundling Home and lying-in hospital, 1764, and Paul's Hospital, 1763. King Augustus III of Poland died in 1763, so Poland needed to elect a new ruler. The cause of death was confirmed by autopsy. Rumours of Catherine's private life had a small basis in the fact that she took many young lovers, even in old age. For all her achievements, Catherine is often remembered for the multitude of salacious and slanderous rumours attached to her name, none more famous than the one surrounding her death. He received a palace in Saint Petersburg when Catherine became empress. The next day, she left the palace and departed for the Ismailovsky Regiment, where she delivered a speech asking the soldiers to protect her from her husband. For example, serfs could apply to be freed if they were under illegal ownership, and non-nobles were not allowed to own serfs. A description of the empress's funeral is written in Madame Vige Le Brun's memoirs. However, military conscription and the economy continued to depend on serfdom, and the increasing demands of the state and of private landowners intensified the exploitation of serf labour. [113] This re-established the separate identity that Judaism maintained in Russia throughout the Jewish Haskalah. Catherine, for her part, claimed in her memoirs that all his actions bordered on insanity. By claiming the throne, she wrote, she had saved Russia from the disaster that all this Princes moral and physical faculties promised.. Poland ceased to exist as an independent nation[130] until its post-WWI reconstitution. Assisted by highly successful generals such as Alexander Suvorov and Pyotr Rumyantsev, and admirals such as Samuel Greig and Fyodor Ushakov, she governed at a time when the Russian Empire was expanding rapidly by conquest and diplomacy. As Simon Sebag Montefiore notes in The Romanovs: 16181918, Peter, then on holiday in the suburbs of St. Petersburg, was oblivious to his wifes actions. [67] Their discontent led to widespread outbreaks of violence and rioting during Pugachev's Rebellion of 1774. [87], Catherine appointed Ivan Betskoy as her advisor on educational matters. She was the second wife of Peter the Great. She died of natural causes, of a stroke, when she was 67 years old. Her father, Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, belonged to the ruling German family of Anhalt. An admirer of Peter the Great, Catherine continued to modernise Russia along Western European lines. Many Orthodox peasants felt threatened by the sudden change, and burned mosques as a sign of their displeasure. Her death led people to create a lot of rumors. I have never been so happy. Such all-consuming passion proved unsustainablebut while the pairs romantic partnership faded after just two years, they remained on such good terms that Potemkin continued to wield enormous political influence, acting as tsar in all but name, one observer noted. [153], Empress Catherine's correspondence with Frederick II Eugene, Duke of Wrttemberg, (the father of Catherine's daughter-in-law Maria Feodorovna) written between 1768 and 1795, is preserved in the State Archive of Stuttgart (Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart) in Stuttgart, Germany.[154]. Very few members of the nobility entered the church, which became even less important than it had been. Peter and Catherine had both been involved in a 1749 Russian military plot to crown Peter (together with Catherine) in Elizabeth's stead. Catherine became the Empress of Russia and turned her love for reading and philosophy into practice. "[138] In the end, the empress was laid to rest with a gold crown on her head and clothed in a silver brocade dress. Russian poets wrote about his virtues, the court praised him, foreign ambassadors fought for his favour, and his family moved into the palace. Still, there was a start of industry, mainly textiles around Moscow and ironworks in the Ural Mountains, with a labour force mainly of serfs, bound to the works. She called Potemkin for help mostly military and he became devoted to her. Further compounding these unpopular decisions were his attempted repudiation of his wife in favor of his mistress and his seizure of church lands under the guise of secularization. Like Empress Elizabeth before her, Catherine had given strict instructions that Ivan was to be killed in the event of any such attempt. [45] In a 1790 letter to Baron de Grimm written in French, she called the Qianlong Emperor "mon voisin chinois aux petits yeux" ("my Chinese neighbour with small eyes"). The emperor's eccentricities and policies, including a great admiration for the Prussian king Frederick II, alienated the same groups that Catherine had cultivated. In reality, Catherine the Great died of a stroke and she was discovered collapsed on the floor in her washroom. The Manifesto of 1763 begins with Catherine's title: We, Catherine the second, by the Grace of God, Empress and Autocrat of all the Russians at Moscow, Kiev, Vladimir, Novgorod, Tsarina of Kasan, Tsarina of Astrachan, Tsarina of Siberia, Lady of Pleskow and Grand Duchess of Smolensko, Duchess of Estonia and Livland, Carelial, Tver, Yugoria, Permia, Viatka and Bulgaria and others; Lady and Grand Duchess of Novgorod in the Netherland of Chernigov, Resan, Rostov, Yaroslav, Beloosrial, Udoria, Obdoria, Condinia, and Ruler of the entire North region and Lady of the Yurish, of the Cartalinian and Grusinian tsars and the Cabardinian land, of the Cherkessian and Gorsian princes and the lady of the manor and sovereign of many others. Catherine also issued the Code of Commercial Navigation and Salt Trade Code of 1781, the Police Ordinance of 1782, and the Statute of National Education of 1786. Poniatowski, through his mother's side, came from the Czartoryski family, prominent members of the pro-Russian faction in Poland; Poniatowski and Catherine were eighth cousins, twice removed, by their mutual ancestor King Christian I of Denmark, by virtue of Poniatowski's maternal descent from the Scottish House of Stuart. Catherine was eventually able to put down the uprising, but the carnage exacted on both sides was substantial. She trained herself, biographer Virginia Rounding told Times Olivia B. Waxman last October, learning and beginning to form the idea that she could do better than her husband., In Catherines own words, Had it been my fate to have a husband whom I could love, I would never have changed towards him. Peter, however, proved to be not only a poor life partner, but a threat to his wifes wellbeing, particularly following his ascension to the Russian throne upon his aunt Elizabeths death in January 1762. Also, the townspeople tended to turn against the junior schools and their pedagogical[clarification needed] methods. [45] The Dzungar genocide which was committed by the Qing state had led many Dzungars to seek sanctuary in the Russian Empire, and it was also one of the reasons for the abrogation of the Treaty of Kyakhta. Writing for History Extra, Hartley describes Catherines Russia as an undoubtedly aggressive nation that clashed with the Ottomans, Sweden, Poland, Lithuania and the Crimea in pursuit of additional territory for an already vast empire. 1772-04-06 Catherine the Great Empress of Russia, ends tax on men with beards, enacted by Tsar . [8] The young Sophie received the standard education for an 18th-century German princess, with a concentration upon learning the etiquette expected of a lady, French, and Lutheran theology. Catherine II[a] (born Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst; 2 May 1729 17 November 1796),[b] most commonly known as Catherine the Great,[c] was the reigning empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. On 5 August 1786, the Russian Statute of National Education was created. The official cause, after an autopsy, was a severe attack of haemorrhoidal colic and an apoplexy stroke.[26]. After the rebels, their French and European volunteers, and their allied Ottoman Empire had been defeated, she established in the Commonwealth a system of government fully controlled by the Russian Empire through a Permanent Council, under the supervision of her ambassadors and envoys. Aided by her lover Grigory Orlov and his powerful family, she staged a coup just six months after her husband took the throne. Catherine the Great was worried that her son, Paul, was not emotionally fit to rule so she planned to replace him with his son, Alexander, as her heir. [73] The Chinese Palace was designed by the Italian architect Antonio Rinaldi who specialised in the chinoiserie style. Finally Catherine annexed the Crimea in 1783. Russia was to stop any involvement in internal affairs of Sweden. Closer to home, her success, coupled with how she came to power, led to jealously and fear among her male objectors in the Russian court. Yelizaveta Alekseyevna Tarakanova (17531775) was another potential rival. Orlov died in 1783. [86] She believed a 'new kind of person' could be created by inculcating Russian children with European education. In this month, the empress of Russia died and her successor Paul, who detested that the Zubovs had other plans for the army, ordered the troops to retreat to Russia. [59] Some serfs did apply for freedom and were successful. Articles and Photos. This commission promised to protect their religious rights, but did not do so. It opened in Saint Petersburg and Moscow in 1769. On 25 November, the coffin, richly decorated in gold fabric, was placed atop an elevated platform at the Grand Gallery's chamber of mourning, designed and decorated by Antonio Rinaldi. The truss holding her equine paramour broke, crushing Catherine to death beneath the poor beast. In 1785, Catherine conferred on the nobility the Charter to the Nobility, increasing the power of the landed oligarchs. [83][84], Catherine also received Elisabeth Vige Le Brun at her Tsarskoye Selo residence in St Petersburg, by whom she was painted shortly before her death. Her reign was called Russia . Her enemies, however, saw things differently. Gustav Adolph felt pressured to accept that Alexandra would not convert to Lutheranism, and though he was delighted by the young lady, he refused to appear at the ball and left for Stockholm. [51], In 1768, the Assignation Bank was given the task of issuing the first government paper money. Although Catherine did not descend from the Romanov dynasty, her ancestors included members of the Rurik dynasty, which preceded the Romanovs. A. Viazemski. [38], By mid-June 1796, Zubov's troops overran without any resistance most of the territory of modern-day Azerbaijan, including three principal citiesBaku, Shemakha, and Ganja. [106], Russia often treated Judaism as a separate entity, where Jews were maintained with a separate legal and bureaucratic system. ", [Kazimir Valishevsky. She sent the Russian army into Poland to avoid possible disputes. However, because her second cousin Peter III converted to Orthodox Christianity, her mother's brother became the heir to the Swedish throne[4] and two of her first cousins, Gustav III and Charles XIII, later became Kings of Sweden. B. Catherine the Great's Foreign Policy Reconsidered. Although the government knew that Judaism existed, Catherine and her advisers had no real definition of what a Jew is because the term meant many things during her reign. Catherine the Great (May 2, 1729-Nov. 17, 1796) was empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796, the longest reign of any female Russian leader.
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