Catherine II the Great Biography

Catherine II the Great

(Catherine II of Russia, called the Great; Stettin, today Szazecin, present-day Poland, 1729-Saint Petersburg, 1796) Empress of Russia (1762-1796).German princess of the Anhalt-Zerbst dynasty, was sent by her family to Russia to marry Grand Duke Peter, grandson of Tsar Peter I of Russia, also called Peter the Great.Once established in Saint Petersburg, she changed her original name, Sofía Augusta, to Catherine Alexeievna, and entered the Russian Orthodox Church, a gesture that proved decisive for her political future.Catherine married the Grand Duke in 1745, who acceded to the Russian throne in January 1762 under the name of Peter III.

Catherine the Great, Tsarina of Russia

Tsar Peter III's disdainful attitude towards Russian traditions and, above all, his iconoclastic politics and secularization of goods earned him the enmity of many sectors, led by the Church and the imperial guard.Given these circumstances and the poor understanding of the royal couple, Catherine staged a coup d'etat at the end of June "for the defense of orthodoxy and the glory of Russia." The Orlov brothers revolted the imperial guard regiments, and the tsar was arrested, forced to abdicate, and shortly thereafter assassinated.The fact that this crime was kept secret was exploited by Pugachev, between 1773 and 1774, to stir up the popular masses in the name of Peter III.

During his reign, the Russian economy grew considerably thanks to the free labor of a large part of the workforce, trade and industrial liberalization measures and an immigration policy that favored agricultural colonization, especially among Crimea and Kuban, and the founding of cities like Sevastopol and Kherson.

The empress developed at the same time her enlightenment program in the field of education (she founded numerous schools) and tried to Europeanize the country, for which she favored the penetration of enlightened ideas, invited the court to numerous European intellectuals and promoted the use of the French language in nobility and court circles; towards the end of her reign, however, the outbreak of the French Revolution intensified her autocratic attitudes.In religious matters, she adopted a policy of tolerance that ended with the persecution of dissidents from the Orthodox Church.

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