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.

Comments

John jervis Biography

John Jervis (Meaford, 1735-Rochetts, 1823) British military.Commander of the English fleet in the West Indies (1793-1795) and in the Mediterranean (1795-1801).Forced to cross the Atlantic, he won a victory over the Spanish squad at Cape San Vicente (1797).First Lord of the Admiralty (1801-1804), where he put an end to corruption and indiscipline.

Hosea Biography

Hosea Old Testament prophet, the first of the group of the so-called Twelve Minor Prophets.Born around 800 BC.and died around 725 BC, he developed his ministry in the northern kingdom (Israel), where he came from.Hosea preached at the end of the reign of Jeroboam II (782-743 BC) and in the time of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah; therefore, its prophetic mission must be between 750 and 725 BC. The prophet Hosea He is credited with the authorship of the so-called Book of Hosea , in which the prophet denounces the people's infidelity towards Yahweh and it reveals the tender love of God, comparable to that of the husband who forgives his unfaithful wife or the father who loves his rebellious son.The book comprises fourteen chapters, and is divided into two parts.The first (chapters 1-3) symbolically exposes Israel's infidelity and announces her punishment and salvation in a presaged return to national unity.The second (chapters 4-14) directly challenges the people with r...

Federico Sopeña Biography

Federico Sopeña (Valladolid, 1917-Madrid, 1991) Spanish musicologist and music critic.Doctor of theology from the Gregorian University, he was professor of aesthetics and musicology at the Madrid Conservatory, where he also held the position of director (1951-1956).In 1958 he entered the Royal Spanish Academy and subsequently held the position of General Commissioner of Music (1971-1972) and director of the Prado Museum (1981-1983).His abundant production includes Contemporary European Music (1952), Stravinski (1956), Atlántida: Introduction to Manuel de Falla (1962) , Music and literature (1974), History of contemporary Spanish music (1976) and Written at night (1985).

Guglielmo Ferrero Biography

Guglielmo Ferrero (Portici, 1871-Monte Peregrino, 1942) Italian historian.Disciple of Cesare Lombroso, he continued his positivism.From his first major work, The Grandeur and Decay of Rome , published from 1901 to 1907, he demonstrated a marked tendency towards sociology and the philosophy of history. Guglielmo Ferrero When fascism arrived, Guglielmo Ferrero lined up among his most intransigent adversaries and had to exile himself.Hosted in Switzerland, he continued the fight against the aforementioned political regime and in 1930 obtained the chair of History of the French Revolution at the University of Geneva. The courses on the French Revolution gave rise to two works, written in French: Adventure , Bonaparte in Italy (1796-1797) and Reconstruction , Talleyrand in Vienna (1814-1815) .In them he tried to point out to contemporary politicians the paths to a stable peace.At the same time, he taught history at the Institut Universitaire des Hautes Études Internationales ...

Arthur Adamov Biography

Arthur Adamov (Kislovodsk, 1908-Paris, 1970) French-language playwright, founder of the theater of the absurd.He left Russia when he was only four years old.He studied in Switzerland, first, and then in Germany.In 1924 he moved to Paris, where he began to frequent surrealist environments.In this period he published some poetry, but immediately stopped writing, until 1946, when he published a heartbreaking and provocative little book, L'aveu , a ruthless analysis of his psychological and spiritual crisis.A year later, under the influence of Strindberg, he wrote his first theatrical text, La parodie . From 1946 to 1955 he developed the themes of what critics called New theater of isolation or Theater of the absurd , and he became an exponent of avant-garde drama, expressing in his texts the discomfort of the individual in the face of the structures imposed by society.Through his characters, lacking a precise psychological individuality, he configured impersonal dramas cross...

Giacomo Puccini Biography

Giacomo Puccini (Lucca, present-day Italy, 1858-Brussels, 1924) Italian composer.Heir to the great Italian lyrical tradition, but at the same time open to other currents and styles typical of the turn of the century, Puccini became the great dominator of the international lyrical scene during the first decades of the 20th century.He was not a prolific creator: without counting a few instrumental pieces and some religious pieces composed in his youth, twelve operas make up the bulk of his production, an insignificant figure compared to those of his predecessors, but enough to make him a key author of the repertoire.operatic and one of the most appreciated and applauded by the public. Puccini Giacomo Puccini was born into a family, some of whose members had held, since the 18th century, the position of chapelmaster from Lucca Cathedral.On the death of his father, Michele, in 1863, little Giacomo, despite not having shown a special musical talent, was destined to follow the family ...

Gian Domenico Cassini Biography

Gian Domenico Cassini (Perinaldo, present-day Italy, 1625-Paris, 1712) Italian-French astronomer.He was a professor of astronomy at the University of Bologna, where he studied and tabulated the positions of the satellites of Jupiter.In 1669 he assumed the direction of the Paris Observatory, at the express request of King Louis XIV, and in 1673 he was granted French citizenship.Continuing the studies begun in Italy, Cassini discovered the satellites of Saturn: Iapetus (1671), Rhea (1672), Tethys (1684) and Dione (1684).In 1675 he detected the dark space that separates the A and B rings of Saturn and that bears his name, the Cassini division.He was the first to consider zodiacal light as a phenomenon of cosmic and not meteorological origin (The elements of astronomy verified, 1693).Cassini rejected Johannes Kepler's theory of elliptical planetary orbits and proposed trajectories through oval curves, the so-called Cassini ovals.

Joseph H. Maclagan Wedderburn Biography

Joseph H.Maclagan Wedderburn (Forfar, 1882-Princeton, 1948) British mathematician.Professor at Princeton University, he was editor of the Proceedings of the Edinburgh mathematical society (1905-1909) and the Annals of mathematics (1912-1928).He stated a theorem ( Wedderburn's theorem ) according to which every finite field is commutative.

Jose Maria Samper Biography

José María Samper (Honda, 1831-Anapoima, 1888) Colombian writer and politician.He collaborated in the newspapers La noche and El Comercio de Lima , as well as in others with a liberal tendency.He participated in the liberal revolution and held various public positions.He is the author of books of poems ( Withered flowers , 1849; Ecos de los Andes , 1860), comedies ( The September conspiracy , 1857; A son of the people , 1857), novels ( Martín Flores , 1866; The soldier poet , 1881; Story of a soul , 1881), essays ( Apuntamientos para la historia politico y social de Nueva Granada , 1853; The political parties in Colombia: historical political study , 1869) and studies biographical ( National Gallery of Illustrious Men , 1879).

James Wilkinson Biography

James Wilkinson (Calvert County, 1757-Mexico, 1825) American politician and adventurer.He participated in the American War of Independence and in the Kentucky separatist movement (1787) as a double agent for Spain.He was named Governor of Louisiana in 1805 and Commander of New Orleans in 1813.

History Today Online

Search This Blog