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

Hernando Tellez Biography

Hernando Téllez (Santafé de Bogotá, 1908-1966) Colombian writer and journalist.From a very young age, he showed his journalistic skills, as a contributor to the magazine Universidad directed by Germán Arciniegas, and as an assistant to Enrique Santos in El Tiempo . He was also deputy director of El Liberal and director of the magazine Semana .During the period between 1943 and 1944 he served as Colombian consul in Marseille and senator of the Republic, but he stood out above all for being one of the most complete writers of his time (he was a translator, commentator, short story writer, essayist and literary critic ). In his extensive essay work he dealt with issues of literature, society, politics and everyday life.Téllez was a poet of the essay, as well as profound; He was a great craftsman of the language, a teacher in a sober and effective handling of the language.He was a sensitive observer of daily life, an acute critic of the social and political life of the country...

Agnes De Mille Biography

Agnes De Mille (New York, 1909- id , 1993) American dancer and choreographer.Niece of C.B.De Mille has collaborated on musical comedies and has moved away from classical ballet in favor of a more popular style ( Rodeo , 1942; A rose for Emily , 1971).She has worked as a consultant in musical comedies and has dedicated herself to recovering the American folk tradition.

Jean André Deluc Biography

Jean André Deluc (Geneva, 1727-Windsor, 1817) Swiss physicist.For years he combined his business with studies and scientific expeditions in the Alps.From 1773 until his death he was a reader of the Duchess Carlota of Mecklenburg, wife of the British monarch George III; In this second stage of his life, devoted mainly to research, he published numerous works on geology. Jean André Deluc Jean André Deluc also devoted himself to the study of meteorology and calorimetry and perfected various instruments.He also developed a theory on the variation of water vapor pressure with density and pressure, and showed that the maximum density of water is reached at 4ºC.

Gene Kelly Biography

Gene Kelly (Eugene Patrick Curran Kelly; Pittsburgh, United States, 1912-Beverly Hills, id., 1996) American dancer, choreographer, actor and film director.A multifaceted and versatile talent, the image of Gene Kelly is inextricably linked to some of the legendary Hollywood musicals of the 1950s, such as Singing in the Rain , A Day in New York and An American in Paris , of which he himself signed the choreographies, and even participated as co-director in the first two.He also appeared in other musicals such as Brigadoon (1954), Las girls (1957) and Las senoritas de Rochefort (1966), and in 1956 he performed Invitation to dance .His agile and athletic style, combined with a refined classical technique, revolutionized the concept of male dance in the field of film musicals. Gene Kelly The son of Irish parents, Gene Kelly was the third of five children born to the marriage of James Patrick Kelly, a traveling salesman of gramophones, and Harriet Eckhardt.He attended the U...

Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier Biography

Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier (Auxerre, France, 1768-Paris, 1830) French engineer and mathematician.He was the son of a tailor, and was educated by the Benedictines.Positions in the Army Scientific Corps were reserved for families of recognized status, so he accepted a military professorship in mathematics. Joseph Fourier During the French Revolution he had a prominent role in his own district, and was rewarded with a candidacy for a chair at the École Polytechnique.Fourier accompanied Napoleon on his eastern expedition of 1798, and was appointed governor of Lower Egypt.Isolated from France by the British fleet, it organized the workshops that the French army had to count on for its ammunition supplies.He also contributed numerous writings on mathematics to the Egyptian Institute that Napoleon founded in Cairo. After the British victories and the capitulation of the French under General Menou in 1801, Joseph Fourier returned to France, where he was appointed prefect of the depa...

The legacy of Johannes Gutenberg

In the German city of Mainz , on the west bank of the Rhine River, an unknown character was found dead in February 1468.For a few years this indigent old man and half blind he received an assignment of clothes, grains and wine from the local governor, the same who had his headquarters on the other side of the river Rhin, in Wiesbaden .Very few people remembered who he was or what he had achieved His name was Johannes Gutenberg and he was the father of modern printing. inkart Johannes Gutenberg was born in the within a patrician family of Mainz, transforming himself into a goldsmith and a worker in metal.Later he became a member of the goldsmith's guild of Strasbourg , which was then a German city, where he began working in a No very expensive dream that haunted him: finding a method to print medieval manuscripts that were carefully handcrafted, without sacrificing their elaborate ornamental design. It was only in 1455 when Gutenberg produced his first printed book, ...

Jordi Pujol Biography

Jordi Pujol (Jordi Pujol i Soley; Barcelona, 1930) Spanish politician, president of the Generalitat of Catalonia from 1980 to 2003.He studied medicine, although he did not feel a special vocation.His nationalistic and religious sentiment was already manifested in his youth, when he carried out apostolate work in the slums of his hometown; thus, he participated in the creation of the Catholic institution Catòlics Catalans. Once he finished his degree, he worked in the Fides Cuatrecases pharmaceutical laboratories, and took part in subversive incidents, such as the tram strike that took place in Barcelona in 1956, the dismissal of the president of the newspaper La Vanguardia or the incident at the Palacio de la Música in 1960, in which he interrupted a concert attended by Francisco Franco and his ministers to sing a Catalan anthem banned by the regime.He was sentenced by a court martial to seven years in prison. Jordi Pujol At the beginning of the sixties he founded with other...

Jorge Dezcallar Biography

Jorge Dezcallar (Palma de Mallorca, 1945) Spanish lawyer and diplomat.Jorge Dezcallar Mazarredo was born on November 3, 1945 in Palma de Mallorca, the oldest of four siblings.After completing his first studies at the College of the Franciscan Fathers in the Mallorcan capital, he studied law at the Complutense University of Madrid, the city to which his father, a colonel of the Marine Corps, had been assigned. After graduating as a lawyer he decided to undertake diplomatic studies.In the family there was already a history of people linked to diplomacy, which undoubtedly sowed Dezcallar's concern to develop his professional work in the foreign service. Jorge Dezcallar His entry into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs took place by opposition in August 1971.Between 1972 and 1974 he was stationed in Poland, and from September 1974 to April 1978 he remained at the Consulate General of Spain in New York, where he held various positions.In April 1978, he moved to the Uruguayan embas...

Jose Hernandez Biography

José Hernández (Perdriel, San Martín, 1834-Buenos Aires, 1886) Argentine poet, author of Martín Fierro , a work that is considered the pinnacle of gaucho literature and an outstanding classic of Argentine literature. José Hernández As a child he was in the care of uncles and grandparents while his parents worked in the fields.He studied at the Liceo Argentino de San Telmo, but a chest illness made him leave Buenos Aires and join his father in a field of Camarones; by then the mother had died.The young Hernández stayed there for a few years, immersing himself in the rural world. He returned to Buenos Aires after the Battle of Caseros (1852), and was involved in the political struggles that divided the country after the fall of Juan Manuel de Rosas.Of federal convictions, he joined the government of the Confederation, faced with Buenos Aires.For 1856 some sources place it in Paraná; others delay that residence until 1858, but the truth is that Hernández worked in that city as a...

Guillaume de Lorris Biography

Guillaume de Lorris (Lorris-en-Gâtinais, h.1235-?) French poet.He was the author of a single work, Roman de la Rose, which he left unfinished.Composed of about 4,000 verses, it was completed by Jean de Meung between 1275 and 1280 and first printed in 1485.Although almost everything about this medieval poet is unknown, it is known that he began his work at the age of twenty-five and died young.He was probably a clergyman and certainly a scholar.He knew Ovid's The Art of Loving, from whom he takes many elements, and the medieval literary tradition on the theme of courtly love, developed in the Romans of Chrétien de Troyes and by the troubadour lyric.With his work, in which he systematically used allegorical language of exquisite freshness and virtuous execution, he gave a more abstract and mystical meaning to courtly love.

History Today Online

Search This Blog