Skip to main content

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.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Giulio Clovio Biography

Giulio Clovio (Juraj Klovic, called Julio or Giulio Clovio; Grizané, 1498-Rome, 1578) Italian miniaturist.He was a disciple of Julio Romano and a friend of El Greco.He received the nickname "the Michelangelo of the small." His most characteristic works are Farnese Breviary and Psalter .
Post a Comment
Read more

Hua guofeng Biography

Hua Guofeng (Also called Hua Kuo-Feng; Hunan, 1921-Beijing, 2008) Chinese communist leader.Hua Guofeng began his political career in his native province of Hunan, of which he became deputy governor (1958-67).After the triumph of the "Cultural Revolution" instigated by Chairman Mao Zedong, he passed to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (1969).However, it was part of the openness line of Chu En-Lai and Deng Xiaoping, in opposition to the orthodoxy of Lin Piao. Hua Guofeng Driven by the growing weight of the reformists, in 1973 he acceded to the Politburo and in 1975 he was appointed Minister of Public Security and Vice President of the Government.After the deaths of Chu En-Lai and Mao Zedong, he succeeded the former as head of the Chinese government and the latter as chairman of the Communist Party (1976-81). From both positions he collaborated with Deng Xiaoping in the elimination of the old leftist guard represented by Mao's widow and her ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Jose Zorrilla Biography

José Zorrilla (Valladolid, 1817-Madrid, 1893) Spanish writer.It is the main representative of medieval and legendary romanticism.In 1833 he entered the University of Toledo as a law student, and in 1835 he went to the University of Valladolid.José Zorrilla published his first verses in the Valladolid newspaper El Artista . José Zorrilla In Madrid, after abandoning his university career, he achieved fame after reading some of his verses at the funeral of Larra (1837).He held the position of the latter in the writing of El Español , where he published the series of poems entitled Poesías (1837), the first of a set of eight volumes that he completed in 1840.His poetic success would be renewed in 1852 with a descriptive poem, Granada , which remained unfinished.In 1839 he married Matilde O'Reilly, of whom he was widowed very soon.
Post a Comment
Read more

Franz schmidt Biography

Franz Schmidt (Pressburg [act.Bratislava], 1874-Perchtoldsdorf, Vienna, 1939) Austrian composer.Cellist and professor at the Vienna Conservatory, he composed symphonies, concerts, operas and an oratorio inspired by the Apocalypse of Saint John.
Post a Comment
Read more

Gerard walschap Biography

Gerard Walschap (Londerzeel, Flanders, 1898-Antwerp, 1989) Belgian writer in the Flemish language.His novels dealt with, from a strictly religious perspective, the political, moral and existential conflicts of the present time.The trilogy The Roothooft Family (1929-1933); Sister Virgilia (1951), his masterpiece; Rebellion in the Congo (1953) and Alter ego (1964).He also wrote plays, poems and essays.
Post a Comment
Read more

Jose Campeche Biography

José Campeche (San Juan de Puerto Rico, 1751- id. , 1809) Puerto Rican painter.In his production, the portraits and paintings on religious themes stand out ( Miguel Antonio Ustáriz , Ramón de Castro ).
Post a Comment
Read more

Joseph Huby Biography

Joseph Huby (Châtelaudren, 1878-Laniscat, 1948) French Jesuit.He was a professor of Sacred Scripture at Fourvière (Lyon) and contributed to the magazines Études and Recherches de Science Religieuse .He is the author of Christus, history of religions (1912).
Post a Comment
Read more

Heinrich Friedrich Emil Lenz Biography

Heinrich Friedrich Emil Lenz (Dorpat, 1804-Rome, 1865) Russian physicist.Professor and rector of the University of Saint Petersburg, he studied the Peltier effect, the conductivity of metals and the variation of electrical resistance with temperature.He stated a law that allows knowing the direction and direction of the induced current in an electrical circuit. Heinrich Lenz He studied physics and chemistry at the University of Dorpat and, still very young, took part as a geophysicist in an expedition around the world, during which he made measurements on the level of salt, the temperature and the pressure of seas and oceans.Later settled in Saint Petersburg, he taught at the University and the Academy of Sciences of this city, of which he would become dean and rector. Lenz studied electrical conductivity and discovered the effect known as Joule effect regardless of the experiences and conclusions reached in this regard by James Prescott Joule, the British scientist who gave...
Post a Comment
Read more

Jose Toribio Medina Biography

José Toribio Medina (Santiago de Chile, 1852-1930) Historian, bibliographer and scholar, considered the most distinguished and laborious bibliographer in Latin America.He studied at the English School of Valparaíso and later at the National Institute, where he was a disciple of Diego Barros Arana, Miguel Luis Amunátegui, Rodulfo Armando Philipi and Ramón Briceño.He studied law at the University of Chile and, in just three years, became a lawyer (1872). But he soon moved away from the world of law and entered the diplomatic career, for which he made numerous trips (Peru, the United States, Argentina, Guatemala, Mexico and several countries in Europe, especially Spain ), in a tireless search for sources and documents on the history and letters of his country.He was secretary of the Faculty of Philosophy and Education. Of his prolific work (in total, about 500 titles) we can mention: History of colonial Chilean literature (1878), The aborigines of Chile (1882), Colonial Biogra...
Post a Comment
Read more