Legends of Catherine II of Russia
Encyclopedia
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
Empress Catherine II of Russia
Catherine II of Russia
Catherine II, also known as Catherine the Great , Empress of Russia, was born in Stettin, Pomerania, Prussia on as Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg...
, as well as the dramatic changes the country underwent during her long rule, gave rise to many urban legends, most casting her in an unfavorable light. Some stories were loosely based on true events, others were completely false. The palace intrigue of her son Paul I of Russia
Paul I of Russia
Paul I was the Emperor of Russia between 1796 and 1801. He also was the 72nd Prince and Grand Master of the Order of Malta .-Childhood:...
was a fertile ground for such rumors.
History
She traveled from Germany with her mother in January 1744. When they reached Russia, the Empress Elizabeth took a great liking to Sophie (Catherine), but her nephew, Peter (Catherine's husband), who was mentally and physically undeveloped, hated the country he was to reign over, and admired Frederick the Great of Prussia, who was a hero to him.Several stories about the circumstances of her death at the age of 67 probably originated soon after. A common story states that she died as a result of her voracious sexual appetite while attempting sexual intercourse with a stallion
Zoophilia
Zoophilia, from the Greek ζῷον and φιλία is the practice of sex between humans and non-human animals , or a preference or fixation on such practice...
—the story holds that the harness
Horse harness
A horse harness is a type of horse tack that allows a horse or other equine to pull various horse-drawn vehicles such as a carriage, wagon or sleigh. Harnesses may also be used to hitch animals to other loads such as a plow or canal boat....
holding the horse above her broke, and she was crushed . Another story, that she died on the toilet when her seat broke under her, is true only in small part: she did collapse in a bathroom from a stroke
Stroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
, but after that she died being cared for in her bed. This tale was widely circulated and even jokingly referred to by Aleksandr Pushkin
Aleksandr Pushkin
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was a Russian author of the Romantic era who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature....
in one of his untitled poems. ("Наказ писала, флоты жгла, / И умерла, садясь на судно."—literal translation: "Decreed the orders, burned the fleets / And died boarding a vessel", the last line can also be translated as "And died sitting down on the toilet".). There existed also a version on alleged assassination, by spring blades hidden in a toilet seat.
Rumors of her private life had a large basis in the fact that she took many young lovers, even while in old age. (Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement...
's Don Juan, around the age of twenty-two, becomes her lover after the siege of Ismail
Izmail
Izmail is a historic town near the Danube river in the Odessa Oblast of south-western Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of the Izmail Raion , the city itself is also designated as a separate raion within the oblast....
(1790), in a fiction
Don Juan (Byron)
Don Juan is a satiric poem by Lord Byron, based on the legend of Don Juan, which Byron reverses, portraying Juan not as a womanizer but as someone easily seduced by women. It is a variation on the epic form. Byron himself called it an "Epic Satire"...
written only about twenty-five years after Catherine's death.) This practice was not unusual by the court standards of the day, nor was it unusual to use rumor and innuendo of sexual excess politically. One of her early lovers, Stanisław August Poniatowski was later supported by her to become a king of Poland. One unfavorable rumor was that Alexander Dmitriev-Mamonov
Alexander Dmitriev-Mamonov
Count Alexander Matveyevich Dmitriev-Mamonov was a lover of Catherine II of Russia from 1786 to 1789....
and her later lovers were chosen by Prince Potemkin
Grigori Alexandrovich Potemkin
Prince Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin-Tavricheski was a Russian military leader, statesman, nobleman and favorite of Catherine the Great. He died during negotiations over the Treaty of Jassy, which ended a war with the Ottoman Empire that he had overseen....
himself, after the end of the long relationship Catherine had with Potemkin, where he, perhaps, was her morganatic
Morganatic marriage
In the context of European royalty, a morganatic marriage is a marriage between people of unequal social rank, which prevents the passage of the husband's titles and privileges to the wife and any children born of the marriage...
husband. After Mamonov eloped from the 60-year-old Empress with a 16-year-old maid of honour and married her, the embittered Catherine reputedly revenged herself of her rival "by secretly sending policemen disguised as women to whip her in her husband's presence".
According to some contemporaries close to Catherine, Countess Praskovya Bruce
Praskovya Bruce
Countess Praskovja Aleksandrovna Bruce was a Russianlady-in-waiting and noble, confidante of empress Catherine the Great....
was prized by her as "L'Eprouveuse", or "tester of male capacity". Every potential lover was to spend a night with Bruce before he was admitted into Catherine's personal apartments. Their friendship was cut short when Bruce was found "in an assignment" with Catherine's youthful lover, Rimsky-Korsakov, ancestor of the composer; they both later withdrew from the imperial court to Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
.
A long-surviving story about the Potemkin village
Potemkin village
Potemkin villages or Potyomkin villages is an idiom based on a historical myth. According to the myth, there were fake settlements purportedly erected at the direction of Russian minister Grigory Potemkin to fool Empress Catherine II during her visit to Crimea in 1787...
s was false, even though it became eponymous. It states that Potemkin built fake settlements with hollow facades to fool Empress Catherine II during her visit to Crimea
Crimea
Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...
and New Russia, the territories Russia
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
conquered under her reign. Modern historians, however, consider this scenario at best an exaggeration, and quite possibly simply a malicious rumor spread by Potemkin's opponents.
Some other narratives
- Not a native speaker of RussianRussian languageRussian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, Catherine misspelled eщё (jɪɕˈɕo 'more'), written with three letters, as истчо ([ɪstˈtɕo]), consisting of five letters, and that allegedly gave rise to a popular Russian joke: how can five mistakes occur in a word of three letters? (The letter ёYo (Cyrillic)Yo is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. In Unicode, the letter ⟨Ё⟩ is named CYRILLIC CAPITAL/SMALL LETTER IO.It commonly represents the sounds , like the pronunciation of ⟨Yo⟩ in "York"....
was not widely accepted until the 1940s). - After Catherine granted to KazanKazanKazan is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia. With a population of 1,143,546 , it is the eighth most populous city in Russia. Kazan lies at the confluence of the Volga and Kazanka Rivers in European Russia. In April 2009, the Russian Patent Office granted Kazan the...
's Muslims the right to build mosqueMosqueA mosque is a place of worship for followers of Islam. The word is likely to have entered the English language through French , from Portuguese , from Spanish , and from Berber , ultimately originating in — . The Arabic word masjid literally means a place of prostration...
s, the city's ChristianChristianA Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
leadership decided that mosques were being built too high—higher than churches. They sent a petition to Catherine asking her to prohibit the construction of high minarets. As the legend goes, Catherine replied that she was the tsarina of the Russian land and that the sky was beyond her jurisdiction. - The religious leader Jacob FrankJacob FrankJacob Frank was an 18th century Jewish religious leader who claimed to be the reincarnation of the self-proclaimed messiah Sabbatai Zevi and also of the biblical patriarch Jacob...
spread the rumour that his daughter Eve FrankEve FrankEve Frank or Eva Frank , born in Nikopol, Ottoman Empire under the name Rebecca or Rachel, was the daughter of Jacob Frank, the claimant to the position of Jewish Messiah in the 18th century, and his wife Hannah Kohen....
was Catherine's illegitimate daughter.