60 Fun Facts About Catherine the Great

Catherine the Great's father opposed her conversion to Russian Orthodoxy because he was a devout member of which church?

Lutheran: he objected, but his daughter went ahead. In 1744 she was received into the Orthodox Church and took a new name, Catherine, along with her new faith.

Catherine was born with which German princely surname?

Anhalt-Zerbst was a minor German principality with little money. Sophie owed her brilliant match less to her father's title than to her mother's better-connected relatives.

The teenage Catherine the Great fell gravely ill in Russia after getting up at night to do what?

Practise her language lessons: determined to win over her new country, she got up in the small hours to recite Russian vocabulary in her bedroom.

How was Sophie related to Peter, the heir she married?

Two of her first cousins became kings of Sweden, and her uncle became heir to the Swedish throne.

On arriving in Russia, Sophie fell so ill she nearly died; what did she credit her survival to?

Frequent bloodletting was the treatment the empress insisted on, over the protests of Sophie's mother. The quarrel cost the mother her standing at court, while the patient came out of it in high favour.

Which Russian ruler chose the young Catherine the Great as a bride for her nephew and heir?

Elizabeth had once been engaged to Catherine's uncle, who died just before the wedding, so she kept a soft spot for the family and took a strong liking to the girl.

German-born Catherine wrote her memoirs and her letters to Europe's philosophers mainly in which language?

French. Raised by a French governess, she used the language of Europe's courts for her memoirs and for the mass of letters that won her a reputation abroad for 'philosophy'.

Which palace near St Petersburg was the country residence of Catherine and Peter's 'young court' after their 1745 wedding?

Oranienbaum. Peter had gone back there with his Holstein courtiers in July 1762 when Catherine's coup unfolded, and it was there that he gave up the throne.

Which Roman historian did Catherine say caused a 'revolution' in her thinking when she read him as a young grand duchess?

Tacitus. Catherine wrote that his Annals made her take a gloomier view of things and look for the 'hidden and interested motives' behind events at court.

Which courtier did Catherine imply in her memoirs was the real father of her son Paul?

Sergei Saltykov. Soon after Paul's birth he was sent to Sweden to announce it, yet Paul grew up to resemble Peter III in both looks and character.

Which foreign monarch did Catherine's husband Peter III openly idolise, alienating Russia's army and court?

Frederick II of Prussia. As soon as Peter became emperor in 1762 he pulled Russia out of the Seven Years' War against him and signed an alliance with the old enemy instead.

Which brothers led the 1762 Guards plot that put Catherine on the Russian throne?

The Orlovs. Grigory, Catherine's lover, and his brother Alexei won the Guards regiments over to her; Alexei later commanded the warships that destroyed the Ottoman fleet at Çeşme.

How long had Peter III been emperor when Catherine overthrew him?

About six months. Peter III became emperor in January 1762 and was deposed that July; he died eight days later at Ropsha, in the custody of Catherine's supporters.

What was the official cause of Peter III's death after the autopsy?

Haemorrhoidal colic and apoplexy was what Catherine's government announced. Historians generally assume he was killed while held by her supporters at Ropsha, though exactly how is unknown.

Which deposed emperor, a prisoner since infancy, was killed in 1764 during an attempt to free him and unseat Catherine?

Ivan VI. Catherine had renewed the standing order that his guards kill him if anyone tried a rescue, so Lieutenant Mirovich's attempt ended with Ivan dead at his jailers' hands.

Catherine ruled from St Petersburg, but in which older city was she crowned empress in September 1762?

Moscow. Russia's rulers were still crowned in the Kremlin, and the Great Imperial Crown made for Catherine's big day was last worn by Nicholas II at his coronation in 1896.

Catherine dreamed of driving the Ottomans from which city and reviving a Christian empire there?

Constantinople. Her 'Greek Project' aimed to carve up the Ottoman lands and restore the Byzantine Empire, but after two Turkish wars the city was still firmly Ottoman.

Which 1774 treaty ended the first of Catherine's Turkish wars and detached Crimea from Ottoman rule?

The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca. It opened the Bosporus to Russian ships, and its clause on the sultan's Orthodox subjects became Russia's standing pretext for intervening in Ottoman affairs.

Which people ruled Crimea as a khanate before Catherine annexed it?

Tatars. The Crimean Khanate had been an Ottoman vassal for three centuries until the 1774 peace made it independent in name; nine years later Catherine annexed it outright.

Which Black Sea city, founded on Catherine's orders in 1794, replaced Ottoman Khadjibey?

Odessa. Russian troops under José de Ribas had stormed the Turkish fort there in 1789, and Catherine's 1794 decree ordered a naval harbour and trading port built in its place.

Which Caucasus kingdom placed itself under Catherine's protection by treaty in 1783?

Georgia. Under the Treaty of Georgievsk King Erekle II got a guarantee of his kingdom and dynasty, yet within twenty years Catherine's successors had annexed the country outright.

Which former lover did Catherine help make a king in 1764?

Stanisław Poniatowski. Catherine saw him as a convenient pawn and used Russian troops and influence to get him elected king of Poland, a country she then helped carve up.

Which third power joined Catherine's Russia and Prussia in partitioning Poland?

Austria. It shared in the first partition of 1772 and the third in 1795, which wiped Poland off the map, but sat out the second, taken by Russia and Prussia alone.

Whose ragtag insurgent armies rose against the partition of Poland in 1794?

Kościuszko's. He had spent the American Revolution as an engineer fortifying West Point; back home he led the 1794 national rising until Russian and Prussian troops crushed it.

Which alliance did Catherine form in 1780 to stop the Royal Navy searching merchant ships?

The League of Armed Neutrality. Britain was searching ships for enemy cargo during the American Revolutionary War, so Catherine banded the neutral powers together to resist it.

Which American naval hero did Catherine hire as a rear admiral to fight the Ottomans in 1788?

John Paul Jones. He fought on the Black Sea for her, but the posting brought him rivals and a criminal accusation instead of glory, and by 1790 he was back in Paris, embittered.

Which St Petersburg landmark did Catherine commission and inscribe 'To Peter the First from Catherine the Second'?

The Bronze Horseman. German by birth, Catherine was eager to tie herself to Peter the Great, so she had the sculptor Falconet cast him on a rearing horse above her dedication.

Which German farming settlers did Catherine encourage to migrate to Russia?

The Volga Germans. Catherine's manifesto of 1763 offered foreign settlers free land, self-government and exemption from military service, and thousands of German farmers took it up.

Which novelty did Catherine introduce to Russia in 1769?

Paper money. Military spending had drained the treasury of silver, so her new Assignation Bank issued paper roubles; they stayed in use, steadily losing value, until 1849.

Against which disease did Catherine have an English doctor inoculate her in 1768?

Smallpox. Thomas Dimsdale did it with relays of horses standing by for his escape in case she died; instead she made him a baron and had her son inoculated as well.

In Catherine's Russia, a noble's fortune was reckoned less in land than in how many of what he owned?

Souls. That was how male serfs were counted; Catherine had once planned to free them, but instead she handed crown lands, peasants included, to her favourites and ministers.

Which Cossack led the great rebellion of 1773–75 while claiming to be Catherine's dead husband, Peter III?

Yemelyan Pugachev. His Cossack and peasant army threatened Moscow before he was captured and beheaded in 1775, and the scare convinced Catherine to tighten serfdom rather than end it.

Which famous museum began as Catherine's private art collection?

The Hermitage. It began in 1764 as her private gallery beside the Winter Palace, stocked with paintings bought from a Berlin dealer, and the public was not let in until 1852.

In a 1772 letter, Catherine wrote that 'Anglomania is the master of my' what?

Plantomania. She had fallen for English gardens, she wrote, adoring curves, gentle slopes and ponds shaped like lakes, and despising straight lines and fountains that 'torture' water.

Which exotic style did Scottish architect Charles Cameron use for the village he built Catherine at Tsarskoye Selo?

Chinese. Caught up in Europe's craze for chinoiserie, Catherine first tried to hire a genuine Chinese architect for the village and, failing that, gave the job to Cameron.

With which philosopher did Catherine correspond for 15 years without ever meeting him?

Voltaire. He lauded her in letter after letter until his death in 1778, and she then bought his whole library from his heirs; it is still in St Petersburg.

Which philosopher did Catherine bail out by buying his library and paying him a salary as its librarian?

Diderot. The Encyclopédie's editor kept his books for life under the deal, and in 1773 he made the long journey to St Petersburg to thank her, staying five months at court.

Catherine's Instruction for a new law code was judged so radical that which country banned it?

France. Catherine admitted she had 'pillaged' Montesquieu to write it, yet his own country banned it, while in Russia her commission debated it for months and passed nothing.

Whose 1790 book Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow so angered Catherine that she exiled him to Siberia?

Alexander Radishchev. He meant his exposé of serfdom to open Catherine's eyes; instead, with revolution raging in Paris, it brought him a death sentence, commuted to ten years in Siberia.

Which school for noble girls did Catherine found in 1764, the first of its kind in Russia?

The Smolny Institute. It taught noblemen's daughters until 1917, when Lenin took over the building as Bolshevik headquarters for the October Revolution.

Which Catholic order, dissolved by the Pope in 1773, did Catherine allow to carry on in Russia?

The Jesuits. Catherine refused to let the papal decree take effect in the lands she had just taken from Poland, so the order lived on there until a later pope restored it in 1814.

Whose lands did Catherine seize to refill her treasury?

The Church. Catherine took the Orthodox Church's vast estates and their peasants for the state, which cost the clergy what little power Peter the Great's reforms had left them.

What name was given to the western borderlands where Catherine's decrees began confining Russia's Jews?

The Pale of Settlement. Decrees of 1783, 1791 and 1794 limited Jewish traders to the newly annexed lands, and the restriction hardened into a fixed zone that lasted until 1917.

Which favourite, nearly forty years her junior, dominated Catherine's last years?

Platon Zubov. He was in his early twenties when the sixty-year-old empress took him up, and he talked her into sending his brother Valerian to invade Persia in 1796.

Which favourite, Catherine's viceroy in the newly conquered south, is remembered for the sham 'villages' of legend?

Grigory Potemkin. The tale that he lined her 1787 route with fake villages is apocryphal; the fleet, the harbours and the towns he built in the south were real enough.

Which future US president spent part of his teens in Catherine's St Petersburg as secretary to an American envoy?

John Quincy Adams. At fourteen he went as secretary to Francis Dana, whose credentials Catherine's government refused to accept; in 1809 he returned as the first US minister to Russia.

How did Catherine actually die in November 1796?

A stroke. She collapsed in her private rooms one morning and died the next evening without waking; the notorious story about a horse is a slander spread after her death.

Which grandson did Catherine apparently intend to make her heir in place of her son Paul?

Alexander. She died before acting on it, so Paul took the throne and at once scrapped the rule letting a monarch pick a successor, fixing the crown in the male line instead.

In which cathedral is Catherine buried, alongside the husband she overthrew?

Peter and Paul Cathedral. As soon as she died, her son Paul had Peter III's remains brought there from a monastery grave, crowned at last and buried beside her.

Which Hollywood star played Catherine in the 1934 film The Scarlet Empress?

Marlene Dietrich. Her director was Josef von Sternberg, who had made her a star in The Blue Angel; he took huge liberties here, staging the coup as a cavalry charge up the palace stairs.

Which actress played Catherine in the Hulu series The Great (2020–2023)?

Elle Fanning. Her Catherine arrives a romantic and is soon plotting against Nicholas Hoult's Peter; the show's own subtitle, 'An Occasionally True Story', warns how much of it is invented.

Which Hollywood star wrote and starred in the 1944 Broadway comedy Catherine Was Great?

Mae West. She called the empress 'a pre-incarnation of myself' and surrounded herself on stage with a guard of tall, muscular actors, after failing to sell the script as a film.

In which Prussian city, now in Poland, was the future Catherine the Great born in 1729?

Stettin. She was born there because her father, a minor German prince with little money, was serving in the Prussian army as a general and the city's commandant.

Historians group Catherine with Joseph II and Maria Theresa as which kind of 18th-century ruler?

Enlightened despots. They pursued legal and educational reforms inspired by the Enlightenment but none that might weaken their power; Russia's serfs ended Catherine's reign worse off than before.

Which class did Catherine's 1785 Charter confirm as owners of their estates?

The nobility. The Charter also spared nobles corporal punishment and gave them their own assemblies and courts, while the serfs on their estates were left with fewer rights than before.

Which Swiss mathematician did Catherine recruit from Berlin to Saint Petersburg?

Leonhard Euler. He had worked in St Petersburg as a young man; soon after returning in 1766 he went almost totally blind, yet produced nearly half his life's work there.

During Catherine's reign Russians became the first Europeans to colonise which territory?

Alaska. Russian fur traders founded the first European settlement there in 1784, at Three Saints Bay on Kodiak Island; the tsars sold the whole territory to the United States in 1867.

Which Black Sea naval base did Catherine's Russia begin building in 1783, straight after annexing Crimea?

Sevastopol. Built beside the ruins of the ancient Greek colony of Chersonesus, it was fortified so strongly that British and French armies needed an eleven-month siege to take it in the Crimean War.

Which river, then called the Yaik, did Catherine rename in 1775 to blot out the memory of a Cossack revolt?

The Ural. The Yaik Cossacks had been the driving force of the great rising just crushed, so Catherine wiped the name out, renaming both the river and the Cossack host.

Which Romantic poet sent the hero of his satirical epic to St Petersburg to become a favourite of Catherine?

Lord Byron. In Don Juan the hero fights in the Russian army, catches the empress's eye and joins her court, until the climate makes him ill and she sends him off to England.