Catherine the Great Trivia
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60 free Catherine the Great trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Catherine the Great trivia quiz covers the minor German princess who became the longest-reigning female ruler of Russia. The easy questions are the ones most people know: where she was born, how she got the throne, the husband she overthrew, the museum that began as her private collection and the horse story that was never true. From there it moves through her rise: the name she was born with, the illness she nearly died of on arrival, her conversion, the loveless marriage to a Prussia-obsessed heir and the regiment she rode to on the morning of the coup. The harder end covers the reign in detail: the crown made in two months, the smallpox inoculation, the Nakaz and the Grand Commission, the paper rouble, Pugachev's revolt, the three partitions of Poland, the annexation of Crimea, the Smolny Institute, the Charter to the Nobility, her letters to Voltaire and the lovers she pensioned off with serfs. It finishes with her stroke, her will and the many actresses who have played her, from Marlene Dietrich to Elle Fanning. Every answer was checked against Catherine's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our Peter the Great and Russia quizzes are natural companions.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Catherine the Great's father opposed her conversion to Russian Orthodoxy because he was a devout member of which church?
Lutheran
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.
Q 02Catherine was born with which German princely surname?
Anhalt-Zerbst
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.
Q 03The teenage Catherine the Great fell gravely ill in Russia after getting up at night to do what?
Practise her language lessons
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.
Q 04How was Sophie related to Peter, the heir she married?
Second cousins
Two of her first cousins became kings of Sweden, and her uncle became heir to the Swedish throne.
Q 05On arriving in Russia, Sophie fell so ill she nearly died; what did she credit her survival to?
Frequent bloodletting
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.
Q 06Which Russian ruler chose the young Catherine the Great as a bride for her nephew and heir?
Elizabeth
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.
Q 07German-born Catherine wrote her memoirs and her letters to Europe's philosophers mainly in which language?
French
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'.
Q 08Which palace near St Petersburg was the country residence of Catherine and Peter's 'young court' after their 1745 wedding?
Oranienbaum
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.
Q 09Which Roman historian did Catherine say caused a 'revolution' in her thinking when she read him as a young grand duchess?
Tacitus
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.
Q 10Which courtier did Catherine imply in her memoirs was the real father of her son Paul?
Sergei Saltykov
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.
Q 11Which foreign monarch did Catherine's husband Peter III openly idolise, alienating Russia's army and court?
Frederick II
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.
Q 12Which brothers led the 1762 Guards plot that put Catherine on the Russian throne?
The Orlovs
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.
Q 13How long had Peter III been emperor when Catherine overthrew him?
About six months
Q 21Which Caucasus kingdom placed itself under Catherine's protection by treaty in 1783?
Georgia
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.
Q 22Which former lover did Catherine help make a king in 1764?
Stanisław Poniatowski
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.
Q 23Which third power joined Catherine's Russia and Prussia in partitioning Poland?
Austria
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.
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.
Q 14What was the official cause of Peter III's death after the autopsy?
Haemorrhoidal colic and apoplexy
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.
Q 15Which deposed emperor, a prisoner since infancy, was killed in 1764 during an attempt to free him and unseat Catherine?
Ivan VI
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.
Q 16Catherine ruled from St Petersburg, but in which older city was she crowned empress in September 1762?
Moscow
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.
Q 17Catherine dreamed of driving the Ottomans from which city and reviving a Christian empire there?
Constantinople
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.
Q 18Which 1774 treaty ended the first of Catherine's Turkish wars and detached Crimea from Ottoman rule?
The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca
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.
Q 19Which people ruled Crimea as a khanate before Catherine annexed it?
Tatars
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.
Q 20Which Black Sea city, founded on Catherine's orders in 1794, replaced Ottoman Khadjibey?
Odessa
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.
Q 24Whose ragtag insurgent armies rose against the partition of Poland in 1794?
Kościuszko's
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.
Q 25Which alliance did Catherine form in 1780 to stop the Royal Navy searching merchant ships?
The League of Armed Neutrality
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.
Q 26Which American naval hero did Catherine hire as a rear admiral to fight the Ottomans in 1788?
John Paul Jones
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.
Q 27Which St Petersburg landmark did Catherine commission and inscribe 'To Peter the First from Catherine the Second'?
The Bronze Horseman
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.
Q 28Which German farming settlers did Catherine encourage to migrate to Russia?
The Volga Germans
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.
Q 29Which novelty did Catherine introduce to Russia in 1769?
Paper money
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.
Q 30Against which disease did Catherine have an English doctor inoculate her in 1768?
Smallpox
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.