The Memoirs of Catherine the Great (11 page)

By 1762, Catherine had lost her parents and most of her immediate family. The eldest of five children, only she and her brother Friedrich August (1734–93), the last Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, lived to maturity.

Catherine’s correspondence as Grand Duchess exists in two nineteenth-century books: Ferdinand Siebigk, Katharina der Zweiten Brautreise nach Russland 1744–1745.
Eine historische Skizze
(Dessau, Germany, 1873); and
Sbornik Imperatorskogo russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva,
vol. 7 (St. Petersburg, 1871), hereafter cited as
SIRIO.

Catherine to Mme. Geoffrin, November 6, 1764, “Pis’ma Imperatritsy Ekateriny II, k G-zhe Zhoffren,”
SIRIO,
1:261–62.

Mme. Geoffrin “invented the Enlightenment salon. First, she made the one-o’clock dinner rather than the traditional late-night supper the sociable meal of the day, and thus she opened up the whole afternoon for talk. Second, she regularized these dinners, fixing a specific day of the week for them (Monday for artists, Wednesday for men of letters).” Dena Goodman,
The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French
Enlightenment (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994), 91.

Written in 1947 by Grigorii A. Gukovskii, “The Empress as Writer,” in
Catherine the
Great: A Profile,
ed. Marc Raeff (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), 68.

Whittaker,
Russian Monarchy,
9.

Isabel de Madariaga concludes, “In her literary as in her legislative production she was pragmatic in her approach, pedantic in her execution, and eclectic as regards her sources.”
Catherine the Great: A Short History
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990), 204. See also Isabel de Madariaga, “The Role of Catherine II in the Literary and Cultural Life of Russia,” in
Politics and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia
(New York: Longman, 1998), 284–95.

A nearly one-thousand-page annotated bibliography of Catherine’s writings catalogs accessible Russian publications and excludes rare books, archives, and Catherine’s publications abroad in French and in translations. I. V. Babich, M. V. Babich, and T. A. Lapteva, eds.,
Ekaterina II: Annotirovannaia bibliografiia publikatsii
(Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2004). See also Prince N. N. Golitsyn,
Bibliograficheskii slovar’ russkikh pisatel’nits
(1889; reprint, Leipzig: Zentralantiquariat der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, 1974), 92–109; and John T. Alexander, “Catherine II (Ekaterina Alekseevna), ‘The Great,’ Empress of Russia,” in
Early Modern Russian Writers: The Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries, ed. Marcus C. Levitt, Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 150 (Detroit: Bruccoli Clark Layman and Gale Research, 1995), 43–54.

Gukovskii, for example, writes that by 1790, when she stopped publishing and was working on her memoirs and a history of Russia, “she gave up her writing.” “The Empress as Writer,” 89.

“Je vous ai dit mille fois que je ne vous écris point, je jase avec vous.” Catherine to Grimm, August 24, 1778,
SIRIO,
23:100.

On this phenomenon in England and the role of women, see Margaret J. M. Ezell,
Social Authorship and the Advent of Print
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). Ezell argues that scholarship on the growth of printing in the eighteenth-century based on outstanding work by Robert Darnton and Roger Chartier has created a progressive narrative of publication that overvalues the significance of publication for the purpose of creating a civil society. The idea that publishing is always better than not publishing, while true for scholars today, ignores the many other social and political relationships created by unpublished writing in the eighteenth century.

Catherine even left her “secret” correspondence with Potemkin to be read by her favorites, to foster trust between the men in her life; this correspondence also involved courtiers, couriers, and routes that pitted political factions against each other for influence, including the privilege of giving Catherine her mail. Smith,
Love and Conquest,
xxv–xxx.

Bruce Redford,
The Converse of the Pen: Acts of Intimacy in the Eighteenth-Century Familiar
Letter
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 2.

In Russia’s first biographical compilation of writers,
Attempt at a Historical Dictionary of
Russian Writers (1772), Nikolai Novikov (1744–1818) sometimes notes publication, along with knowledge of languages, the various genres used, and existence of manuscripts. But repeatedly, the most important fact about a writer is the esteem of “many knowledgeable people.”

Catherine to Marmontel, 1767,
SIRIO,
13:269.

On Catherine’s notion of her audience as listeners as well as readers, see W. Gareth Jones, “The Spirit of the
Nakaz:
Catherine II’s Literary Debt to Montesquieu,”
Slavonic and East European Review
76:4 (October 1998): 658–71.

Joan DeJean, “Classical Reeducation: Decanonizing the Feminine,” in The Politics of Tradition: Placing Women in French Literature, ed. Joan DeJean and Nancy K. Miller, Yale French Studies, no. 75 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988), 26–39.

She asked both Prince de Ligne and Count de Ségur to teach her; for their examples for her, see P. Pekarskii, Materialy dlia istorii zhurnal’noi i literaturnoi deiatel’nosti Eka
teriny II,
Prilozhenie k III-mu tomu
Zapisok Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk,
vol. 6 (St. Petersburg, 1863), 36–37, 68–70.

Isabel de Madariaga, “Catherine II and Enlightened Absolutism,” in
Politics and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia
(New York: Longman, 1998), 198. For a literary analysis of the artistic structure of the
Instruction,
see Gareth Jones, “The Spirit of the
Nakaz.
”

Catherine to Johann Georg Zimmermann, January 1789 (596).

The special underground role of memoirs in Russian culture “as a form of autobiography with . . . a conscience” is the subject of Beth Holmgren, ed., The Russian Memoir:
History and Literature
(Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2003), x.

Eidel’man, “Memuary Ekateriny II,” 157–59. In Soviet times, the memoirs were transferred from the Imperial Archives in the former Winter Palace, now the Hermitage Museum, to the Russian State Archive of Ancient Documents in Moscow.

For example, in the middle memoir she writes that “the first stirring of ambition that I felt was caused by M. Bolhagen . . . in 1736,” as he read the announcement of her cousin’s marriage to the Prince of Wales (15).

“D’ailleurs philosophe au possible, point de passion ne me fait agir.” Catherine to Princess Johanna, 1756,
SIRIO,
1:72.

Quoted in Vasilii A. Bil’bassov, “The Intellectual Formation of Catherine II,” in
Catherine the Great: A Profile,
ed. Marc Raeff (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), 22.

John T. Alexander, “Ivan Shuvalov and Russian Court Politics, 1749–63,” in
Literature,
Lives, and Legality in Catherine’s Russia, ed. A. G. Cross and G. S. Smith (Nottingham, England: Astra Press, 1994), 1–13.

Lionel Gossman, “Marginal Writing,” in
A New History of French Literature,
ed. Denis Hollier (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), 381.

Marcus C. Levitt, “Catherine the Great,” in Russian Women Writers, ed. Christine D. Tomei, vol. 1 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1999), 3–27.

Catherine to d’Alembert, November 13, 1762,
Oeuvres et correspondances inédites de
d’Alembert,
ed. Charles Henry (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1967), 205. Veronica Buckley,
Christina, Queen of Sweden
(London: Fourth Estate, 2004).

Jean Le Rond d’Alembert,
Oeuvres complètes de d’Alembert
(Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1967), 2:148.
Mémoires
appeared in
Mélanges de littérature, d’histoire et de philosophie
(1753).

Voltaire first got the idea for a history of Peter the Great in 1737 from the future Frederick the Great, and in 1745 he first approached Elizabeth. Thus his relationship with Catherine had a precedent. P. K. Shchebal’skii, “Ekaterina II, kak pisatel’nitsa: literaturnaia perepiska Ekateriny, V,” Zaria 8 (1869): 68–111.

Catherine to Voltaire, September 1763,
Voltaire’s Correspondence,
ed. T. Besterman, 107 vols. (Geneva: Institut et Musée Voltaire, 1953–65), 53:30 (no. 10597).

Bil’bassov, “The Intellectual Formation of Catherine II,” 27.

On Catherine’s and the
philosophes’
ideas about the great man in history, see Dixon,
Catherine the Great,
5–8.

Madariaga, “Catherine and the
philosophes,
” 215–34.

Quoted in Comte de Ségur,
Mémoires ou souvenirs et anecdotes,
2nd ed., vol. 3 (Paris, 1826), 43.

John LeDonne, Ruling Russia: Politics and Administration in the Age of Absolutism,
1762–1796
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), viii.

An average print run was 600 books; Catherine’s primer sold 20,000 copies.

To Grimm she wrote: “I beg you to no longer call me, nor to any longer give me the sobriquet of Catherine the Great, because
primo,
I do not like any sobriquet,
secondo,
my name is Catherine II, and
tertio,
I do not want anyone to say of me as of Louis XV, that one finds him badly named; fourthly, my height is neither great nor small.” Catherine to Grimm, February 22, 1788,
SIRIO,
23:438.

For a survey of 774 foreign publications about Catherine from 1744 to 1796 in the Russian Public Library’s Russica collection, see Vasilii A. Bil’basov,
Istoriia Ekateriny
vtoroi,
vol. 12 (Berlin, 1896).

Dr. Georg Sacke, “Die Pressepolitik Katharinas II von Russland,”
Zeitungswissenschaft
9 (1934): 570–79.

Catherine to Voltaire, September 1763,
Voltaire’s Correspondence,
53:31 (no. 10597). Catherine never forgot Rousseau’s criticism, for in a letter to Grimm while she was revising her middle memoir, she cites a similar passage by Rousseau on Poland’s loss of liberty. Catherine to Grimm, May 13, 1791,
SIRIO,
23:538.

Catherine to Mme. Geoffrin, March 28, 1765,
SIRIO,
1:266.

Claude C. de Rulhière, A History, or Anecdotes of the Revolution in Russia, in the Year 1762 (1797; reprint, New York: Arno Press and
The New York Times,
1970).

For a history of French writings about Russia, with both edited texts and correlated passages, see Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, ed., L’Impératrice et l’Abbé: Un duel littéraire in
édit entre Catherine II et l’Abbé Chappe d’Auteroche
(Paris: Fayard, 2003).

A revisionist view of much Russian historiography argues that “the dialogue between ruler and ruled in Russia aspired to be nonconfrontational.” Whittaker,
Russian Monarchy,
7.

On Catherine’s coronation festivities, which took place for six months, Richard Wortman writes that “their magnificence and scale reconfirmed the European character of the Russian court and stunned foreign visitors.”
Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in
Russian Monarchy,
vol. 1 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), 118.

Richard Wortman, “Texts of Exploration and Russia’s European Identity,” in
Russia
Engages the World, 1453–1825,
ed. Cynthia Hyla Whittaker (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), 97.

She was influenced by the linguist Antoine Court de Gébelin’s (1725–84)
Histoire naturelle de la parole, ou Précis de l’origine du langage & de la grammaire universelle
(Paris, 1776), and was aided by Peter Simon Pallas (1741–1811), who published a two-volume edition of
Sravnitel’nye slovari vsekh iazykov i narechii, sobrannye desnitseiu
vsevysochaishei osoby
(St. Petersburg, 1787 and 1789), and later by Jankevich de Marijevo, who published a revised and expanded four-volume edition,
Sravnitel’nyi slovar’
vsekh iazykov i narechii, po azbuchnomy poriadku raspolozhenii
(St. Petersburg, 1791). See Shchebal’skii, “Ekaterina II kak pisatel’nitsa,”
Zaria
6:2 (1870): 17–27; and Friedrich von Adelung,
Catherinen’s des Grossen verdienste um die vergleichende Sprachenkunde
(St. Petersburg, 1815).

Anatole G. Mazour,
Modern Russian Historiography
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975), 33.

Shchebal’skii, “Ekaterina II kak pisatel’nitsa,”
Zaria
3 (1870): 10–14.

“Qui est ce meilleur poète et ce meilleur historien de mon empire? Ce n’est pas moi pour sûr, n’ayant jamais fait ni vers ni histoire.” Catherine to Grimm, August 24, 1778,
SIRIO,
23:100.

L. M. Gavrilova, “Istochniki ‘Zapisok kasatel’no rossiiskoi istorii’ Ekateriny II,” Vspo
mogatel’nye istoricheskie ditsipliny
20 (1989): 167.

Catherine mentions Ivan Perfil’ievich Elagin, writer and Freemason, in her final memoir, for with his silence he supported her during Bestuzhev-Riumin’s arrest in 1758. Her letter of January 12, 1794, to Grimm refers to Elagin’s
Attempt at a Narrative
on Russia. SIRIO,
23:589.

Sochineniia 8 (1901): 5. Gavrilova, “Istochniki ‘Zapisok,’ ” 164–74. Most history in the eighteenth century focused on the ruler, and, like Tatishchev, Catherine believed that because of its size, history, and culture, Russia needed an absolute monarch. In addition to this empirical model, Whittaker also describes dynastic and antidespotic models of history. Russian Monarchy, 119–40.

“J’en conviens, mais la rage de l’histoire a emporté ma plume.” Catherine to Grimm, January 12, 1794,
SIRIO,
23:589.

“Fortunate will be the writer who in a century compiles the history of Catherine II.” Voltaire to Catherine, December 3, 1771,
Voltaire’s Correspondence,
80:169 (no. 16442). Voltaire here complains that the documents of history are unreliable and only great deeds will remain.

In
An Obsession with History: Russian Writers Confront the Past
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994), Andrew Wachtel traces Russian writers’ (including Catherine’s) willingness to treat their history, long the exclusive turf of professional historians in other countries, as if there was a mystery to the problem of writing history in Russia. Censorship and lack of access to materials still remain problems today.