Read e-book online Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman PDF

By Robert K. Massie

ISBN-10: 0679456724

ISBN-13: 9780679456728

The Pulitzer Prize–winning writer of Peter the good, Nicholas and Alexandra, and The Romanovs returns with one other masterpiece of narrative biography, the intense tale of an imprecise younger German princess who traveled to Russia at fourteen and rose to develop into the most extraordinary, robust, and desirable ladies in history.

Born right into a minor noble family members, Catherine remodeled herself into Empress of Russia by way of sheer decision. owning an excellent brain and an insatiable interest as a tender girl, she wolfed the works of Enlightenment philosophers and, while she reached the throne, tried to exploit their rules to lead her rule of the massive and backward Russian empire. She knew or corresponded with the preeminent old figures of her time: Voltaire, Diderot, Frederick the good, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, Marie Antoinette, and, unusually, the yankee naval hero, John Paul Jones.

Reaching the throne fired through Enlightenment philosophy and decided to develop into the embodiment of the “benevolent despot” idealized by way of Montesquieu, she stumbled on herself regularly contending with the deeply ingrained realities of Russian existence, together with serfdom. She persisted, and for thirty-four years the govt., international coverage, cultural improvement, and welfare of the Russian humans have been in her fingers. She handled household uprising, international wars, and the tidal wave of political switch and violence churned up via the French Revolution that swept throughout Europe. Her attractiveness depended fullyyt at the viewpoint of the speaker. She used to be praised via Voltaire because the equivalent of the best of classical philosophers; she used to be condemned by way of her enemies, commonly overseas, as “the Messalina of the north.”

Catherine’s kin, acquaintances, ministers, generals, fans, and enemies—all are the following, vividly defined. those incorporated her bold, eternally scheming mom; her susceptible, bullying husband, Peter (who left her mendacity untouched beside him for 9 years after their marriage); her unsatisfied son and inheritor, Paul; her liked grandchildren; and her “favorites”—the parade of younger males from whom she sought companionship and the recapture of teenage in addition to intercourse. the following, too, is the enormous determine of Gregory Potemkin, her most important lover and attainable husband, with whom she shared a passionate correspondence of affection and separation, by means of seventeen years of extraordinary mutual achievement.

The tale is beautifully instructed. the entire targeted traits that Robert okay. Massie delivered to Nicholas and Alexandra and Peter the Great are current the following: ancient accuracy, intensity of knowing, felicity of favor, mastery of element, skill to shatter fable, and a unprecedented genius for locating and expressing the human drama in amazing lives.

History bargains few tales richer in drama than that of Catherine the good. during this publication, this perpetually interesting lady is lower back to lifestyles.