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The Memoirs of Catherine the Great (Modern Library Classics)

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Catherine the Great has long suffered from mixed press. Jeesh, I mean there was the fact she almost certainly had her demented husband, who just happened to be the Czar, conveniently snuffed, she enacted brutal laws in retaliation for a wee bit of disloyalty on behalf of the Russian peasantry, and, well, let's not forget that nasty rumor about how fond she was of horses. Ahem. But you know, this was also one of the greatest rulers in Russian history, a pen-pal of Voltaire, hand-picked agent of Frederick the Great, and above all else, an improbable survivor against whom the deck was stacked pretty high.

I think Catherine used these memoirs to sway the public's feelings about her. That's a nice way of saying I suspect the ol' gal fibbed a time or two. But so what? This is still an invaluable first-hand account of a time and place about which we might otherwise have known far less than we do, but for courtesy of her gifted prose. Sure, Catherine wasn't perfect but she wasn't a monster, either, as so many other Russian rulers have been. She had a good sense of humor, she liked to read and she made an art of political pragmatism. Catherine also tried to do what was right (especially what was right for her) and early in her reign, this German on the Russian throne brought about a number of amazingly liberal reforms that ended laws that were suffocating Mother Russia, even during the Age of Enlightenment.

I say, let historians debate all they want, Catherine deserved to have her say and her point of view is privileged. If for nothing else than the details of her era, this memoir is worth its weight in sable and caviar.

This rather large collection can be very absorbing in spite of its "pedestrian" style. Even a bad translation (which it likely was not) couldn't be an excuse to call it good writing, but memoirs are not really known for being Pulitzer material. "Alibiographies," these are sometimes called, and the stories in "Memoirs" are very often told by Catherine to make herself a favorable picture. As historian Will Durant says about the work, it is not so much false, as it is partial. Truthfully, though, it would be hard to name any other autobiography that did not do the same. The most glaring difference between "her version" and the "world's version," for example, has to be her thoughts and descriptions of her husband, Czar Peter III. The reader will find this easy -- and interesting -- to spot all through the memoirs!

Durant also implies, though, that Catherine's memoirs fills many gaps, at least as material for further reading. No matter the partiality shown in the book, it is blindingly clear that Catherine was head and shoulders above almost all her contemporaries in intelligence, energy, curiosity, and shrewdness.

A word of personal annoyance with this book. It took more than three-quarters of the pages to run across the telling of her first non-husband love relationship. Even then the fateful paragraph was extra-long and in an unexpectedly different style, and had to be read twice to catch on. All that work for so little naughty information!

This book is fantastic. One third of the book informs you of all the data you need to clarify and comprehend what the memoirs are stating. The memoirs comprise the last two thirds of the book.

Catherine did a lot for the enlightenment in RUSSIA and was a true Russian in heart if not by blood and birth.

The book is easy to read and never boring especially if you are interested in history told by the people that made.

It is often only by making critical use of contemporary or near-contemporary bureaucratic records, military reports, or, in certain auspicious circumstances, personal correspondence, that modern historians are able to fabricate their rough, and frequently simplified, portraits of the monarchs or leaders of old; precious few of this figures, tragically, ever found time or motivation to pen memoirs to illuminate later generations as to their internal drives and personal struggles. With such a near-complete lack of material authored by these historical figures themselves, succeeding generations are frequently left unsatisfied by the dry, one-dimensional, caricatures made possible by unreliable third party accounts often written decades following the figure's demise; such sketches are essentially no more than rote enumerations of the figure's pivotal, outward, deeds. In happy contrasts to this dearth of first-hand historical authorship stands Sophia Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst, more commonly known to English-speaking historians as Catherine II, Empress and Autocrat of Russia from 1762 to 1796; perhaps more so than other other appellation, however, Catherine is remembered as the "Enlightened," for her keen academic interest in the governmental ideals of the Enlightenment, which stressed the freedom and betterment of the masses, particularly in the political sphere. Under Catherine's steady stewardship, during which she clearly displayed a shrewd intelligence and political savvy, the Russian Empire enjoyed one the most prosperous periods in its long and often sordid history, devouring Poland and expanding to its natural southern extend through the annexation of the Crimea. Yet, Catherine's memoirs, penned at an indeterminate time before her death and left unfinished mid-sentence, deal in no way with the political and military wrangling of her thirty-year imperial reign; instead, the memoirs have as their focus the formative years of Catherine's life, spanning from her earliest childhood, to her marriage to her often-derided husband Czar Peter III, to the months immediately preceding the shadowy series of events leading to her coronation of sole ruler of All the Russias. It is in studying these fascinating accounts of Catherine's youth that historians today are able to more fully appreciate not only Catherine's keen intellect and academic knowledge, but also the extremely shrewd propaganda techniques which she employed in order to shape later perceptions of her and to justify her usurpation of the throne.
Catherine, known to history as one of Russia's most successful monarchs, was, in fact, not or Russian but of German descent. It is perhaps one of the most striking aspects of her memoirs that she, after departing her homelands in the German states for the far-away and alien court of the Empress Elizabeth, never again upon arriving in Russia acknowledges or alludes to her German heritage. From the moment she is cast into the intrigue of the court, and begins to sense her overt destiny of inheriting the Czarist crown, Catherine assumes her Russian identity flawlessly and wholly; never once in the memoirs does she let slip any sense of a longing for her homeland, or any sympathy or camaraderie whatsoever with the German people. This speaks loudly to Catherine's pragmatic sense of necessity. To mourn her homeland or to shun her new Russian domain would have been, in her shrewd eyes, to throw away a magnificent opportunity for personal advancement. Indeed, Catherine, in contrast with the general portrait she paints of herself in the memoirs, distinctly declares that, from the beginning of her unhappy days in the court of Elizabeth, she wholly sought, and believed herself worthy to hold, the crown. Yet, this early determination, which, in light of Catherine's later depiction her years with Peter, may indeed have been an unintentional slippage; throughout the work, Catherine consistently paints herself as the victims not only of a cruel fate, but of the intrigues of the courtiers. Already despairing over her marriage to Peter, Catherine portrays herself as becoming a virtual prisoner in the Winter Palace, not allowed either to leave or to see her child. Reading the account, one cannot but begin feeling sympathy for Catherine; however, this is only because she intended it to be so. From the very first page of the memoirs, it is abundantly clear that Catherine is not only intimately aware of events around her, but possessed an astute understanding of twisting events in her own favor. By depicting herself as an aloof victim of various court intrigues, which are so well documented in the work as to clearly have been written by one involved in them, Catherine is simply washing her hands of what was more likely her own active scheming in these formative years before her ascension to power. Such a perceptive woman as Catherine, one feels when reading the memoirs, would never have been so victimized by schemers. She, instead, would have been one. The decisive Empress Catherine could not possibly have come into being unless molded by shrewd intrigue in her early years at court.
There is much to be revealed not only of the personality and mentality of the young Catherine in the memoirs, but also of the concerns of the aging Catherine, who seeks throughout the work to emphasize her attachment to Enlightenment ideals and values. The memoirs are littered with instances in which Catherine boasts of have read Enlightenment authors, as well as showing her appreciation of Greek culture and religion. In one particularly striking passage, Catherine loudly laments the nobles' atrocious treatment of the peasants, and goes so far as to trace this behavior back to their exposure, as children, to similar abuse of servants by their parents; clearly, Catherine is attempting to advance a sketch of herself as a woman of benign, progressive, ideals; yet, the same passage in which she speaks with such horror of the peasants plight also exposes the limitations, or possibly insincerity, of her Enlightened ideas. Though she appears to regret that the serfs are so abused, Catherine makes no clear vow to so much as attempt to better their lot in life. How much of this is due to Catherine's realism, as it was unlikely that she could have aided the serfs had she tried, or to her half-hearted belief in the Enlightenment is unclear and will likely be the cause of debate for much time to come. Yet let the memoirs' depiction of Catherine stand next to the realities of her reign and policy, and one will see that she clearly intended to use the memoirs, and her fervent profession of Enlightened ideals, as an apology or mask for her later limited and unsuccessful reforms; moreover, Catherine's violent suppression the Pugachev Uprising and shift towards the right later in her reign do not square well with the portrait of herself given in the memoirs. Still, there is much to admire in the young Catherine's honesty concerning her personal life, particularly her many lovers. Even this, though is merely another another tool used to coerce the reader into accepting uncritically the portrait of Catherine presented here. When one reads of such honesty and sincerity of Catherine's private life, it is all to easy a step to put such faith into the entire work, thus accepting the image of herself that Catherine desperately wanted the reader to.
It is in justifying her most irregular assumption of power, however, that Catherine and her memoirs have most influenced historical perception, even to this day. From the first instance when the young Catherine meets her husband-to-be, Peter, the memoirs paint a decidedly negative and, likely, caricatured image of the poor man. According to the memoirs, Peter was truly a boy in a man's body, who much preferred playing with his toy soldiers than in tending to affairs of state. Moreover, Peter is depicted as an unthinking womanizer who occasionally uses violence against Catherine. Like the memoir's depiction of Catherine, however, this sketch of the unfortunate Czar should not be accepted uncritically. Catherine composed these memoirs three decades after assuming power by deposing her imbecile husband, who later perished under extremely mysterious circumstances. It is with this in mind that one must approach the portrayal of Peter the third in this work. By casting Peter as a careless fool who, in Catherine's own words, would be the death of Russia should he ever assume the throne, Catherine lends ample justification to her deposition of Peter; indeed, in the same passage in which Catherine denounces Peter as Russia's doom, she casts herself is the nation's savior. Thus, it is abundantly unclear whether or not Peter suffered from the disabilities, at least to the extent, that Catherine attributes to him. Certainly, it would be most enlightening if his memoirs were to be found, denouncing his manipulative and ambitious wife.
While "The Memoirs of Catherine the Great," like any autobiographical work, are subject to numerous prejudices, both intentional and accidental, they are still highly illuminating as to the personality of Catherine, not only in her early years but also in her old age. Clearly, she was a highly intelligent and driven individual, determined to please her subjects and readers with her erudition and humanity. Equally illuminating are her polemics against her husband, which speak, perhaps, to the guilty conscious of an old woman looking to justify the crimes of her youth. Moreover, as a portrait of imperial Russian life at its height of power and grander prior to the decadence and stagnation that was to set in following Catherine's death, the memoirs are invaluable in allowing later generations to understand how the imperial family and court viewed themselves.

Very interesting insight into the mind of a strong woman that lived long ago. Human nature never really changes does it? :-)