Catherine the Great

Catherine was born on 2 May 1729 as Princess Sophie Auguste Friederike von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg, in the city of Stettin (now known as Szczecin) within the Province of Pomerania in the Kingdom of Prussia. She was delivered in her family's residence in the neoclassical building at the current 1 Farna Street (then Große Domstraße 1), where she resided for the first few years of her life, before her family moved to the Ducal Castle in Stettin. Her mother was Joanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp. Her father, Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, belonged to the ruling German family of Anhalt. He failed to become the Duke of Courland and Semigallia and, at the time of his daughter's birth, he held the rank of a Prussian general in his capacity as governor of the city of Stettin. However, because her second cousin Charles Peter Ulrich converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, her mother's brother, Adolf Frederick, became the heir to the Swedish throne and two of her first cousins, Gustav III and Charles XIII, became Kings of Sweden.

In accordance with the prevailing custom among the ruling dynasties of Germany, she received her education chiefly from a French governess and from tutors. According to her memoirs, Sophie was considered a tomboy and trained herself to master a sword.

Catherine found her childhood to be uneventful; she once wrote to her correspondent Baron Grimm, "I see nothing of interest in it". Although Sophie was born a princess, her family had little money; her rise to power was supported by her mother Joanna's wealthy relatives, who were both nobles and royal relations. The more than 300 sovereign entities of the Holy Roman Empire, many of them small and powerless, made for a highly competitive political system in which the various princely families competed for advantages over one another, often by way of political marriages.

For smaller German princely families, an advantageous marriage was one of the best means of advancing their interests. To improve the position of her house, Sophie was groomed throughout her childhood to become the wife of a powerful ruler. In addition to her native German, Sophie became fluent in French, the lingua franca of European elites in the 18th century. The young Sophie received the standard education for an 18th-century German princess, concentrating on etiquette, French, and Lutheran theology.

In 1739, when Sophie was 10, she met her second cousin who would later become her husband and Peter III of Russia. She later wrote that she immediately found Peter detestable and that she stayed at one end of the castle and Peter at the other. She disliked his pale complexion and his fondness for alcohol.

The choice of Sophie as wife of the future emperor was a result of the Lopukhina affair, in which Count Jean Armand de Lestocq and King Frederick the Great of Prussia took an active part. The objective was to strengthen the friendship between Prussia and Russia, to weaken the influence of Austria, and to overthrow the chancellor Alexey Bestuzhev-Ryumin, a known partisan of the Austrian alliance on whom the reigning Russian Empress Elizabeth relied. The diplomatic intrigue failed, largely due to the intervention of Sophie's mother, Joanna Elisabeth.

Contemporary and later accounts present Joanna as a figure of strong will and ambition, often involved in court affairs. Her efforts to secure her daughter’s advantageous marriage in Russia brought her into conflict with Empress Elizabeth, who ultimately expelled her from the country amid allegations of espionage on behalf of King Frederick. Elizabeth knew the family well and had intended to marry Joanna's brother, Charles Augustus (Karl August von Holstein). He died of smallpox in 1727 in Saint Petersburg, just before the wedding could take place. Despite Joanna's interference, Elizabeth took a strong liking to Sophie, and Sophie and Peter were eventually married in 1745.

When Sophie arrived in Russia in 1744 at age 15, she spared no effort to ingratiate herself not only with Elizabeth, but also with Elizabeth's lover Alexei Razumovsky and with the Russian people at large. She zealously applied herself to learning the Russian language, rising late at night to repeat her lessons in her bedroom. She became ill with pneumonia, but survived and recovered. In her memoirs, she wrote that she made the decision then to do whatever was necessary and to profess to believe whatever was required of her to become qualified to wear the crown. Although she was able to learn Russian, she spoke with a heavy accent, and made grammatical errors. In most circumstances Catherine II spoke French in her court. In fact the use of French as the main language of the Russian imperial court continued until 1812, when it became politically incorrect to speak French in court due to the French invasion of Russia.

Sophie recalled in her memoirs that as soon as she arrived in Russia, she fell ill with a pleuritis that almost killed her. She credited her survival to frequent bloodletting; in a single day, she received four phlebotomies. Her mother's opposition to this practice brought her the Empress's disfavour. When Sophie's situation looked desperate, her mother wanted her confessed by a Lutheran pastor. Awaking from her delirium, however, Sophie said, "I don't want any Lutheran; I want my Orthodox father [clergyman]". This increased her popularity with the Empress and her court as a whole. Elizabeth doted on Sophie and their relationship grew stronger after this.

Sophie's father, a devout German Lutheran, opposed his daughter's conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy. Despite his objections, on 28 June 1744, the Russian Orthodox Church received Sophie as a member. It was then that she took the baptismal name Catherine (Yekaterina or Ekaterina) and the (artificial) patronymic Алексеевна (Alekseyevna, daughter of Aleksey), so that she was in all respects the namesake of Catherine I, the mother of Elizabeth and the grandmother of Peter III. The following year, on 21 August 1745, the long-planned dynastic marriage between Catherine and Peter finally took place in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, Saint Petersburg. Catherine had recently turned 16. Her father did not travel to Russia for the wedding.

The bridegroom, then known as Peter von Holstein-Gottorp, had become Duke of Holstein-Gottorp (located in the north-west of present-day Germany near the border with Denmark) in 1739. The newlyweds settled in the palace of Oranienbaum, which remained the residence of the "young court" for many years. From there, they governed the small duchy to obtain experience to govern Russia.

In all other aspects, the marriage proved unsuccessful; it remained unconsummated for years due to Peter III's mental immaturity. After Peter took a mistress, Catherine became involved with other prominent court figures. She soon became popular with several powerful political groups that opposed her husband. Unhappy with her marriage, Catherine became an avid reader of books, mostly in French. She disparaged her husband for his devotion to reading on the one hand "Lutheran prayer-books, the other the history of and trial of some highway robbers who had been hanged or broken on the wheel".

It was during this period that she first read Voltaire and the other philosophes of the French Enlightenment. As she learned Russian, she became increasingly interested in the literature of her adopted country. Some years later, in 1754, Catherine read the Annals by Tacitus, which caused what she called a "revolution" in her mind as Tacitus was the first intellectual she read who understood power politics as they are, not as they should be. She was especially impressed with his argument that people do not act for their professed idealistic reasons, and instead she learned to look for the "hidden and interested motives".

According to Alexander Herzen, who edited a version of Catherine's memoirs, Catherine had her first sexual relationship with Sergei Saltykov while living at Oranienbaum, as her marriage to Peter had not yet been consummated, as Catherine later claimed. Nonetheless, Catherine would eventually leave the final version of her memoirs to her son, the future Paul I, in which she explained why Paul had been Peter's son. Saltykov was used to make Peter jealous, and she did not desire to have a child with him; Catherine wanted to become empress herself, and did not want another heir to the throne; however, Empress Elizabeth allegedly blackmailed Peter and Catherine to produce this heir. Peter and Catherine had both been involved in a 1749 military plot to crown Peter (together with Catherine) in Elizabeth's stead. As a result of this plot, Elizabeth likely wished to deny both Catherine and Peter any rights to the Russian throne. Elizabeth, therefore, allowed Catherine to have sexual lovers only after a new legal heir, Catherine and Peter's son Paul, born in 1754, survived and appeared to be strong.

After this, Catherine carried on sexual liaisons over the years with many men, including Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski, Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov, Alexander Vasilchikov, Grigory Potemkin, Ivan Rimsky-Korsakov, and others. She became acquainted with Princess Ekaterina Vorontsova-Dashkova, the sister of her husband's official mistress. In Dashkova's opinion, she had introduced Catherine to several powerful political groups that opposed her husband; however, Catherine had been involved in military schemes against Elizabeth with the likely goal of subsequently getting rid of Peter III since at least 1749.

Peter III's temperament became quite unbearable for those who resided in the palace. He would announce trying drills in the morning to male servants, who later joined Catherine in her room to sing and dance until late hours.

In 1759, Catherine became pregnant with her second child, Anna, who only lived to 14 months. Due to various rumours of Catherine's promiscuity, Peter was led to believe he was not the child's biological father and is known to have proclaimed, "Go to the devil!" when Catherine angrily dismissed his accusation. She therefore spent much of this time alone in her private boudoir to hide away from Peter's abrasive personality. In the first version of her memoirs, edited and published by Alexander Hertzen, Catherine strongly implied that the real father of her son Paul was not Peter, but rather Saltykov.

Catherine recalled in her memoirs her optimistic and resolute mood before her accession to the throne:

I used to say to myself that happiness and misery depend on ourselves. If you feel unhappy, raise yourself above unhappiness, and so act that your happiness may be independent of all eventualities.

After the death of the Empress Elizabeth on 5 January 1762 (OS: 25 December 1761), Peter succeeded to the throne as Emperor Peter III and Catherine became his empress. The imperial couple moved into the new Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. The Emperor's eccentricities and policies, including his great admiration for the Prussian King Frederick II, alienated the same groups that Catherine had cultivated as allies. Russia and Prussia had fought each other during the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) and Russian troops had occupied Berlin in 1761.

Peter's support for Frederick II eroded much of his support among the nobility. Peter ceased Russian operations against Prussia, and Frederick suggested the partition of Polish territories with Russia. Peter also intervened in a dispute between his Duchy of Holstein and Denmark over the province of Schleswig (see Count Johann Hartwig Ernst von Bernstorff). As Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, Peter planned war against Denmark, Russia's traditional ally against Sweden.

In July 1762, barely six months after becoming emperor, Peter lingered in Oranienbaum with his Holstein-born courtiers and relatives, while Catherine lived in another palace nearby. On the night of 8 July 1762 (OS: 27 June 1762), Catherine was given the news that one of her co-conspirators had been arrested by her estranged husband and that the coup they had been planning would have to take place at once. The next day, she left the palace and departed for the Izmailovsky Regiment, where she delivered a speech asking the soldiers to protect her from her husband. Catherine then left with the Izmailovsky Regiment to go to the Semenovsky Barracks, where the clergy was waiting to ordain her as the sole occupant of the Russian throne and began her reign as Empress of Russia as Catherine II.

She had her husband arrested and forced him to sign a document of abdication, leaving none to dispute her accession to the throne.

On 17 July 1762, eight days after the coup that amazed the outside world and just six months after his accession to the throne, Peter III died at Ropsha, possibly at the hands of Alexei Orlov (younger brother to Grigory Orlov, then a court favourite and a participant in the coup). Peter supposedly was assassinated, but it is unknown how he died. The official cause, after an autopsy, was a severe attack of haemorrhoidal colic and an apoplexy stroke.

At the time of Peter III's overthrow, other potential rivals for the throne included Ivan VI, who had been confined at Schlüsselburg in Lake Ladoga from the age of six months and was thought to have been insane. Ivan was assassinated during an attempt to free him as part of a failed coup against Catherine. Like Elizabeth before her, Catherine had given strict instructions that Ivan was to be killed in the event of any such attempt. The woman later known as Princess Tarakanova was another potential rival.

Catherine succeeded her husband as empress regnant, following the legal precedent of Empress Catherine I, who had succeeded her husband Peter I in 1725. Historians debate Catherine's technical status, whether as a regent or as a usurper, tolerable only during the minority of her son, Grand Duke Paul.

Catherine was crowned at the Assumption Cathedral in Moscow on 22 September 1762. Her coronation marks the creation of one of the main treasures of the Romanov dynasty, the Great Imperial Crown of Russia, designed by Swiss-French court diamond jeweller Jérémie Pauzié. Inspired by Byzantine design, the crown was constructed of two half spheres, one gold and one silver, representing the Eastern and Western Roman Empires, divided by a foliate garland and fastened with a low hoop.

The crown contains 75 pearls and 4,936 Indian diamonds forming laurel and oak leaves, the symbols of power and strength, and is surmounted by a 398.62-carat ruby spinel and a diamond cross. The crown was produced in a record two months and weighed 2.3kg (5.1 lbs). From 1762, the Great Imperial Crown was the coronation crown of all Romanov emperors until the monarchy's abolition in 1917. It is now on display in the Moscow Kremlin Armoury Museum.

During her reign, Catherine extended the borders of the Russian Empire by some 520,000 square kilometres (200,000 sq mi), absorbing New Russia, Crimea, the North Caucasus, the Right-bank Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Courland at the expense, mainly, of two powers—the Ottoman Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Catherine's foreign minister, Nikita Panin (in office 1763–1781), exercised considerable influence from the beginning of Catherine's reign. A shrewd statesman, Panin dedicated much effort and millions of rubles to setting up a "Northern Accord" between Russia, Prussia, Poland, and Sweden to counter the power of the Bourbon–Habsburg League. When it became apparent that his plan could not succeed, Panin fell out of favour with Catherine and she had him replaced with Ivan Osterman (in office 1781–1797).

Catherine agreed to a commercial treaty with Great Britain in 1766, but stopped short of a full military alliance. Although she could see the benefits of friendship with Britain, Catherine was wary of Britain's increased power following its victory in the Seven Years' War, which threatened the European balance of power.

Peter the Great had gained a foothold in the south, on the edge of the Black Sea, during the Azov campaigns. Catherine completed the conquest of the south, making Russia the dominant power in the Balkans following the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774. Russia inflicted some of the heaviest defeats ever suffered by the Ottoman Empire, including at the Battle of Chesma (5–7 July 1770) and the Battle of Kagul (21 July 1770). In 1769, a last major Crimean–Nogai slave raid, which ravaged the Russian held territories in Ukraine, saw the capture of up to 20,000 slaves for the Crimean slave trade.

Russia's victory brought the Yedisan between the rivers Bug and Dnieper, and Crimea into the Russian sphere of influence. Though a series of victories accrued by the Russian Empire led to substantial territorial conquests, including direct conquest over much of the Pontic–Caspian steppe, less Ottoman territory was directly annexed than might otherwise be expected due to a complex struggle within the European diplomatic system to maintain a balance of power that was acceptable to other European states and avoided direct Russian hegemony over Eastern Europe. Nonetheless, Russia took advantage of the weakened Ottoman Empire, the end of the Seven Years' War, and the withdrawal of France from Polish affairs to assert itself as one of the continent's primary military powers. The war left the Russian Empire in a strengthened position to expand its territory and maintain hegemony over the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, eventually leading to the First Partition of Poland. Turkish losses included diplomatic defeats which led to its decline as a threat to Europe, the loss of its exclusive control over the Orthodox millet, and the beginning of European bickering over the Eastern Question that would feature in European diplomacy until the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I.

The Russian victories procured access to the Black Sea and allowed Catherine's government to incorporate present-day southern Ukraine, where the Russians founded the new cities of Odessa, Nikolayev, Yekaterinoslav (literally: "the Glory of Catherine"), and Kherson. The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, signed 21 July 1774 (OS: 10 July 1774), gave the Russians territories at Azov, Kerch, Yenikale, Kinburn, and the small strip of Black Sea coast between the rivers Bug and Dnieper. The treaty also removed restrictions on Russian naval and commercial traffic in the Azov Sea, granted Russia the position of protector of Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire and made Crimea a protectorate of Russia.

In 1770, Russia's State Council announced a policy in favour of eventual Crimean independence. Catherine named Şahin Giray, a Crimean Tatar leader, to head the Crimean state and maintain friendly relations with Russia. His period of rule proved disappointing after repeated effort to prop up his regime through military force and monetary aid. Finally, Catherine annexed Crimea in 1783. The palace of the Crimean Khanate passed into the hands of the Russians. In 1787, Catherine conducted a triumphal procession in the Crimea, which helped provoke the next Russo-Turkish War.

The Ottomans restarted hostilities with Russia in the Russo-Turkish War of 1787–1792. On 25 September 1789, a detachment of the Imperial Russian Army under Alexander Suvorov and Ivan Gudovich, took Khadjibey and Yeni Dünya for the Russian Empire. In 1794, Odessa replaced Khadjibey by a decree of the Russian Empress Catherine the Great. Russia formally gained possession of the Sanjak of Özi (Ochakiv Oblast) in 1792 and it became a part of Yekaterinoslav Viceroyalty. The Russian Empire retained full control of Crimea, as well as land between the Southern Bug and the Dniester. This war was another catastrophe for the Ottomans, ending with the Treaty of Jassy (1792).

The last decades of the 18th century were marked by continual strife between rival claimants to the Peacock Throne. Catherine took advantage of the disorder to consolidate her control over the weak polities of the Caucasus, which was, for swaths of it, an integral Persian domain. The kingdom of Georgia, a subject of the Persians for many centuries, became a Russian protectorate in 1783, when King Erekle II signed the Treaty of Georgievsk, whereby the Empress promised to defend him in the case of Persian attack. The shamkhals of Tarki followed this lead and accepted Russian protection three years later.

In the Treaty of Georgievsk (1783), Russia agreed to protect Georgia against any new invasions and further political aspirations of their Persian suzerains. Catherine waged a new war against Persia in 1796 after they, under the new king Agha Mohammad Khan, again invaded Georgia and established rule in 1795, expelling the newly established Russian garrisons in the Caucasus. The ultimate goal for the Russian government, however, was to topple the anti-Russian shah (king), and to replace him with his pro-Russian half-brother Morteza Qoli Khan, who had defected to Russia.

It was widely expected that a 13,000-strong Russian corps would be led by the seasoned general Ivan Gudovich, but the Empress followed the advice of her lover, Prince Zubov, and entrusted the command to his youthful brother, Count Valerian Zubov. The Russian troops set out from Kizlyar in April 1796 and stormed the key fortress of Derbent on 21 May (OS: 10 May). The event was glorified by the court poet Derzhavin in his famous ode; he later commented bitterly on Zubov's inglorious return from the expedition in another famous poem.

By mid-June 1796, Zubov's troops easily overran most of the territory of modern-day Azerbaijan, including three principal cities—Baku, Shemakha, and Ganja. By November, they were stationed at the confluence of the Aras and Kura Rivers, poised to attack mainland Iran. In this month, Catherine died, and her son and successor Paul I, who detested that the Zubovs had other plans for the army, ordered the troops to retreat to Russia. This reversal aroused the frustration and enmity of the powerful Zubovs and other officers who took part in the campaign; many of them would be among the conspirators who arranged Paul's murder five years later.

Catherine longed for recognition as an enlightened sovereign. She refused the Duchy of Holstein-Gottorp, which had ports on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean and refrained from having a Russian army in Germany. Instead, she pioneered for Russia the role that Britain later played through most of the 19th and early 20th centuries as an international mediator in disputes that could, or did, lead to war. She acted as mediator in the War of the Bavarian Succession (1778–1779) between the German states of Prussia and Austria. In 1780, she established a League of Armed Neutrality, designed to defend neutral shipping from being searched by the British Royal Navy during the American Revolutionary War.

From 1788 to 1790, Russia fought a war against Sweden instigated by Catherine's cousin, King Gustav III of Sweden, who expected to overrun the Russian armies still engaged in war against the Ottomans and hoped to strike Saint Petersburg directly. But Russia's Baltic Fleet checked the Royal Swedish navy in the tied Battle of Hogland (July 1788), and the Swedish army failed to advance. Denmark declared war on Sweden in 1788 (the Theatre War). After the decisive defeat of the Russian fleet at the Battle of Svensksund in 1790, the parties signed the Treaty of Värälä (14 August 1790), returning all conquered territories to their respective owners and confirming the Treaty of Åbo. Russia was to stop any involvement in the internal affairs of Sweden. Large sums were paid to Gustav III and peace ensued for 20 years even in spite of the assassination of Gustav III in 1792.

In 1764, Catherine placed Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski, her former lover, on the Polish throne. Although the idea of partitioning Poland came from Frederick II of Prussia, Catherine took a leading role in its execution in the 1790s. In 1768, she formally became the protector of the political rights of dissidents and peasants of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which provoked an anti-Russian uprising in Poland, the Confederation of Bar (1768–1772), supported by France. After the rebels, their French and European volunteers, and their allied Ottoman Empire had been defeated, she established in the Commonwealth a system of government fully controlled by the Russian Empire through a Permanent Council, under the supervision of her ambassadors and envoys. Empress Catherine was also satisfied despite the loss of Galicia to the Habsburg monarchy. By this "diplomatic document" Russia gained Polish Livonia, and lands in eastern Belarus embracing the counties of Vitebsk, Polotsk and Mstislavl.

In the War in Defense of the Constitution, pro-Russian conservative Polish magnates, the Confederation of Targowica, fought against Polish forces supporting the constitution, believing that Russians would help them restore the Golden Liberty. Abandoned by their Prussian allies, Polish pro-constitution forces, faced with Targowica units and the regular Russian army, were defeated. Prussia signed a treaty with Russia, agreeing that Polish reforms would be revoked, and both countries would receive chunks of Commonwealth territory. In 1793, deputies to the Grodno Sejm, last Sejm of the Commonwealth, in the presence of the Russian forces, agreed to Russian territorial demands. In the Second Partition, Russia and Prussia helped themselves to enough land so that only one-third of the 1772 population remained in Poland.

Catherine was a patron of the arts, literature, and education. The Hermitage Museum, which now occupies the whole Winter Palace, began as Catherine's personal collection. The empress was a great lover of art and books, and ordered the construction of the Hermitage in 1770 to house her expanding collection of paintings, sculpture, and books. By 1790, the Hermitage was home to 38,000 books, 10,000 gems, and 10,000 drawings. Two wings were devoted to her collections of "curiosities".

She ordered the planting of the first English landscape garden at Tsarskoye Selo in May 1770. In a letter to Voltaire in 1772, she wrote: "Right now I adore English gardens, curves, gentle slopes, ponds in the form of lakes, archipelagos on dry land, and I have a profound scorn for straight lines, symmetric avenues. I hate fountains that torture water in order to make it take a course contrary to its nature: Statues are relegated to galleries, vestibules etc.; in a word, Anglomania is the master of my plantomania".

Catherine shared in the general European craze for all things Chinese, and made a point of collecting Chinese art and buying porcelain in the popular Chinoiserie style. Between 1762 and 1766, she had built the "Chinese Palace" at Oranienbaum which reflected the chinoiserie style of architecture and gardening. The Chinese Palace was designed by the Italian architect Antonio Rinaldi who specialised in the chinoiserie style. In 1779, she hired the Scottish architect Charles Cameron to build the Chinese Village at Tsarskoye Selo. Catherine had at first attempted to hire a Chinese architect to build the Chinese Village, and on finding that was impossible, settled on Cameron, who likewise specialised in the chinoiserie style.

She made a special effort to bring leading intellectuals and scientists to Russia, and she wrote her own comedies, works of fiction, and memoirs. She worked with Voltaire, Diderot, and d'Alembert—all French encyclopedists who later cemented her reputation in their writings. The leading economists of her day, such as Arthur Young and Jacques Necker, became foreign members of the Free Economic Society, established on her suggestion in Saint Petersburg in 1765. She recruited the scientists Leonhard Euler and Peter Simon Pallas from Berlin and Anders Johan Lexell from Sweden to the Russian capital.

Catherine enlisted Voltaire to her cause, and corresponded with him for 15 years, from her accession to his death in 1778. He lauded her accomplishments, calling her "The Star of the North" and the "Semiramis of Russia" (in reference to the legendary Queen of Babylon, a subject on which he published a tragedy in 1768). Although she never met him face to face, she mourned him bitterly when he died. She acquired his collection of books from his heirs, and placed them in the National Library of Russia.

Catherine read three sorts of books, namely those for pleasure, those for information, and those to provide her with a philosophy. In the first category, she read romances and comedies that were popular at the time, many of which were regarded as "inconsequential" by the critics both then and since. She especially liked the work of German comic writers such as Moritz August von Thümmel and Christoph Friedrich Nicolai. In the second category fell the work of Denis Diderot, Jacques Necker, Johann Bernhard Basedow, and Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon. Catherine expressed some frustration with the economists she read for what she regarded as their impractical theories, writing in the margin of one of Necker's books that if it was possible to solve all of the state's economic problems in one day, she would have done so a long time ago. For information about particular nations that interested her, she read Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville's Memoirs de Chine to learn about the vast and wealthy Chinese empire that bordered her empire; François Baron de Tott's Memoires de les Turcs et les Tartares for information about the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean khanate; the books of Frederick the Great praising himself to learn about Frederick just as much as to learn about Prussia; and pamphlets written by Benjamin Franklin denouncing the British Crown to understand the reasons behind the American Revolution. In the third category fell the work of Voltaire, Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm, Ferdinando Galiani, Nicolas Baudeau, and Sir William Blackstone. For philosophy, she liked books promoting what has been called "enlightened despotism", which she embraced as her ideal of an autocratic but reformist government that operated according to the rule of law, not the whims of the ruler, hence her interest in Blackstone's legal commentaries.

Within a few months of her accession in 1762, having heard the French government threatened to stop the publication of the famous French Encyclopédie on account of its irreligious spirit, Catherine proposed to Diderot that he should complete his great work in Russia under her protection. Four years later, in 1766, she endeavoured to embody in legislation the principles of Enlightenment she learned from studying the French philosophers. She called together at Moscow a Grand Commission—almost a consultative parliament—composed of 652 members of all classes (officials, nobles, burghers, and peasants) and of various nationalities. The commission had to consider the needs of the Russian Empire and the means of satisfying them. The empress prepared the "Instructions for the Guidance of the Assembly", pillaging (as she frankly admitted) the philosophers of Western Europe, especially Montesquieu and Cesare Beccaria. As many of the democratic principles frightened her more moderate and experienced advisors, she refrained from immediately putting them into practice. After holding more than 200 sittings, the so-called Commission dissolved without getting beyond the realm of theory.

Catherine began issuing codes to address some of the modernisation trends suggested in her Nakaz. In 1775, the empress decreed a Statute for the Administration of the provinces of the Russian Empire. The statute sought to govern Russia efficiently by increasing population and dividing the country into provinces and districts. By the end of her reign, 50 provinces and nearly 500 districts were created, government officials numbering more than double this were appointed, and spending on local government increased sixfold. In 1785, Catherine conferred on the nobility the Charter to the Nobility, increasing the power of the landed oligarchs. Nobles in each district elected a Marshal of the Nobility, who spoke on their behalf to the monarch on issues of concern to them, mainly economic ones. In the same year, Catherine issued the Charter of the Towns, which distributed all people into six groups as a way to limit the power of nobles and create a middle estate. Catherine also issued the Code of Commercial Navigation and Salt Trade Code of 1781, the Police Ordinance of 1782, and the Statute of National Education of 1786. In 1777, the empress described to Voltaire her legal innovations within a backward Russia as progressing "little by little".

During Catherine's reign, Russians imported and studied the classical and European influences that inspired the Russian Enlightenment. Gavrila Derzhavin, Denis Fonvizin and Ippolit Bogdanovich laid the groundwork for the great writers of the 19th century, especially for Alexander Pushkin. Catherine became a great patron of Russian opera. Alexander Radishchev published his Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow in 1790, shortly after the start of the French Revolution. He warned of uprisings in Russia because of the deplorable social conditions of the serfs. Catherine decided it promoted the dangerous poison of the French Revolution. She had the book burned and the author exiled to Siberia.

Catherine also received Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun at her Tsarskoye Selo residence in St Petersburg, who painted several members of her court. Madame Vigée Le Brun vividly describes the empress in her memoirs:

the sight of this famous woman so impressed me that I found it impossible to think of anything: I could only stare at her. Firstly I was very surprised at her small stature; I had imagined her to be very tall, as great as her fame. She was also very fat, but her face was still beautiful, and she wore her white hair up, framing it perfectly. Her genius seemed to rest on her forehead, which was both high and wide. Her eyes were soft and sensitive, her nose quite Greek, her colour high and her features expressive. She addressed me immediately in a voice full of sweetness, if a little throaty: "I am delighted to welcome you here, Madame, your reputation runs before you. I am very fond of the arts, especially painting. I am no connoisseur, but I am a great art lover."

Madame Vigée Le Brun also describes the empress at a gala:

The double doors opened and the Empress appeared. I have said that she was quite small, and yet on the days when she made her public appearances, with her head held high, her eagle-like stare and a countenance accustomed to command, all this gave her such an air of majesty that to me she might have been Queen of the World; she wore the sashes of three orders, and her costume was both simple and regal; it consisted of a muslin tunic embroidered with gold fastened by a diamond belt, and the full sleeves were folded back in the Asiatic style. Over this tunic she wore a red velvet dolman with very short sleeves. The bonnet which held her white hair was not decorated with ribbons, but with the most beautiful diamonds.

Russia's second ballet school, Moscow State Academy of Choreography, commonly known as The Bolshoi Ballet Academy, was founded during Catherine's reign on 23 December 1773. It entered into a contract with the Italian teacher-choreographer Filippo Becari, who was to select "the most capable of dancing" children to learn "to dance with all possible precision and to show themselves publicly in all pantomime ballets".

Catherine held western European philosophies and culture close to her heart, and she wanted to surround herself with like-minded people within Russia. She believed a 'new kind of person' could be created by inculcating Russian children with European education. Catherine believed education could change the hearts and minds of the Russian people and turn them away from backwardness. This meant developing individuals both intellectually and morally, providing them knowledge and skills, and fostering a sense of civic responsibility. Her goal was to modernise education across Russia.

Catherine appointed Ivan Betskoy as her advisor on educational matters. Through him, she collected information from Russia and other countries about educational institutions. She also established a commission composed of T. N. Teplov, T. von Klingstedt, F. G. Dilthey, and the historian G. Muller. She consulted British pedagogical pioneers, particularly the Rev. Daniel Dumaresq and Dr. John Brown. In 1764, she sent for Dumaresq to come to Russia and then appointed him to the educational commission. The commission studied the reform projects previously installed by I. I. Shuvalov under Elizabeth and under Peter III. They submitted recommendations for the establishment of a general system of education for all Russian orthodox subjects from the age of 5 to 18, excluding serfs. However, no action was taken on any recommendations put forth by the commission due to the calling of the Legislative Commission. In July 1765, Dumaresq wrote to Dr. John Brown about the commission's problems and received a long reply containing very general and sweeping suggestions for education and social reforms in Russia. Dr. Brown argued, in a democratic country, education ought to be under the state's control and based on an education code.

Catherine, throughout her long reign, took many lovers, often elevating them to high positions for as long as they held her interest and then pensioning them off with gifts of serfs and large estates. The percentage of state money spent on the court increased from 10% in 1767 to 11% in 1781 to 14% in 1795. Catherine gave away 66,000 serfs from 1762 to 1772, 202,000 from 1773 to 1793, and 100,000 in one day: 18 August 1795. Catherine bought the support of the bureaucracy. In 1767, Catherine decreed that after seven years in one rank, civil servants automatically would be promoted regardless of office or merit.

After her affair with her lover and adviser Grigory Potemkin lost a lot of its passion in 1776, he allegedly selected a candidate-lover for her who had the physical beauty and mental faculties to hold her interest (such as Alexander Dmitriev-Mamonov and Nicholas Alexander Suk). She showed generosity towards her lovers, even after the affair ended. One of her lovers, Pyotr Zavadovsky, received 50,000 roubles, a pension of 5,000 roubles, and 4,000 peasants in Ukraine after she dismissed him in 1777. The last of her lovers, Platon Zubov, was 40 years her junior. Her sexual independence led to many of the legends about her.

Catherine kept her illegitimate son by Grigory Orlov (Alexis Bobrinsky, later elevated to Count Bobrinsky by Paul I) near Tula, away from her court.

The acceptance of a woman ruler was more of an issue among elites in Western Europe than in Russia. The British ambassador to Russia, James Harris, reported back to London that:

Her Majesty has a masculine force of mind, obstinacy in adhering to a plan, and intrepidity in the execution of it; but she wants the more manly virtues of deliberation, forbearance in prosperity and accuracy of judgment, while she possesses in a high degree the weaknesses vulgarly attributed to her sex—love of flattery, and its inseparable companion, vanity; an inattention to unpleasant but salutary advice; and a propensity to voluptuousness which leads to excesses that would debase a female character in any sphere of life.

Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, the British ambassador to Russia, offered Stanisław Poniatowski a place in the embassy in return for gaining Catherine as an ally. Poniatowski, through his mother's side, came from the Czartoryski family, prominent members of the pro-Russian faction in Poland; Poniatowski and Catherine were eighth cousins, twice removed, by their mutual ancestor King Christian I of Denmark, by virtue of Poniatowski's maternal descent from the Scottish House of Stuart. Catherine, 26 years old and already married to the then-Grand Duke Peter for some 10 years, met the 22-year-old Poniatowski in 1755, well before encountering the Orlov brothers. They had a daughter named Anna Petrovna in December 1757 (not to be confused with Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna of Russia, the daughter of Peter I's second marriage), although she was legally regarded as Grand Duke Peter's.

King Augustus III of Poland died in 1763, so Poland needed to elect a new ruler. Catherine supported Poniatowski as a candidate to become the next king. She sent the Russian army into Poland to avoid possible disputes. Russia invaded Poland on 26 August 1764, threatening to fight, and imposing Poniatowski as king. Poniatowski accepted the throne, and thereby put himself under Catherine's control. News of Catherine's plan spread, and Frederick II (others say the Ottoman sultan) warned her that if she tried to conquer Poland by marrying Poniatowski, all of Europe would oppose her. She had no intention of marrying him, having already given birth to Orlov's child and to the Grand Duke Paul by then.

Prussia (through the agency of Prince Henry), Russia (under Catherine), and Austria (under Maria Theresa) began preparing the ground for the partitions of Poland. In the first partition, 1772, the three powers split 52,000 km2 (20,000 sq mi) among them. Russia got territories east of the line connecting, more or less, Riga–Polotsk–Mogilev. In the second partition, in 1793, Russia received the most land, from west of Minsk almost to Kiev and down the river Dnieper, leaving some spaces of steppe down south in front of Ochakov, on the Black Sea. Later uprisings in Poland led to the third partition in 1795. Poland ceased to exist as an independent nation until its post-World War I reconstitution.

Grigory Orlov, the grandson of a rebel in the Streltsy uprising (1698) against Peter the Great, distinguished himself in the Battle of Zorndorf (25 August 1758), receiving three wounds. He represented an opposite to Peter's pro-Prussian sentiment, with which Catherine disagreed. By 1759, he and Catherine had become lovers; no one told Catherine's husband, Peter. Catherine saw Orlov as very useful, and he became instrumental in the 28 June 1762 coup d'état against her husband, but she preferred to remain the dowager empress of Russia rather than marrying anyone.

Orlov and his other three brothers found themselves rewarded with titles, money, swords, and other gifts, but Catherine did not marry Grigory, who proved inept at politics and useless when asked for advice. He received a palace in Saint Petersburg when Catherine became empress.

Orlov died in 1783. Their son, Aleksey Grygoriovich Bobrinsky (1762–1813), had one daughter, Maria Alexeyeva Bobrinsky (Bobrinskaya) (1798–1835), who married in 1819 the 34-year-old Prince Nikolai Sergeevich Gagarin (London, England, 1784–1842) who took part in the Battle of Borodino (7 September 1812) against Napoleon, and later served as ambassador in Turin, the capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia.

Grigory Potemkin was involved in the palace coup of 1762. In 1772, Catherine's close friends informed her of Orlov's affairs with other women, and she dismissed him. By the winter of 1773, Pugachev's Rebellion was starting to take root and Catherine's son Paul had started gaining support; both of these trends threatened her power. She called Potemkin for help—mostly military—and he became devoted to her.

In 1772, Catherine wrote to Potemkin. Days earlier, she had found out about an uprising in the Volga region. She appointed General Aleksandr Bibikov to put down the uprising, but she needed Potemkin's advice on military strategy. Potemkin quickly gained positions and awards. Russian poets wrote about his virtues, the court praised him, foreign ambassadors fought for his favour, and his family moved into the palace. He later became the de facto absolute ruler of New Russia, governing its colonisation.

In 1780, Emperor Joseph II, the son of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa, toyed with the idea of determining whether or not to enter an alliance with Russia, and asked to meet Catherine. Potemkin had the task of briefing him and travelling with him to Saint Petersburg. Potemkin also convinced Catherine to expand the universities in Russia to increase the number of scientists.

Catherine was worried that Potemkin's poor health would delay his important work in colonising and developing the south as he had planned. He died at the age of 52 in 1791.

Catherine's life and reign included many personal successes, but they ended in two failures. Her Swedish cousin (once removed), King Gustav IV Adolf, visited her in September 1796, the empress's intention being that her granddaughter Alexandra should become queen of Sweden by marriage. A ball was given at the imperial court on 11 September when the engagement was supposed to be announced. Gustav Adolph felt pressured to accept that Alexandra would not convert to Lutheranism, and though he was delighted by the young lady, he refused to appear at the ball and left for Stockholm. The frustration affected Catherine's health. She recovered well enough to begin to plan a ceremony which would establish her favourite grandson Alexander as her heir, superseding her difficult son Paul, but she died before the announcement could be made, just over two months after the engagement ball.

On 16 November [O.S. 5 November] 1796, Catherine rose early in the morning and had her usual morning coffee, soon settling down to work on papers; she told her lady's maid, Maria Perekusikhina, that she had slept better than she had in a long time. Sometime after 9:00 she was found on the floor with her face purplish, her pulse weak, her breathing shallow and laboured. The court physician diagnosed a stroke and despite attempts to revive her, she fell into a coma. She was given the last rites and died the following evening around 9:45. An autopsy confirmed a stroke as the cause of death.

Later, several rumours circulated regarding the cause and manner of her death. The most famous of these rumors is that she died after committing bestiality with her horse. This rumor was widely circulated by satirical British and French publications at the time of her death. In his 1647 book Beschreibung der muscowitischen und persischen Reise (Description of the Muscovite and Persian journey), German scholar Adam Olearius alleged a supposed Russian tendency towards bestiality with horses. This was repeated in anti-Russian literature throughout the 17th and 18th centuries to illustrate the claimed barbarous Asian nature of Russia.

Catherine's undated will, discovered in early 1792 among her papers by her secretary Alexander Vasilievich Khrapovitsky, gave specific instructions should she die: "Lay out my corpse dressed in white, with a golden crown on my head, and on it inscribe my Christian name. Mourning dress is to be worn for six months, and no longer: the shorter the better." In the end, the empress was laid to rest with a gold crown on her head and clothed in a silver brocade dress. On 25 November, the coffin, richly decorated in gold fabric, was placed atop an elevated platform at the Grand Gallery's chamber of mourning, designed and decorated by Antonio Rinaldi.

According to Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun:The empress's body lay in state for six weeks in a large and magnificently decorated room in the castle, which was kept lit day and night. Catherine was stretched on a ceremonial bed surrounded by the coats of arms of all the towns in Russia. Her face was left uncovered, and her fair hand rested on the bed. All the ladies, some of whom took turn to watch by the body, would go and kiss this hand, or at least appear to. A description of the empress's funeral is written in Madame Vigée Le Brun's memoirs.