Catherine the great new biography

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She convened the first representative assembly in Russia’s history, anticipating the creation of the ill-fated Duma a century and a half later. And she came to be known as Catherine the Great, no mystery to anyone who reads this masterful book about her.

A contemporary of Montesquieu and Jefferson and loyal correspondent with Voltaire and Diderot, she took the first few steps toward reform of her country’s peculiar form of slavery, serfdom.

Equaling the military success of Peter the Great more than half a century before her, and his opening to Europe with the establishment of St. Petersburg, she extended Russia’s span of control to the Black Sea, humbling the Turkish empire and building Crimea’s two great ports, Odessa and Sebastopol.

She amassed the nearly 4,000 works of art that formed the foundation of the legendary Hermitage Museum and sponsored the creation of Falconet’s towering masterpiece, the equestrian statue of Peter the Great that dominates St. Petersburg.

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie ★★★★★

She had been a minor German princess yanked from childhood at the age of 14 to marry the future tsar of Russia. The then 17-year-old Peter, grandson of Peter the Great, was a boorish fo

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Catherine the Great

September 25, 2023

One of the most dreadful books I have ever read. I would rather crawl through sand than read it again. The author Simon Dixon tried to add as much as possible in the shortest chapters, instead of actually saying something interesting or developing any ideas he took forever to speak about the carpets, toilets, and balls of Catherine. Unnecessary details, blocks of statistics and checkbooks, nice extracts from different primary sources, but not any thoughts on them, used as a part of the narrative, instead for explanation and question raisers. The actually useful bits are annoyingly few, but not that much to be concerning for the book’s role in my essay. Even if there are not a lot of direct quotations and explanations, some of the casually thrown facts are quite useful to prove the point (her reading of the classics, the close relations with Voltaire and Diderot, and her relationship with the church). I don’t know what to do with over-the-top information about her sexual encounters and their significance in her life, because I don’t think that they deserve the level of recognition. For me, it’s an interesting link to develop, how was she influenced by her time in Elizabeth’s court, because it is obvious that it left a mark on how she later

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Catherine representation Great - a Unique Biography

a new picture perfect by sweaty old intimate Robert Massie

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