Catherine Ascends; Peter Falls

June 1762

June 28, 1762, marked the beginning of the long and fruitful reign of Empress Catherine II – the Great – one of Russia’s best-known rulers. She oversaw countless reforms, granted self-government to the nobility and municipalities, supported the development of trade and industry, and enabled the emergence of a middle class. During her reign the country’s borders expanded and the sciences and arts flourished. Education was modernized and new institutions of higher learning were established. Catherine herself was glorified by Russia’s greatest poets and artists. She corresponded with Voltaire, one of the first to recognize the scale of her accomplishments with the appellation “Catherine la Grande,” and she befriended another towering figure of the Enlightenment, the French philosopher and critic Denis Diderot.

Of course her reign also had a dark side: serfdom, which she could not quite bring herself to abolish, despite a strong desire to do so; the brutal repression of the Pugachev Rebellion; the arrest of Radishchev, who dared write a book about the suffering of the peasants; the imprisonment of journalist, philanthropist, and publisher Nikolai Novikov in the Shlisselburg Fortress for suspected involvement in a plot to overthrow Catherine in favor of her son (who was growing tired of waiting to ascend to power) and ties to Freemasons.

Then again, nobody’s perfect.

Catherine’s truly brilliant rule completely eclipsed the half-year reign of her pitiful and insignificant husband, Emperor Peter III. After his overthrow she was transformed from a minor German princess fortunate enough to marry the heir to the Russian throne into a great monarch.

Peter III has always been seen as not quite right in the head and entirely unsuited to rule a country. Even as an adult he loved to play with toy soldiers and once hung a live rat who happened into one of his make-believe battlefields. He is remembered as crude, uneducated to the point of utter ignorance, and incapable of performing the act that would give the Russian monarchy an heir, until Catherine convinced him to undergo an operation. Once he did ascend to the throne, he openly cheated on his wife and was preparing to confine her to a convent. He mocked the Orthodox Church and formed an alliance with Russia’s enemy, Prussia’s King Friedrich II. Clearly such a man could not be allowed to remain in power.

But there is one problem with this image of Peter III. Most of what we know about him was taken from the reminiscences of his widow. Imagine a divorce trial conducted based solely on the testimony of the aggrieved wife, along with a few of her closest friends, while the husband and his friends were not allowed to introduce a single piece of evidence. This is more or less how Peter has been treated in the court of history.

Admittedly, Peter was no font of political wisdom. It is, however, worth looking at what he managed to achieve during the half year of his rule. He disengaged Russia from the Seven Years’ War (begun in 1757). He did indeed kowtow to Friedrich and had no desire to fight with him, a reluctance that supposedly prompted indignation within the Russian military. It should be born in mind, however, that Friedrich II was a great monarch and it would be hard to find anyone in Europe at the time who did not kowtow to him. Catherine herself, as soon as she ascended the throne, began a very friendly correspondence with Friedrich and even formed an alliance with him against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Both Russia and Prussia were parties to all three Polish partitions.

In all likelihood, Peter III was no gentleman, especially when it came to his wife, for whom he never felt the slightest affection. Upon coming to power he thrust her into the background and kept his beloved Yelizaveta Vorontsova by his side wherever he went. In his defense, Catherine was also not a faithful spouse, something she was open about in her memoirs, where she even hinted that her husband was not the father of her child.

As concerns Peter’s supposed heavy hand in governing, it should be noted that he abolished the Secret Chancery, the secret political police that had been a source of terror during his predecessor’s reign. However the political police did not disappear for long. No sooner did Catherine take the throne than the Secret Chancery was reborn as the Secret “Expedition,” a term sometimes used for certain agencies of the Russian Empire.

It is also true that Peter regarded the Russian Orthodox Church with contempt, which he demonstrated by talking loudly with the ladies around him during services. He even issued a decree ordering the secularization of church lands and depriving monasteries of their domains. Undoubtedly Peter’s behavior toward the church was inappropriate, yet we might ask ourselves what motivated Catherine’s apparent piety. She understood the strategic importance of demonstrating her respect for Orthodoxy, and in church she was always completely absorbed in prayer, or at least created that impression. As a self-styled defender of the Orthodox Church, she immediately rescinded Peter’s decree to secularize church lands. However, a couple of years later, when she felt her place on the throne was secure, she herself issued the same decree and dealt cruelly with any members of the clergy who objected. The Metropolitan Arseny Matsiyevich, who denounced the decree, was deprived of his office, rank and name, and confined to a remote monastery to live as the simple monk “Arseny the Liar.”

Finally, Peter III’s most significant act during his short reign was the Manifesto Concerning the Freedom of the Nobility, which relieved Russia’s aristocrats from the obligation of serving at court and allowed them to live wherever they chose, whether on their estates or abroad. The manifesto further exempted them from corporal punishment. Many of the achievements of Catherine’s era were associated with the nobility’s newfound sense of themselves as a free estate, thanks to this act. Catherine confirmed her husband’s manifesto and took it further by granting the nobility additional rights.

So why did the nobility object to Peter III’s rule? Why did the entire country rejoice when, on June 28, 1762, Catherine proclaimed that her husband had been overthrown? And did it really rejoice?

Obviously, by the time most of the country found out about the new monarch, the coup was long-since a fait accompli. As far as St. Petersburg was concerned, the empress had the full support of Guards regiments that had been actively wooed by Catherine and her allies. No one at the palace was particularly interested in how the rest of the city felt about Peter’s overthrow. Those surprised or upset by the dethroning kept their opinions to themselves. Alexander Pushkin’s grandfather remained loyal to Peter and was put in jail. How many people opposed the overthrow but preferred to avoid imprisonment we will never know. We will also never know how people reacted to the news three weeks later that the 34-year-old Peter had died of “hemorrhoidal colic,” and whether or not they believed this explanation.

If everyone was really so thrilled to be rid of Peter, it is unlikely there would have been a rash of imposters pretending to be him, and thousands upon thousands of peasants and Cossacks would not have risen up to follow the most prominent among them, Pugachev.

It is easy for a ruler to sully his or her predecessor’s memory. It is not so easy for the dead to argue their case. And if, on top of that, the new ruler has real achievements to boast of, the deposed monarch doesn’t stand a chance in the court of historical public opinion.

We read history through the eyes of the victors, yet would be well served to recall the vanquished from time to time.

* Catherine was born Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg in Stettin, Pomerania, Prussia (now Szczecin, Poland).