Igor GASHKOV
On May 2, 1729, a girl was born who was more likely to receive the crown of Sweden than of Russia: niece of King Adolf Frederick, Princess of Zerbst Sophia-Frederika-Augusta. The changing fate made her Queen Catherine and allowed her to defeat the Swedes in 1790. Not just them: the most famous of empresses seems to attract success to herself.
The path to power for women in 18th-century monarchies began with a successful marriage, which in turn came with simple luck. In 1742, the Russian diplomat Yakov Efimovich Sievers expressed his desire to see with his own eyes the 13-year-old Sophia Augusta Frederica. In the conditions of the time, this meant a direct marriage proposal: the family of the teenage princess knew that the heir to the Russian throne, Peter Fedorovich, was Sofia's peer. According to the rules of the monarchy, he must start a family in the near future.
„Up to the age of 14-15, I was convinced that I was completely ugly” - she wrote in her mature years. But even if external beauty were not taken into account, the most important obstacle remained. The position of the principality of Anhalt-Zerbst on the map of monarchical Europe is extremely modest. And Sophia's father, Christian Augustus, does not even wear this crown: after going to the service of the King of Prussia, Frederick II, he served as commandant in the sea city of Stettin.
A combination of circumstances allowed Catherine to take the first step towards the throne that she could not have taken alone. Empress Elizabeth, who rules in Russia, is the opposite of Catherine: beautiful by birth, but of low maternal origin, she wants to correct this — to be related to a noble but uninfluential family. Elizabeth needs a daughter-in-law who will depend on her both financially and personally — whose relatives will not interfere in the government of Russia, but will fear being expelled from Petersburg to their homeland. When Elizabeth learned that Prince Charles of Lübeck, with whom she had been in love as a youth, had a niece the same age as the heir, Catherine's fate was sealed.
In his popular memoir "Notes" Catherine the Great claimed that from early childhood she suffered from the coldness of her mother Johanna Elizabeth. Not only does she favor her son (which is more of a rule in patriarchal orders in Europe), but she also ridicules her daughter for her ugly appearance. As Sofia matured and began to shed her inferiority complex, a rivalry developed between the two women.
As an adult, the Empress claims that her mother did everything to make Sievers look foolish on the fateful day of his visit. And after learning that the Russian representative did not give up matchmaking, she began to persuade her father not to give his consent. “I know that she pushed my father away from the idea of our trip to Russia, and I was the one who made them both decide,”, writes Ekaterina. When the future queen and her mother visit Frederick II in Berlin, the situation repeats itself: Sophia again begins to feel that her mother is doing everything to harm her in the king's eyes.
The cold relations in the family turned out to be of direct benefit to the future queen, when in 1744 Johanna Elizabeth and Sophia went to Russia. In the court of St. Petersburg, loyalty to the new homeland is valued, and the aging princess of Anhalt-Zerbst can no longer demonstrate it. In the maelstrom of court intrigue, she makes the wrong bet: entrusting a newspaper with her own casual remarks about the queen's personality. Goldbach, a mathematician working in the capital, deciphers the code of the letters and Elizabeth gets to know their content. Her genuine outrage means the countdown has begun for the older of the two German princesses in Russia.
In the changing circumstances of the court, Catherine learns to maneuver much better than her mother. From the first days of her stay in St. Petersburg, she devoted at least a few hours every day to studying Russian. Contrary to her father's advice (Christian Augustus is a staunch Lutheran), Sophia Augusta listens attentively to the sermons of the Orthodox confessor assigned to her. It is soon confirmed that she is ready to change her faith. The queen's daughter-in-law became involved in the religious life of the court: pilgrimage trips, long-hour services and veneration of relics.
In itself, this is no surprise. If Sophia Frederica had refused to convert to Orthodoxy, her stay in Russia would have ended. But the future queen managed to turn the inevitable step into a convincing demonstration of her loyalty. When, in 1745, the heir's bride was stricken with an unknown illness (there was talk of poisoning), she called an Orthodox priest for confession, not a Lutheran one. People of the 18th century were impressed by such an action. At the risk of death, Sophia, who becomes Catherine, gives preference to Orthodoxy over the religion of her ancestors. Catherine scores political points much faster than her fiance Piotr Fedorovich — grandson of Peter I, but son of the Lutheran Karl Friedrich Holstein-Gothorpe, who considered his position stable and until the end of his days showed no interest in Orthodoxy.
It is in Catherine's interest to be able to please Piotr. It seems simple at first. Distant relatives, husband and wife (the marriage took place in 1745) willy-nilly oppose the rest of the more Russian part of the court. But as Pyotr Fyodorovich grew older, Catherine found it increasingly difficult to hide her disappointment. Due to reproductive health problems, the crown prince does not show intimate interest in her. The poisoning she suffers makes Catherine even less beautiful: “I myself turned out to be as scary as a scarecrow and could not recognize myself” she wrote afterwards. When Pyotr, in turn, falls ill - having contracted smallpox - he has already lost his external attractiveness. In addition, the heir to the throne is extremely tactless: in the presence of his wife, he does not hesitate to admit his interest in other women.
Yet Catherine would hardly have dared to violate her husband's fidelity if circumstances beyond her control had not pushed her to do so. As an adult, Piotr is diagnosed with sexual dysfunction, which casts doubt on his ability to reproduce. When Elizabeth was told the news, she burst into tears: she had no children of her own, no other heirs. Then Elizabeth assigns her a lover - with the political goal of continuing the Romanov dynasty.
Not wanting to put her daughter-in-law in a completely ridiculous position, the queen gives her a choice between two: the court gentleman Lev Naryshkin and the diplomat Sergei Saltikov. What brings them together is their distant kinship with the dynasty. Peter the Great's mother came from the Naryshkini family, and Saltykova was the wife of his brother Ivan V and mother of the soon-to-be Tsarina Anna Ioanovna. A child born out of wedlock may inherit traits that vaguely link him to the Romanovs.
Ekaterina chose Saltykov and he does everything to break her heart. Happily married for a long time, he calls his marriage a mistake and swears allegiance to Catherine, “struck on the spot” of her goodness, nobility, and mental qualities. The future empress was not fully aware that they were pretending to her. But as soon as the child is born — the future Paul I - Elizabeth removes Saltykov from the court having fulfilled his mission. In addition, the relationship between the heir's wife and her lover imperceptibly crosses a new slippery line. The legal husband, Pyotr Fedorovich, nevertheless dared to undergo a surgical intervention, which made him capable of producing offspring. It was probably then that he assumed his rights as Catherine's husband. For this reason, the question of the paternity of the future Paul I remains unclear.
Catherine's betrayals continued even after Saltykov was sent away from St. Petersburg. Her next choice fell on the Polish diplomat Stanislaw Poniatowski, but soon the future queen recognized him as a weak person. Under the influence of disappointment, she was attracted by the guard officer Grigory Orlov — a hero of the Seven Years' War and a participant in an unpleasant story: caught with a noble mistress, Princess Kurakina, Orlov does not deny it, but chooses to be imprisoned and sent to the front line as punishment for the crime. He is a tough, rough, but honest man: Catherine has no doubt that this is exactly the man she needs now.
Empress Elizabeth died slowly: her first attack of illness, ending in a loss of consciousness, happened to her in the late 1740s, when she was more than a decade away from her death. The long wait stimulates intrigue. The opponents of Catherine and Pyotr, whose paths had not yet parted, intended to get rid of them. To this end, they propose to raise the little Paul to the throne, establishing a regency over him. In this case, power in Russia will be concentrated in the Shuvalov clan.
Unlike her husband, who has little knowledge of palace politics, Catherine recognizes the threat and develops a plan to counter it. The empress's prolonged agony leaves time for her to acquire the necessary connections. Ekaterina gets close to lieutenant colonel of the guard and hetman Kiril Razumovsky and receives guarantees from him that if Elizabeth does not declare Paul as heir ahead of schedule, then her will will be hidden, and the Shuvalovs , if necessary, will be arrested.
Happiness smiles on Catherine: the dying Elizabeth hesitates until the end and does not make a final decision. After her death in 1761, Peter III inherited the throne, not realizing what his wife was up to.
In the months that followed, the new emperor's tactless attitude toward his wife changed to downright abusive. Peter knows about Catherine's infidelities, does not believe in his paternity of Paul and makes plans for a new marriage. In the summer of 1762 he ordered the arrest of his wife, but could not force his guards to do so: they considered him too drunk. For Catherine, that means no time to wait. The Guard coup in July 1762 made possible a change of power in Russia without bloodshed. Relying on her lover Grigory Orlov, the metropolitan regiments and Russian public opinion, which considered Peter III incapable of running the empire, Catherine placed the crown on her head.
The text was published in TASS