Catherine the Great

by Simon Dixon

  2. Quoted in A. M. Wilson, Diderot (New York, 1972), 645.

  3. J. Cracraft, The Petrine Revolution in Russian Architecture (Chicago, IL, 1988), 175–9.

  4. F. C. Weber, The Present State of Russia, 2 vols. (London, 1723), i: 297–8.

  5. V. Berelowitch, ‘Europe ou Asie? Saint-Pétersbourg dans les relations de voyage occidentaux’, in Le Mirage russe au XVIIIe siècle, eds. S. Karp and L. Wolff (Ferney-Voltaire, 2001), 62–7, esp. p. 66.

  6. L. Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (New Haven, CT, 1998), 211–2.

  7. Sochineniia, xii: 79; A. G. Cross, ‘The English Embankment’, in St Petersburg, 1703–1825, ed. Cross (Basingstoke, 2003), 65.

  8. I. S. B., ‘K istorii postroiki S.-Peterburgskago Troitskago Sobora’, RS, Nov. 1911, 426.

  9. Iu. N. Bespiatykh, Peterburg Anny Ioannovny v inostrannykh opisaniiakh (SPb, 1997), 175.

  10. M. di Salvo, ‘A Venice of the North? Italian Views of St Petersburg’, in St Petersburg, ed. Cross, 73–4.

  11. Letters from Count Algarotti to Lord Harvey and the Marquis Scipio Maffei (Glasgow, 1770), 50.

  12. J. Cook, Voyages and Travels through the Russian Empire, Tartary, and Part of the Kingdom of Persia, 2 vols. (Edinburgh 1770), i: 96–7.

  13. The incident led to a general preoccupation with fire: see PSZ, x: 7270, 7275, 7290, 7295.

  14. Bespiatykh, Peterburg Anny Ioannovny, 72, n. 22.

  15. W. B. Lincoln, Sunlight at Midnight: St Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia (Oxford, 2001), 33–4.

  16. M. V. Lomonosov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 9 vols. (M, 1950–55).

  17. G. Kaganov, Images of Space: St. Petersburg in the Visual and Verbal Arts, trans. S. Monas (Stanford, CA, 1997), 19–22, 26–8.

  18. Lincoln, Sunlight at Midnight, 38.

  19. G. Z. Kaganov, Peterburg v kontekste barokko (SPb, 2002).

  20. SIRIO, vii: 20.

  21. Cook, Voyages and Travels, i: 446–8.

  22. Sochineniia, xii: 37–8.

  23. For the premises on the Fontanka, extended in 1741, see Vnutrennii byt Russkago gosudarstva s 17 oktiabria 1740 goda po 25-e noiabria 1741 goda (M, 1880), i: 326–41. Anna decreed an annual fodder budget of 2369r. 71k. on 6 July 1737 (p. 327).

  24. Sochineniia, xii: 118; A. Orloff and D. Shvidkovsky, St Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars (New York, 1996), 266–7.

  25. Storch, 68–9.

  26. I. Iakovkin, Opisanie sela tsarskago (SPb, 1830), 118–9; KfZh (1795), 175, 10 Feb.; appendix ii: 121, 132 (grants of 200 and 947 roubles for the residents of the Okhta district). Storch, 419–20, suggests that by then, the well-born had largely abandoned the pastime as too dangerous. The location of earlier ice hills is unknown.

  27. KfZh (1744), 3–6.

  28. PSZ, xii: 8851, 9 Jan. 1744.

  29. SIRIO, vii: 22–3; Sochineniia, xii: 39; E. A. Zitser, The Transfigured Kingdom: Sacred Parody and Charismatic Authority at the Court of Peter the Great (Ithaca, NY, 2004), 52–5.

  30. Coxe, i: 269–70 (visiting in 1778).

  31. PSZ, xii: 8882, 29 Feb. 1744.

  32. O. S. Evangulova, Dvortsovo-parkovye ansambli Moskvy: pervoi poloviny XVIII veka (M, 1969), 44–84, 12–24.

  33. SIRIO, vii: 25; Sochineniia, xii: 40.

  34. Sochineniia, xii: 530.

  35. SIRIO, vii: 25–7.

  36. Sochineniia, xii: 41.

  37. E. V. Anisimov, Rossiia v seredine XVIII veka: Bor’ba za nasledie Petra (M, 1986), 183–6; idem, Elizaveta Petrovna (M, 1999), 189–204 (192, Saxon envoy).

  38. G. Marker, Imperial Saint: The Cult of St. Catherine and the Dawn of Female Rule in Russia (DeKalb, IL, 2007), 140.

  39. Despatches, ii: 223, Buckinghamshire to Countess of Suffolk, 14 Feb. 1763.

  40. Sochineniia, xii: 42. KfZh (1744), 7–11, gives 3–8 Mar. as the dates of the pilgrimage. The dates given in C’s memoirs are notoriously unreliable.

  41. D. Willemse, Antonio Nunes Ribeiro Sanches, elève de Boerhaave, et son importance pour la Russie (Leiden, 1966).

  42. Sochineniia, xii: (43), 203–4; Bil’basov, i: 90–1; Alexander, 81.

  43. PCFG, iii: 94, Frederick to Johanna Elisabeth, 14 Apr. 1744 NS, and subsequent letters to his ambassador, Baron Mardefeld.

  44. KfZh (1744), 34–6; Bil’basov, i: 95–7; Sochineniia, xii: 43, 95, 205.

  45. Shortly after the dinner, General Johann-Ludwig Lübras von Pott, the newly appointed Russian ambassador to Sweden, demonstrated his allegiance by travelling to Stockholm via Potsdam, where he reassured Frederick that there was no prospect of another revolution in Russia: Sochineniia, xii: 37; PCFG, iii: 200, Frederick to Mardefeld, 3 July 1744 NS.

  46. PCFG, iii: 48, Frederick to Johanna Elisabeth, 29 Feb. 1744 NS; ibid., 118, Frederick to Mardefeld, 1744.

  47. PCFG, iii: 169, Frederick to Mardefeld, 4 June 1744 NS; Sochineniia, xii: 46–8; Anisimov, Rossiia v seredine XVIII veka, 86–7, 95–6. For a detailed guide to the diplomacy of these years, see F.-D. Lishtenan, Rossiia vkhodit v Evropu (M, 2000).

  48. P. I. Khoteev, Kniga v Rossii v seredine XVIII v.: Chastnye knizhnye sobraniia (Leningrad, 1989), 45–6.

  49. Bil’basov, i: 113–9; SIRIO, vii: 4, C. to Christian August, 3 May 1744. In her memoirs, she claimed that Pastor Wagner had taught her that she was free to choose her confession until the time of her first communion: Sochineniia, xii: 45–6.

  50. A. P. Sumarokov, ‘O pravopisanie’, in Polnoe sobranie vsekh sochinenii, 2nd ed. (M, 1787), x: 24.

  51. Sochineniia, xii: 48–9. On Adodurov, see A. M. Panchenko, et al, Slovar’ russkikh pisatelei XVIII veka (Leningrad, 1988), vol. 1 (A-I), 21–3.

  52. Bil’basov, i: 58, n. 1; PCFG, ii: 488, Frederick to Mardefeld, 16 Dec. 1743 NS.

  53. KfZh (1744), 56–9; Sochineniia, xii: 49; Bil’basov, i: 119–21.

  54. Bil’basov, i: 121–4.

  55. KfZh (1744), 59–67.

  56. PCFG, iii: 239, Frederick to C., 5 Aug. 1744 NS.

  57. For the peace celebrations on 15–17 July, see KfZh (1744), 69–86.

  58. On mileposts, PSZ, xii: 9016, 16 Aug. 1744; 9073, 27 Nov.; 9092, 17 Dec.

  59. Sochineniia, xii: 53–4.

  60. M. Berlinskii, Kratkoe opisanie Kieva (SPb, 1820), 39–41.

  61. Sochineniia, xii: 53. C. was then developing an interest in the Gothic, which here seems to mean simply ‘medieval’.

  62. Sochineniia, xii: 55–6.

  63. For its construction, see Starikova, doc. 519, pp. 551–86.

  64. The phrase ‘theatres of piety’ is John Adamson’s: see ‘Making of the ancien-regime Court’, in Princely Courts of Europe, ed. Adamson, 24–7.

  65. S. Dixon, ‘Religious Ritual at the Russian Court’, in Monarchy and Religion: The Transformation of Royal Culture in Eighteenth-Century Europe, ed. M. Schaich (Oxford, 2007), 229–30.

  66. KfZh (1744), 91–3, 103–12.

  67. On 15 Dec.: KfZh (1744), 24.

  68. Bespiatykh, Peterburg Anny Ioannovny, 140 (C. R. Berch).

  69. Starikova, doc. 265 (servants’ accommodation); docs 970–6 (merry-go-round).

  70. Sochineniia, xii: 214

  71. KfZh (1745), 1, 153–4.

  72. Bil’basov, i: 145, n. 2; Sochineniia, xii: 213 (216).

  73. KfZh (1745), 2–10.

  74. P. Keenan, ‘Creating a “public” in St Petersburg, 1703–1761’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 2005, 107–9.

  75. KfZh (1744), 1 and passim, refers to him throughout as Prince August.

  76. Sochineniia, xii: 218; Keenan, ‘Creating a “public”’, 108.

  77. For French celebrations, see e.g. the earlier Description des festes données par la ville de Paris: à l’occasion du mariage de madame Louise-Elisabeth de France, de dom Philippe, infant & grand amiral d’Espagne, les vingt-neuviéme & trentiéme août mil sept cent trente-neuf (Paris, 1740).

  78. Starikova, doc. 754.

  79. PSZ, xii: 9123–4, 16 Mar. 1745.

  80. Sochineni
ia, xii: 227, 63, 67.

  81. KfZh (1745), 27 (9 May); 29–32.

  82. KfZh (1745), 39–42 (39); 43.

  83. KfZh (1745), 36–7.

  84. See, in particular, PSZ, xii: 9136–40; 9144–7; 9149; 9154–6; 9174.

  85. Bil’basov, i: 164, n. 1, 166, 168.

  86. KfZh (1745), 187, 51.

  87. KfZh (1745), 51; SIRIO, cii: 320, Hyndford to Harrington, 20 Aug. 1745.

  88. Bil’basov, i: 167–70.

  89. Sochineniia, xii: 67.

  90. Sochineniia, xii: 68.

  91. My account of the wedding celebrations relies on KfZh (1745), 52–92 (52–60), and on Santi’s order of ceremonies, ibid., 187–222 (195).

  92. Poroshin, 24, 1 Oct. 1764. Naryshkin’s empty landau was between Prince Aleksei Golitsyn and Count Efim Raguzinskii in the procession; Panin’s carriage, also empty, was further forward: KfZh (1745), 55. See 194, 223–9, for an indicative list of the empty carriages.

  93. L. Kirillova, Moskovskii Kreml’: Starinnye ekipazhi (M, 1999), 10, 17 and passim.

  94. SIRIO, vii: 50–2. See also KfZh (1745), 200.

  95. KfZh (1745), 193.

  96. SIRIO, cii: 321, Hyndford to Harrington, 24 Aug. 1745.

  97. Chudinova, Penie, 33; KfZh (1737), 22–3, 32; victory days listed at PSZ, ix: 6832, 29 Oct. 1735.

  98. KfZh (1745), 187–8.

  99. SIRIO, vii: 53–4; Sochineniia, xii: 68; Bil’basov, i: 171–2.

  100. KfZh (1745), 62; Sochineniia, xii: 69.

  101. KfZh (1745), 64–70.

  102. Quoted by N. V. Sipovskaia, ‘Obedy “k sluchaiu”: Nastol’nye ukrasheniia XVIII veka’, in Razvlekatel’naia kul’tura Rossii XVIII—XIX vv., ed. E. V. Dukov (SPb, 2000), 161–2. KfZh (1745), 69, claimed 10,000 candles.

  103. SIRIO, vii: 64; KfZh (1745), 77–8, 80; Sochineniia, xii: 73–4.

  104. S. Sadie, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (London, 1992), iv: 269–70; MP, i: 144–6 (Bonecchi); Starikova, doc. 32 (programme and synopsis); Mooser, i: 219–20; KfZh (1745), 75.

  105. Zapiski Shtelina, i: 248; Rovinskii, Obozrenie ikonopisaniia, 237–8.

  106. The impressive analysis of C’s approach to sexuality in Greenleaf, ‘Performing Autobiography’ may well exaggerate the empress’s literary sophistication.

  107. Sochineniia, xii: 66.

  108. Sochineniia, xii: 69.

  109. Sochineniia, xii: 80, 82.

  110. G. V. Kalashnikov, ‘Zametki ob obrazovanii budushchego imperatora Petra III’, Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik za 2003 goda (M, 2004), 131–48 (135).

  111. Rulhière, 19–20.

  112. Sochineniia, xii: 199.

  113. O. A. Ivanov, Ekaterina II i Petr III: istoriia tragicheskogo konflikta (M, 2007), more inclined to take C.’s memoirs at face value, offers an exhaustive comparison of the passages on Peter.

  114. Kalashnikov, ‘Zametki’, 144.

  115. Shtelin, Zapiski, 74–5, 79.

  Chapter 3

  1. Sochineniia, XII: 236.

  2. Bil’basov, i: 219–22, 227–8.

  3. P. F. Karabanov, ‘Stats-damy i freiliny russkago dvora XVIII v.’, RS, 2 (1870), 445–6.

  4. Sochineniia, xii: 84–5, 89, 91.

  5. Sochineniia, xii: 245.

  6. Sochineniia, xii: 245–6.

  7. Sochineniia, xii: 243–4.

  8. Sochineniia, xii: 27.

  9. Sochineniia, xii: 215, 60–1.

  10. Sochineniia, xii: 329.

  11. Khoteev, Kniga v Rossii v seredine XVIII v., 7–9.

  12. Sochineniia, xii: 532.

  13. J. Hardman, Louis XVI (New Haven, CT, 1993), vii.

  14. PSZ, xii: 9276, 10 Apr. 1746; N. Rozanov, Istoriia Moskovskago Eparkhial’nago Upravleniia so vremeni uchrezhdenii Sv. Sinoda, 1721–1821 (M, 1869), ii: 1, 153, 159, n. 370.

  15. PSZ, xii: 9286, 15 May 1746; xiii: 9860, 11 June 1751.

  16. J. McManners, Death and the Enlightenment (Oxford, 1981), 302.

  17. Sochineniia, xii: 232–5.

  18. P. Salvadori, La chasse sous l’ancien régime (Paris, 1996), 207; Kutepov, Tsarskaia okhota, 30.

  19. Kutepov, Tsarskaia okhota, 64; KfZh (1751), 92–5; PSZ, xiii: 9903, 3 Nov. 1751.

  20. Sochineniia, xii: 117.

  21. Wortman, Scenarios, 107.

  22. AKV, xxxiv: appendix, n.p, undated. A flask (shtof) measured 1.23 litres.

  23. Mrs Vigor, Letters from a lady, who resided some years in Russia, to her friend in England (London, 1775), 73. See also Bespiatykh, Peterburg Anny Ioannovny, 145 (C. R. Berch).

  24. C. von Manstein, Memoirs of Russia, historical, political and military, from the year M DCC XXVII, to M DCC XLIV (London, 1770), 248.

  25. S. Panchulidzev, Istoriia Kavalergardov 1724–1799—1899, 4 vols. (SPb, 1899), i: 254–68, at p. 260.

  26. Decree of 5 May 1758, quoted in N. Findeizen, History of Music in Russia from Antiquity to 1800, 2: The Eighteenth Century, trans. S. W. Pring, eds. M. Velimirovií and C. R. Jensen (Bloomington, IN, 2008), 30.

  27. SIRIO, ciii: 552, Hyndford to Chesterfield, 23 Feb. 1748.

  28. Anisimov, Elizaveta Petrovna, 132–3, notes a tradition dating back to the empress’s contemporaries.

  29. C. Koslofsky, ‘Princes of Darkness: The Night at Court, 1650–1750’, Journal of Modern History, 79, 2 (2007), 236, 244, 251ff., 258ff.

  30. See Zitser, Transfigured Kingdom, passim.

  31. Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, 267–9; P. Keenan, ‘The Function of Fashion: Women and Clothing at the Russian Court (1700–1762)’, in Women in Russian Culture and Society, 1700–1825, eds. W. Rosslyn and A. Tosi (Basingstoke, 2007), 127–9.

  32. Manstein, Memoirs, 319.

  33. Manstein, Memoirs, 248–9.

  34. Vigor, Letters, 75.

  35. Keenan, ‘The Function of Fashion’, 132–3.

  36. Bil’basov, i: 166, n. 2.

  37. C. M. Foust, Muscovite and Mandarin: Russia’s trade with China and its setting, 1727–1805 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1969), 105–63 (esp. 139–41), 357; ‘Kitaiskie tovary v Rossii XVIII v.’, Istoricheskii arkhiv, 2006:4, 197–200.

  38. SIRIO, cxlviii: 104, Guy Dickens to Newcastle, 17/28 July 1750.

  39. P. Mansel, Dressed to Rule: Royal and Court Costume from Louis XIV to Elizabeth II (New Haven, CT, 2005), xiii—xiv and passim.

  40. Sbornik Biografii Kavalergardov 1724–1762, ed. S. Panchulidzev (SPb, 1901), 342 (I. I. Babaev); Benois, Tsarskoe Selo, 31.

  41. Manstein, Memoirs, 248.

  42. Sochineniia, xii: 211; Russkii pridvornyi kostium ot Petra I do Nikolaia II iz sobraniia Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha Sankt-Peterburg (M, 1999), 28–31.

  43. N. Iu. Bolotina, ‘Zhenshchiny roda Vorontsovykh v povsednevnoi zhizni imperatorskogo dvora XVIII v.’, in E.R. Dashkova i zolotoi vek Ekateriny, ed. L. Tychinina (M, 2006), 142, 150–3.

  44. Sochineniia, xii: 301, 211–2, 252–4.

  45. For comparisons, see Duindam, Vienna and Versailles, ch. 3.

  46. KfZh (1748), suppl., 120–32, 149 (these figures are almost certainly underestimates); K. Pisarenko, Povsednevnaia zhizn’ russkogo dvora v tsarstvovanie Elizavety Petrovny (M, 2003), 47–64, esp. 49, 59–60. On titles, see O. G. Ageeva, Evropeizatsiia russkogo dvora 1700–1796 gg. (M, 2006), 81–96.

  47. C. de Wassenaer, A Visit to St Petersburg, 1824–1825, trans. and ed. I. Vinogradoff (Norwich, 1994), 58.

  48. KfZh (1748), suppl., 140–9.

  49. S. M. Troitskii, Finansovaia politika russkogo absoliutizma v XVIII veke (M, 1966), 246; PSZ, XIII: 9757, 2 June 1750.

  50. KfZh (1748), suppl., 106–8.

  51. Blanning, Power of Culture, 59, 32.

  52. Benois, Tsarskoe Selo, 65–6, 68.

  53. Puteshestvie brat’ev Demidovykh po Evrope: Pis’ma i podnevnye Zhurnaly 1750–1761 gody, ed. G. A. Pobedimova (M, 2006), 101.

  54. N. W. Wraxall, Memoirs of the Courts of Berlin, Dresden, Warsaw and Vienna in the years 1777, 1778 and 1779, 2 vols. (London, 1806), ii: 213.
>
  55. Benois, Tsarskoe Selo, 104–5.

  56. A. I. Uspenskii, Imperatorskie dvortsy, i: 34, Zapiski Imperatorskago Moskovskago Arkhaeologicheskago Instituta, xxiii (M, 1913).

  57. I. Reyfman, Vasilii Trediakovsky: The fool of the ‘new’ Russian literature (Stanford, CA, 1990), 239.

  58. Marker, Imperial Saint, 216–8 and passim.

  59. Quoted in Anisimov, Rossiia bez Petra, 73.

  60. Mooser, i: 247.

  61. Quoted in K. Ospovat, ‘Towards a cultural history of the Court of Elizaveta Petrovna’, SGECRN, 35 (2007), 38.

  62. S. W. Mintz, Sweetness and power: The place of sugar in modern history (Harmondsworth, 1986), 88–94.

  63. Sipovskaia, ‘Obedy’, 161.

  64. Starikova, doc. 936; N. Kazakevich, Tsarskie zastol’ia v XVIII veke: Tseremonial i dekorativnoe oformlenie paradnykh stolov pri dvore imperatrits Elizavety i Ekateriny II (SPb, 2003), 22–4.

  65. E.g., KfZh (1753), 27, C.’s birthday; 74, Elizabeth’s birthday.

  66. P. Stolpianskii, ‘V starom Peterburge: Banketnye stoly’, Starye gody, Mar. 1913, 28–32.

  67. KfZh (1745), Zhurnal banketnyi, 19; KfZh (1748), 14–15, 32–3; Iu. Denisov and A. Petrov, Zodchii Rastrelli (Leningrad, 1973), 148–9, 187–8; Zapiski Vasiliia Aleksandrovicha Nashchokina (SPb, 1842), 101.

  68. Starikova, doc.; Mooser, i: 221; KfZh (1746), 11.

  69. AKV, ii: 109.

  70. G. M. Zelenskaia, Novyi ierusalim: putevoditel’ (M, 2003), 44–51.

  71. PSZ, xiii: 9646, 10 July 1749; 9803, 3 Oct. 1750.

  72. Shtelin, Muzyka, 54–5, para. 6.

  73. Sochineniia, xii: 265, 150.

  74. KfZh (1752), 5–6.

  75. KfZh (1757), 68.

  76. E. I. Indova, Dvortsovoe khoziaistvo v Rossii: Pervaia polovina XVIII veka, (M, 1964), 202–15, passim. For fruit from Astrakhan, see PSZ, xii: 8997, 20 July 1744; 9186, 8 July 1745.

  77. E. Justice, A Voyage to Russia (York, 1739), 16.

  78. Pisarenko, Povsednevnaia zhizn’, 515–20; the list probably dates from 1747. For information relating to 1740–1, see Vnutrennii byt Russkago gosudarstva, i: 366–402.

  79. Bespiatykh, Peterburg Anny Ioannovny, 141 (C. R. Berch).

  80. PSZ, xii: 9161, 27 May 1745; N. I. Batorevich, Ekateringof: Istoriia dvortsovo-parkovogo ansamblia (SPb, 2006), 83–9.