Catherine the Great

by Simon Dixon

  81. Benois, Tsarskoe Selo, 76–7.

  82. Sochineniia, xii: 117.

  83. I. Vinogradoff, ‘Russian Missions to London, 1711–1789: Further Extracts from the Cottrell Papers’, Oxford Slavonic Papers, NS 15 (1982), 71, C. to R. Cottrell, 1741.

  84. Sochineniia, xii: 254–7.

  85. Iu. Ovsiannikov, Franchesko Bartolomeo Rastrelli (Leningrad, 1982), 74.

  86. Sochineniia, xii: 320.

  87. A. A. Kedrintsev, ‘Iantarnyi zal v Sankt-Peterburge’, in I. P. Sautov, et al, Iantarnaia komnata: Tri veka istorii (SPb, 2003), 110–6. The Amber Room was later transferred to Tsarskoe Selo.

  88. Sochineniia, xii: 241, 291.

  89. Sochineniia, xii: 181.

  90. Sochineniia, xii: 183.

  91. B. Kemp, ‘Sir Francis Dashwood’s Diary of his Visit to St Petersburg in 1733’, SEER, 38 (1959–60), 201.

  92. PSZ, xi: 8820, 16 Nov. 1743; Sochineniia, xii: 106.

  93. S. B. Gorbatenko, Petergofskaia doroga: Oranienbaumskii istoriko-landshaftnyi kompleks (SPb, 2001), 194; Sochineniia, xii: 92–3; 244–5.

  94. Gorbatenko, Petergofskaia doroga, 197, 199; Sochineniia, xii: 127.

  95. SIRIO, clxviii: 111, Guy Dickens to Newcastle, 29 July 1750.

  96. Sochineniia, xii: 157.

  97. Sochineniia, xii: 273.

  98. Sochineniia, xii: 293–4.

  99. R. Dimsdale, ‘20 October 1768: Doctor Dimsdale Spends a Day with the Empress’, in Days from the Reigns, ed. Cross, ii: 190.

  100. Sochineniia, xii: 260–1.

  101. Sochineniia, xii: 296.

  102. KfZh (1751), 4–15.

  103. Sochineniia, xii: 309, 313–5 (315).

  104. Sochineniia, xii: 325.

  105. KfZh (1753), 93; PSZ, xiii: 10,103, 27 May 1753.

  106. KfZh (1753), 65–6; Sochineniia, xii: 328–30; SIRIO, cxlviii: 519–20, Guy Dickens to Newcastle, 4/15 Nov. 1753.

  107. AKV, xxxiii: 466–9, ‘O pozhare moskovskago dvortsa’.

  108. A. Mikhailov, Arkhitektor D.V. Ukhtomskii: Ego shkola (M, 1954), 171–3.

  109. SIRIO, cxlviii: 542, Guy Dickens to Newcastle, 20/31 Dec. 1753.

  110. KfZh (1753), 74–5; AKV, v, 17.

  111. Sochineniia, xii: 329, 332, 324.

  112. Sochineniia, xii: 336–7.

  113. Sochineniia, xii: 338–9.

  Chapter 4

  1. Walpole Correspondence, xx: 457–8, Sir H. Mann to Walpole, 13 Dec. 1754 NS.

  2. Rovinskii, Obozrenie ikonopisaniia, 244–6.

  3. KfZh (1754), 121–4.

  4. Sochineniia, xii: 341–7 (341, 345); KfZh (1754), 78–9; McGrew, 29–31.

  5. R. Butterwick, Poland’s Last King and English Culture: Stanislaw August Poniatowski 1732–1798 (Oxford, 1998), 86–100; A. Zamoyski, The Last King of Poland (London, 1992), 41–53.

  6. Quoted in extenso by Zamoyski, Last King, 58.

  7. KfZh (1755), 68–70: 77 men and 44 women were present.

  8. V. A. Korentsvit, ‘Krepost’ Peterstadt v Oranienbaume’, in Pamiatniki istorii i kul’tury Peterburga, ed. A. V. Pozdnukhov (SPb, 1994), 208–22.

  9. Sochineniia, xii: 307, 355–6.

  10. AKV, xxxiii: 83, M. L. Vorontsov to F. D. Bekhteev, 15 June 1756.

  11. Uspenskii, Imperatorskie dvortsy, i: 38–9, 41; PSZ: 10,246, 16 June 1754.

  12. Sochineniia, xii: 117; Benois, Tsarskoe Selo, 78.

  13. AKV, xxxi: 86, M. L. to A. R. Vorontsov, 19 Dec. 1758.

  14. A. N. Petrov, Savva Chevakinskii (Leningrad, 1983), 72, 75–6, 79.

  15. Iu. V. Trubinov, Stroganovskii dvorets (SPb, 1996), 38–61.

  16. Shcherbatov, 223, 225.

  17. A. V. Dëmkin, Britanskoe kupechestvo v Rossii XVIII veka (M, 1998), 70.

  18. Sipovskaia, ‘Obedy’, 162–3.

  19. AKV, xxxi: 83, M. L. Vorontsov to M. P. Bestuzhev-Riumin, Feb 1758; 101, M. L. to A. R. Vorontsov, undated (Jan/Feb 1760); 105, 4/15 Apr. 1760; 110, 24 Oct. 1760.

  20. Sochineniia, xii: 391–2.

  21. Correspondance, 70, 23 Aug. 1756; 81, 24 Aug.

  22. AKV, xxxiii: 32–48. By the same token, no account was taken of Vorontsov’s artistic expenses, for which see S. O. Androsov, ‘Zabytyi russkii metsenat—Graf Mikhail Vorontsov’, PKNO, 2000 (M, 2001), 246–77.

  23. SIRIO, clxviii: 466, Guy Dickens to Newcastle, 7 July 1753.

  24. [J-L Favier], ‘Russkii dvor v 1761 godu’, RS, Oct. 1878.

  25. Cross, 55–8; Dëmkin, Britanskoe kupechestvo, 128–35.

  26. Kazakevich, Tsarskie zastol’ia, 24.

  27. AKV, xxxiii: 50, ‘Zapiska prikhodu i raskhodu den’gam na 1754 god’; xxxii: 19, M. L. Vorontsov to I. I. Shuvalov, 27 Oct. 1756.

  28. Correspondance, 82, 24 Aug. 1756.

  29. Correspondance, 55, 20 Aug. 1756. See also, p. 74, 23 Aug. (cf. 124, 6 Sept.)

  30. Correspondance, 197, 6 Oct. 1756.

  31. Correspondance, 255, undated, Nov. 1756.

  32. SIRIO, vii: 73, C. to Wolff, 11 Nov. 1756.

  33. Correspondance, 272, 17 Nov. 1756.

  34. SIRIO, cxlviii: 118, Guy Dickens to Newcastle, 8 Sept. 1750.

  35. SIRIO, cxlviii: 113, Guy Dickens to Newcastle, 11 Aug. 1750.

  36. Shcherbatov, 195.

  37. C. Marsden, Palmyra of the North: The First Days of St Petersburg (London, 1942), 130.

  38. SIRIO, cxlviii: 321–2, 28 Jan. 1752; ibid., 332, 7 Mar., prompted by ibid., 309, Newcastle to Guy Dickens, 27 Dec. 1751 NS.

  39. Sochineniia, xii: 266.

  40. SIRIO, cx: 292–3, Hyndford to Newcastle, 2 Feb. 1749.

  41. Correspondance, 121, 6 Sept; KfZh (1758), 112.

  42. KfZh (1756), 51, 102; Benois, Tsarskoe Selo, 246–8.

  43. Correspondance, 4, 3 Aug. 1756.

  44. Sochineniia, xii: 227.

  45. Sochineniia, xii: 224, 219, 225.

  46. PSZ, xii: 8908, 3 Apr. 1744.

  47. SIRIO, cxlviii: 295, Guy Dickens to Newcastle, 26 Nov. 1751; KfZh (1751), 108–9.

  48. Sochineniia, xii: 288–9.

  49. Sochineniia, xii: 348.

  50. Correspondance, 34, 11 Aug. 1756; 45, 18 Aug.

  51. Correspondance, 145, 11 Sept. 1756.

  52. Frotier de la Messelière, Voyage à Pétersbourg, ou nouveaux mémoires sur la Russie (Paris, 1803), 217–8, punctuation adjusted.

  53. Sochineniia, xii: 393–5, where the event is misdated to 1758. The mistake recurs in A. L. Porfir’eva, ‘Muzykal’nye razvlecheniia Petra Fedorovicha v Oranienbaume’, in Archivo Russo—Italiano, IV, eds. Daniela Rizzi and A. Shishkin (Salerno, 2005), 340, and also in The Memoirs of Catherine the Great, eds. M. Cruse and H. Hoogenboom (New York, 2005), 178. Alexander, 51, gives 17 June 1757. The chronology of this period in C.’s memoirs is especially unreliable.

  54. Zamoyski, Last King, 55.

  55. Quoted in Alexander, 51.

  56. KfZh (1757), 83.

  57. J. L. H. Keep, ‘Feeding the Troops: Russian Army Supply Policies during the Seven Years’ War’, Canadian Slavonic Papers, 28–31 (1987).

  58. Bil’basov, i: 332–46.

  59. PSZ, xv: 10,940, 5 Apr. 1759, para. 5; KfZh (1759), 42; Sochineniia, xii: 407, 423; Alexander, 53–5.

  60. AKV, xxxi: 88, M. L. to A. R. Vorontsov, 10 Mar. 1759; PSZ, xv: 10,930, 9 Mar. 1759.

  Chapter 5

  1. G. S. Rousseau, ‘“A strange pathology”: Hysteria in the Early Modern World’, in S. L. Gilman, et al, Hysteria beyond Freud (Berkeley, 1993), 157; L. Brockliss and C. Jones, The Medical World of Early Modern France (Oxford, 1997), 444.

  2. AKV, ii: 633–6.

  3. See E. V. Anisimov, ‘I. I. Shuvalov—deiatel’ rossiiskogo Prosveshcheniia’, Voprosy istorii, 1985, no. 7, 94–104.

  4. KfZh (1761), 7.

  5. KfZh (1760), 175.

  6. Alexander, ‘Ivan Shuvalov’, 8.

  7. ‘Russkii dvor’,.

  8. AKV, iv: 461, 20 Feb. 1761.

  9. F.G. Volkov i russkii teatr ego vremeni, 138–43.


  10. KfZh (1761), 22. The artist’s name is not given.

  11. AKV, iv: 461, 20 Feb. 1761; 462, 23 Feb.

  12. Ia. V. Bruk, U istokov russkogo zhanra: XVIII vek (M, 1990), 45, pl. 53–5; AKV, xxxiv: 129.

  13. Chappe d’Auteroche, Voyage en Sibérie, ed. M. Mervaud, ii: 344–5, SVEC, 2004:04.

  14. KfZh (1761), 3–4, 7, 10; AKV, xxi: 84.

  15. Zapiski Shtelina, i: 261.

  16. ‘Dnevnik statskogo sovetnika Misere’, in Ekaterina: put’ k vlasti, eds. M. Lavrinovich and A. Liberman (M, 2003), 54.

  17. AKV, iv: 464, 10 Apr. 1761, A. K. Vorontsova to her daughter, Anna Mikhailovna.

  18. AKV, iv: 464–5, 17 Apr. 1761; KfZh (1761); Alexander, ‘Ivan Shuvalov’, 9.

  19. AKV, iv: 465, 24 Apr. and 30 Apr. 1761.

  20. KfZh (1761), 76, 94, 99, 102, 109, 122.

  21. Sochineniia, xii: 785–6.

  22. Sochineniia, xii: 613–27, passim.

  23. Alexander, 55–7.

  24. KfZh (1761), 79–80. For further fires see AKV, iv: 476, 6 July.

  25. AKV, iv: 474, 15 June 1761.

  26. Bil’basov, i: 418, n. 5, quoting the French ambassador Breteuil. Elizabeth had spent most of the week before at her devotions in her private chapel: KfZh (1761), 100–1.

  27. KfZh (1761).

  28. AKV: xxxi: 151, circular from M. L. Vorontsov, 19 Dec. 1761.

  29. Shtelin, Zapiski, 97; KfZh (1762), 9–10.

  30. For daily lists of their respective dining companions in Jan. and Feb., see KfZh (1762), 54–118, 1st pagn.

  31. KfZh (1762), 3, 1st pagn.

  32. KfZh (1762), 12, 1st pagn; Sochineniia, xii: 506–7.

  33. Vinogradov, ‘Russian Mission’, 71. For Anna’s funeral commission, see Vnutrennii byt Russkago gosudarstva, i: 431–94 (438–9).

  34. Shtelin, Zapiski, 96; KfZh (1762), 6–7, 1st pagn; L. Hughes, ‘Royal Funerals in Eighteenth-Century Russia’, in Monarchy and Religion, ed. Schaich, 411–2.

  35. Sochineniia, xii: 508, has misled generations of historians by giving 25 Jan. as the date of Elizabeth’s funeral.

  36. KfZh (1762), 16–17, 1st pagn.

  37. Ya. P. Shakhovskoy, Zapiski, 1709–1777, ed. R. E. Jones (Newtonville, MA, 1974), iii, 183.

  38. Anecdotes russes, ou letters d’un officier allemand a un gentilhomme livonien, écrites de Pétersbourg en 1762 (London [The Hague], 1765), 32–4.

  39. Bil’basov, i: 424.

  40. ‘Zapiski pridvornago bril’iantshchika Poz’e’, RS, March 1870, 201–3.

  41. AKV, xxxi: 153, M. L. to A. R. Vorontsov, 28 Dec. 1761. It was imposed that day: KfZh (1761), suppl., 4–5.

  42. KfZh (1762), 19, 1st pagn, 27 Feb.

  43. Shtelin, Zapiski, 97; KfZh (1762), 25, 1st pagn, 4 Feb.; SIRIO, vii: 121, 7 July 1762.

  44. Hughes, ‘Royal funerals’, 413. The coffin was lowered into the vault only on 27 Feb., when neither Peter nor C. was present: KfZh (1762), 46, 1st pagn.

  45. Mémoires du Comte de Hordt (Paris, 1784), 267–8.

  46. Sochineniia, xii: 508–9.

  47. Mémoires du Comte de Hordt, 267–8. In point of fact, C. was to attend memorial services for Elizabeth for the rest of her life.

  48. KfZh (1762), 28–34, 1st pagn; ‘Dnevnik statskogo sovetnika Mizere’, 57; Benois, Tsarskoe Selo, 106, 111, 260–3.

  49. SIRIO, xviii: 83, 143, Mercy to Kaunitz, 1 Feb. and 26 Feb. 1762 NS.

  50. Sochineniia, xii: 547, C. to Poniatowski, 2 Aug. 1762.

  51. Shcherbatov, 233.

  52. C. S. Leonard, Reform and Regicide: The Reign of Peter III of Russia (Bloomington, IN, 1993), 42–5; 48–57. For a penetrating discussion, see E. A. Marasinova, ‘Manifest o vol’nosti dvorianstva (k voprosu o mekhanizmakh sotsial’nogo kontrolia)’, in E.R. Dashkova i zolotoi vek Ekateriny, ed. L. V. Tychinina, et al (M, 2006), 84–108.

  53. Tooke, i: 219.

  54. KfZh (1762), 39, 1st pagn; ‘Dnevnik statskogo sovetnika Mizere’, 59.

  55. Bolotov, ii: 108–11.

  56. Bil’basov, i: 423–4; 428–9.

  57. PCFG, xxi: 164, Frederick to Prince Henry, 3 Jan. 1762; 175, to Finckelstein, 11 Jan. 1761 NS.

  58. Ibid., 194, 22 Jan.; (210), 29 Jan.; (212), 31 Jan.

  59. AKV, xxi: 46–7; SIRIO, xviii: 361, Mercy to Kaunitz, 28 May 1762 NS. Prince Dashkov reached Kiev before being recalled by Catherine.

  60. Tooke, i: 239.

  61. Ransel, Politics, 59–61 (61).

  62. Troitskii, Finansovaia politika, 246–7; Leonard, Reform and Regicide, 122.

  63. Kurukin, Epokha ‘dvorskikh bur’, 385–92.

  64. Leonard, Reform and Regicide, 136.

  65. Madariaga, 27–8.

  66. AKV, xxi: 49.

  67. R. Vroon, ‘9 June 1762: The tears of an empress, or the toast that toppled an emperor’, in Days from the Reigns, ed. Cross, ii: 129–30.

  68. Sochineniia, xii: 547, C. to Poniatowski, 2 Aug. 1762.

  69. AKV, xxi: 68.

  70. The following draws on Madariaga, 29–32, and Alexander, 3–16.

  71. PSZ, xvi: 11,585.

  72. R. Bartlett, ‘30 October 1763: The Beginning of Abolitionism in Russia’, in Days from the Reigns, ed. Cross, ii: 138.

  73. Tooke, i: 292.

  74. Osmnadtsatyi vek, 2 (1869), 634, Talyzin to Panin, 29 June 1762.

  75. Perevorot 1762 goda (M, 1908), 141; Bil’basov, ii: 104–6.

  76. Sochineniia, xii:.

  77. A. Schumacher, Geschichte der Thronentsetzung und des Tode Peter des Dritten (Hamburg, 1858).

  78. K. A. Pisarenko, ‘Neskol’ko dnei iz istorii “uedinennogo i priiatnogo mestechka”’, in O. A. Ivanov, V. S. Lopatin and K. A. Pisarenko, Zagadki russkoi istorii: XVIII vek (M, 2000), 253–398.

  79. Madariaga, 32.

  Chapter 6

  1. SIRIO, xii: 113, Buckinghamshire to Halifax, 28 June 1763 NS; cxl: 205, Bérenger to Praslin, 28 June and 8 July; xlvi: 538–40, Mercy to Kaunitz, 28 June.

  2. Alexander, 74–5.

  3. SIRIO, xxii: 66, 75, Solms to Frederick II; 7/18 June 1763; xii: 113, Buckinghamshire to Halifax, 28 June 1763 NS.

  4. KfZh (1763), 109–11, 112–4, 117, 129; I. V. Kapustina, ‘Usad’ba Kuskovo v kontekste evropeiskikh paradnykh rezidentsii XVIII veka’, Russkaia usad’ba, 9 (2003), 163–81; Pis’ma Saltykovu, 14, 25 June 1763.

  5. KfZh (1763), 131–42.

  6. M. I. Pyliaev, Staryi Peterburg (SPb, 2007 edn.), 260. Begun in 1753, the church survived until 1961 when it was demolished during Khrushchev’s anti-religious campaign to make way for the Sennaia ploshchad’ metro station.

  7. SIRIO, cxl: 206–7, Bérenger to Praslin, 12 July 1763 NS.

  8. Zapiski Shtelina, i: 209; M. F. Korshunova, Iurii Fel’ten (Leningrad, 1988), 28. The gallery was demolished in 1766 as part of the scheme to clad the Neva’s banks in granite.

  9. Rovinskii, Obozrenie ikonopisaniia, 279–80; Zapiski Shtelina, i: 256.

  10. SIRIO, cxl: 206, Bérenger to Praslin, 12 July 1763 NS.

  11. The longest of these memoranda is at SIRIO, x: 380–1, 20 Sept. 1769.

  12. Madariaga, 123–32.

  13. Bartlett, 30 October 1763, 139–40. See the same author’s ‘The Question of Serfdom: Catherine II, the Russian Debate and the View from the Baltic Periphery’, in Russia in the Age of the Enlightenment, eds. R. Bartlett and J. M. Hartley (London, 1990), 142–66, and his ‘Serfdom and state power in Imperial Russia’, European History Quarterly, 33 (2003), 38–9.

  14. A. Kamenskii, Ot Petra I do Pavla I: Reformy v Rossii XVIII veka (M, 1999), 330.

  15. R. Bartlett, ‘Educational Projects in the First Decade of the Reign of Catherine II’, in Russische Aufklärungsreeption im Kontext offiieller Bildungskonepte (1700–1825), ed. G. Lehmann-Carli, et al. (Berlin, 2001), 109–24.

  16. D. L. Ransel, Mothers of Misery: Child Abandonment in Russia (Princeton, NJ, 1988), 31–45.

  17. Poroshin, 20, 29 Sept. 1764; 117, 9 Dec.; 133, 20 Dec; and passim.

 
; 18. W. Rosslyn, ‘5 May 1764: The Foundation of the Smol’nyi Institute’, in Days from the Reigns, ed. Cross, ii: 149.

  19. See, in particular, her letters to ‘Dusky Levushka’ (Princess Cherkasskaia), from c. 1770: ‘Chetyre pis’ma Ekateriny II-y k kniagine A. P. Cherkasskoi’, RA, 1870, no. 3, 529–39.

  20. PSZ, xvi: 11,606, 12 July 1762, referring to the Senate meeting on 3 July.

  21. J. P. LeDonne, Ruling Russia: Politics and Administration in the Age of Absolutism 1762–1796 (Princeton, NJ, 1984), 27–30; L. G. Kisliagina, ‘Kantseliariia stats-sekretarei pri Ekaterine II’, in Gosudarstvennye uchrezhdeniia Rossii XVI—XVIII vv. (M, 1991), 171.

  22. W. Daniel, Grigorii Teplov: A Statesman at the Court of Catherine the Great (Newtonville, MA, 1991); MP, iii: 144–53.

  23. R. Faggionato, A Rosicrucian Utopia in Eighteenth-Century Russia: The Masonic circle of N.I. Novikov (Amsterdam, 2005), 16–21; Sochineniia, xii: 298, (406).

  24. Kisliagina, ‘Kantseliariia’, 172–5; SIRIO, vii: 319, Teplov to Elagin, 12 Sept. 1763.

  25. G. E. Munro, ‘Food in Catherinian St. Petersburg’, in Food in Russian History and Culture, eds. M. Glants and J. Toomre (Bloomington, IN, 1997), 31–48. Panin and Elagin reminisced about the imperial table in earlier eras: Poroshin, 23 Dec. 1764.

  26. SIRIO, i: 261–2, C. to Mme Geoffrin, 4 Nov. 1763.

  27. Parkinson, 48, 29 Nov. 1792.

  28. Poroshin, 265, 28 Aug. 1765, records a visit of thirty minutes at Tsarskoe Selo: most apparently lasted about fifteen minutes.

  29. O. A. Omel’chenko, Imperatorskoe Sobranie 1763 goda (Komissiia o vol’nosti dvorianskoi) (M, 2001), 13–48.

  30. SIRIO, x: 381, 20 Sept. 1769; Madariaga, 43–7. Counting the backlog of Senate business became an annual obsession.

  31. Quoted in Madariaga, 58.

  32. RS, Nov. 1874, 494, C. to Volkov, June 1763.

  33. Ekaterina II: Babushkina azbuka, ed. L.V. Tychinina (M, 2004), para. 45.

  34. Ovsiannikov, Rastrelli, 173.

  35. Ermitazh: Istoriia stroitelstva i arkhitektura zdanii, ed. B. B. Piotrovskii (Leningrad, 1989), 99–102; O. Medvedkova, ‘Catherine II et l’architecture à la francaise: le cas de Vallin de la Mothe’, in Catherine II et l’Europe, ed. Davidenkoff, 39–40; Zapiski Shtelina, i: 207.