The Memoirs of Catherine the Great
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Most important, using similar subject matter, the memoirs tell different stories. Written many years apart, they subtly reflect Catherine’s immediate concerns at the time of writing. However, knowing when the memoirs were written is problematic because most are undated. A. N. Pypin made an extensive description of Catherine’s many autobiographical materials in the State Archives in the order that he found them, not how Catherine left them (731–41). Using dates and internal evidence, Pypin established their probable order. Based on internal evidence, Catherine most likely wrote the early memoir, covering 1729–54, around 1756. She probably began the final memoir around 1794; part 1 covers 1728–50, and part 2 continues with 1751 and ends in 1759.110 The dating of the three parts of the middle memoir, which covers 1728–50, is problematic. Part 1 begins with a heading in her hand on the first page: “Memoirs begun on April 21, 1771.” Catherine’s papers also contain two separate sheets with later dates. On one she wrote, “Memoirs begun in 1790. Part One,” which is followed by blank pages; on another she wrote, “Memoirs continued in 1791. Part Two,” which is followed by part 2 of the middle memoir. Using internal evidence from part 3, the editors of the Academy edition conclude that all three parts of the middle memoir, begun on Catherine’s birthday in 1771, must have been completed before the end of 1773. They suggest that Catherine somewhat revised this memoir in 1790–91, and then began the final memoir in 1794, in which she incorporated the middle memoir into a new part 1.111
Codicology sheds some light on how Catherine edited the memoirs and supports this chronological scenario. For the 1756 memoir, eighteen pages long, Catherine wrote on both sides of inexpensive paper, with a 1½-inch left margin, which was insufficient for additions. For the subsequent memoirs, she wrote on both sides of excellent, heavy gilt-edged English paper that came in bifolio sheets. She folded each folio (31.7 × 19.9 cm wide) in half vertically, then wrote on one half and made additions on the other half, while also making changes to her main text. The margins of the middle memoir contain extensive additions that sometimes cover the entire page in a patchwork of sections. She most likely made these additions in 1790–91. In contrast, the final memoir has few additions, but a number of insertions on smaller pages, usually single folios, and sometimes bifolios. These smaller folios resemble the lower quality paper she used in the 1756 memoir, which suggests that these added episodes had been written years earlier and were the notes from which she had written the middle memoir. The heavy editing of the middle memoir in 1790–91 indicates that Catherine’s conception of the memoir had changed sufficiently to warrant another memoir with a new beginning and ending.
The middle memoir represents an expanded attempt to set the record straight for posterity in response to critical accounts of Russia and of Catherine’s coup by Rulhière and Chappe d’Auteroche in 1768. In particular, she counters Rulhière’s account of her background as a poor relation among German courts.112 Thus part 1, while a court memoir, also contains the fullest description of her youth, family, and especially her brilliant match. It is the life of a successful German Princess, and it concludes with her marriage. She wrote it when she was looking for a similar spouse for her son, and after they had agreed upon Princess Wilhelmina of Hessen-Darmstadt (1755–76), Catherine wrote her a set of maxims about the “job,” based on her own experiences.113 The early memoir has four pages on her youth in Germany, which Catherine greatly expands in the middle memoir. In 1756, Catherine had reason to minimize her German background, given that her husband was too obviously Prussophile, but the return to her German years in 1771 allows her to evoke an alternative vision of court life to the one she had endured as Grand Duchess.
The court of Brunswick was then a truly royal court, in the number of beautiful houses this court occupied and in the decoration of these houses, the order that reigned at court, the many people of all kinds that the court supported, and the crowd of foreigners who constantly came there, and the dignity and magnificence that went into the whole style of life. Balls, operas, concerts, hunting parties, carriage drives, and banquets followed one another daily. This is what I saw for at least three or four months in Brunswick each year, from my eighth to my fifteenth year. [14]
Thus, whereas Rulhière portrays Catherine’s upbringing as poor and provincial, in her middle memoir Catherine counters with her ample experience of grand court life in Germany, which far outshone that of the Russian court. The memoirs are only one of the many ways that she attempted to repair the losses of those years in a dismal Russian court, which she summarizes in her epitaph (1778): “Eighteen years of tedium and solitude led her to read many books.”114
The style in which Catherine wrote her memoirs amplifies her criticisms of Elizabeth’s court and her vision of her own Russian court that combined splendor and familial congeniality. The dedication to part 1 of this memoir evokes the atmosphere of intimate conversation among her trusted inner circle at court. Catherine dedicates it to Countess Praskovia Alexandrovna Bruce (née Rumiantseva) (1729–85), her friend during all those years as Grand Duchess, “to whom I can speak freely without fear of consequences.” 115 They had become close when Catherine first arrived in Russia in 1744 and remained thus through 1779, when Catherine learned that her friend was having an affair with her then favorite, Major Ivan Rimsky-Korsakov. Catherine’s words to Grimm noting her death are typical of her gracious practicality. “It is impossible not to miss her when one has known her long, for she was very nice; it would have upset me much more six or seven years ago, but since then we have been somewhat distant and separated.” 116 In her life and in her letters, Catherine practiced the art of unpretentious conversation, which she enshrined in her Rules. Conversation earns a place in her self-portrait in the final memoir: “My disposition was naturally so accommodating that no one was ever with me a quarter of an hour without falling comfortably into conversation, chatting with me as if they had known me for a long time.” Catherine’s skill at evoking the art of conversation in her writing reflected her early reading of Mme. de Sévigné’s letters to her daughter during the opulent reign of Louis XIV, which were widely known and praised for their simplicity and vivid stories of a grand court life.
In this memoir, Catherine defends herself abroad implicitly as enlightened and worldly, and at home explicitly. In her domestic self-defense, she includes a self-portrait with her resolutions to perform her job to the best of her abilities; it comes on the heels of a reprimand from the Empress for her debts. She resolved to please (1) the Grand Duke, (2) the Empress, and (3) the nation. “I admit that when I despaired of succeeding on the first point, I redoubled my care to fulfill the last two, I thought I succeeded more than once on the second, and I succeeded on the third point to the fullest extent and without any reservations at any time, and therefore I believed that I had attained my goal sufficiently” (58). She later recycled this resolution for her epitaph. The end of the memoir restates her defense in the previous memoir against the Empress’s accusation that she was at fault for not producing an heir: on their wedding night, her husband went to sleep, and this was “the state in which things remained for nine consecutive years without the least change.”117 She protests her innocence against rumors of her sexual appetite: “I knew nothing.” At the time that Catherine was writing this memoir, she was between the two most important relationships of her life and career, having broken with Grigory Orlov in the fall of 1772 and moving toward making Potemkin her favorite, a process she put in motion with a letter in December 1773. On February 21, 1774, she wrote one of her autobiographical letters, “a sincere confession” of her love life to an often jealous Potemkin, defending herself against gossip of having had fifteen, rather than five, lovers.118 Thus her autobiographical writings accomplished many purposes, only some related to her coup in 1762.
In fact, the complete middle memoir, dated to 1771–73, addresses an immediate threat to Catherine. During this period, aside from war, plague, and an armed revolt, Catherine had problems at home. This me
moir ends with the arrival, on February 7, 1750, of the Ambassador from Denmark, Count Rochus Friedrich Lynar (1708–81), to negotiate for the exchange of the Grand Duke’s territory of Holstein for Denmark’s Oldenburg and Delmenhorst. This issue was relevant to Catherine’s struggle with the threat to her legitimacy presented by the majority of her son, Grand Duke Paul, on September 20, 1772. His majority pitted Paul, the Panin party, and the Vorontsovs against the Orlovs and Chernyshevs, Catherine’s supporters, in a last attempt to remove Catherine from the throne in favor of her son. 119 The Grand Duke’s territory in Holstein, which he inherited from his father, Peter III, created an important potential foreign base for the power of both men at court. The restoration of Holstein to its former glory formed the whole of Peter’s existence, as it had his father’s; both men had allied themselves with Russia for this purpose. In her final memoir, Catherine says that she fills in for Peter to run Holstein because he cannot be bothered, but it is very much her problem, too.
Catherine took as great an interest in Holstein before as after her coup for the same reason: the external leverage and power it gave the two men with whom her political survival was inextricably linked. Before the coup, she wanted Peter to keep Holstein, and after the coup, she took steps to deprive her son of the territory. In 1767, Catherine made a preliminary agreement with Denmark to exchange Paul’s inheritance, Holstein-Gottorp, for Oldenburg and Delmenhorst. Paul agreed on May 21, 1773, and then on July 14, 1773, signed these over to Catherine’s maternal uncle Duke August Friedrich (1711–85) in exchange for a Russian treaty with Denmark against Sweden, effectively eliminating any foreign power base for himself. At the end of the middle memoir, Catherine promises a fourth part on this issue, but returns to it only at the opening of part 2 of her final memoir, which she begins with a monologue that shows her to be a brilliant politician. In effect, she argues that in 1751, Peter (like Paul in 1773) should keep Holstein and bargain it away only for the glory of Russia and his reputation. Thus her monologue in the final memoir that she will leave her son in effect justifies her actions against him as for his benefit.
Historians have only recently begun to appreciate the political significance of Catherine’s actions in this situation. It was especially delicate for Catherine because at the very time she needed the support of the Orlovs, she had learned on April 25, 1772, that her longtime favorite, Grigory Orlov, had been unfaithful. She replaced him as favorite with Alexander Vasilchikov on September 2, 1772, whereupon Orlov returned from negotiations with Turkey in early September, apparently at Catherine’s secret request. Mikhail Safonov argues that Catherine, far from being just the hurt lover, used her break with Orlov to distract Panin (and Paul) with the potential real gain for Paul of greatly reducing Orlov’s influence at court from the distant possibility of installing Paul as Emperor. To satisfy Panin and Paul, Catherine deprived Orlov of his honors; as soon as they signed away Holstein, she restored Orlov’s honors to him.120
The middle memoir has a second dedication that pleasantly masks another of Catherine’s important problems in the early 1770s: the plague in Moscow. Like her dedication to Countess Bruce at the beginning of part 1, this dedication, at the beginning of part 2, evokes an atmosphere of easy conversation among friends. “To Monsieur Baron Alexander Cherkasov, from whose body I pledge by my honor to extract at least one burst of laughter daily or else to argue with him from morning until evening because these two pleasures are the same for him, and I love to give pleasure to my friends” (73). Catherine had made a list of humorous causes of death of her friends: she would die trying to please others, Countess Bruce would die shuffling cards, and Cherkasov would die from suffocation by speech (653–54). 121 As with the previous dedication, Catherine creates a friendly, easy sphere that stands in vivid contrast to her withering attack on the stupidity and dangers of life at a court under Elizabeth.
High stakes card games . . . were necessary in a court where there was no conversation, where people cordially hated one another, where slander passed for wit, and where the least mention of scandal was considered a crime of lèse-majesté. Secret intrigues passed for cleverness; one carefully avoided speaking of art or science because everyone was ignorant; one could wager that half the group could barely read, and I am not quite sure that a third knew how to write. [89]
In contrast with this picture of ignorance, Baron Alexander Ivanovich Cherkasov (1728–88) had studied at Cambridge University, spoke English perfectly, and enjoyed the pleasures of life, especially food and drink. She does not mention him in this memoir, and indeed he appears just once in all the memoirs, as the future husband of the Princess of Courland in the final memoir. His importance lies in her present, not the past, as she strove with his help to control a devastating outbreak of plague in Moscow. He founded and presided over the Medical Collegium (1763–75), which Catherine used to institute reform of medical education and public health and, more important, to train Russian doctors (rather than import German ones), especially for the military. As with her dedication to Countess Bruce, Catherine added this dedication to the memoir later; it is in a different color and thickness of ink on the first page in the column she used for additions. While Gyllenborg and probably Hanbury-Williams read the autobiographical pieces she wrote for them, there is no record that either dedicatee ever saw this memoir.
Beginning in the 1770s, Catherine appears to have circulated some autobiographical writings among her inner circle. In 1778, she wrote in Russian what she called a “sixteen year examination” of her reign since 1762.122 She sent it to Grimm, and she mentions other readers, including Potemkin, Orlov, and Shuvalov, who found it a “chef d’oeuvre,” “very nice,” and “academic,” respectively.123 In 1789, she composed another epistolary self-portrait, this one for Dr. Johann Georg Zimmermann (1728–95), Swiss royal doctor and author of On Melancholy (1756), with whom she corresponded about literature and politics (1785–95). 124 It begins with a now familiar theme: “I have always thought that others have slandered me because they have not understood me.” She concludes her portrait with a humorous change of tone that shows her sensitivity to her reader as a listener: “Here ends the dialogue of the dead, let us return to the living” (595). However, no surviving documents of her time contain any mention of her memoirs. Perhaps she followed the advice of an illustrious predecessor, the Duc de Saint-Simon (1675–1755), who in his Memoirs (1743) of the reign of Louis XIV warns that “he who writes the history of his times . . . would therefore have had to lose his mind even to let people suspect that he is writing. His work should ripen under the surest lock and key, thus to pass to his heirs.”125 In a letter to Grimm in 1790, she denies writing memoirs: “I do not know what Didot has heard about my memoirs, but one can be sure that I have never written any, and if it is a sin not to have done this, then I must admit my guilt.”126
The explicit expectation in France that she would write her memoirs may have spurred Catherine on to try again in the 1790s. In addition, Catherine found reading and writing psychologically therapeutic in difficult times. For example, her dedication to Cherkasov in the middle memoir sounds like a prescription. In 1777, in a final letter to her anxious, jealous favorite Peter Zavadovsky (1739–1812), Catherine ends things on a dry note: “Most of all, calm your spirit and be healthy and merry, and I advise you to follow the advice of SRV [Semen Romanovich Vorontsov] to translate Tacitus or to practice Russian history.” 127 After the untimely death of her favorite, Alexander Lanskoi (1758–84, favorite as of 1778), she embarked on her comparative linguistic project to allay her grief. Likewise, Potemkin’s death, in 1791, reverberated, and Catherine took her own advice. Aside from writing her letters to Grimm and the memoirs, during this period Catherine was also composing her Russian history and corresponding (1790–92) with the French historian Gabriel Sénac de Meilhan (1736–1803), who had approached her to write a history of eighteenth-century Russia and her reign.128 Sénac de Meilhan concludes an outline for his history of her with a comparison betw
een Catherine and the one other enlightened European monarch with whom she was often compared, Frederick the Great.129
In the year before she began to revise her memoirs, Catherine read and responded to writings about and by Frederick, especially his posthumous memoir, History of My Times (1788), which helped shape her new conception for the final memoir.130 Their writings are comparable, for like Catherine, Frederick was a voluminous writer, excelling in the one genre that eluded Catherine, namely poetry; he too corresponded extensively with Voltaire, Grimm, and others. In early 1789, Catherine wrote to Grimm about her “27 notes” on the first thirty pages of Frederick’s works, which begin with his preface to his History, and concludes that “the witty bon mot often wins out over an exact account of the event, but there are many very good things in it.”131 In April 1789, she made critical notes in Abbé Denina’s Essay on the Life and Reign of Frederick II, King of Prussia (1788). According to Denina, Bayle’s dictionary was Frederick’s favorite book, though his wife found it improper for a noblewoman; Catherine writes that she thinks it is “very philosophical,” and mentions her own reading of this important work for the first time in her final memoir (675). Frederick’s History begins with the state of Prussia at the beginning of his reign in 1740: “With the death of Frederick William, King of Prussia, the revenues of the state did not exceed 7,400,000 ecus.”132 Similarly, in 1794 Catherine began a largely financial memoir in Russian, though she dispensed with Frederick’s classical use of the third person for himself: “In 1762, upon my ascension to the throne, I found a land army in Prussia of which two-thirds had not been paid” (517).133 Frederick concludes his introduction to his History with a lesson in successful rule that sounds like his early study of Machiavelli (1740): “History is the school of Princes; it is up to them to instruct themselves in the mistakes of past centuries so as to avoid them, and to learn that one must design a plan and follow it step-by-step, and that only he who has best calculated his conduct can prevail over those who act less rationally.”134