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Slows. mintmobile.com. Hello,

1:30

thank you for having me. I

2:00

lie to you and he's now a

2:02

published historian because he's just written a

2:04

very funny book Unruly a history of

2:06

England's kings and queens if anyone deserves

2:08

the episode the great. It's David Mitchell.

2:10

Welcome David Thank you very much. That's

2:13

too compliment Alfred is the only

2:15

great person in this country Oh, I was told

2:17

at school no Constantine the great and canute the

2:19

great would be the other great Well can you

2:21

I do mention the fact that can you say

2:23

is named as great but not according to miss

2:26

Brown? Oh, he said it's just Alfred in England

2:28

And I think it was because she thought the

2:30

canute is a bit Danish He

2:33

counts as a great Dane not the dog not

2:35

the dog Alpha

2:37

is the only great but Constantine. Yeah, well as in

2:39

the Emperor the Emperor He was crowned in York, so

2:41

he counts because he was crowned in New York one

2:43

of ours. We can claim him I see I think

2:45

you're stretching a point Okay,

2:48

all right, miss Brown is the authority will go with

2:51

miss Brown David Do you are not only a history

2:53

graduate? But you are now published historian as well. So

2:55

that I mean the obvious worry for me is are

2:57

you coming from my job? Is this a coup? Yes,

3:02

I wish to take over the past and redefine

3:05

it to my own advantage because that very much

3:07

seems to be the spirit of the age No,

3:11

I've just written a funny book about kings and

3:13

queens and then I will back off. All right

3:15

Yeah, I will allow you that small amount of

3:18

turf But thank you

3:20

for coming in we are doing kings and

3:22

queens of a sort but we're meandering eastwards

3:24

to Russia So, what do you know about

3:26

Catherine the Great? Well, I did Catherine the

3:28

Great for a level Which point

3:30

she was less than 200 years dead. So practically

3:34

current affairs She

3:36

was one of the enlightened despots and

3:39

the thing about the enlightened despots. There

3:41

was sort of a virtue signaling tyrants

3:44

Sort of told the world that they

3:46

loved Voltaire and they thought that humanity

3:48

was a thing that should be cherished

3:50

But they broadly allowed the repressive regimes

3:52

that they inherited to continue quite an

3:54

accurate summation Julia you are nodding The

3:57

politically correct term now is enlightened

3:59

monarch because it's rude to them to

4:01

call them despots. Yes. Yes. You don't want

4:03

to offend anyone with a large army. So,

4:06

what do you know? So

4:13

this is the so what do you know? This

4:15

is where I guess what our lovely listeners at

4:17

home might know about today's subject, and I'm

4:20

guessing they've heard of Catherine the Great. She's one of

4:22

the great names from history, but Catherine

4:24

the Great is everywhere in pop culture. Recently

4:26

we've been treated to Elle Fanning's performance in

4:29

the hilariously raucous and wildly inaccurate TV series

4:31

The Great, but Catherine's been

4:33

portrayed by such icons as Marlene Dietrich,

4:35

Catherine Zeta-Jones, Bette Davis, even Catherine de

4:37

Nerve, in the bizarrely named movie God

4:39

Loves Caviar. Ideal name for film. She's

4:43

everywhere, but what about the real history behind

4:45

all the glitz and grisly drama? What made

4:47

Catherine so great? Was she great?

4:49

Are we happy with that word? Let's find

4:52

out. David, we'll start with an easy one.

4:54

What was Catherine's name and where did she

4:56

grow up? She was German. Yes.

4:58

And I think she was called Sophie. Oh,

5:00

look at you with your A-level knowledge. Yes,

5:03

you can go ahead and do this. I was going to say,

5:05

since I'm in my bag. So Catherine

5:07

was named Princess Sophia Augusto Credicrika

5:09

of Anhalt-Zeops, when she was born.

5:11

She was born in 1729 in

5:14

Pomerania in a little Baltic port called

5:16

Stettin, where her father, who was a

5:19

Prussian army general, he was stationed there

5:21

at the time. But Anhalt-Zeops is actually somewhere

5:23

closer to the middle. She was the

5:26

eldest of five siblings, but only she

5:28

and one of her brothers survived into

5:30

adulthood. Catherine had what she described as

5:32

a precocious education. She was taught religion,

5:35

history, geography by a Lutheran priest. Sophia,

5:37

she was a healthy, energetic child until

5:39

the age of seven, when she got

5:41

a violent cough that left

5:44

her bedridden for three weeks. And when she

5:46

finally got up, it turned out she had a curvature

5:48

of the spine. Do you want to guess what the

5:50

recommended treatment was by German doctors at the time? What

5:52

are they suggesting for her? Right. Well,

5:54

I mean, bleeding, obviously. First thing, bleed people.

5:56

That's the ruling, then. So isn't it? until

5:58

the middle of the... He said

6:00

pretty much yeah, that doesn't help. While.

6:03

They they didn't think too much outside the

6:05

box got some since his horrendous bracing contraption

6:07

maybe or stretching my lack of us as

6:09

you could use the things that they use

6:12

in the car for to talk to people

6:14

but not turn it up to the overall

6:16

but or mid power to murdered on

6:18

them on the medical map Altogether physicists have

6:21

any kids it comes out a to budgets

6:23

are symmetrical and the torturing processor Washington has

6:25

a much larger i mean I think

6:27

they've is coming for both of our.yeah. I

6:31

know it's servers find. Was. Every

6:33

aligned with the use of a

6:35

harness and some other folk remedies.

6:37

so for example, she was also

6:40

rubdown periodically with the young marrieds

6:42

saliva. And her ignacio

6:44

exist under try. And

6:47

these folk remedies were supervised not by the

6:49

local doctor, but by the local humans. Ssl

6:52

is this. May have led to distrust

6:54

of doctors later. In. Life for us

6:56

insists maneuver it's a about you will

6:59

be a bad bad could. Backstories Wonderful

7:01

book. Have you considered a hangman or

7:03

made saliva? I was suggested many remedies

7:06

of of the problems with having a

7:08

bad back. Everyone's got their own solution

7:10

but nobody suggested made saliva he doesn't

7:12

if even get that on the any

7:15

ssssss she recovered her healthy on Cecile

7:17

and Hm a fourteen of those is

7:19

packed off the Russia with her mother

7:22

because she can be a candidate for

7:24

marriage to go in be. Is

7:26

essentially shown in front of this

7:28

young add to the Russian thrown

7:30

he's cool pizza and whose pizza

7:33

sees. Another German our and also

7:35

hurt others. Are in small

7:37

associates per second cousin. So not

7:39

quite the scandalous so his full name with

7:42

Carl pets are already have host the me

7:44

so later he became grand total still that

7:46

of it's by the yes likes of the

7:48

As he was raised in Germany and he

7:51

was also the nephew of Empress Elizabeth of

7:53

Russia who in tribute to her deceased says

7:55

sir honor nominated him as heir to the

7:58

Russian Thrown. He was also a direct. Descendant

8:00

of Peter the Great who is to the grandfather

8:02

the Zara fresher is Elizabeth and Peter is the

8:04

heir right might be marrying What are you gonna

8:06

do to catch his eye to

8:08

catch Peter's eye and impress Elizabeth his aunt?

8:11

Yes in Russia in the middle of the

8:13

18th century Yeah, so you're in it's a

8:15

big palace, but everybody sort of smells and

8:17

is about to die of some infectious disease

8:20

That's what the boss was like How

8:22

do I seem both like a good

8:25

partner in life, but also of

8:27

overwhelmingly sexy? These are

8:30

not questions. I have the answer.

8:32

I found the dating scene quite

8:34

stressful In

8:37

early 21st century, UK. She's

8:40

also learning everyone's names at court. She's

8:42

learning everyone's dogs names She's

8:44

plugging herself into the gossip network and

8:46

the efforts pay off She was selected

8:49

as the best possible wife for Peter

8:51

and of course Sophia converts to orthodoxy

8:53

She takes the name you could see Nina Alexei,

8:55

but we angle size to Catherine Elizabeth

8:58

chose the name for her in honor of her

9:00

own mother Catherine the first of Russia the two

9:02

were married on the 21st of August 1745

9:06

lovely so we have Catherine and Peter and it's a

9:08

match made in heaven Or

9:10

is it I mean Peter is

9:13

not the great romantic catch

9:15

you might do you know anything about Peter

9:17

as a young man? No, I don't know

9:19

much about this Peter. Okay, but all I

9:21

remember is that I don't think we're nearly

9:24

hearing from him Yeah,

9:27

that's that I mean Julia the word I'm gonna

9:29

use that's probably the kindest word is immature No,

9:33

that's exactly right. He wasn't mature. He

9:35

enjoyed childish games toy soldiers. He

9:37

had rude table manners He cared

9:39

only for hunting dogs drinking

9:42

Corrusing dressing up his servants

9:44

and Prussian uniforms and making them parade

9:46

around historians have referred to him as a

9:48

parade. Oh maniac He just sounds like a

9:50

standard monarch They're

9:52

all obsessed with hunting if they only

9:55

had invented the Nintendo Wildlife

9:58

that would have survived. He

10:01

doesn't quite cruel to animals. famously. he

10:03

touches a rat chewing on one of

10:05

his toy soldiers. How do you

10:08

think he punishes the rat at as

10:10

think he's back as a for the

10:12

shit hits. The success of It's A

10:14

gives it a full court martial iraq

10:16

and that he built a minute gallows

10:18

and hangs. It was enemy you say

10:20

without the approval in fact that the

10:22

proper judicial processes that. Are

10:25

causing. There are some rights. Catherine finds

10:27

the body of the rat dangling from

10:29

the gallows. Sarah: Yeah, What?

10:32

What have you been doing? it? What

10:35

is this is perhaps unsurprising.

10:37

David that smoke the not flying in the bedroom.

10:39

Julia. They're not really getting along

10:42

in this physical sense. Ah, they

10:44

know much till. The the sick

10:46

render not anyway. Eventually, after a decade

10:48

of marriage, Catherine does. Produce an

10:50

Heir signs on September twentieth, Seventeen,

10:53

Fifty Four and publicly, Paul was

10:55

recognized as Peters Air. But in

10:57

all likelihood he was the son

10:59

of Catherine's lover. Suitcase filled the

11:01

costs so that that really sucked

11:03

out the whole system. Pacific scepticism

11:06

around them: German princess and her

11:08

lover's child who's now head of

11:10

the. Russian. Royal House. that's

11:12

not the system basis. I sat okay

11:14

as we don't know. as soon as

11:17

ssssss, you don't know whether he was

11:19

that whose son Paul was. None of

11:21

us. And don't I send a lot

11:23

a lot like Peter the third. Surprisingly

11:25

okay, so I could have been make

11:27

up the second. Certainly not going to

11:30

encourage him to have a different hair

11:32

do when they're trying to forge legitimacy.

11:34

Far One things I know that the

11:36

Russians rigged elections. Now I didn't realize

11:38

they also rigs prime agenda. Were

11:41

actually know there was no Prime. it's editor

11:43

owning a Peter. The Great Loss Succession. got

11:45

rid of private janitor and the monarchs

11:47

had a point essentially their own air

11:49

and just to say primogeniture is of

11:52

course the traditional medieval law that the

11:54

first born son will inherit thrown as

11:56

long as they're legitimate so is something

11:58

sixty one and press Elizabeth dies. And

12:00

so in comes Peter the third, the

12:02

new czar, Catherine's husband, and what policies

12:04

do you think he's enacting, David? There's

12:06

been a lot of limits on the

12:08

movement of rats, definitely. Julia,

12:11

his policies are not awful. He's not

12:13

terrible. Some of Peter's policies

12:15

actually enjoy some support, but Peter was

12:18

probably not cut out to be the

12:20

monarch because he wasn't really that interested

12:22

in governance even before he ascended the

12:24

throne. When he was kind of

12:27

governing Holstein from a distance, it

12:29

wasn't him but Catherine the Great,

12:31

or Catherine back then, just Catherine,

12:33

Catherine who was able to kind of stepping

12:35

in and assisting him. This was so well

12:38

known that foreign ambassadors had come to

12:40

refer to her as Madame Le Recerce.

12:43

Madame the resort. Yeah, exactly. So

12:46

he's only really in power for six months or so

12:48

and already he's alienated everyone. I mean, there's a line

12:50

that she writes her memoirs later and she edits them

12:52

a lot. So we're never quite sure at what stage

12:54

she's writing things and then they sort of get added

12:56

back in little additions later. But there's a very powerful

12:59

line where she says, it was

13:01

a matter of either perishing with or because

13:03

of him or else of

13:05

saving myself, the children and perhaps the state.

13:07

If I had orchestrated a coup to take

13:09

over Russia, that is how I would retrospectively

13:11

justify it. Yeah, exactly. And that doesn't make

13:13

it not true, but I would just say

13:15

that is also what you would say whether

13:17

or not it's true. How do you launch

13:19

a coup? All of this, you need to

13:21

get the army on site and then you

13:23

occupy the TV and radio stations. And

13:27

here we are at the BBC. We're already halfway there. I think

13:29

there's a guy at the door with some caviar. Yeah,

13:33

I mean, you're spot on. Get the army on site.

13:35

It's half the battle. And Catherine does that

13:38

incredibly quickly. That's right. So Catherine and her

13:40

allies, they had been building up support

13:42

on her behalf throughout Peter's reign. And

13:44

this wasn't very hard to do because

13:47

she was quite popular and Peter was not.

13:50

And her lover, Grigoy D'Arloaf and

13:52

his brothers were quite well regarded

13:54

among the military regiments and Nikita

13:56

Panyin, the Grand Duke's tutor, but

13:58

also a senior statesman. he had

14:00

sought to secure political support for her

14:02

as well. But then their plans were

14:04

almost spoiled because one of their supporters

14:06

got arrested so the plan had to

14:08

move up. She was awoken

14:11

early in the morning on the 28th

14:13

of June in 1762 at Peterhof by

14:15

Alexei Arlov, so the brother of her lover. And

14:18

then they raced to St. Petersburg where

14:20

elite army regiments proclaimed her as empress

14:22

and sovereign of all rushes. Then

14:25

she went to the Kazan church, she was

14:27

proclaimed sovereign by the clergy and then she

14:29

reached the winter palace where crowds cheered

14:31

and soldiers swore oaths of loyalty

14:34

to her there. Then Catherine puts

14:36

on this guards uniform and rides

14:38

to Peterhof to arrest Peter. And

14:40

at first he tries to negotiate

14:43

but then he signed an unconditional

14:45

abdication and Catherine wasted no time

14:47

in arranging her coronation. So on September

14:49

22nd in 1762 at the age of 33, she

14:53

was proclaimed the empress of Russia. So

14:56

1762 is the coup, she sees his power

14:58

and Peter was just out, he doesn't even know what's

15:00

happened and he wakes up one morning, you're no longer

15:02

the czar. How long do you think he lasts, David?

15:05

I don't sense he's around a year later,

15:08

is he? No. Is

15:10

he around the following Saturday? Pretty

15:13

much no, he gets eight days. Eight days? Eight days.

15:15

Oh I guess what he was, it depends what day

15:17

of the week it was. Sure, sure, he was

15:19

probably strangled by Gregory Arlov.

15:21

Alexei. Is it Alexei? Okay,

15:23

so an Arlov brother, one of the five. They're

15:26

interchangeable, they get drunk in a party and then... No, no,

15:28

no, not interchangeable. One

15:31

was a lover and one was a big fighter

15:34

and not interchangeable. You've got to pick the right

15:36

brother for the right job. Exactly. Oh

15:38

I picked the wrong brother, I thought the plumber brother. The

15:41

lover brother trying to strain me. This

15:43

is a disaster. All right, so

15:45

let's talk about the Russia that Catherine has inherited, the

15:47

state, the country, the people, much like the

15:49

early beach boys. It's all about the serf. What is

15:51

a serf? How does serf them work? Tell us about

15:54

Russian society. So serfdom,

15:56

it was both a social and economic

15:58

system in Russia. At the time,

16:01

serfs were peasants. They were bonded to

16:03

states where they largely worked the land,

16:05

but they also were the ones who

16:07

paid taxes and they provided the base

16:10

for military recruitment. So serfdom

16:12

was a very important system. There were up to 10

16:14

million of them in a population of about 20 million.

16:17

Now Russia was mainly agricultural at

16:20

the time, so the wealth of

16:22

Russia very much depended on these

16:24

peasant agricultural workers. They

16:27

lived in horrible conditions. They had

16:29

very little freedom. They needed their

16:32

owners' permission to leave their village

16:34

to take up certain livelihoods. They

16:37

were legally forbidden from marrying who

16:39

they wanted to unless they had their owners'

16:41

permission from protesting against their owners' actions and

16:44

they could be bought and sold.

16:46

So as Catherine put it, their lives or their

16:48

souls weren't their own. The

16:50

institution of serfdom was

16:52

an important political and economic question

16:54

in Catherine's Russia. It

16:56

was a question on which Catherine and the

16:58

people who supported her, all of the nobles,

17:00

really diverged on. Let's talk

17:02

domestic policy, everyone's favourite. There are domestic reforms

17:05

that she does pass, which do matter. They

17:07

do have an impact, Julia. That's right. So

17:10

using her powers as an

17:12

enlightened monarch with nearly unlimited

17:14

reach, she does implement the

17:16

sweeping programme of reform. So

17:19

there's the 1775 provincial reform

17:21

that draws the lines and

17:23

the borders of the Russian Empire

17:25

and kind of rationalises them. She

17:27

established new courts, she created local

17:29

boards of welfare to provide healthcare

17:32

and education. She set up founding

17:34

homes, mental asylums. She was particularly

17:36

interested in the area of education.

17:38

In 1786, she provided

17:41

for the establishment of free schools throughout

17:43

the empire, although there was some

17:45

limited take-up there for various reasons. We

17:48

also associate her reign with a greater policy

17:50

of religious toleration. We talk about domestic policy,

17:52

but she meddles in the election of the

17:54

King of Poland and she knows him. David,

17:56

how do you think she knows him, the

17:59

new king? of Poland. The new

18:01

one. I tell them maybe they'd had a

18:03

thing. Yep. Yeah. You're getting the

18:05

gist now, aren't you? You're figuring out.

18:08

He's a former lover of hers called

18:10

Stanislaw August Poniatowski and from bedroom to

18:12

throne room, the ultimate sleeping away to

18:14

the top. It's great,

18:17

right? Fair enough. So she's interfering in

18:19

Polish politics. Later on, she pretty much

18:21

invades Poland and calves it up. And

18:24

then there's the Ottoman Empire. They become a

18:26

bit of a kind of adversary, Julia, don't

18:28

they? The Russians and the Ottomans fought about

18:30

10 wars before the Crimean War.

18:33

The Ottoman Empire wasn't just Catherine's

18:35

adversary, but by seeing her intervention

18:37

in Poland, the Ottoman Empire gets

18:39

particularly nervous about Russia's growing influence

18:41

and searches out a pretext and

18:43

declares war on Russia in September

18:45

1768. Now, since the time of

18:47

Peter the Great, Russia had tried

18:50

to get access to the Black

18:52

Sea and also influence events in

18:54

the Mediterranean. So Russia really devotes

18:56

a lot of resources to this

18:58

and comes out victorious. And she

19:00

annexes it later in 1783. Right. In

19:03

1783, she annexes Crimea, and then

19:05

she kind of goes on this

19:07

triumphal tour of the territories

19:09

in 1787. This provokes the second

19:11

Russian-Ottoman war because with all of

19:14

these glorious military and naval exercises,

19:16

the Ottoman Empire suddenly gets angry.

19:18

Well, yeah, it gets angry. It

19:20

gets angry, imprisons the Russian ambassador,

19:22

declares war. And to make matters

19:25

worse, Sweden declares war from the

19:27

other side. Oh, not Sweden. And

19:29

Sweden. Russia eventually

19:31

defeats both and then also later,

19:34

carves of Poland a little more.

19:36

Yeah, there you go. So enlightened

19:39

monarch at home, fun-loving war

19:41

criminal away. Russia's getting vastly bigger.

19:43

Yeah. From the starting point of

19:45

being massive. It gets

19:48

even bigger, but crucially, further south,

19:50

more access to the sea, and

19:52

also wearing all the other countries

19:54

and also further west. Right. Right.

19:56

Okay. West into the Baltic. Yes,

20:00

exactly. So, Poland doesn't exist, but

20:03

also further east, right? So, Russian,

20:05

encroachment, Siberia continues. There are

20:07

these expeditions to the North Pacific,

20:09

and it sets up eventually kind

20:11

of the formal colonization of Alaska.

20:14

So, you'd think that Catherine's huge success in

20:16

terms of foreign policy and domestic policy, the

20:18

people would be delighted with it. But there

20:20

are actual several rebellions against her. Her son's

20:22

always, you know, plotting against her. But the

20:24

most famous one is called the Cossack Rebellion.

20:26

It's led by a guy called Pugachev, I

20:28

think. He genuinely rises up

20:31

against the Julia. And it's

20:33

the largest rebellion in imperial Russia

20:35

before the 20th century. So, Emilean

20:38

Pugachev, he's a leader. Cossack, Cossacks

20:40

were autonomous communities of soldiers across

20:42

the Russian steppe, and they served the Russian

20:45

state as frontier soldiers. But by this

20:47

time, they had very legitimate grievances on

20:49

the state's encroachment in their traditional

20:51

autonomy. So, in 1773, Pugachev

20:54

taps into this resentment, and,

20:57

you know, he raises thousands of supporters, and

20:59

they kind of plunder and massacre populations

21:01

and lay siege to imperial strongholds.

21:04

Now, what makes this particularly interesting

21:06

was Pugachev's claim to be Peter

21:08

III, Catherine's dead husband.

21:10

And so, eventually, this uprising is

21:12

suppressed because the war with the

21:14

Ottoman Empire ends, and troops are

21:16

sent in to put down the

21:19

rebellion, and Pugachev is handed over

21:21

even by his own followers. He's

21:23

supposed to be a quarter, but the

21:25

executioner beheads him first. That's

21:27

right. Accidentally. That sounds like

21:29

they ruined the opportunity of all that

21:31

cruelty. We've talked already

21:33

about the paradox of the Enlightenment monarch. What

21:36

kind of Enlightenment vibe has she given off?

21:38

She is an enlightened monarch, but she's also

21:40

a pragmatist. So, I think we see this

21:42

pattern that on the one hand, she tries

21:44

to rule Russia in this just and humane

21:47

kingdom, but then she also keeps butting up

21:49

against principles. So, she kind of begins to

21:51

recognize the political limits to her

21:53

absolutism, and just to say that

21:55

after the French Revolution, which had

21:57

taken Enlightenment principles to its end.

22:00

very extreme, there's a noticeable shift

22:02

in Russia. So Russia, after 1789,

22:04

becomes distinctly more conservative.

22:06

I mean, the interesting thing I think is

22:08

that not only is she interested in politics,

22:11

you know, she reads Voltaire, she reads Diderot,

22:13

she meets him. She's writing too. She writes

22:15

history books, she writes poems, she writes music

22:17

and literature and theatre and her own memoirs.

22:20

She's hugely productive as a creative force. But

22:22

moving on, she has lots of lovers, we

22:24

think at least 12, some say 17, but

22:26

the greatest lover is Potemkin or how do

22:28

I pronounce it? Potemkin. First name battleship.

22:31

That's right. Strangeness in

22:33

there. Yeah, his parents, very unusual.

22:35

Had an answerable battleship. Have

22:37

you heard of this fella? I have heard of him, and

22:41

obviously the battleship was named after him, and

22:43

so I'm assuming he's like a military guy,

22:45

a big military guy that helped her and

22:47

also more than that.

22:49

A great love, but more than that, he's

22:52

probably the only lover who's on her intellectual

22:54

equal, right? Is that fair? Yes, I think.

22:56

Yeah, so he's almost prime ministerial to her.

22:58

That's a very rude thing to say about

23:00

the King of Poland. Sorry. That's a very

23:02

good point. So the King of Poland was,

23:04

you know, this kind of erudite, very well

23:06

educated European man of letters

23:09

and Potemkin is very clever, he's very

23:11

smart, he's

23:13

very energetic, he's eccentric too, but they

23:15

come from different worlds. So he kind

23:17

of embodies this old Russian

23:20

heroism, whereas Poniatowski, the

23:22

King of Poland, is much more European.

23:24

We haven't said that she comes to

23:26

power age 33, she rules for 34

23:28

years. Most of her romantic life, she's

23:30

older than her lovers. And the older

23:32

she gets, the younger they get. Fair

23:35

enough. Let's talk about her final years

23:37

then. So Potemkin dies, how much longer

23:40

after his death did she die too?

23:42

Well, she dies in 1796, but

23:45

I should say that the final years of her

23:47

reign had quite a different tenor to

23:49

the earlier part. We talked about

23:51

how the French Revolution, and especially

23:54

the execution of Louis XVI and

23:56

Marie Antoinette, closed the curtain on

23:58

this more open-minded, enlightened Catholic. Before

24:00

her death in 1796, she also

24:02

partitioned Poland two more times, won

24:04

the Russian Ottoman and the Russian

24:06

Swedish war, and was even going

24:09

to intervene in the French Revolutionary

24:11

Wars in Italy. But she

24:13

didn't because she died, inconveniently.

24:16

And although her partner died in

24:18

so many ways, Patiunkin died in 1791. She

24:21

had the young Platon Zubov on her

24:24

arm, so she was still recognizable as

24:26

this energetic monarch. And her death, of

24:28

course, was not as dramatic as legend.

24:30

She collapsed in her toilet, her

24:32

water closet, after what must have been a stroke.

24:35

And she had to be carried to her bed,

24:37

but they couldn't quite lift her onto the bed,

24:39

so she died 36 hours later on the

24:41

floor. And she

24:43

was succeeded by Paul, who not

24:45

only tried to erase her legacy, but

24:48

revived the military tone of his father,

24:50

Peter III's reign. And he

24:52

brings back primogeniture, right? Right. Of

24:56

course he does. Of course. So

24:58

male primogeniture, so this means more peaceful transitions,

25:00

but this was the last time a

25:02

woman ruled Russia. And what about her

25:04

memory? He essentially suppressed any talk of

25:07

her. Really? Even

25:09

though her reign had been very successful, he

25:11

doesn't try and... Because that would be more

25:13

common, wouldn't it? To sort of derive

25:16

your legitimacy from a previous successful

25:18

regime. No, he derives his

25:21

legitimacy by emulating Peter III. And

25:24

no one... Yeah, I mean, he doesn't

25:26

survive on the throne very long either,

25:29

because he's killed in

25:31

favour of his son, Alexander I, who

25:33

is much more kind of in line

25:35

with Catherine the Great's reign, and then

25:37

her posthumous reputation becomes a question from

25:40

his fate. The Nuance Window! It's

25:47

time for the Nuance Window. This is where Dr.

25:49

Julia gets two uninterrupted minutes to tell us something

25:51

we need to know about Catherine the Great. So

25:54

without much further ado, Julia, take

25:56

it away, please. Thanks, Greg. I just

25:58

wanted to use this opportunity... to unpack what

26:01

exactly made Catherine great. So was

26:03

it on the one hand her

26:05

cultural aspirations, her enlightened views, her

26:07

Republican spirit, or her emulation of

26:09

Peter the Great's expansionism and desire

26:12

to influence the political affairs of

26:14

Europe. Now in light of Russia's

26:16

current war in Ukraine, it's difficult

26:19

to uncritically celebrate her imperial ambitions,

26:21

particularly because Catherine's policies affected the

26:23

territories that today make up Ukraine.

26:26

And even on her own terms, Catherine

26:28

was this immensely complicated multifaceted figure, which

26:31

is what makes her so interesting. And

26:33

as I suggested in the century following

26:36

her death, her posthumous reputation had already

26:38

become this idiom in which the Russian

26:40

Empire worked out its national

26:43

politics. The celebrated empress was chastised

26:45

by many, including Russia's national

26:47

poet, Alexander Pushkin. Now in the

26:49

21st century, Catherine II has

26:53

been deployed as a propaganda figure for the

26:55

Putin regime, because Putin has

26:57

depicted her as a foreigner who yearned

26:59

to become Russian, a woman who wrote

27:01

that she will descend her homeland with

27:04

her tongue and with a pen and

27:06

with a sword, right? So echoing these

27:08

military aspects of her rule and the

27:10

appropriation of many parts of Ukraine, including

27:13

Crimea for the Russian Empire. This is

27:15

a history that has not endeared her

27:17

to the Ukrainian nation. So it's a

27:20

topical reminder to ask whose perspective a

27:22

historical characterization celebrates. Much of what made

27:24

Catherine such a celebrated figure expanding the

27:26

Russian Empire, gaining access to the Black

27:29

Sea, developing the northern shores of

27:31

the Black Sea, suppressing rebellion, acquisition

27:33

of cultural artifacts, these all happened

27:35

at great expense to the autonomy

27:38

of others. So I'd say

27:40

that current international politics really raises the

27:42

question of whether this is a price

27:44

that's worth paying for greatness. David,

27:48

Catherine the Great. Well, the thing

27:50

is, I suppose you can only, you

27:52

have to judge historical figures on their own

27:54

terms and on her own terms, she succeeded

27:57

in her own aims. Well, there we go.

28:00

for things about Catherine the Great. And listener, if you

28:02

want to hear more about another Empire Building Enlightenment

28:04

monarch, you can check out our episode on Frederick

28:06

the Great of Prussia with Stephen Fry in Comedy

28:08

Corner, so you can compare notes. And

28:10

for more ruthless queens, we also have sad episodes on

28:12

N'Jingo, Evin Dongo and Agrippina the Younger. And remember, if

28:14

you've enjoyed the podcast, leave a review, share the show

28:17

with your friends and make sure to subscribe to us

28:19

on BBC Sounds, we're called You're Dead to Me. You

28:21

don't want to miss an episode, do you? I'd

28:23

just like to say a huge thank you then to my

28:25

guests in History Corner. We have the fantastic Dr. Julia Lakin

28:28

from Royal Holloway. Thank you, Julia. Thank you so much for

28:30

having me. Pleasure. And in Comedy Corner,

28:32

we have the delightfully droll David Mitchell. Thank you,

28:34

David. Thank you for having me. And to you

28:36

lovely listener, join me next time as we launch

28:38

a well timed coup against another historical subject. But

28:41

for now, I'm off to go and convince Gwyneth

28:43

Paltrow to invest in my new wellness company, GOB.

28:45

You basically take the spittle from a maid and

28:47

you rub it on the back and everyone gets

28:49

rich. Hooray! Bye! Hello,

29:00

I'm Sean Keveny and I'm back with a

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Custard filled pastries everywhere as

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