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A review by erboe501
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie
4.0
I read 1/4 of this (into Catherine's early marriage with Peter) nearly a year ago, and then finished this in two reading chunks this summer. While some of the detail can weigh you down, Massie keeps the action moving at a good pace, so it's easy to find that you've moved through 100 pages without much trouble. It was especially fun to read this as I began watching the Hulu series The Great, very loosely based on Catherine's arrival and early days at the Russian court.
A couple times Massie seemed to interject his own opinion into things in a startling way that took me out of the narrative. For example, he went into a tangent on the guillotine while on an aside about the French Revolution, which led to general remarks on the death penalty and how all civilized nations are now moving away from the death penalty. That is not exactly imperative to Catherine's story, especially since she waved the death penalty to most condemned during her reign.
I found myself indignant about the treatment of serfs and how accepted a fact of life and Russian culture that was for most people of the time. Catherine tried to end serfdom, but couldn't without jeopardizing her reign. But then I was reminded that America had slaves for 100 years after Catherine's reign, as would Russia. Indeed, it took some mental gymnastics to put Catherine on the same timeline as Marie Antoinette and the American Revolution.
I found Catherine a sympathetic heroine in her first thirty years, as she aspired for the throne. You root for her and her Enlightenment ideas. But over the 30 years she was Empress, she becomes more reactionary, her decisions less sympathetic because much less liberal, a disheartening shift. I did find her affairs and favorites fascinating for how they were mostly just accepted at court. None of her recognized legitimate children were likely to be Peter's, and that didn't seem to be a problem. The frankness of her desire for companionship, and her acting upon it on such a public European stage, is remarkable.
I'd always been interested in the Romanovs and end of the Russian empire, so this biography helpfully filled in some of Russia's earlier history.
A couple times Massie seemed to interject his own opinion into things in a startling way that took me out of the narrative. For example, he went into a tangent on the guillotine while on an aside about the French Revolution, which led to general remarks on the death penalty and how all civilized nations are now moving away from the death penalty. That is not exactly imperative to Catherine's story, especially since she waved the death penalty to most condemned during her reign.
I found myself indignant about the treatment of serfs and how accepted a fact of life and Russian culture that was for most people of the time. Catherine tried to end serfdom, but couldn't without jeopardizing her reign. But then I was reminded that America had slaves for 100 years after Catherine's reign, as would Russia. Indeed, it took some mental gymnastics to put Catherine on the same timeline as Marie Antoinette and the American Revolution.
I found Catherine a sympathetic heroine in her first thirty years, as she aspired for the throne. You root for her and her Enlightenment ideas. But over the 30 years she was Empress, she becomes more reactionary, her decisions less sympathetic because much less liberal, a disheartening shift. I did find her affairs and favorites fascinating for how they were mostly just accepted at court. None of her recognized legitimate children were likely to be Peter's, and that didn't seem to be a problem. The frankness of her desire for companionship, and her acting upon it on such a public European stage, is remarkable.
I'd always been interested in the Romanovs and end of the Russian empire, so this biography helpfully filled in some of Russia's earlier history.