Catherine,s boat ride. The Empress was showing off the wonders of her realm, and they were many indeed. But were they real or were they fake? Only Potemkin, the one-eyed giant, knew for sure- and he never said…
The year was 1787. the occasion was Catherine the Great’s triumphal tour to the Crimea, the longest, most lavish, most expensive boating party in world history. Catherine’s gold-plated tour lasted six months, entertained three thousand guests, covered more than a thousand miles, and cost seven million rubles which was a lot of money back then. And this was the journey that created the persistent and intriguing legend of the “Potemkin Villages.”
—Thoroughly modern, during her 34-year reign Catherine dragged Russia into the 18th century. An Enlightenment Empress, she brought the French philosopher Diderot to her court for six months of conversation. And while, as Massie notes, she ignored his advice, her invitation alone altered the image of the East as a place composed only of snow and wolves. “Thirty years of labour have not brought Diderot the slightest recompense,” said Catherine’s confidant, the author Friedrich Melchior Grimm. “It has pleased the Empress of Russia to pay the debt of France.”
When Voltaire needed a dowry for his daughter, Catherine bought his library; she laid the foundations for the Hermitage collection; introduced smallpox inoculations, and the changes she made to education made possible a Russian intelligentsia.—Read More:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/historybookreviews/9364528/Catherine-the-Great-by-Robert-K-Massie-review.html
Were the charming towns on the riverbank painted facades or settled communities? Were the cheerful and tourist friendly peasants local inhabitants or transplanted serfs whipped into their songs and dances? If the vision of prosperity was a brilliant hoax, was Catherine an accomplice or a dupe? The impressario of the tour, Gregory Alexandrovich Potemkin, commander in chief, governor general of the southern provinces, first prince of Tauris, Catherine’s sixth lover and possibly her second husband, left no answers for posterity. And the guests on that royal procession to end all royal processions could not agree among themselves.
—A quick-witted and compelling dramatization of the troubled marriage of Catherine II (played by German actress Elisabeth Bergner, in her English-language debut) to Peter III (a randy Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) and her subsequent ascension to the throne as Empress of Russia. With its luxurious renderings of the eighteenth-century St. Petersburg royal court and its nearly screwball evocation of Catherine and Peter’s teasing relationship, The Rise of Catherine the Great —
Catherine the Great, Empress and Autocrat, “Matushka,” Little Mother of all the Russias, whose name has become synonymous with all that was lush and intemperate under the Russian monarchy, was born Princess Sophia in the threadbare Lutheran duchy of Anhalt-Zerbst. Because Frederick of Prussia refused to marry off either of his sisters to the future czar, Peter III, the proposal of marriage was passed onto Sophia, who was penniless but of suitable bloodline. In 1744, Sophia, not yet fifteen, arrived in St. Petersburg with one small trunk containing three dresses, a dozen chemises, a dzen hankerchiefs, a dress length of blue and silver brocade, and a cautionary letter from her father urging her to be meekly submissive to the royal family and to save her weekly pocket money.
—MARLENE DIETRICH AS CATHERINE THE GREAT—
Peter was a sadistic half-wit, but Sophia, now re-christened Catherine upon her confirmation into the Orthodox Church- took to the intrigue and luxury of the court with zest. She learned her lessons well: purge or be purged. In 1762, six months after their joint rule began, Peter was deposed by a rising of the palace guard and assassinated shortly thereafter; Catherine, foreigner and usurper- was proclaimed Empress, a sequence of events which prompted a timeless observation by the French envoy to St. Petersburg, who wrote that the Russian crown was never gained by lawful succession but was always seized…. ( to be continued)
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