Volume 4, Number 5 · April 8, 1965
Catherine Was Great
By Martin Malia
Catherine the Great
by Zoé Oldenbourg
Pantheon, 378 pp., $5.95
Mme. Oldenbourg's subject is the human drama of Catherine the woman viewed as the prelude to the political epic of Catherine the sovereign. She focuses on Catherine's formative years, beginning in 1744 when the fourteen-year-old Princess Sophia-Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst was summoned to Russia by Empress Elizabeth to marry the latter's nephew and heir, Peter Ulrich of Holstein, and culminating in 1762 when, at thirty-three, she acceded to absolute power in her own right. The author's aim is to explore the wellsprings of the character of this foreigner who had no legitimate title to rule Russia, but yet stepped to the throne over the body of her husband—murdered by the henchmen of her third lover—and who then managed to keep her son Paul from his birthright of empire during the thirty-four years of her reign. This familiar story—known partly through her own Memoirs—is rather too gaudy and obvious a subject for histoire romancée; yet Mme. Oldenbourg rises above these difficulties to give us a portrait of Catherine and her entourage that is amazingly fresh and illuminating.
Review, 1346 words
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