St Catherine House

St Catherine House

St Catherine House

Catherine the Great died in 1796, several years after the start of the French Revolution. Despite her openness to Enlightenment ideas, her correspondence with pre-revolutionary thinkers like Voltaire and Diderot, and her attempts at internal reform, the violent phases of the Revolution turned Catherine against her earlier inclinations. In the end, she considered sending an army to France to restore the monarchy. Catherine’s depiction as an enlightened despot has left open the door of debate: to what extent did Catherine accept the progress and reform associated with Enlightenment belief?

Catherine as Empress After 1762

With the assistance of highly placed government officials and the elite Guards units in St. Petersburg, Catherine engineered a bloodless coup in 1762, deposing her inept and highly unpopular husband, Peter III. Intelligent and exceptionally literate, Catherine was devoted to Russia, embraced Orthodoxy, and determined to reform government and foreign policy.

Catherine became an avid art collector, filling the Winter Palace (later the Hermitage) with priceless masterpieces. She came to the throne as the most literate and best educated autocrat in the history of Russia. She spoke French fluently, wrote plays, essays, and treatises on a number of topics. Catherine valued books and acquired the libraries of both Voltaire and Diderot upon the deaths of those great thinkers.