Catherine the Great: A Biography by Joan Haslip
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"[...] the obscure little German princess who had completed the work of Peter the Great and made Russia into an European power."

I am coming back to reviewing books after an almost three-month hiatus caused by the demands of remote teaching. Contrary to common perception, I have found out that remote teaching takes way more time than in-person instruction, especially if one wants to do it well (virtual lectures will never be even close in quality to in-person ones, but one should try the best). I simply did not have time. Anyway...

Being Polish by birth I might be expected to have in my blood an intense dislike for Catherine the Great, the 18th-century Empress of Russia. After all, she was instrumental in arranging consecutive partitions of Poland at the end of the 18th century, which resulted in the disappearance of my native country from maps of Europe for well over 100 years. Yet it is obvious to me that we, Poles, ourselves brought the Polish state to ruin 250 years ago by following unwise politics, in the same way as the majority of my ex-compatriots seem to be doing it now, in 2020.

As to Catherine the Great: I am deeply impressed by the political talent of this "obscure little German princess" who "made Russia into an European power." I have to admit to a bias, though. I am blatantly sexist and I believe that it is the women who should be in charge of everything in the world while men should only engage in drinking beer, watching football on TV, pretending to be experts on everything, and some other low-responsibility activities. Thus Catherine's life story, which may appear unusual to many people, seems natural to me.

Joan Haslip's Catherine the Great (1977) is a traditional, perhaps even "old-style" biography that recounts events chronologically and reports on all aspects of Catherine's life - political, historical, and also personal (in a few places the author is quite gossipy). We follow the future Empress's life path from her birth in Szczecin (then Stettin) in 1729 as Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst, through the crucial event in 1744, which changed her life and affected European history, when the then Russian czarina Elizaveta Petrovna invited teenage Sophia to come to Russia and make the Romanov's dynasty secure by marrying the grand duke Peter and producing a heir (which eventually happened in 1754).

Catherine gradually became interested in politics. She saw her chance to get to the very top and never let it go. People sometimes say "if you want something bad enough, and you work for it hard enough, it's going to happen." That's obviously not true; one has to be clever in working for "it" and one has to be very lucky. Catherine was extremely clever in plotting and scheming - for instance, she had an uncanny ability to convincingly tell clever lies on the spot - and she indeed was very lucky. Czarina Elizaveta Petrovna died at a time that was most opportune for Catherine. Peter III, who ascended to the throne, was too sympathetic to Prussian interests for Russian liking, so that Catherine could arrange an almost "patriotic" coup d'état to soon become Catherine II, the Empress of Russia.

The author recounts Catherine the Great's reign (1762 - 1796) with great attention to detail. I am not qualified to summarize the events, so let me just use a quote from Wikipedia "The period of Catherine the Great's rule is considered the Golden Age of Russia."

Ms. Haslip pays lots of attention to Catherine the Great's romantic affairs or rather one should say sexual liaisons. The empress was known for her insatiable sexual appetite and we read about the long array of her lovers. There are authors who use salacious details to titillate the reader. This is certainly not true about this biography. Ms. Haslip focuses on how the empress' erotic affairs influenced her politics and the European affairs in general. I will use an example of the fate of Poland and the affair between Catherine and future Polish king, Stanislaw Poniatowski. Ms. Haslip writes:

"[...] it was an evil day for Poland when this cultured dilettante came under the spell of a woman as fascinating and as unscrupulous as the grand duchess."

The residual effects of this affair facilitated the dismemberment of Poland, during the "first partition" in 1772, when Russia, Prussia, and Austria took large chunks of Polish territory. According to Ms. Haslip, the second partition of Poland in 1793, as well as the third and the final one, when Poland - one of the most powerful countries in Europe - disappeared from the maps, also were at least partly affected by Catherine's erotic affairs. Ms. Haslip also writes the following about Prince Potemkin, one of Catherine's most famous favorites and lovers:

"Had Potemkin lived, the second and third partitions of Poland would never have taken place."

While this might sound reasonable, one has to realize that, first of all, any partitions of Poland were possible mainly because in the 18th century the powerful segments of Polish society - the aristocracy and top echelons of nobility - cared only about their own interests rather than about the good of the country as a whole. But I am again digressing. I am supposed to write about the book.

I find the biography very readable and certainly learned a lot from it! Ms. Haslip's writing style is likely not my favorite, but I recommend the book highly and without hesitation.

Three-and-a-half stars.


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