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Catherine The Great Influence

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Voltaire called Catherine the Great the new “Semiramis of the North,” after the legendary founder of Babylon noted for her beauty, wisdom, and sexual excesses. Despite the notoriety she gained for her sexual escapades, Catherine's importance to the flowering of Russian literature was immense. One of her driving ambitions during her thirty-four-year reign was to advance Russian culture, and she patronized Russian authors and artists accordingly. Possessed of a self-admitted “mania” for writing and eager to provide models for the literary culture she sought to develop, Catherine produced reams of writing, including voluminous correspondence with Voltaire and other Enlightenment notables, passionate love letters, lively memoirs, political tracts, …show more content…
She was a German princess, the daughter of Prince Christian August of Anhalt-Zerbst and Princess Johanna Elizabeth of Holstein-Gottorp. Born Sophia Augusta Fredericka on April 21, 1729, she was schooled under a French governess, who taught her French and introduced her to the neoclassical plays of such dramatists as Racine, Moliére, and Corneille. Empress Elizabeth of Russia, childless and anxious to establish an heir to the throne, arranged Catherine's marriage to Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich—formerly Peter Ulrich of Holstein-Gottorp—her nephew, a grandson of Peter the Great who was also Catherine's cousin. Catherine traveled to Russia in 1744, where she converted to the Russian Orthodox Church and took the name Ekaterina Alekseevna. She married Peter Fedorovich in 1745. Their marriage was not a happy one on several accounts: Peter did not share Catherine's love of intellectual pursuits, and he was most likely sterile or impotent. To relieve her boredom, Catherine traveled the kingdom and read widely, particularly in …show more content…
She was a great patron of the arts, encouraging the works of playwrights and poets, and corresponding with major Enlightenment figures, including Voltaire and Diderot. One of her first acts as empress was to order the construction of a new opera house, designed in the neoclassical style. When she authored her first publication, the Bol'shoi nakaz (1767; Great Instruction), she borrowed heavily from Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws. The Nakaz was a product of French salon culture, indicating Catherine's interest in constitutional law and social reform. Although the work was much admired at home and abroad, the Legislative Committee whom Catherine had hoped to “instruct” did little to realize her vision. Catherine then turned to writing in earnest, hoping to disseminate her ideas through literature rather than law. With Vsiakaia vsiachina (All Sorts and Sundries), a journal launched in 1769, Catherine attempted to create a journalistic arena like that in England, modeling her work after Addison and Steele's Spectator and using light satire and moralistic teaching to promote her ideas. She also sponsored the translation of foreign classics, including works by ancient authors such as Homer and Cicero and recent European writers

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