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Slows. mintmobile.com. Hello,
1:30
thank you for having me. I
2:00
lie to you and he's now a
2:02
published historian because he's just written a
2:04
very funny book Unruly a history of
2:06
England's kings and queens if anyone deserves
2:08
the episode the great. It's David Mitchell.
2:10
Welcome David Thank you very much. That's
2:13
too compliment Alfred is the only
2:15
great person in this country Oh, I was told
2:17
at school no Constantine the great and canute the
2:19
great would be the other great Well can you
2:21
I do mention the fact that can you say
2:23
is named as great but not according to miss
2:26
Brown? Oh, he said it's just Alfred in England
2:28
And I think it was because she thought the
2:30
canute is a bit Danish He
2:33
counts as a great Dane not the dog not
2:35
the dog Alpha
2:37
is the only great but Constantine. Yeah, well as in
2:39
the Emperor the Emperor He was crowned in York, so
2:41
he counts because he was crowned in New York one
2:43
of ours. We can claim him I see I think
2:45
you're stretching a point Okay,
2:48
all right, miss Brown is the authority will go with
2:51
miss Brown David Do you are not only a history
2:53
graduate? But you are now published historian as well. So
2:55
that I mean the obvious worry for me is are
2:57
you coming from my job? Is this a coup? Yes,
3:02
I wish to take over the past and redefine
3:05
it to my own advantage because that very much
3:07
seems to be the spirit of the age No,
3:11
I've just written a funny book about kings and
3:13
queens and then I will back off. All right
3:15
Yeah, I will allow you that small amount of
3:18
turf But thank you
3:20
for coming in we are doing kings and
3:22
queens of a sort but we're meandering eastwards
3:24
to Russia So, what do you know about
3:26
Catherine the Great? Well, I did Catherine the
3:28
Great for a level Which point
3:30
she was less than 200 years dead. So practically
3:34
current affairs She
3:36
was one of the enlightened despots and
3:39
the thing about the enlightened despots. There
3:41
was sort of a virtue signaling tyrants
3:44
Sort of told the world that they
3:46
loved Voltaire and they thought that humanity
3:48
was a thing that should be cherished
3:50
But they broadly allowed the repressive regimes
3:52
that they inherited to continue quite an
3:54
accurate summation Julia you are nodding The
3:57
politically correct term now is enlightened
3:59
monarch because it's rude to them to
4:01
call them despots. Yes. Yes. You don't want
4:03
to offend anyone with a large army. So,
4:06
what do you know? So
4:13
this is the so what do you know? This
4:15
is where I guess what our lovely listeners at
4:17
home might know about today's subject, and I'm
4:20
guessing they've heard of Catherine the Great. She's one of
4:22
the great names from history, but Catherine
4:24
the Great is everywhere in pop culture. Recently
4:26
we've been treated to Elle Fanning's performance in
4:29
the hilariously raucous and wildly inaccurate TV series
4:31
The Great, but Catherine's been
4:33
portrayed by such icons as Marlene Dietrich,
4:35
Catherine Zeta-Jones, Bette Davis, even Catherine de
4:37
Nerve, in the bizarrely named movie God
4:39
Loves Caviar. Ideal name for film. She's
4:43
everywhere, but what about the real history behind
4:45
all the glitz and grisly drama? What made
4:47
Catherine so great? Was she great?
4:49
Are we happy with that word? Let's find
4:52
out. David, we'll start with an easy one.
4:54
What was Catherine's name and where did she
4:56
grow up? She was German. Yes.
4:58
And I think she was called Sophie. Oh,
5:00
look at you with your A-level knowledge. Yes,
5:03
you can go ahead and do this. I was going to say,
5:05
since I'm in my bag. So Catherine
5:07
was named Princess Sophia Augusto Credicrika
5:09
of Anhalt-Zeops, when she was born.
5:11
She was born in 1729 in
5:14
Pomerania in a little Baltic port called
5:16
Stettin, where her father, who was a
5:19
Prussian army general, he was stationed there
5:21
at the time. But Anhalt-Zeops is actually somewhere
5:23
closer to the middle. She was the
5:26
eldest of five siblings, but only she
5:28
and one of her brothers survived into
5:30
adulthood. Catherine had what she described as
5:32
a precocious education. She was taught religion,
5:35
history, geography by a Lutheran priest. Sophia,
5:37
she was a healthy, energetic child until
5:39
the age of seven, when she got
5:41
a violent cough that left
5:44
her bedridden for three weeks. And when she
5:46
finally got up, it turned out she had a curvature
5:48
of the spine. Do you want to guess what the
5:50
recommended treatment was by German doctors at the time? What
5:52
are they suggesting for her? Right. Well,
5:54
I mean, bleeding, obviously. First thing, bleed people.
5:56
That's the ruling, then. So isn't it? until
5:58
the middle of the... He said
6:00
pretty much yeah, that doesn't help. While.
6:03
They they didn't think too much outside the
6:05
box got some since his horrendous bracing contraption
6:07
maybe or stretching my lack of us as
6:09
you could use the things that they use
6:12
in the car for to talk to people
6:14
but not turn it up to the overall
6:16
but or mid power to murdered on
6:18
them on the medical map Altogether physicists have
6:21
any kids it comes out a to budgets
6:23
are symmetrical and the torturing processor Washington has
6:25
a much larger i mean I think
6:27
they've is coming for both of our.yeah. I
6:31
know it's servers find. Was. Every
6:33
aligned with the use of a
6:35
harness and some other folk remedies.
6:37
so for example, she was also
6:40
rubdown periodically with the young marrieds
6:42
saliva. And her ignacio
6:44
exist under try. And
6:47
these folk remedies were supervised not by the
6:49
local doctor, but by the local humans. Ssl
6:52
is this. May have led to distrust
6:54
of doctors later. In. Life for us
6:56
insists maneuver it's a about you will
6:59
be a bad bad could. Backstories Wonderful
7:01
book. Have you considered a hangman or
7:03
made saliva? I was suggested many remedies
7:06
of of the problems with having a
7:08
bad back. Everyone's got their own solution
7:10
but nobody suggested made saliva he doesn't
7:12
if even get that on the any
7:15
ssssss she recovered her healthy on Cecile
7:17
and Hm a fourteen of those is
7:19
packed off the Russia with her mother
7:22
because she can be a candidate for
7:24
marriage to go in be. Is
7:26
essentially shown in front of this
7:28
young add to the Russian thrown
7:30
he's cool pizza and whose pizza
7:33
sees. Another German our and also
7:35
hurt others. Are in small
7:37
associates per second cousin. So not
7:39
quite the scandalous so his full name with
7:42
Carl pets are already have host the me
7:44
so later he became grand total still that
7:46
of it's by the yes likes of the
7:48
As he was raised in Germany and he
7:51
was also the nephew of Empress Elizabeth of
7:53
Russia who in tribute to her deceased says
7:55
sir honor nominated him as heir to the
7:58
Russian Thrown. He was also a direct. Descendant
8:00
of Peter the Great who is to the grandfather
8:02
the Zara fresher is Elizabeth and Peter is the
8:04
heir right might be marrying What are you gonna
8:06
do to catch his eye to
8:08
catch Peter's eye and impress Elizabeth his aunt?
8:11
Yes in Russia in the middle of the
8:13
18th century Yeah, so you're in it's a
8:15
big palace, but everybody sort of smells and
8:17
is about to die of some infectious disease
8:20
That's what the boss was like How
8:22
do I seem both like a good
8:25
partner in life, but also of
8:27
overwhelmingly sexy? These are
8:30
not questions. I have the answer.
8:32
I found the dating scene quite
8:34
stressful In
8:37
early 21st century, UK. She's
8:40
also learning everyone's names at court. She's
8:42
learning everyone's dogs names She's
8:44
plugging herself into the gossip network and
8:46
the efforts pay off She was selected
8:49
as the best possible wife for Peter
8:51
and of course Sophia converts to orthodoxy
8:53
She takes the name you could see Nina Alexei,
8:55
but we angle size to Catherine Elizabeth
8:58
chose the name for her in honor of her
9:00
own mother Catherine the first of Russia the two
9:02
were married on the 21st of August 1745
9:06
lovely so we have Catherine and Peter and it's a
9:08
match made in heaven Or
9:10
is it I mean Peter is
9:13
not the great romantic catch
9:15
you might do you know anything about Peter
9:17
as a young man? No, I don't know
9:19
much about this Peter. Okay, but all I
9:21
remember is that I don't think we're nearly
9:24
hearing from him Yeah,
9:27
that's that I mean Julia the word I'm gonna
9:29
use that's probably the kindest word is immature No,
9:33
that's exactly right. He wasn't mature. He
9:35
enjoyed childish games toy soldiers. He
9:37
had rude table manners He cared
9:39
only for hunting dogs drinking
9:42
Corrusing dressing up his servants
9:44
and Prussian uniforms and making them parade
9:46
around historians have referred to him as a
9:48
parade. Oh maniac He just sounds like a
9:50
standard monarch They're
9:52
all obsessed with hunting if they only
9:55
had invented the Nintendo Wildlife
9:58
that would have survived. He
10:01
doesn't quite cruel to animals. famously. he
10:03
touches a rat chewing on one of
10:05
his toy soldiers. How do you
10:08
think he punishes the rat at as
10:10
think he's back as a for the
10:12
shit hits. The success of It's A
10:14
gives it a full court martial iraq
10:16
and that he built a minute gallows
10:18
and hangs. It was enemy you say
10:20
without the approval in fact that the
10:22
proper judicial processes that. Are
10:25
causing. There are some rights. Catherine finds
10:27
the body of the rat dangling from
10:29
the gallows. Sarah: Yeah, What?
10:32
What have you been doing? it? What
10:35
is this is perhaps unsurprising.
10:37
David that smoke the not flying in the bedroom.
10:39
Julia. They're not really getting along
10:42
in this physical sense. Ah, they
10:44
know much till. The the sick
10:46
render not anyway. Eventually, after a decade
10:48
of marriage, Catherine does. Produce an
10:50
Heir signs on September twentieth, Seventeen,
10:53
Fifty Four and publicly, Paul was
10:55
recognized as Peters Air. But in
10:57
all likelihood he was the son
10:59
of Catherine's lover. Suitcase filled the
11:01
costs so that that really sucked
11:03
out the whole system. Pacific scepticism
11:06
around them: German princess and her
11:08
lover's child who's now head of
11:10
the. Russian. Royal House. that's
11:12
not the system basis. I sat okay
11:14
as we don't know. as soon as
11:17
ssssss, you don't know whether he was
11:19
that whose son Paul was. None of
11:21
us. And don't I send a lot
11:23
a lot like Peter the third. Surprisingly
11:25
okay, so I could have been make
11:27
up the second. Certainly not going to
11:30
encourage him to have a different hair
11:32
do when they're trying to forge legitimacy.
11:34
Far One things I know that the
11:36
Russians rigged elections. Now I didn't realize
11:38
they also rigs prime agenda. Were
11:41
actually know there was no Prime. it's editor
11:43
owning a Peter. The Great Loss Succession. got
11:45
rid of private janitor and the monarchs
11:47
had a point essentially their own air
11:49
and just to say primogeniture is of
11:52
course the traditional medieval law that the
11:54
first born son will inherit thrown as
11:56
long as they're legitimate so is something
11:58
sixty one and press Elizabeth dies. And
12:00
so in comes Peter the third, the
12:02
new czar, Catherine's husband, and what policies
12:04
do you think he's enacting, David? There's
12:06
been a lot of limits on the
12:08
movement of rats, definitely. Julia,
12:11
his policies are not awful. He's not
12:13
terrible. Some of Peter's policies
12:15
actually enjoy some support, but Peter was
12:18
probably not cut out to be the
12:20
monarch because he wasn't really that interested
12:22
in governance even before he ascended the
12:24
throne. When he was kind of
12:27
governing Holstein from a distance, it
12:29
wasn't him but Catherine the Great,
12:31
or Catherine back then, just Catherine,
12:33
Catherine who was able to kind of stepping
12:35
in and assisting him. This was so well
12:38
known that foreign ambassadors had come to
12:40
refer to her as Madame Le Recerce.
12:43
Madame the resort. Yeah, exactly. So
12:46
he's only really in power for six months or so
12:48
and already he's alienated everyone. I mean, there's a line
12:50
that she writes her memoirs later and she edits them
12:52
a lot. So we're never quite sure at what stage
12:54
she's writing things and then they sort of get added
12:56
back in little additions later. But there's a very powerful
12:59
line where she says, it was
13:01
a matter of either perishing with or because
13:03
of him or else of
13:05
saving myself, the children and perhaps the state.
13:07
If I had orchestrated a coup to take
13:09
over Russia, that is how I would retrospectively
13:11
justify it. Yeah, exactly. And that doesn't make
13:13
it not true, but I would just say
13:15
that is also what you would say whether
13:17
or not it's true. How do you launch
13:19
a coup? All of this, you need to
13:21
get the army on site and then you
13:23
occupy the TV and radio stations. And
13:27
here we are at the BBC. We're already halfway there. I think
13:29
there's a guy at the door with some caviar. Yeah,
13:33
I mean, you're spot on. Get the army on site.
13:35
It's half the battle. And Catherine does that
13:38
incredibly quickly. That's right. So Catherine and her
13:40
allies, they had been building up support
13:42
on her behalf throughout Peter's reign. And
13:44
this wasn't very hard to do because
13:47
she was quite popular and Peter was not.
13:50
And her lover, Grigoy D'Arloaf and
13:52
his brothers were quite well regarded
13:54
among the military regiments and Nikita
13:56
Panyin, the Grand Duke's tutor, but
13:58
also a senior statesman. he had
14:00
sought to secure political support for her
14:02
as well. But then their plans were
14:04
almost spoiled because one of their supporters
14:06
got arrested so the plan had to
14:08
move up. She was awoken
14:11
early in the morning on the 28th
14:13
of June in 1762 at Peterhof by
14:15
Alexei Arlov, so the brother of her lover. And
14:18
then they raced to St. Petersburg where
14:20
elite army regiments proclaimed her as empress
14:22
and sovereign of all rushes. Then
14:25
she went to the Kazan church, she was
14:27
proclaimed sovereign by the clergy and then she
14:29
reached the winter palace where crowds cheered
14:31
and soldiers swore oaths of loyalty
14:34
to her there. Then Catherine puts
14:36
on this guards uniform and rides
14:38
to Peterhof to arrest Peter. And
14:40
at first he tries to negotiate
14:43
but then he signed an unconditional
14:45
abdication and Catherine wasted no time
14:47
in arranging her coronation. So on September
14:49
22nd in 1762 at the age of 33, she
14:53
was proclaimed the empress of Russia. So
14:56
1762 is the coup, she sees his power
14:58
and Peter was just out, he doesn't even know what's
15:00
happened and he wakes up one morning, you're no longer
15:02
the czar. How long do you think he lasts, David?
15:05
I don't sense he's around a year later,
15:08
is he? No. Is
15:10
he around the following Saturday? Pretty
15:13
much no, he gets eight days. Eight days? Eight days.
15:15
Oh I guess what he was, it depends what day
15:17
of the week it was. Sure, sure, he was
15:19
probably strangled by Gregory Arlov.
15:21
Alexei. Is it Alexei? Okay,
15:23
so an Arlov brother, one of the five. They're
15:26
interchangeable, they get drunk in a party and then... No, no,
15:28
no, not interchangeable. One
15:31
was a lover and one was a big fighter
15:34
and not interchangeable. You've got to pick the right
15:36
brother for the right job. Exactly. Oh
15:38
I picked the wrong brother, I thought the plumber brother. The
15:41
lover brother trying to strain me. This
15:43
is a disaster. All right, so
15:45
let's talk about the Russia that Catherine has inherited, the
15:47
state, the country, the people, much like the
15:49
early beach boys. It's all about the serf. What is
15:51
a serf? How does serf them work? Tell us about
15:54
Russian society. So serfdom,
15:56
it was both a social and economic
15:58
system in Russia. At the time,
16:01
serfs were peasants. They were bonded to
16:03
states where they largely worked the land,
16:05
but they also were the ones who
16:07
paid taxes and they provided the base
16:10
for military recruitment. So serfdom
16:12
was a very important system. There were up to 10
16:14
million of them in a population of about 20 million.
16:17
Now Russia was mainly agricultural at
16:20
the time, so the wealth of
16:22
Russia very much depended on these
16:24
peasant agricultural workers. They
16:27
lived in horrible conditions. They had
16:29
very little freedom. They needed their
16:32
owners' permission to leave their village
16:34
to take up certain livelihoods. They
16:37
were legally forbidden from marrying who
16:39
they wanted to unless they had their owners'
16:41
permission from protesting against their owners' actions and
16:44
they could be bought and sold.
16:46
So as Catherine put it, their lives or their
16:48
souls weren't their own. The
16:50
institution of serfdom was
16:52
an important political and economic question
16:54
in Catherine's Russia. It
16:56
was a question on which Catherine and the
16:58
people who supported her, all of the nobles,
17:00
really diverged on. Let's talk
17:02
domestic policy, everyone's favourite. There are domestic reforms
17:05
that she does pass, which do matter. They
17:07
do have an impact, Julia. That's right. So
17:10
using her powers as an
17:12
enlightened monarch with nearly unlimited
17:14
reach, she does implement the
17:16
sweeping programme of reform. So
17:19
there's the 1775 provincial reform
17:21
that draws the lines and
17:23
the borders of the Russian Empire
17:25
and kind of rationalises them. She
17:27
established new courts, she created local
17:29
boards of welfare to provide healthcare
17:32
and education. She set up founding
17:34
homes, mental asylums. She was particularly
17:36
interested in the area of education.
17:38
In 1786, she provided
17:41
for the establishment of free schools throughout
17:43
the empire, although there was some
17:45
limited take-up there for various reasons. We
17:48
also associate her reign with a greater policy
17:50
of religious toleration. We talk about domestic policy,
17:52
but she meddles in the election of the
17:54
King of Poland and she knows him. David,
17:56
how do you think she knows him, the
17:59
new king? of Poland. The new
18:01
one. I tell them maybe they'd had a
18:03
thing. Yep. Yeah. You're getting the
18:05
gist now, aren't you? You're figuring out.
18:08
He's a former lover of hers called
18:10
Stanislaw August Poniatowski and from bedroom to
18:12
throne room, the ultimate sleeping away to
18:14
the top. It's great,
18:17
right? Fair enough. So she's interfering in
18:19
Polish politics. Later on, she pretty much
18:21
invades Poland and calves it up. And
18:24
then there's the Ottoman Empire. They become a
18:26
bit of a kind of adversary, Julia, don't
18:28
they? The Russians and the Ottomans fought about
18:30
10 wars before the Crimean War.
18:33
The Ottoman Empire wasn't just Catherine's
18:35
adversary, but by seeing her intervention
18:37
in Poland, the Ottoman Empire gets
18:39
particularly nervous about Russia's growing influence
18:41
and searches out a pretext and
18:43
declares war on Russia in September
18:45
1768. Now, since the time of
18:47
Peter the Great, Russia had tried
18:50
to get access to the Black
18:52
Sea and also influence events in
18:54
the Mediterranean. So Russia really devotes
18:56
a lot of resources to this
18:58
and comes out victorious. And she
19:00
annexes it later in 1783. Right. In
19:03
1783, she annexes Crimea, and then
19:05
she kind of goes on this
19:07
triumphal tour of the territories
19:09
in 1787. This provokes the second
19:11
Russian-Ottoman war because with all of
19:14
these glorious military and naval exercises,
19:16
the Ottoman Empire suddenly gets angry.
19:18
Well, yeah, it gets angry. It
19:20
gets angry, imprisons the Russian ambassador,
19:22
declares war. And to make matters
19:25
worse, Sweden declares war from the
19:27
other side. Oh, not Sweden. And
19:29
Sweden. Russia eventually
19:31
defeats both and then also later,
19:34
carves of Poland a little more.
19:36
Yeah, there you go. So enlightened
19:39
monarch at home, fun-loving war
19:41
criminal away. Russia's getting vastly bigger.
19:43
Yeah. From the starting point of
19:45
being massive. It gets
19:48
even bigger, but crucially, further south,
19:50
more access to the sea, and
19:52
also wearing all the other countries
19:54
and also further west. Right. Right.
19:56
Okay. West into the Baltic. Yes,
20:00
exactly. So, Poland doesn't exist, but
20:03
also further east, right? So, Russian,
20:05
encroachment, Siberia continues. There are
20:07
these expeditions to the North Pacific,
20:09
and it sets up eventually kind
20:11
of the formal colonization of Alaska.
20:14
So, you'd think that Catherine's huge success in
20:16
terms of foreign policy and domestic policy, the
20:18
people would be delighted with it. But there
20:20
are actual several rebellions against her. Her son's
20:22
always, you know, plotting against her. But the
20:24
most famous one is called the Cossack Rebellion.
20:26
It's led by a guy called Pugachev, I
20:28
think. He genuinely rises up
20:31
against the Julia. And it's
20:33
the largest rebellion in imperial Russia
20:35
before the 20th century. So, Emilean
20:38
Pugachev, he's a leader. Cossack, Cossacks
20:40
were autonomous communities of soldiers across
20:42
the Russian steppe, and they served the Russian
20:45
state as frontier soldiers. But by this
20:47
time, they had very legitimate grievances on
20:49
the state's encroachment in their traditional
20:51
autonomy. So, in 1773, Pugachev
20:54
taps into this resentment, and,
20:57
you know, he raises thousands of supporters, and
20:59
they kind of plunder and massacre populations
21:01
and lay siege to imperial strongholds.
21:04
Now, what makes this particularly interesting
21:06
was Pugachev's claim to be Peter
21:08
III, Catherine's dead husband.
21:10
And so, eventually, this uprising is
21:12
suppressed because the war with the
21:14
Ottoman Empire ends, and troops are
21:16
sent in to put down the
21:19
rebellion, and Pugachev is handed over
21:21
even by his own followers. He's
21:23
supposed to be a quarter, but the
21:25
executioner beheads him first. That's
21:27
right. Accidentally. That sounds like
21:29
they ruined the opportunity of all that
21:31
cruelty. We've talked already
21:33
about the paradox of the Enlightenment monarch. What
21:36
kind of Enlightenment vibe has she given off?
21:38
She is an enlightened monarch, but she's also
21:40
a pragmatist. So, I think we see this
21:42
pattern that on the one hand, she tries
21:44
to rule Russia in this just and humane
21:47
kingdom, but then she also keeps butting up
21:49
against principles. So, she kind of begins to
21:51
recognize the political limits to her
21:53
absolutism, and just to say that
21:55
after the French Revolution, which had
21:57
taken Enlightenment principles to its end.
22:00
very extreme, there's a noticeable shift
22:02
in Russia. So Russia, after 1789,
22:04
becomes distinctly more conservative.
22:06
I mean, the interesting thing I think is
22:08
that not only is she interested in politics,
22:11
you know, she reads Voltaire, she reads Diderot,
22:13
she meets him. She's writing too. She writes
22:15
history books, she writes poems, she writes music
22:17
and literature and theatre and her own memoirs.
22:20
She's hugely productive as a creative force. But
22:22
moving on, she has lots of lovers, we
22:24
think at least 12, some say 17, but
22:26
the greatest lover is Potemkin or how do
22:28
I pronounce it? Potemkin. First name battleship.
22:31
That's right. Strangeness in
22:33
there. Yeah, his parents, very unusual.
22:35
Had an answerable battleship. Have
22:37
you heard of this fella? I have heard of him, and
22:41
obviously the battleship was named after him, and
22:43
so I'm assuming he's like a military guy,
22:45
a big military guy that helped her and
22:47
also more than that.
22:49
A great love, but more than that, he's
22:52
probably the only lover who's on her intellectual
22:54
equal, right? Is that fair? Yes, I think.
22:56
Yeah, so he's almost prime ministerial to her.
22:58
That's a very rude thing to say about
23:00
the King of Poland. Sorry. That's a very
23:02
good point. So the King of Poland was,
23:04
you know, this kind of erudite, very well
23:06
educated European man of letters
23:09
and Potemkin is very clever, he's very
23:11
smart, he's
23:13
very energetic, he's eccentric too, but they
23:15
come from different worlds. So he kind
23:17
of embodies this old Russian
23:20
heroism, whereas Poniatowski, the
23:22
King of Poland, is much more European.
23:24
We haven't said that she comes to
23:26
power age 33, she rules for 34
23:28
years. Most of her romantic life, she's
23:30
older than her lovers. And the older
23:32
she gets, the younger they get. Fair
23:35
enough. Let's talk about her final years
23:37
then. So Potemkin dies, how much longer
23:40
after his death did she die too?
23:42
Well, she dies in 1796, but
23:45
I should say that the final years of her
23:47
reign had quite a different tenor to
23:49
the earlier part. We talked about
23:51
how the French Revolution, and especially
23:54
the execution of Louis XVI and
23:56
Marie Antoinette, closed the curtain on
23:58
this more open-minded, enlightened Catholic. Before
24:00
her death in 1796, she also
24:02
partitioned Poland two more times, won
24:04
the Russian Ottoman and the Russian
24:06
Swedish war, and was even going
24:09
to intervene in the French Revolutionary
24:11
Wars in Italy. But she
24:13
didn't because she died, inconveniently.
24:16
And although her partner died in
24:18
so many ways, Patiunkin died in 1791. She
24:21
had the young Platon Zubov on her
24:24
arm, so she was still recognizable as
24:26
this energetic monarch. And her death, of
24:28
course, was not as dramatic as legend.
24:30
She collapsed in her toilet, her
24:32
water closet, after what must have been a stroke.
24:35
And she had to be carried to her bed,
24:37
but they couldn't quite lift her onto the bed,
24:39
so she died 36 hours later on the
24:41
floor. And she
24:43
was succeeded by Paul, who not
24:45
only tried to erase her legacy, but
24:48
revived the military tone of his father,
24:50
Peter III's reign. And he
24:52
brings back primogeniture, right? Right. Of
24:56
course he does. Of course. So
24:58
male primogeniture, so this means more peaceful transitions,
25:00
but this was the last time a
25:02
woman ruled Russia. And what about her
25:04
memory? He essentially suppressed any talk of
25:07
her. Really? Even
25:09
though her reign had been very successful, he
25:11
doesn't try and... Because that would be more
25:13
common, wouldn't it? To sort of derive
25:16
your legitimacy from a previous successful
25:18
regime. No, he derives his
25:21
legitimacy by emulating Peter III. And
25:24
no one... Yeah, I mean, he doesn't
25:26
survive on the throne very long either,
25:29
because he's killed in
25:31
favour of his son, Alexander I, who
25:33
is much more kind of in line
25:35
with Catherine the Great's reign, and then
25:37
her posthumous reputation becomes a question from
25:40
his fate. The Nuance Window! It's
25:47
time for the Nuance Window. This is where Dr.
25:49
Julia gets two uninterrupted minutes to tell us something
25:51
we need to know about Catherine the Great. So
25:54
without much further ado, Julia, take
25:56
it away, please. Thanks, Greg. I just
25:58
wanted to use this opportunity... to unpack what
26:01
exactly made Catherine great. So was
26:03
it on the one hand her
26:05
cultural aspirations, her enlightened views, her
26:07
Republican spirit, or her emulation of
26:09
Peter the Great's expansionism and desire
26:12
to influence the political affairs of
26:14
Europe. Now in light of Russia's
26:16
current war in Ukraine, it's difficult
26:19
to uncritically celebrate her imperial ambitions,
26:21
particularly because Catherine's policies affected the
26:23
territories that today make up Ukraine.
26:26
And even on her own terms, Catherine
26:28
was this immensely complicated multifaceted figure, which
26:31
is what makes her so interesting. And
26:33
as I suggested in the century following
26:36
her death, her posthumous reputation had already
26:38
become this idiom in which the Russian
26:40
Empire worked out its national
26:43
politics. The celebrated empress was chastised
26:45
by many, including Russia's national
26:47
poet, Alexander Pushkin. Now in the
26:49
21st century, Catherine II has
26:53
been deployed as a propaganda figure for the
26:55
Putin regime, because Putin has
26:57
depicted her as a foreigner who yearned
26:59
to become Russian, a woman who wrote
27:01
that she will descend her homeland with
27:04
her tongue and with a pen and
27:06
with a sword, right? So echoing these
27:08
military aspects of her rule and the
27:10
appropriation of many parts of Ukraine, including
27:13
Crimea for the Russian Empire. This is
27:15
a history that has not endeared her
27:17
to the Ukrainian nation. So it's a
27:20
topical reminder to ask whose perspective a
27:22
historical characterization celebrates. Much of what made
27:24
Catherine such a celebrated figure expanding the
27:26
Russian Empire, gaining access to the Black
27:29
Sea, developing the northern shores of
27:31
the Black Sea, suppressing rebellion, acquisition
27:33
of cultural artifacts, these all happened
27:35
at great expense to the autonomy
27:38
of others. So I'd say
27:40
that current international politics really raises the
27:42
question of whether this is a price
27:44
that's worth paying for greatness. David,
27:48
Catherine the Great. Well, the thing
27:50
is, I suppose you can only, you
27:52
have to judge historical figures on their own
27:54
terms and on her own terms, she succeeded
27:57
in her own aims. Well, there we go.
28:00
for things about Catherine the Great. And listener, if you
28:02
want to hear more about another Empire Building Enlightenment
28:04
monarch, you can check out our episode on Frederick
28:06
the Great of Prussia with Stephen Fry in Comedy
28:08
Corner, so you can compare notes. And
28:10
for more ruthless queens, we also have sad episodes on
28:12
N'Jingo, Evin Dongo and Agrippina the Younger. And remember, if
28:14
you've enjoyed the podcast, leave a review, share the show
28:17
with your friends and make sure to subscribe to us
28:19
on BBC Sounds, we're called You're Dead to Me. You
28:21
don't want to miss an episode, do you? I'd
28:23
just like to say a huge thank you then to my
28:25
guests in History Corner. We have the fantastic Dr. Julia Lakin
28:28
from Royal Holloway. Thank you, Julia. Thank you so much for
28:30
having me. Pleasure. And in Comedy Corner,
28:32
we have the delightfully droll David Mitchell. Thank you,
28:34
David. Thank you for having me. And to you
28:36
lovely listener, join me next time as we launch
28:38
a well timed coup against another historical subject. But
28:41
for now, I'm off to go and convince Gwyneth
28:43
Paltrow to invest in my new wellness company, GOB.
28:45
You basically take the spittle from a maid and
28:47
you rub it on the back and everyone gets
28:49
rich. Hooray! Bye! Hello,
29:00
I'm Sean Keveny and I'm back with a
29:02
brand new series of Your Place or Mine
29:04
from BBC Radio 4. It's
29:08
the show where a litany of
29:10
wonderful guests try to tempt this
29:12
recalcitrant traveller onto the runway to
29:14
experience their favourite place on earth.
29:16
Custard filled pastries everywhere as
29:19
standard. I stayed in a place where that was
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there, they didn't put mints on the pillows, they
29:23
put custard tarts. They'll try to
29:25
tempt me with all the wonders and
29:27
delicacies from their favourite place in the
29:30
world. But will they succeed? There's an
29:32
amazing lighthouse and there's a brilliant tour
29:34
there by the guy who, his family
29:36
were the lighthouse keepers. The lighthouse family,
29:38
if you will. Listen to all new
29:40
episodes of Your Place or Mine on
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BBC Science. I'm
29:49
Helena Bonham Carter and for BBC
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Radio 4, this is History's Secret
29:54
Heroes, a new series of
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rarely heard tales from World War
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Two. They had no idea. that
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she was Britain's top female code breaker. We'll
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hear of daring risk takers. What she was
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offering to do was to ski in over
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the High Carpathian Mountains. Of
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course it was dangerous, but danger
30:12
was his friend. Subscribe to
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