CATHERINE THE GREAT

Catherine built marvelous new monuments across Russia and transformed St. Petersburg into a truly European city of Imperial pretensions. The arts, music and education where patronized by her, and Catherine pumped millions of rubles into the creation of the Hermitage collection, which today is the delight of Russia and the world. No other Russian monarch appreciated beauty as much as Catherine, she set the stage for the emergence of a national Russian culture that would emerge as something unique and wonderful in the 19th century.

Re-marriage was out of the question and she probably never took a husband again; although it has been rumored that she and a later lover, Potemkin, were secretly married in the Church of St. Samson in Petersburg. Much has been made of Catherine's libido. She has entered history with a mixed reputation due to the young men who entered her life in it's later years. Had she been a man, no one would have spoken of it, and many of the most famous tales about her are untrue. She dealt with the issue of her affairs head-on and justified it to herself as the need of an autocrat for companionship and diversion.

Throughout her life she was estranged from her son, Paul, who grew up hating his mother for her condescending treatment of him and her role in the murder of his imagined father, Peter III, which he believed was more direct than history has proven. Paul never accepted the fact that his father was Serge Saltykov. The empathy between mother and son was mutual. Catherine felt Paul was foolish and unbalanced. Once on the throne he was sure to undo all of her accomplishments. He rashly boasted of this many times in Russia and on journeys abroad. Catherine planned to bypass Paul and leave her crown to his first son and her favorite grandson, Alexander. Feeling she had a number of years left, she did not make the arrangements for the transition to Alexander and upon her death from a heart attack on November 6, 1796 the throne passed to Paul.

Catherine's achievements were many. She left Russia much stronger, more prosperous and beautiful than she had found it. That she failed in much she had set out to do had less to do with her and more to do with human nature. Catherine was unable to transform Russia through her will alone. Since she was unwilling to use terror or force to transform society, she chose a more patient path, hoping to gradually raise the level of culture by legislation, education, and example. She single-handedly grafted onto Russian rootstock the bud-wood of western culture, which was taken and remolded two generations later into something marvellous.

The inimitable beauty of St. Peterburg architectural ensembles and squares was extolled by many poets. The city dates its existence from May 16 (27, New Style), 1703, when the corner-stone of the Peter and Paul Fortress was laid. The city grew rapidly in accordance with a well thought-out plan. Its unique architectural monuments were created by the genius of such eminent Russian architects as Mikhail Zemtsov, Ivan Korobov and Piotr Yeropkin, and also by Western European masters - Domenico Trezzini, Bartolommeo Francesco Rastrelli, Alexandre Jean-Baptiste Le Blond, and others. The early eighteeth-century architectural ensembles were mainly constructed in the style known as the Petrine Baroque. The small buildings of the period are characterized by laconic architectural forms and festive colourfulness. In St. Petersburg the Baroque style found its fullest expression in Rastrelli's work. His Winter and Stroganov Palaces and the Smolny Convent are elegant and full of grandeur. The eighteenth-century architecture greatly influenced the shaping of the city appearence. Some of the buildings of the time are real masterpieces of world architecture.

F.Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment

He closed his hand on the twenty copecks, walked on for ten paces, and turned facing the Neva, looking towards the palace. The sky was without a cloud and the water was almost bright blue, which is so rare in the Neva. The cupola of the cathedral, which is seen at its best from the bridge about twenty paces from the chapel, glittered in the sunlight, and in the pure air every ornament on it could be clearly distinguished. The pain from the lash went off, and Raskolnikov forgot about it; one uneasy and not quite definite idea occupied him now completely. He stood still, and gazed long and intently into the distance; this spot was especially familiar to him. When he was attending the university, he had hundreds of times--generally on his way home--stood still on this spot, gazed at this truly magnificent spectacle and almost always marvelled at a vague and mysterious emotion it roused in him. It left him strangely cold; this gorgeous picture was for him blank and lifeless. He wondered every time at his sombre and enigmatic impression and, mistrusting himself, put off finding the explanation of it. He vividly recalled those old doubts and perplexities, and it seemed to him that it was no mere chance that he recalled them now. It struck him as strange and grotesque, that he should have stopped at the same spot as before, as though he actually imagined he could think the same thoughts, be interested in the same theories and pictures that had interested him . . . so short a time ago. He felt it almost amusing, and yet it wrung his heart. Deep down, hidden far away out of sight all that seemed to him now--all his old past, his old thoughts, his old problems and theories, his old impressions and that picture and himself and all, all. . . . He felt as though he were flying upwards, and everything were vanishing from his sight. Making an unconscious movement with his hand, he suddenly became aware of the piece of money in his fist. He opened his hand, stared at the coin, and with a sweep of his arm flung it into the water; then he turned and went home. It seemed to him, he had cut himself off from everyone and from everything at that moment.

Evening was coming on when he reached home, so that he must have been walking about six hours. How and where he came back he did not remember. Undressing, and quivering like an overdriven horse, he lay down on the sofa, drew his greatcoat over him, and at once sank into oblivion. . . .
It was dusk when he was waked up by a fearful scream. Good God, what a scream! Such unnatural sounds, such howling, wailing, grinding, tears, blows and curses he had never heard.