How Did a German Princess Become Catherine the Great of Russia?

Catherine the Great became Empress of Russia by overthrowing her own husband. Born a minor German princess, she married the heir to the Russian throne, and in July 1762, a few months after he became Emperor Peter III, she won over the guards regiments of St Petersburg and was proclaimed sole ruler. She then reigned until her death in November 1796, longer than any other female ruler of Russia, and expanded the empire by roughly 520,000 square kilometres. The story of how an outsider who arrived speaking German and French became the most famous Russian monarch of her century is also a story about learning a language, a culture and a court from scratch.

Sophie from Stettin

She was born on 2 May 1729 in Stettin, then in the Kingdom of Prussia and today Szczecin in Poland, as Sophie Auguste Friederike von Anhalt-Zerbst. Her father, Christian August, was a prince of the small German state of Anhalt-Zerbst, and her mother was Joanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp. Nothing about this background suggested a future empress. Her family had good connections but little power, and like many princesses of her rank she was raised to make a useful marriage.

She grew up speaking German and learned French, the shared language of the European elite at the time. That French would matter later: it was the language she used with philosophers, diplomats and much of her own court.

A new name, a new faith, a new language

In 1744, at the age of 15, Sophie travelled to Russia as a possible bride for Peter, the nephew and chosen heir of Empress Elizabeth. To marry into the Russian imperial family she had to leave the Lutheran church of her childhood. On 28 June 1744 she was received into the Russian Orthodox Church and took the name Catherine (Yekaterina) Alekseyevna.

She also threw herself into learning Russian. According to the biographical record, she studied hard but kept a heavy accent and made grammatical mistakes all her life, and at court she still mostly spoke French. For anyone who has ever felt embarrassed about an accent, it is a useful reminder: one of the most powerful people of the eighteenth century never sounded like a native speaker, and it did not stop her.

An unhappy marriage

On 21 August 1745, not yet 16, she married Peter in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan in St Petersburg. The marriage was by most accounts a cold one. The couple had little in common, and Catherine spent years at court building friendships, reading widely and watching how power worked around the empress. She later had a series of well-known favourites and lovers, among them Stanisław August Poniatowski, Grigory Orlov and Grigory Potemkin.

The coup of 1762

Empress Elizabeth died in January 1762 and Peter became Emperor Peter III. He quickly made enemies among the nobility and the army. A conspiracy formed around Catherine, with the Orlov brothers playing a central role. When one of the plotters was arrested in early July, the group decided to act at once. On 9 July 1762 Catherine went to the Izmailovsky Regiment and asked the soldiers for protection, then moved on to other barracks, where she was proclaimed sole ruler.

Peter was forced to abdicate and died on 17 July at Ropsha. The official cause was given as colic and apoplexy, but historians have long suspected that he was killed, possibly by Alexei Orlov. Catherine was crowned in the Assumption Cathedral in Moscow on 22 September 1762. She had no blood claim to the throne at all. Her right to rule rested on the support of the guards, the nobility and her own skill.

An enlightened empress?

Catherine read the French philosophers and wanted to be seen as one of their own. Voltaire and Denis Diderot both praised her, and Diderot spent about five months in Russia advising her in 1773–1774. In 1766 she convened a large commission to rewrite Russia's laws, guided by her own written Nakaz ("Instruction"), which drew on Enlightenment ideas.

She founded the Smolny Institute of Noble Maidens in 1764, described as the first state-financed higher education institution for women in Europe, and supported the founding of the Free Economic Society in 1765. Her art collection became the core of the Hermitage in St Petersburg. She also promoted smallpox inoculation, and by around 1800 there had been about two million inoculations in the empire. She wrote too: comedies, fiction and other works came from her own pen.

The limits: serfdom and Pugachev

The other side of the picture is serfdom. Millions of peasants remained bound to the land and to their lords, and serfdom stayed central to the economy and to army recruitment during her reign. Growing pressure on the serfs fed unrest. In 1773 Yemelyan Pugachev, a former Cossack officer, launched a revolt in the name of the dead Peter III, claiming to be him. It is described as the largest peasant rebellion in Russian history, and it ended only with Pugachev's capture and execution in January 1775. After the revolt, Catherine reorganised provincial government and leaned even more on the nobility, confirming their privileges in the Charter to the Nobility of 1785.

Wars, Crimea and Poland

Catherine's armies fought the Ottoman Empire twice. The war of 1768–1774 brought victories at Chesma and Kagul and ended with the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, which gave Russia access to the Black Sea. In 1783 Russia annexed Crimea, and new cities such as Kherson and Sevastopol were founded in the southern lands. To the west, Catherine helped put her former lover Poniatowski on the Polish throne in 1764, and then took part in the three partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793 and 1795, which wiped the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth off the map.

The truth about "Potemkin villages"

In 1787 Catherine toured her new southern territories, including Crimea, with her court and foreign ambassadors. The journey was organised by Potemkin, the governor of the region. A famous story says he built fake villages along the Dnieper, filled them with people dressed as peasants, and moved them downstream overnight to fool the empress. That story was popularised by a Saxon diplomat, Georg von Helbig, who was not on the trip and relied on court gossip. Modern historians treat it as largely a myth: Potemkin decorated existing towns, but openly. The phrase "Potemkin village" survives in English for any impressive front that hides a poor reality.

Catherine died of a stroke in November 1796, aged 67, and was succeeded by her son Paul.

Learn with Catherine: English phrases about power and pretence

Phrase	Meaning	Example
to seize power	to take control by force	Catherine seized power in 1762.
to win someone over	to gain someone's support	She won over the guards regiments.
a Potemkin village	an impressive front hiding a poor reality	The new office was a Potemkin village.
to throw yourself into something	to start doing something with great energy	She threw herself into learning Russian.
to make your mark	to have a lasting influence	Catherine made her mark on Russian history.

Try this: Write three English sentences about a time you had to learn something new in a hurry. Use "throw yourself into" and "win someone over".