{"product_id":"the-memoirs-of-catherine-the-great-isbn-9780812969870","title":"The Memoirs of Catherine the Great","description":"Empress Catherine II brought Europe to Russia, and Russia to Europe, during her long and eventful reign (1762—96). She fostered the culture of the Enlightenment and greatly expanded the immense empire created by Czar Ivan the Terrible, shifting the balance of power in Europe eastward. Famous for her will to power and for her dozen lovers, Catherine was also a prolific and gifted writer.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFluent in French, Russian, and German, Catherine published political theory, journalism, comedies, operas, and history, while writing thousands of letters as she corresponded with Voltaire and other public figures. The Memoirs of Catherine the Great provides an unparalleled window into eighteenth-century Russia and the mind of an absolute ruler. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith insight, humor, and candor, Catherine presents her eyewitness account of history, from her whirlwind entry into the Russian court in 1744 at age fourteen as the intended bride of Empress Elizabeth I’s nephew, the eccentric drunkard and future Peter III, to her unhappy marriage; from her two children, several miscarriages, and her and Peter’s numerous affairs to the political maneuvering that enabled Catherine to seize the throne from him in 1762. Catherine’s eye for telling details makes for compelling reading as she describes the dramatic fall and rise of her political fortunes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis definitive new translation from the French is scrupulously faithful to her words and is the first for which translators have consulted original manuscripts written in Catherine’s own hand. It is an indispensable work for anyone interested in Catherine the Great, Russian history, or the eighteenth century.\u003cu\u003eAdvance praise for \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Memoirs of Catherine the Great\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/u\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Superb. The translation of the Memoirs is fluid, accessible, and idiomatic, while remaining accurate and as delightful as the original. Students will heartily enjoy this excursion into the historical and literary world of the great empress.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003cb\u003eCynthia Hyla Whittaker\u003c\/b\u003e, professor and chair, Department of History, \u003cu\u003eBaruch College\/CUNY\u003c\/u\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Several translations of the memoirs of Catherine the Great have been published before, but none of them can compare with this latest edition. Mark Cruse and Hilde Hoogenboom have produced a masterpiece. Their translation fairly sings, capturing with stunning virtuosity all the beguiling wit and charm that make these memoirs one of the most fascinating works ever penned by a European monarch.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003cb\u003eDouglas Smith\u003c\/b\u003e, editor and translator of \u003ci\u003eLove and Conquest: Personal Correspondence of Catherine the Great and Prince Grigory Potemkin\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Catherine the Great’s memoirs are a classic and almost unique record of personality and power, the work of one of history’s greatest and most alluring leaders but also of a young girl trapped in a sinister court and a miserable marriage–this new edition is the best for decades and the one for both general and scholarly readers to use.” \u003cbr\u003e–\u003cb\u003eSimon Sebag Montefiore\u003c\/b\u003e, author of \u003ci\u003ePotemkin: Catherine the Great’s Imperial Partner\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eStalin: The Court of the Red Tsar\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A richly textured account of the turbulent years the young Grand Duchess spent at the court of the Empress Elizabeth. No serious student of Catherine’s life and reign will want to be without this splendid new edition. It casts a completely new light on the composition of the Empress’s extraordinary memoirs.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003cb\u003eProfessor Simon M. Dixon\u003c\/b\u003e, chairman, School of History, \u003cu\u003eUniversity of Leeds\u003c\/u\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Catherine’s memoirs are one of the most fascinating documents of the eighteenth century. This translation will give the English-speaking audience a unique chance to learn about the life of this extraordinary woman from her own story.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003cb\u003eProfessor Alexandr Kamenskii\u003c\/b\u003e, chair, Early and Early Modern Russian History, \u003cu\u003eThe Russian State University for the Humanities\u003c\/u\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This fluent and unabridged translation of one of the most remarkable documents of eighteenth-century history, based on the original French manuscript of the text that Catherine revised in 1794, is preceded by a substantial scholarly preface tracing the fascinating story of the memoirs’ composition, sources, literary style, and fate after Catherine’s death. Researchers, teachers, and general readers alike will welcome this book.”\u003cbr\u003e–\u003cb\u003eLindsey Hughes\u003c\/b\u003e, \u003cu\u003eUniversity College London\u003c\/u\u003eAbout the Translators\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMark Cruse has a Ph.D. in French literature from New York University and teaches at Arizona State University.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHilde Hoogenboom received her Ph.D. in Russian literature from Columbia University and teaches Russian and translation at the State University of New York at Albany.1728—43\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePeter III’s childhood and education in Holstein; heir to the Russian  throne\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe mother of Peter III, daughter of Peter I, died of consumption about  two months after bringing him into the world in the little town of Kiel  in Holstein, from the despair of being consigned to live there and from  being so unhappily married. Karl Friedrich, Duke of Holstein, nephew of  Charles XII, King of Sweden, and father of Peter III, was a weak, ugly,  short, sickly and poor prince (see Bergholz’s journal in Büsching’s  Magazin). He died in the year 1739 and left his son, who was around  eleven years old, under the guardianship of his cousin Adolph  Friedrich, the Bishop of Lübeck and Duke of Holstein, since chosen King  of Sweden as a result of the preliminary talks of the Treaty of Åbo on  the recommendation of Empress Elizabeth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePeter III’s education was directed by Brümmer, the Grand Marshal of the  Court and a Swede by birth, and under him were Grand Chamberlain  Bergholz, author of the aforementioned journal, and four chamberlains,  two of whom—Adlerfelt, the author of a history of Charles XII, and  Wachmeister—were Swedish, and the other two, Wolff and Mardefeld, were  from Holstein. They raised the Prince for the throne of Sweden in a  court that was too large for the country in which it was located and  that was divided into several factions, which hated each other and vied  to control the Prince’s mind, which each faction wanted to shape. As a  result, these factions inspired in him the reciprocal hatred they felt  against the individuals they opposed. The young prince politely  detested Brümmer and his overbearing way and accused the Grand Marshal  of excessive severity; he despised Bergholz, who was Brümmer’s friend  and toady, and liked none of his attendants, because they hampered him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e From the age of ten, Peter III was partial to drink. He had to make  many public appearances and was never out of sight day or night. Those  he liked best during his childhood and the first years of his stay in  Russia were his two old valets: Kramer, a Livonian, and Romberg, a  Swede. The latter was his favorite; he was a rather vulgar and rough  man who had been a dragoon officer under Charles XII. Brümmer and as a  result Bergholz, who trusted blindly in Brümmer, were attached to  Adolph Friedrich, Prince Bishop of Lübeck and Prince Guardian and  Administrator; all the others were unhappy with this Prince and even  more with his entourage.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOnce Empress Elizabeth had ascended to the throne of Russia, she sent  Chamberlain Korf to Holstein to summon her nephew, whom the Prince  Administrator sent off immediately, accompanied by Grand Marshal  Brümmer, Grand Chamberlain Bergholz, and Chamberlain Ducker, Brümmer’s  nephew. The Empress’s joy was great when he arrived. She left shortly  thereafter for her coronation in Moscow.§ She was resolved to declare  the Prince her heir. But first he had to profess the Greek Orthodox  faith. The enemies of Grand Marshal Brümmer, notably Grand Chancellor  Count Bestuzhev and the late Count N. Panin, who had long been Russian  minister in Sweden, claimed to have in hand convincing proof that as  soon as Brümmer saw the Empress determined to declare her nephew heir  apparent to the throne, he took as much care to spoil the mind and  heart of his pupil as he had taken to make him worthy of the Swedish  crown.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut I have always doubted this atrocious allegation and have believed  that the education of Peter III was undermined by a clash of  unfortunate circumstances. I will relate what I have seen and heard,  and that in itself will clarify many things. I saw Peter III for the  first time when he was eleven years old, in Eutin at the home of his  guardian, the Prince Bishop of Lübeck. Some months after the death of  Duke Karl Friedrich, Peter III’s father, the Prince Bishop had in 1739  assembled all of his family at his home in Eutin to have his ward  brought there. My grandmother, mother of the Prince Bishop, and my  mother, sister of this same Prince, had come there from Hamburg with  me. I was ten years old at the time. Prince August and Princess Anna,  brother and sister of the Prince Guardian and Administrator of  Holstein, were also there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was then that I heard it said among this assembled family that the  young duke was inclined to drink, that his attendants found it  difficult to prevent him from getting drunk at meals, that he was  restive and hotheaded, did not like his attendants and especially  Brümmer, and that otherwise he showed vivacity, but had a delicate and  sickly appearance. In truth, his face was pale in color and he seemed  to be thin and of a delicate constitution. His attendants wanted to  give this child the appearance of a mature man, and to this end they  hampered and restrained him, which could only inculcate falseness in  his conduct as well as his character.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSoon after this Holstein court arrived in Russia, it was followed by a  Swedish embassy that requested the Empress allow her nephew to succeed  to the Swedish throne. But Elizabeth, who had already declared her  intentions in the preliminary talks of the Treaty of Åbo, mentioned  above, replied to the Swedish Diet that she had already declared her  nephew heir to the throne of Russia and that she adhered to the  preliminary talks of the Treaty of Åbo, which made the Prince  Administrator of Holstein heir apparent to the Swedish crown. (This  Prince had had an older brother to whom Empress Elizabeth had been  engaged after the death of Peter I. The marriage had not taken place,  because the prince died of smallpox several weeks after the engagement.  Empress Elizabeth retained tender feelings for his memory, and she gave  tokens of her affection to the prince’s entire family.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePeter III was thus declared Elizabeth’s heir and Grand Duke of Russia  after he professed his faith according to the Greek Orthodox rite;  Simeon Theodorsky, since named Archbishop of Pskov, was made his  spiritual instructor. The Prince had been baptized and raised in the  Lutheran faith, the most rigid and least tolerant, and since his  childhood he had always been resistant to all instruction. I heard it  said by his attendants that at Kiel it had required great effort to  make him go to church on Sundays and feast days, and to make him  perform devotional acts, which were forced upon him, and that most of  the time he acted irreligiously.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHis Imperial Highness took it into his head to dispute every point with  Simeon Theodorsky. Often his attendants were called in to cut short  these bitter exchanges and to calm the Prince’s heated emotions.  Finally, after much frustration, the Prince submitted to the wishes of  the Empress, his aunt, although, whether from prejudice, habit, or a  contradictory spirit, he often made it known that he would have  preferred to leave for Sweden rather than stay in Russia.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe kept Brümmer, Bergholz, and his Holstein entourage around him until  his marriage. Some other tutors were added to these as a formality: one  was Monsieur Isaak Veselovsky for the Russian language, who came at  first rarely and eventually not at all; the other, Professor Stählin,  was supposed to teach him math and history, but in truth played with  him and practically served as his buffoon. The most conscientious  teacher was the ballet master Landé, who taught him to dance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDuring this period, the Grand Duke spent all his time making two  servants, who had been assigned for his personal service, perform  military exercises in his private chambers. He gave them titles and  ranks and demoted them according to his whim. These were truly the  games of a child and of perpetual childishness. In general he was still  very much a child, although he turned sixteen in 1744 when the Russian  court was in Moscow.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1744\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCatherine’s arrival in Russia; Bestuzhev-Riumin and court factions; her  illness; her mother’s politics at court; her profession of the Orthodox  faith and betrothal to Peter; trip to Kiev; Catherine’s debts; Peter  has measles, then smallpox\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat year, Catherine II arrived with her mother in Moscow on February  9. At that time, the Russian court was divided into two large factions  or parties. The leader of the first group, who had begun to recover  from his weakened position, was Vice Chancellor Bestuzhev-Riumin. He  was infinitely more feared than loved, exceedingly scheming,  suspicious, willful, and daring, rather tyrannical in his principles,  an implacable enemy, but a friend to his friends, whom he abandoned  only when they turned their backs on him, and otherwise hard to get  along with and often overly exacting. He was in charge of the  department of foreign affairs. Having battled with the Empress’s  entourage, he had lost ground before the journey to Moscow, but had  begun to recover. He supported the courts of Vienna, Saxony, and  England. The arrival of Catherine II and her mother gave him no  pleasure. It was the secret work of the faction opposed to him. The  enemies of Count Bestuzhev were numerous, but he made them all tremble.  He had the advantage over them in his position and his character, which  gave him immense influence in the politics of the antechamber.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe party opposed to Bestuzhev supported France, its ally Sweden, and  the King of Prussia. The Marquis de la Chétardie was its soul and the  Holstein court its ringleaders; they had won over Lestocq, one of the  principal actors of the revolution that had placed the late Empress  Elizabeth on the throne of Russia. Lestocq was greatly trusted by  Elizabeth. He had been her personal surgeon since the death of Empress  Catherine I, to whom he had also been devoted, and had rendered  essential services to both mother and daughter. He lacked neither  intelligence, shrewdness, nor capacity for intrigue, but he was  malicious and had a black and evil heart. All these foreigners aided  one another and promoted Count Mikhail Vorontsov, who had also taken  part in the coup d’état and had accompanied Elizabeth the night she  took the throne. She had made him marry the niece of Empress Catherine  I, Countess Anna Karlovna Skavronskaya, who had been brought up in  Empress Elizabeth’s household and was very devoted to the Empress. This  faction also included Count Alexander Rumiantsev, father of the Marshal  who had signed the Treaty of Åbo with Sweden, about which Bestuzhev had  been little consulted. The faction also counted upon the Procurator  General Prince Trubetskoi, upon the whole Trubetskoi family and,  consequently, upon the Prince of Hessen-Hamburg, who had married a  princess of this family. The Prince of\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHessen-Hamburg, who at the time was highly regarded, was nothing by  himself, and his influence came from the large family of his wife,  whose father and mother were still alive; the latter was highly  respected. The rest of the Empress’s entourage then consisted of the  Shuvalov family, who opposed in all matters the Grand Master of the  Hunt Razumovsky and a bishop, who for the moment was the leading  favorite. Count Bestuzhev knew how to exploit the Shuvalovs, but his  principal supporter was Baron Cherkasov, Secretary of the Cabinet to  the Empress, who had already served in Peter I’s cabinet. He was a  rough and headstrong man who wanted order and justice, and to run  everything by the rules. The rest of the court chose one faction or the  other according to their interests or daily opinions.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Grand Duke appeared to rejoice at the arrival of my mother and  myself. I was in my fifteenth year. During the first ten days he paid  me much attention. Even then and in that short time, I saw and  understood that he did not care much for the nation that he was  destined to rule, and that he clung to Lutheranism, did not like his  entourage, and was very childish. I remained silent and listened, and  this gained me his trust. I remember him telling me that among other  things, what pleased him most about me was that I was his second  cousin, and that because I was related to him, he could speak to me  with an open heart. Then he told me that he was in love with one of the  Empress’s maids of honor, who had been dismissed from court because of  the misfortune of her mother, one Madame Lopukhina, who had been exiled  to Siberia, that he would have liked to marry her, but that he was  resigned to marry me because his aunt desired it. I listened with a  blush to these family confidences, thanking him for his ready trust,  but deep in my heart I was astonished by his imprudence and lack of  judgment in many matters.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe tenth day after my arrival in Moscow, a Saturday, the Empress went  to the Trinity Monastery of St. Sergei. The Grand Duke stayed with us  in Moscow. I had already been assigned three tutors: Simeon Theodorsky  to instruct me in the Greek Orthodox faith, Basil Adadurov for the  Russian language, and Landé, the ballet master, for dancing. To make  more rapid progress in Russian, I rose from my bed at night and, while  everyone slept, memorized the lessons that Adadurov gave me. Because my  room was warm and I had no experience of the climate, I neglected to  put on my shoes and studied in my bedclothes. On the thirteenth day  after my arrival, I came down with pleurisy, which was nearly fatal. It  began with chills the Tuesday after the Empress’s departure for Trinity  Monastery. I had just gotten dressed to go to dinner with my mother at  the Grand Duke’s, when I obtained with difficulty her permission to go  to bed. When she returned from dinner, she found me almost unconscious  with a high fever and an excruciating pain in my side. She thought I  was coming down with smallpox, sent for doctors, and wanted them to  treat me accordingly. They recommended that I be bled; she was  completely against this, saying that it was from being bled that her  brother had died of smallpox in Russia and that she did not want\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe same thing to happen to me. The doctors and the attendants of the  Grand Duke, who had not had smallpox, made a detailed report of the  state of affairs to the Empress, and while my mother and the doctors  were arguing, I lay unconscious in my bed, with a burning fever and a  pain in my side that made me suffer horribly and moan, for which my  mother scolded me, wanting me to endure my suffering patiently.A new translation by Mark Cruse and Hilde Hoogenboom; [quote]--Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Potemkin: Catherine the Great's Imperial Partner","brand":"Modern Library","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303465406693,"sku":"NP9780812969870","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780812969870.jpg?v=1767740463","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-memoirs-of-catherine-the-great-isbn-9780812969870","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}