Robert K. Massie's Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman PDF

By Robert K. Massie

ISBN-10: 0679456724

ISBN-13: 9780679456728

The Pulitzer Prize–winning writer of Peter the nice, Nicholas and Alexandra, and The Romanovs returns with one other masterpiece of narrative biography, the extreme tale of an imprecise younger German princess who traveled to Russia at fourteen and rose to turn into the most striking, strong, and attractive ladies in history.

Born right into a minor noble family members, Catherine remodeled herself into Empress of Russia via sheer selection. owning a super brain and an insatiable interest as a tender girl, she gobbled the works of Enlightenment philosophers and, while she reached the throne, tried to exploit their ideas to steer her rule of the mammoth and backward Russian empire. She knew or corresponded with the preeminent historic figures of her time: Voltaire, Diderot, Frederick the good, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, Marie Antoinette, and, unusually, the yankee naval hero, John Paul Jones.

Reaching the throne fired through Enlightenment philosophy and decided to turn into the embodiment of the “benevolent despot” idealized through Montesquieu, she came across herself constantly contending with the deeply ingrained realities of Russian lifestyles, together with serfdom. She endured, and for thirty-four years the govt., overseas coverage, cultural improvement, and welfare of the Russian humans have been in her palms. She handled household uprising, overseas wars, and the tidal wave of political switch and violence churned up by way of the French Revolution that swept throughout Europe. Her recognition depended completely at the viewpoint of the speaker. She was once praised via Voltaire because the equivalent of the best of classical philosophers; she was once condemned through her enemies, usually overseas, as “the Messalina of the north.”

Catherine’s kinfolk, pals, ministers, generals, enthusiasts, and enemies—all are the following, vividly defined. those incorporated her bold, endlessly scheming mom; her susceptible, bullying husband, Peter (who left her mendacity untouched beside him for 9 years after their marriage); her unsatisfied son and inheritor, Paul; her loved grandchildren; and her “favorites”—the parade of younger males from whom she sought companionship and the recapture of teenybopper in addition to intercourse. right here, too, is the large determine of Gregory Potemkin, her most important lover and attainable husband, with whom she shared a passionate correspondence of affection and separation, by means of seventeen years of remarkable mutual achievement.

The tale is beautifully advised. the entire unique traits that Robert ok. Massie dropped at Nicholas and Alexandra and Peter the Great are current right here: historic accuracy, intensity of figuring out, felicity of fashion, mastery of aspect, skill to shatter delusion, and a unprecedented genius for locating and expressing the human drama in awesome lives.

History bargains few tales richer in drama than that of Catherine the nice. during this publication, this perpetually interesting lady is back to existence.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Wellesley historical past professor Tumarkin ( Lenin Lives! ) the following explains how Stalin and his successors glorified the Soviet struggle opposed to Nazi Germany via orchestrating a sanitized delusion of heroic triumph meant to foster aid for the Communist occasion and an sick economic climate. The cult of the good Patriotic warfare, she demonstrates, hid the U. S. S. R. 's disastrous unpreparedness for the 1941 German invasion, which price 30 million Soviet lives. Stalin's homicide of tens of millions of Soviet army commanders in a purge at the eve of the battle, his use of the struggle as a pretext to overwhelm dissent and nationalist separatisms and his scorched-earth coverage also are passed over from the legit cult. in response to the author's travels in Russia among 1978 and 1992, this illuminating and poignant examine contrasts the controlled fable of WW II with the unvarnished memoirs of writers, filmmakers and usual voters.
Copyright 1994 Reed enterprise info, Inc. --This textual content refers to an out of print or unavailable version of this identify.

From Library Journal

Tumarkin (The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia, 1983) has effectively used own sorrows to color a correct portrayal of the manipulation, by means of Stalin, of the nice Patriotic conflict (World struggle II). She indicates intimately how historical past used to be distorted, contrived, and intentionally falsified to cajole the Soviet humans to do heroic deeds. This falsified background lined up the tragedy of the Russian entrance, Stalin's purges, and the homicide of thousands of Stalin's enemies. mockingly, this falsification consists of a chance for us. to cite David Remnick (Lenin's Tomb, LJ 6/15/93), musing at the gathered influence of dwelling with distorted or obliterated prior: "In creating a mystery of background, the Kremlin made its topics a bit of extra insane, a bit extra determined. " The cult of struggle persevered via successive chairmen and occasion first secretaries until eventually Gorbachev's glasnost. a good addition to educational and public libraries.
Harry Willems, Kansas Lib. approach, Iola
Copyright 1994 Reed company info, Inc. --This textual content refers to an out of print or unavailable version of this identify.

From the again Cover

This relocating account of a ache people's fight with a brutal heritage indicates how kingdom and get together experts stage-managed a countrywide trauma right into a heroic make the most that glorified the Communist occasion.

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Kinder schenken ihren Vätern normalerweise Schraubenschlüssel und ihren Müttern elektrische Dosenöffner. Wenn Sie also beschließen, sich auf der Erde als Mann zu geben, brauchen Sie Werkzeug. Elektrowerkzeuge sind besonders beliebt (sie sind groß, schwer, unhandlich und gefährlich), aber auch mit einem Sortiment von Schraubenziehern und Schraubenschlüsseln läßt sich schon etwas anfangen. Vergessen Sie nicht: Sie werden sie im Regelfalle nicht benutzen müssen; es reicht, wenn sie nur herum liegen.

Wenn Sie also vorhaben, eine gewisse Zeit auf dem Planeten zuzubringen, müssen Sie nicht nur in der Lage sein, stundenlang im Stau zu stehen, ohne die Nerven zu verlieren, Sie müssen auch die Reden von George Bush ertragen, der immer wieder erklärt, er habe Präsident werden wollen, um der Welt Frieden zu bringen. 9. Die Fähigkeit zu lügen. Menschen sind nicht nur fast grenzenlos belastbar, es ist ihnen auch nahezu unmöglich, die Wahrheit zu sagen. Das macht sie natürlich ein wenig unglaubwürdig.

Und Menschen sind gefährliche Feinde, denn sie gehen von der Theorie aus, daß sie sich besonders wohl fühlen, wenn jemandem, den sie nicht leiden können, etwas Schreckliches zustößt. 10. Die Fähigkeit, »im Kosmos zu wandeln« – das heißt, die Schön heit des Universums zu sehen, egal, wo Sie sich aufhalten. « Oder die pulsierenden Lichter einer Disko zu sehen und an die Sternenhaufen der äußeren Nebel zu denken. Oder fünf Menschen dabei zu beob achten, wie sie versuchen, die Restaurantrechnung aufzuteilen, und sich davon »zutiefst rühren« zu lassen.

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