: From Peter the Great to the time of Catherine the
Great . is .perhaPs the most romantic period of Russian history, and Mr. Poliakoff has chosen a justifiably romantic title for his ' story of this period. When Lovers Ruled Russia (Appleton,: 15S.) has been written to prove how often, if the truth were known, " political events would be found to be due to feminine interference." Mr. Poliakoff tells again the story of Peter the Great and his beaUtiful German mistress, Anna Mins, the daughter of a wine merchant, and of her successor, an Estonian• slave girl who later became Catherine I. " A woman's hair is long—her brain is small," was a favourite saying of the Muscovites. Intelligence was not expected of the weaker sex, but their influence appears, to have been great. When the Empress Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great died, she left " thirty thouSand dresses and not a single letter worth preserving." But this Elizabeth reigned in Russia for twenty-one years. Mr. Poliakoff gives us a sympathetic: picture of Catherine the Great, whose character is neatly summed up in a quotation from the epitaph she wrote for herself some time before her death : " She loved life." When Lovers Ruled Russia is excellent reading, written in a vivid and vigorous style. It should be a popular book.
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