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By ANGUS WILSON ' IN the latest edition of the Soviet Encyclopedia Catherine II appears as the supreme type of eighteenth-century auto- crat. Aristocratic and bourgeois historians, we are told, have attempted to make much of her liberal schemes, but, in truth, they can be reduced to a feNif minor educational inno- vations. Far from diminishing slavery, she extended it. Her foreign policy is described as aligning Russia with the despotic gendarmerie of Europe. Much emphasis is laid on her hostility to the French Revolution in the last years of her life. It is all quite true, of course:. and yet her Soviet heirs do not seem quite fair to the woman who did so much to lay the foundation of Russia's power. Peter the Great, a more remote figure, fares better, but then his place in the Marxist historical chain is less equivocal, his great technical innovations more in line with Soviet heroism than Catherine's westernising cultural pre- tensions. It is hardly to be expected that the witty, wily friend of Voltaire, Diderot and Melchior Grimm would find favour in the cultural world of social realism, still less the amorous, sensual woman who has been the heroine of so many bio- graphies romancies. Nevertheless this young German princess, who found Peter's creation in sad decay when she ascended the throne in 1762—a confused and defeatist foreign policy, an army and a navy in disorder, a bankrupt treasury—by sub- ordinating every interest to that of Russia, left the country of her adoption the richer for the Crimean seaboard and half of Poland. By her character, her industry and her exhaustleess taste for intrigue, she made Russia an important Power in Europe instead of a remote. half-Asiatic, barbarous land. She was a brilliant propagandist. And the work was all her own. Some flexibility in Marxist history. one feels, is required to give a place to so great an architect of Russian imperialism. favour, and by then the hatred her mistrust had bred in him was too deep to be effaced by any testamentary apologia. however carefully tricked out. For it must be said at once that Catherine's memoirs, however apparently vivacious, even garrulous and indiscreet, are a careful presentation of a half- truth, an easy-flowing, impressionist exercise in which the discreditable has been omitted. She presents herself as an innocent, unhappy young woman surrounded by persecution and intrigue, but she is also anxious to show her superior sophistication and intelligence. As a result, the true picture emerges between the lines. Nevertheless, top much emphasis. I think, has been laid upon the propagandist intentions of these memoirs. Nothing 'that Catherine wrote—certainly not the carefree letters to Grimm or the enthusiastic, culture-loving letters to Voltaire—was wholly straightforward: everything was intended for its public effect: but she undoubtedly loved to write, to let her incredible energy flow over from statecraft, court pomp and love-making on to paper in memoranda. comedies, letters, anything that would allow her lavish per- sonality to express itself. Her memoirs, therefore, despite their profusion of personalities. their shapelessness, their occasional intentional obscurities, are as exciting as they are unique. inflammation of the bowels and apoplexy. He had an inordinately small heart, quite withered.' There existed, however, another letter, first printed from a copy in 1881, which tells a different story. It is from Alexis Orloff, the brother of her new lover. It is a distracted note sent from Ropsha immediately after Peter's death. 'Little mother, he is no more. What were we thinking of to raise our hands against our Gospodar? But the mischief is done. He struggled behind the table with Prince Theodor, but we separated them and he is no more.' We may guess at least whom they were thinking to please. As Catherine wrote to Poniatowski, 'A book would not suffice to describe the officers' behaviour. The Orlovs shone by their art of leadership, their prudent daring...
Despite this cold-blooded duplicity of the woman whom Pushkin called 'a Tartuffe in petticoats,' the memoirs show clearly her charm, her intellectual powers, her genuinely liberal side. The court of the Empress Elizabeth to which Catherine came in 1744 was an incredible mixture of lavish splendour and squalid barbarism. It was 200 years or more behind Western Europe. Catherine had come from a satellite court of the civilised Berlin of Frederick II. The impact of these two worlds produced that strange, centaur-like creature, the enlightened despot, Great Catherine, Semiramis of the North. To read these memoirs tells us much about the eighteenth century and even more about the nature of Russia.
The new English edition is well translated and the additional documents of great interest. Mention is made of the English translation published by Alexander Herzen in 1859 from a frag- mentary copy that survived Nicholas I's order. It would have been of added interest if Herzen's preface had been reprinted. It is strange that no mention is made of Miss Catharine Anthony's translation, which, though not complete, was published in America in 1926.
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