In 1745, a random German girl marries the future tsar of Russia. Six months into her husband’s reign, she stages a coup to overthrow her husband, declares herself the new tsarina of Russia, and becomes one of the greatest rulers in Russian history.
She was born with the name Sophia, but she would later be known as Catherine the Great.
[insert intro]
Early Life
Sophia was born in a German province in 1729. Every woman I’ve covered on the podcast so far has had a father who was extremely stern and disciplined — and Sophia is no exception. Sophia’s father was a military general and a minor German prince. He was devoutly religious, and obsessed with duty, frugality, and being a good soldier.
At 37 years old, he still had no children to inherit his land. So his family arranged for him to marry a 15 year old girl named Johanna.
And Johanna is as different from her new husband as she could possibly be. She is frivolous, she loves gossip, she's vain. On top of that, she grew up in this glittering, lavish household, where she wore beautiful dresses, attended elegant balls, and loved to gossip. And then at age 15 she had to leave all of that behind and move to an extremely austere household with an almost 40 year old husband.
So, Joanna is obviously unhappy. She constantly believes that she is cut out for a more sophisticated, glamorous life. So she dreams of having a son who will advance so much in this world that he will bring her into exciting, glamorous society again.
When Johanna is 16, she gives birth and... it's not a boy. It's a girl. It’s actually our main character, Sophia, who will later rule all of Russia. But Johanna is so disappointed. She barely looks at her new daughter, and ignores her as much as possible.
A year later, Johanna gave birth to a son. She absolutely worshiped this baby boy, and lavished all her love and care and attention onto her son, while ignoring Sophia except to scold her extremely violently whenever anything upset her.
By being forced to tiptoe around a volatile mother and spoiled brother, Sophia got good at reading the room and controlling her emotional reactions, which actually prepared her very well for her later life. Luckily her father loved her, and so did her governess, who was a young French woman whose job was to educate and babysit her. Her governess gave her the kindness and attention that her mother withheld. Under her governess’s instruction, Sophia’s curiosity, critical thinking, and love for learning flourished — she asked questions even about the Bible, which no one questioned in those days. Sophia was also very physically active—she loved playing outside, especially with the other children, where she was a natural leader.
When Sophia turned 9, her mom Johanna decided it was time to start scouting for a husband for her — which was mostly just an excuse for Johanna to escape her boring house and go around the country visiting all her acquaintances.
During this time, Johanna repeatedly tells Sophia that she’s ugly, which may or may not have been true, but Sophia accepts it and realizes that in order to get a good husband and thus escape her mother, she needs to have an attractive personality. So she learns how to please people by being a good listener, and showing off her intelligence and sense of humor in a tasteful way. This comes in really handy when a series of fortunate events happen.
When Sophia is 10, Johanna’s acquaintance Elizabeth becomes the new tsarina, or empress, of Russia. Elizabeth had been engaged to Johanna’s brother, though he died right before the wedding. So Johanna immediately sends Elizabeth a letter congratulating her on her new position, and they start writing letters back and forth.
Soon, another lucky thing happens. Elizabeth has no children. Her closest living relative is her nephew Peter. So Elizabeth declares Peter to be her heir, to become the czar of Russia when she dies, and she summons him to come live at her palace.
Unfortunately, when she actually meets Peter, she is horrified. Peter at this time is 12 years old. He’s half Russian and half German, but his Russian mother died when he was an infant, so he has spent his whole life in Germany, brought up by a sadistic German tutor who beat him harshly for very little reason. As a result of the abuse, he’s extremely emotionally stunted, physically weak, stupid, and bad-tempered. On top of all that, he loves Germany. He thinks German culture is the best in the world. He really doesn’t want to move to Russia or to learn the Russian language, much less become the Russian czar.
So, Elizabeth is horrified by her nephew. She decides to find Peter a wife ASAP, so that they can produce a son who will hopefully be a better future tsar.
So this whole time, Joanna’s been exchanging letters with Elizabeth, and bragging about Sophia. So Elizabeth vets Sophia as a potential wife for Peter. They find that Sophia is strong and healthy, which is important because people constantly died from disease or childbirth back then, and that she’s intelligent and mature — plus the marriage will promote good relations between Russia and the Germans.
So, Elizabeth summons Sophia to Russia to meet Peter. Sophia is 14 years old, and she says goodbye to her home, her beloved father, and her governess — she will never see them or her homeland ever again. In a classic Johanna move, Johanna uses most of Sophia’s bridal money to buy nice dresses for herself, leaving Sophia with only a few simple dresses, and the two of them set off for Russia in a horse-drawn carriage.
Arrival in Russia
A few weeks later they arrive at Elizabeth’s royal court. Now you might think that navigating corporate politics is tough, but imagine playing politics at a place where one emotionally volatile person controls everything, and can exile you or your loved ones to Siberia whenever she feels like it. If someone decides to spread a rumor about you, whether because they dislike you or because they’re just jealous, you might easily fall out of favor.
So, Sophia sets to work politicking from day 1. Now that she’s been given this golden ticket to escape her mom and make something of her God-given intelligence and strength, Sophia is determined to do everything in her power to succeed. She later wrote: “My heart predicted there would be little happiness in my marriage to Peter; ambition alone sustained me through those years. My inmost soul never doubted that, sooner or later, I would become the sovereign Empress of Russia in my own right.“ Interestingly, in this way, she was actually a bit like her mother. Although Sophia cringed at how silly and vain Johanna was, Johanna was ambitious and had always believed she was cut out for greater things—just like Sophia now did.
Sophia realizes that the path to power for her is to be loved by everyone. She doesn’t officially marry Peter until a year later, so for the time being, she’s just this German fiancee who could be sent back to Germany (or Siberia) anytime. So she puts on this act of being this very artless, humble girl who’s just very good, very selfless, and filled with love and gratitude for her new home. And she does an amazing job.
When her mom Johanna goes into debt buying too many clothes, Sophia pays off Johanna’s debts with her own allowance. When Elizabeth exiles Sophia’s new friends to Siberia on a whim, Sophia displays no anger or resentment.
Sophia’s also careful not to outshine other women and cause them jealousy. One time, there was a lavish ball, and all the noble ladies were competing to wear the most beautiful dress they possibly could. Sophia instead showed up in this very plain white gown that made her look like a charming peasant girl, effectively signaling to everyone that she’s not trying to play the status game or to be better than anyone. The whole room is absolutely charmed by her simple, innocent look — especially Elizabeth, who is extremely vain and always needs to be the best dressed woman in any room. I think this is really smart of her, because jealous women can be really savage, and it would’ve been so easy for any of these Russian women to get jealous of Sophia’s privileged position and try to take her down.
Notably, she doesn’t seem to spend any time feeling sorry for herself for having to leave behind her home or marry this horrible husband or submit to the whims of Elizabeth and her mother — or if she did occasionally pity herself, she made sure to get it all out of her system when she was private and alone. Whenever she was around any people, she consistently behaved with a kindness and forgiveness that made her above reproach, such that no one could ever give Elizabeth any excuse to send her away.
Sophia also sets to work just becoming Russian, which earns her the love of the Russian public. She works really hard to learn the Russian language — she begs her Russian tutor to prolong their lessons, and stays up late at night studying her Russian books when she’s supposed to be sleeping. At one point she gets pneumonia, and word spreads that the young German princess had caught a terrible cold because she was up all night in the cold hallway studying Russian — which really endears her to the Russian public.
Her pneumonia gets pretty bad though, and at one point it looks like she might die. Johanna offers to call over a Lutheran pastor to comfort her in her impending death. But Sophia says no, I want a Russian Orthodox priest to guide me. And everyone in Russia is so touched by this—because, in those days, religion was a key cornerstone of everyone’s identity. Germans were Lutheran, and Russians were, well, Russian Orthodox. And so, in asking for a Russian Orthodox priest in her hour of death, Sophia is really signaling that she’s serious about giving up her German identity and becoming fully Russian. Now, we know that Sophia had been asking all these critical questions about religion from a young age, and was not very devout one way or the other, so this was almost certainly a calculated political move on her part. And it succeeds — when Sophia recovers from her sickness, she discovers that the Russian public loves her, and Elizabeth now sees her almost as her own daughter.
Soon after that, Sophia gets rebaptized by the Russian Orthodox church, and she takes the new name Catherine, which was Elizabeth’s mother’s name. So from now on, I’ll refer to Sophia as Catherine. The fact that Elizabeth chose to rename Catherine after her own mother shows how much Catherine has succeeded in winning her love.
Marriage to Peter
Catherine also does her best to get close to Peter. She obviously doesn’t like or respect him much, but she recognizes that he is the source of any power she will ever have in Russia; the only reason she’s here at all is to be his wife and have his child. She realizes that Peter hates all the people around him who try to control him, and feels suffocated by the destiny that he’s been prescribed — so she realizes that the way to get along with him is simply never to try to control him. She listens patiently to all his silly stories, plays his favorite silly games with him, and covers for him when he’s in trouble. He starts to see her as an older sister figure—he tells her his thoughts and asks her for advice.
Unfortunately though, Peter was just an abusive guy who liked to whip his dogs and hang rats from the bedroom roof, and their marriage was miserable. On top of that, Peter was completely uninterested in any sort of intimate relations with Catherine.
For 10 years, they sleep together in the same bed every night. They’re literally supervised by guardians who ensure that they get into bed together and then lock them in the bedroom to produce a future czar — but all Peter ever wanted to do is to cover the bed with toy soldiers and play with them until he fell asleep.
Finally, it is another man’s lust that solves the problem. A handsome noble named Saltykov seduces Catherine, and he and Catherine start having an affair. But back in those days, there was no birth control. Saltykov realizes that he needs to fix whatever is wrong with Peter, so that if Catherine gets pregnant, Peter will be able to claim plausible responsibility. Saltykov convinces Peter to get circumcised, and arranges for an experienced woman to tutor Peter in bed.
Thanks to the surgery and tutorials, Peter and Catherine finally start having marital relations. Catherine gets pregnant and gives birth to a boy named Paul. Elizabeth is delighted, and Catherine is relieved to have cemented her place in Russia as the mother of a future czar.
For 8 more years, Catherine endures a miserable life, tightly controlled by the whims of Elizabeth and her guardians, who exile her friends, forbid her from interfering in government affairs, and accuse her of arbitrary sins. Peter abuses her physically and verbally. Catherine barely gets to see her own son, since Elizabeth effectively adopts him. But none of this breaks Catherine’s spirit—her ambition and emotional discipline lets her endure all of it quietly, and keep herself sane by reading tons of books.
Rise to Power
At some point, Elizabeth’s health starts to fail. Catherine realizes that, if she wants to become the next tsar, it’s time to start amassing some allies. She manipulates Elizabeth into letting her spend more time outside, by basically threatening suicide, and she starts hanging out with the elite divisions of the Russian army.
Now previously, she had focused on charming everyone by being humble — but now, with the army officers, she works to impress them with her intelligence—she converses brilliantly with them about politics, statesmanship, and military strategy, thanks to all the books she reads. They also realize that, despite her German origins, Catherine is a passionate Russian nationalist.
Catherine even starts having a love affair with one of the army’s top leaders, Gregory Orlov, who’s super popular and influential.
In due time, Elizabeth dies. Some army officers want to stage a coup immediately to put Catherine on the throne. But she says no, it’s not time yet. She lets Peter take the throne first and show the Russian people just how terrible of a leader he is, to pave the way for her leadership.
And Peter does exactly that. He has never lost his childhood love for all things German. As soon as he becomes czar, he gives back a bunch of German territory that Russia had fought hard to conquer, forces the Russian army to wear German uniforms, and begins to transition the country to the German religion of Lutheranism.
All of this horrifies the Russian public, and Catherine and her army friends start to plot their coup.
One night, unexpectedly, Peter finds out about Catherine’s plan and arrests one of her friends. As soon as Catherine hears about the arrest, she abandons the original plan and decides to just stage the coup that night.
So Orlov, her lover, rounds up his army officers and leads them to the Winter Palace, where they all swear allegiance to Catherine. Surrounded by the cheering army, Catherine stands and declares herself the new Tsarina Catherine II of Russia.
She then leads the soldiers on an epic nighttime horseback ride to go find Peter. Peter doesn’t even attempt to fight. Confronted with Catherine’s power and popularity, Peter just gives in. He signs a notice declaring that he’s officially relinquishing all authority and begs Catherine for mercy.
Catherine locks him up in a prison. A week later, Peter gets into a fight with some of the prison guards, and the guards kill him.
A few weeks later, at the age of 33, in a lavish and very traditional ceremony, Catherine has a crown placed upon her head and officially becomes tsarina of Russia. Her crown is custom-made with so many dazzling jewels that it weighs almost five pounds and remains a Russian national treasure to this day. The whole nation is stunned by the majestic presence and thoroughly Russian demeanor of this girl who, up til now, had seemed like a humble German princess who donned simple white dresses to please everyone with her humility. Overnight, she morphed into the regal and confident ruler of the biggest country in the world, almost twice the size of continental Europe and with 3 times the population of Great Britain.
And she wasn’t satisfied with merely sitting on the throne; she was determined to win glory and leave an unforgettable legacy. She planned to earn herself a place in history next to Peter the Great and Frederick the Great.
International Affairs
Back then, every great ruler needed to conquer new territory and build new cities. For 200 years, every Russian tsar had eyed two valuable pieces of territory: Poland, which had rich natural resources and provided a buffer against invasion, and the Black Sea, which would give Russia its first warm water port. And for 200 years, Russian czars had tried and failed to conquer them. Until Catherine took over.
She started with Poland. Soon after she took power, the king of Poland died. Catherine jumped at the opportunity to ensure that their new king would be friendly to Russia. Luckily, a few years ago, she’d had a love affair with a Polish ambassador to Russia, and this Polish ambassador still loved her. So she bribed and manipulated the Polish nobles to make her ex lover the new Polish king. With the Polish king under her thumb, Catherine ensured that Poland stayed weak and didn’t form alliances with stronger countries. Then, as the Polish people stood defenseless, Catherine dismantled their country piece by piece, incorporated their most fertile lands into Russia, and crushed every attempt by the Polish people to rebel against Russian rule. For the next 123 years, Poland was wiped off the face of the map.
This might sound really unethical by today’s standards, but back then it was a dog eat dog world, where war was extremely common. If you didn’t strengthen your own country, then someone else would invade you—and Catherine had just hugely strengthened her country, and shifted the entire power balance in Eastern Europe in Russia’s favor for the next decades.
Catherine then turned her attention to the Ottoman Empire. Her spies told her that the Ottoman army had grown quite weak. To her delight, the Ottomans started protesting her actions in Poland—which was a golden opportunity to go to war with them and conquer some of their de territory. She reorganized the Russian army, embraced modern weapons technology, personally selected army commanders, rebuilt the navy, and sent them out to war. She also convinced other countries to lend her money to pay for all of this. Catherine sustained the resources and morale to fight for 6 years, during which the Russians won stunning victories, including its first naval victory in 900 years. When the war ended, Catherine had gained the entire northern coast of the Black Sea (which came with Russia’s first warm water port), the Crimea, and huge chunks of Ukraine. These pieces of territory are so strategically valuable and so resource-rich that, even today, as we speak, Russia still finds it worthwhile to fight to reclaim these areas in the face of UN sanctions and criticism.
Thus, in taking over multiple territories that Russians have and continue to dream about them for centuries, Catherine cemented her legacy in the realm of international affairs.
Domestic Affairs
Now let’s talk about domestic affairs. For a long time, Russia had been regarded by the rest of Europe as a giant frozen tundra filled with impoverished serfs, no culture, cities with open sewers and run-down infrastructure, and no scientific innovations — and honestly, that was kind of accurate. Today, you might think of Russia as having great musicians and writers like Tchaikovsky and Tolstoy, but all of these guys lived after Catherine’s time — as of 1762 when Catherine took power, Russia did not have any of this great culture.
Meanwhile, for the past century, other European countries had been rapidly modernizing. France sat at the epicenter of the Age of Enlightenment and produced great philosophers like Voltaire, and Descartes, who are still read in college classrooms today and greatly influenced the US Constitution. They turned Paris into the most modern city in the world, with the first ever sidewalks, public parks, and street lighting, and clothing shops that dictated fashion trends all across Europe.
Peter the Great, who became czar 80 years before Catherine, had achieved greatness in large part because he tried to modernize Russia and catch up to the great European powers. He had founded the city of St. Petersburg and modeled it after the modern European city of Amsterdam.
Catherine set out to continue Peter the Great’s legacy. In her first two years in power, she wrote a famous treatise called the Nakaz that articulated how she believed Russia ought to be governed, drawing heavily on liberal enlightenment principles around freedom and equality. Notably, in her very first sentence of the Nakaz, Catherine wrote that Russia is a European power — a controversial statement since Russia’s territory reached all the way across Asia, going further east than China. But it reflected her earnest intent to liberalize Russia under the European model.
In the Nakaz, Catherine advocated for equality of all men under the law, which was pretty bold considering that, in those days, 80% of the Russian population consisted of serfs, who were essentially slaves who worked the land and could be bought, sold, beaten and killed by their owners with impunity. She also advocated for limiting the rights of nobles, and abolishing the use of torture — though she still believed in monarchy over democracy. Her treatise was rapidly translated into many languages and became a widely-discussed philosophical writing of her time. It paved the way for the emancipation of the serfs a century later. And it obviously inspired people to view Russia as a modern, enlightened country.
She further cemented her and Russia’s reputation by becoming close friends with some of the most influential philosophers of her time, most notably Voltaire and Diderot. She discussed political philosophy with them, sent them gifts, and genuinely impressed them so much that they wrote op-eds about how great she was and praised her whenever they met other influential statesmen or intellectuals (which was very often).
Catherine also wrote other less philosophical laws to modernize Russia.
Back then, Russia measured 6,000 miles across and 3,000 miles up and down, and the only means of reliably communicating across all those miles was by sending a letter, delivered by horseback, to someone who knew how to read—and only 5% of the population knew how to read. Imagine having to govern a country under these constraints.
On top of this, Russia’s existing laws and government structures were convoluted, bureaucratic, and left lots of room for corruption. So Catherine got to work completely rewriting many parts of the legal code — fundamentally restructuring the local and regional government systems to be more efficient, establishing schools and hospitals, and making schools teach science instead of just religion. Of the 1200 pages that still remain of her local government overhaul, 800 pages were written by Catherine herself — which is a testament to how personally involved she was with writing laws, rather than getting her advisors to do it for her.
She also founded 216 new towns and several major cities, including Odessa, which is the third largest city in Ukraine today. She established Russia’s first societies for learning and research, and civic spaces like theaters and academies for them to meet. She helped popularize the newly developed smallpox vaccine by very publicly getting herself vaccinated. She instated better economic policies, allowed greater freedom of the press, and weakened the power of the church over Russian life and thought. All this made Russia a more open and free-thinking society, and laid the foundation for the following century of Russian flourishing that produced the cultural exports like Tchaikovsky, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky that we know Russia for today.
How did she manage all this?
Takeaways on how she succeeded
The first thing was just being highly intelligent and making good decisions. She had excellent judgment about people, which obviously helped in everything from winning Elizabeth’s love, to getting allies to overthrow Peter, to making her ex-lover the king of Poland. It also meant she was able to select super competent advisors, army commanders, and other bureaucrats, whose competence allowed Catherine to spend an unusual amount of time on intellectually demanding tasks like writing laws, treatises, and letters to philosophers. Her writings are especially impressive considering that her formal education ended when she left Germany at age 14 — after that, her only additional coursework was in Russian language and religion. The modern equivalent would be someone dropping out after freshman year of high school, and later writing tens of thousands of pages of legal documents and philosophical arguments. I think this is partly thanks to her natural intelligence, partly her natural curiosity about the world, and also partly that she was locked in a castle for 18 years with very little to do besides read books and observe all the petty dramas of the court around her, which I’m sure must’ve both educated her mind and sharpened her intuition about interpersonal dynamics.
The second thing was just how tenaciously ambitious she was, and how she was willing to sacrifice everything for power. Of course, early in life she left behind her homeland and father to go marry Peter. She also broke up with several men who she loved deeply, when their ambition threatened her power. Perhaps saddest of all, she sacrificed her relationship with her son Paul. As the closest direct descendent of the Russian royal family, Paul ought to have been tsar instead of Catherine, who didn’t even have any Russian blood. At the very least, it would’ve been nice for Catherine to let Paul be her co-ruler. But Catherine really didn’t want to give up any power. So she kept him repressed. She completely refused to give him any responsibilities, and exiled anyone in the government who seemed to like Paul, to ensure that Paul couldn’t develop any political power. Catherine succeeded in preventing Paul from ever overthrowing her—but at the cost that he hated her for most of his life. It really does illustrate that, if you want big power, you need to be willing to pay big costs.
Finally, Catherine excelled at regulating her emotions. A mentor of mine, who’s been a company CEO for over a decade, believes that managing your personal psychology is the hardest and most important part of being a long-term CEO — and Catherine, who ruled Russia for 34 years, did this very well. She recognized that she had a lifelong need for affection and companionship; she wrote in her memoirs that she “could not live a day without love.” So she made sure she always had a male companion to satisfy this need for love. Catherine gets a bit of a bad reputation for this, and at some points it did get kind of weird, like how she would pay handsome men in their 20s to keep her company when she was in her 50s and 60s. However, beyond buying these guys gifts with state funds, she didn’t really let them get in the way of her work — and this strategy seemed to successfully keep her mostly emotionally stable, sane, and motivated into her later years of power, even as her health declined, which is much better than you can say of most monarchs of her time.
This ties closely to what I think was her most important quality of all, which was her adaptability. Catherine never let her past or her habits negatively influence what she needed to do in the present. She always left all her baggage at the door—and there were many doors in her life. When she arrived in Russia, she left her native German culture completely behind. When she became tsarina, she instantly and seamlessly discarded the humble, modest persona that had led her up to that point. Every time she discarded an overambitious lover, she immediately found a new man to fill the emotional void so she could stay focused on her work.
Thanks to all this, Catherine is one of only 3 Russian monarchs ever to be known as “the Great.” And to this day, she remains the last female ruler of Russia.
If you liked this episode, please share it with your friends and rate it on your podcast app. Thanks for listening.