catalina

Catalina II of russiain the enlightened despotism

by alexandra dvornik

Who was Catalina ii?

Catalina II of Russia, called Catherine the Great, was reigning empress of Russia for 34 years, from June 28 1762, until her death, at age of 67. Catalina took up the legacy of Peter I of Russia

When Princess Sofia of Anhalt-Zerbst arrived in Russia in 1744 to marry the heir to the throne, nothing seemed to predict that she would become one of the most remembered tsarinas in history. She was barely 15 years old, she was a foreigner and belonged to the nobility of a small German principality. But it was this starting point that motivated her to strive to be accepted and even admired by her new country: she quickly learned Russian, entered the court and converted to Orthodox Christianity, receiving the name with which she would go down in history. : Yekaterina or Catherine

Catalina II of Russia

How Catherine II ascended to the throne?

Catherine's husband, Tsar Peter III, lacked the character that his aunt and his wife had. When Empress Elizabeth died in 1762, it soon became evident that this "boy in a man's body," as his wife disparagingly called him, was incapable of running an empire; Instead, he preferred to dedicate himself to hunting and recreating battles with tin soldiers in his rooms. He only occupied the throne from January 1762 to July of that same year, when Catherine, supported by a large part of the court, staged a coup d'état to seize power from him. He was granted it, but a month later he died under strange circumstances, possibly strangled by order of one of Catalina's lovers.

Catherine's territorial conquests

As monarch, Catherine was great in political and military ambition. He knew how to keep Frederick II of Prussia, the other political giant of the time, at bay. He seized territory from the Turks and founded the ports of Odessa and Sevastopol to provide his empire with an outlet to the Mediterranean through the Black Sea. He also turned Poland into a satellite country, placing a puppet king on its throne.

her art collection

A lo largo de su reinado, reunió la colección real de arte más importante de Europa, y fundó con ella el Hermitage de San Petersburgo. La pasión cosmopolita de Catalina por la arquitectura neoclásica, la pintura holandesa y flamenca, los jardines ingleses y los enciclopedistas galos fue el caldo de cultivo que hizo posible que, en los siglos siguientes, pudieran existir Tolstói, Dostoievski, Chéjov, Tchaikovski, Stravinski o Diaghilev.

legal reform

Catherine dedicated the first efforts of her reign to renewing the antiquated Russian legal code, which had been in force for more than a century and consisted of a tangle of contradictory and obsolete rules. To do this, he convened a national assembly with 564 delegates, who came to Moscow from all the provinces of the Empire. Each of them received a copy of the Nakaz, an extensive guide of legislative recommendations written by the empress herself over the course of two years. It was, in fact, a practical rehashing of the ideas of Baron de Montesquieu, John Locke and Cesare Beccaria.

bibliowebgrafy

https://www.infobae.com/opinion/2021/04/28/el-despotismo-ilustrado-y-el-populismo/

photo of the beginning

https://historia.nationalgeographic.com.es/a/catalina-grande-zarina-mas-poderosa_15860

2nd and 3rd pages

4th, 5th and 6th pages

https://www.lavanguardia.com/historiayvida/edad-moderna/20190623/47314214864/catalina-grande-logros-usurpadora.html