![]() ![]() ![]() Most historians who compare the Russia she inherited (or usurped) in 1762 with the Russia she bequeathed in 1796, and who weigh the enormous odds (hostile neighbours, a reactionary aristocracy and clergy, an enormous country with ruined finances, no roads and a resentful enslaved peasantry), end by adulating her. One of only three Russian rulers to be awarded the sobriquet ‘the Great’, Catherine, like Peter the Great, polarises biographers. Even in the company of her peers – Queen Elizabeth I of England, Queen Christiana of Sweden, the empress Maria Theresa – Catherine the Great stands out as an empire-builder, a larger-than-life, exceptionally astute, lucky and energetic politician. ![]()
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