Of all the empresses, Catherine II (later known as
Catherine the Great) deserves special note. She
combined an avid personal interest in Enlightenment
ideas (she was quite well-read and corresponded with
Diderot, Voltaire, and d'Alembert) with the unbending
conviction that autocracy was the only thing that
could handle Russia. Under her rule Russia
experienced the "golden age of the nobility" where
the aristocracy was permitted to forego state service
and concentrate on their personal affairs. The
Russian Empire expanded into the Crimea and, together
with Prussia and Austria, partitioned Poland three
times, controlling Warsaw until 1918. Under
Catherine, Russia grew into the great European power
Peter the Great had envisaged one hundred years
before. And though it is common knowledge that she
had quite a voracious sexual appetite, the legend
about the horse is just not true.
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