History Online - Russian Tsars

Catherine II was beautiful, ambitious, bright, and a well educated woman. She was raised in the spirit of the Enlightenment and wanted to use these progressive ideas in her reign. She worked hard for the success of the country and during her reign Russia moved forward on the world stage and in the westernization begun by Peter the Great. For the first time since Peter the Great, Russia had a leader who was effective and deeply involved in the country's life.

The daughter of, as a French ambassador called her father, a prince of "quite exceptional imbecility", Catherine the Great faced a number of obstacles on her road to the Russian throne. Through a strange bevy of political marriages she was betrothed to the Grand Duke and potentially future Emperor of Russia, Peter III, and, due to her precocious nature, eventually made the most of it. Before all this, at the age of four, she met Frederick William I of Prussia, and, being a right little snot, refused to kiss the hem of his cloak: "His coat is so short I cannot reach it!" she said. King Frederick responded, "The child is impertinent!" thus condemning Catherine to an evening of beatings administered by her power-hungry mother, Johanna. Obviously, with such an ill-mannered child, the only way to get power in the family would be to marry it. Fortunately for Johanna, such an opportunity presented itself some years later (unfortunately for Johanna, she herself eventually fell out of favor with the court and was cast out of Russia): while Catherine, at the tender age of fourteen, was contemplating a marriage proposal offered to her by her uncle (!), Empress Elizabeth of Russia deigned that she was to marry Elizabeth's nephew, Peter III (Elizabeth was Peter the Great's daughter). The deal here was that Peter III was the Grand Duke, destined to Emperor of Russia, and Elizabeth wanted to see an heir past him before giving up the ghost herself, so she tried to marry him off in hopes of speeding things along. Unfortunately, Peter thoroughly lacked charm and was startlingly ugly.

She had been born Princess Sophia August Frederika on May 2, 1729 in the Baltic seaport town of Stettin, then a part of German Pomerania. Her father was an obscure German military princeling named Christian August, and her mother was Princess Joanna Elizabeth of Holstein-Gottorp. Her father was nominal ruler of the tiny principality of Anhalt-Zerbst, but the greater part of his life was spent as an officer in the service of Prussia. Little Sophia was nicknamed Feke or Figchen. Little is known about her early life, except that which Catherine related in her unfinished autobiography years later.

Figchen's mother, Joanna, was the sister of Karl August, who had been engaged to Elizabeth I of Russia before she took the throne. Karl August died suddenly and unexpectantly in Petersburg in 1727. Elizabeth kept a fondness for him and his family long after his death. In the early 1740's Elizabeth was searching for a wife for her nephew and heir, Peter. Fidgen was the right age and a sentimental choice for the romantic Empress of Russia. Figchen and her mother were summoned by Elizabeth to Russia late in 1743. The potential match of the young German princess and the heir to the Russian throne was actively promoted by her mother and the Prussian King, Frederick, who saw the alliance as a way to further Prussian interests at the court of St. Petersburg. He eyed Figchen carefully at a banquet in her honor in Berlin before she left for Russia. He always claimed he saw greatness in her, even when Sophia was a child.

Crossing the border into Russia she went from Riga to St. Petersburg and on to Moscow, finally meeting Elizabeth on February 9, 1744. Elizabeth was enchanted with her. Figchen immediately began to study Russian and Orthodoxy, with the end result of abandoning Lutheranism for the Russian Church, being re-christened Yekaterina - Catherine.