Terrible tsarinas

Member of the French Academy

Terrible Tsarinas -

Five Russian Women in Power

NAISSANCE D’UNE DAUPHINE (Gallimard)

A despondent hush fell upon the Winter Palace. While the stupor that marks the death of a sovereign is usually followed of an outburst of joy when the name of the successor is proclaimed, this time the minutes ticked by and the courtiers’ dejection, their uncertainty, stretched until the verge of alarm. It was as though Peter the Great were still dying. Some people even seemed to think that, without him, Russia had no future. Contemplating the enormous corpse, its hands clasped and eyes shut forever, all the notables who had come running at the news were astonished that this man of monstrous energy and audacity, who had pried the country out of its age-old lethargy and provided it with an administration, a police force, and an army worthy of a modern power, who had sloughed off the weight of Russian traditions and opened the nation to Western culture, and built a capital of endless splendor on a wasteland of mud and water, had not taken the trouble to name a successor.

It is true that, even a few months before, there had been nothing to suggest that he might meet such a sudden demise. As