Terrible tsarinas

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Catherine’s Reign: A Flash of Flamboyance These binges of drinking and lovemaking did not prevent Catherine from conducting herself like a true autocrat whenever she recovered her wits. She scolded and slapped her maidservants for a peccadillo, bellowed at her ordinary advisers, and attended without a misstep the tiresome parades of the Guard; she rode on horseback for hours at a time, to soothe her nerves and to prove to one and all that her physical stamina was beyond dispute. Since she had a sense of family, she brought in brothers and sisters (whose existence Peter the Great had always chosen to ignore) from their remote provinces. At her invitation, former Livonian and Lithuanian peasants, uncouth and aw kwardly stuffed into formal clothing, disembarked in the salons of St. Petersburg.

Titles of “Count” and “Prince” rained down on their heads, to the great scandal of the authentic aristocrats. Some of these new courtiers with calloused hands joined the rest of Her Majesty’s dinner crowd in the conclaves of good humor and licentiousness.

Nonetheless, however keen she may have been for this dissolute debauchery, Catherine always set aside a few hours to deal with public affairs. Certainly, Menshikov continued to dictate decisions in matters affecting the interests of the State, but, from one week to another, Catherine gained in confidence and began to stand up to her mentor, sometimes to the point of disputing his opinions.

While recognizing that she would never be able to do without the advice of this competent, devoted, wily man, she convinced him to convene around her a High Privy Council, including not only Menshikov but several other characters whose fidelity to Her Majesty was notorious: Tolstoy, Apraxin, Vice Chancellor Golovkin, Ostermann… This supreme cabinet relegated the traditional Senate to the sidelines, where they no longer discussed any questions of primary importance. It was at the instigation of the High Council that Catherine decided to ease the fate of the