Terrible tsarinas

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Terrible Tsarinas colonization of the uncultivated plains of the southwest, creating the first secondary schools here and there, and founding the university in Moscow (to succeed the Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy in that city) and the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. Thus she maintained, against all the winds and tides, the trend of opening to the Western culture that Peter the Great had so urgently fostered, and without too much sacrificing the land’s traditions that were so cherished by the old nobility. While she recognized the defects of serfdom, she by no means planned to give up this secular practice. Let unrepentant utopians dream of a paradise where rich and poor, muzhiks and landowners, illiterate and erudite, blind and clear-sighted, young and old, minstrels and freaks would all have the same chance in life - she was too conscious of the harsh Russian reality to subscribe to such a mirage. On the other hand, whenever she found, within reach, an opportunity to extend the geographical limits of Russia, she became possessed, like a gambler at a betting table.

At the end of 1761, just when she was starting to doubt the abilities of her military chiefs, the fortress of Kolberg (in Pomerania) fell into the hands of the Russians. The attack was led by Rumiantsev, with a promising new general at his side - one Alexander Suvorov. This unhoped-for victory proved the empress right in holding out against the skeptics and the defeatists.

However, she hardly had the strength to enjoy the moment.

She had just spent a few weeks resting at Peterhof, but it had not brought her any relief. Returning to the capital, the satisfaction brought by her country’s military victory was soon effaced by the turmoil around her. She was haunted by the thought of death and caught up in rumors of dynastic intrigues, the grand duchess’s love scandals and the grand duke’s stupid, stubborn obsession with the triumph of Prussia. Shut up in her room, she suffered most of all from her legs, whose wounds bled in spite of every