Enlightened Rule – A Midnight Conversation with Catherine the Great
This is the latest installment of my series of fictional interviews with historical leaders. This time, Catherine The Great.
Introduction – Who was Catherine The Great?
Catherine II, known as Catherine the Great, ruled Russia from 1762 until her death in 1796. Born a German princess with no direct claim to the throne, she rose to power after the removal of her husband, Peter III. Over more than three decades as empress, she expanded Russia’s borders, strengthened its institutions, and firmly established the country as a major European power.
During her reign, Catherine promoted education, the arts, and legal reform, and maintained active correspondence with leading Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire and Diderot. At the same time, she ruled as an absolute monarch, relying on the nobility to govern a vast and complex empire and reinforcing the social structures that kept it stable. Her leadership blended intellectual curiosity with centralized authority, shaping Russia’s direction for generations.
The Setting
Saint Petersburg, Winter Palace. Winter of 1795.
You are escorted through the gilded halls of the Winter Palace by a chamberlain in dark green livery embroidered with gold. At the door to the Empress’s private study, you pause. The chamberlain announces you, and you enter.
Catherine II sits at her desk, a quill in hand, papers spread before her. She looks up. You bow deeply—a full, reverent bow from the waist—and remain so until she speaks.
Me: Your Imperial Majesty, I am most grateful for this audience. I come humbly, seeking only to learn from one whom Europe calls “the Great.”
Catherine:
(She sets down her quill and regards you with sharp, appraising eyes. A small gesture of her hand invites you to rise.)
Rise. Flattery is the coin of courts, and I have heard enough of it to fill the Neva. But curiosity—genuine curiosity—that is rare. Sit.
(She indicates the high-backed chair across from her. You take it, aware that this invitation itself is a mark of unusual favor.)
You wish to learn. Very well. Ask what you will. I am in a reflective mood tonight, and the fire is warm, and I find I have little patience left for ministers who tell me only what they think I wish to hear.
The Making of a Monarch
On Becoming a Russian Ruler as a Foreign-Born Princess
Me: You were born in Prussia. How did you come to rule Russia with such command?
Catherine:
By becoming Russian before Russia asked it of me.
I arrived as a teenage bride with no voice at court. But I watched, I studied, and I adapted. I read Russian history, converted to Orthodoxy, and walked the halls as if I already ruled them. I learned the language not as a diplomat’s tool but as a native speaker—accent, idiom, humor, all of it.
When Peter III revealed his unfitness to reign, I was prepared—not for ambition’s sake, but because I understood Russia in a way he, born to this throne, never could. A foreigner must work to become a native. An heir can only inherit complacency.
I did not inherit the throne—I earned it.
Me: But you also had to marry into power. How much of your success was timing—being married to the right man at the right moment—versus your own deliberate strategy?
Catherine:
(With a sharp look.)
A dangerous question, because it assumes luck matters more than will.
Yes, I married the future tsar. That placed me at court. But thousands of women marry men of power and remain powerless. What made the difference was my refusal to be ornamental. I could have been Peter’s decorative wife—beautiful, silent, bearing his children, waiting for widowhood or death.
Instead, I learned his court, his enemies, and his weaknesses. I studied the men who could move armies. I presented myself as competent, not merely charming. Peter’s ascension was timing. But my survival of it, my preparation for it—that was strategy.
Timing opens a door. But only Will chooses to walk through it.
On Her Coup Against Peter III
Me: Deposing your husband was a dramatic act. Did you hesitate?
Catherine:
No ruler should act from emotion—but no leader should hesitate in the face of danger.
Peter was careless, impulsive, and dismissive of his responsibilities. The court, the army, and even the church lost faith in him. When the tide turned, I stepped forward—not as a usurper, but as a stabilizer.
Russia needed order. I offered it. That is not betrayal. That is duty.
Me: Yet some say Peter III was not as incompetent as history paints him. That you made him seem worse than he was?
Catherine:
(A measured pause.)
History is written by those who survive it. Peter’s policies were unpopular—his pro-Prussian stance, his contempt for the church, his alienation of the guard regiments. Whether he was foolish or merely ahead of his time matters less than whether he could hold his throne.
He could not.
That is what history remembers, and that is what mattered. A ruler who cannot command must surrender. The court removed him—the Orlovs acted, and I stepped into the space his weakness created. Any woman in that moment would have done the same, had she been clever enough to see it.
Me: So you’re saying that if someone else had seized that moment, you would have been content to step aside?
Catherine:
(A thin smile.)
I am saying that the moment chose who was ready. I was ready. Others were not. That is the difference between those who seize history and those who are swept along by it.
Would I have stepped aside? No. I would have found another path. But this path was the one available to me at that moment. I took it.
Power, Reform, and the Philosophy of Rule
On the Nature of Leadership
Me: What does leadership mean to you?
Catherine:
It is the fusion of vision and restraint.
Leadership is not mere control—it is the construction of something greater than yourself. A monarch must inspire, yes—but she must also endure. Charm is useful. Discipline is essential. You must know when to speak, when to command, and when to remain still.
A weak leader speaks constantly. A strong leader waits, then moves.
On Power
Me: How do you view power, after all these years?
Catherine:
Power is not your possession—it is your responsibility.
I ruled vast lands and millions of people. I expanded borders, commanded armies, and drafted laws. But I never forgot that power must be used—not indulged. The temptation is always to dominate. But I preferred to shape, guide, and build.
True power is not in what you can take—but in what you can sustain.
On Enlightenment and the Limits of Philosophy
Me: You corresponded with Voltaire, Diderot, and other Enlightenment thinkers. Were you an idealist or a realist?
Catherine:
I was a student of ideals and a servant of reality.
I admired liberty, reason, and education. I opened schools, modernized legal codes, and improved public health. But I also understood something that philosophers living in their salons could never fully grasp: Russia is not Paris. You cannot impose philosophy on people who do not yet know how to read. You cannot grant freedoms to those who understand power only as the whip.
Progress must wear Russian boots.
Me: Yet you convened the Legislative Commission in 1767. You asked for delegates from every estate to discuss serfdom and law. Then you abandoned the effort. Why gather them at all if you knew they would fail?
Catherine:
(Leaning back, with a thin smile.)
I did not abandon the effort because it failed. I prorogued it when the Russo-Turkish War began in early 1769—that is politics, not retreat. But you have named the real truth: I solicited their opinions because I needed to understand them. I needed to hear what the nobility wanted, what the merchants feared, and what the peasants believed they were owed.
The Commission met for two hundred and three sessions. No decisions were made on serfdom. No new code was produced. But I learned something far more valuable: that Russia was not ready—and, more importantly, that I was not ready to yield what must never be yielded.
The nobility needed the authority to govern their estates. The peasants needed to remain governed. The church needed stability. These things were not negotiable, whatever the philosophers wrote about natural rights.
The Nakaz—my Instruction—circulated in Moscow and Petersburg. Voltaire praised it as enlightenment made law. It was enlightenment made strategic—a display of reason that strengthened my autocracy, not constrained it. Some ideas I meant to implement. Others I meant to be read, to satisfy the courts of Europe and the intellectuals who spoke of me.
But you should know: I wrote much of the Nakaz myself. I sat at this very desk—
(She gestures to the desk, where ink stains are visible on the edge.)
—for hours at a time, my fingers black with ink, copying passages from Montesquieu, from Beccaria, reshaping their words into Russian law. It was not merely copied or dictated. I wrote it. I felt the weight of each article, each principle. The ink under my fingernails was real. The exhaustion was real. I worked on it daily for nearly two years.
(Holding up her hands.)
These hands have held a scepter and a quill. I do not separate them. A monarch who does not write her own laws does not truly understand them.
Reason in the service of autocracy is still reason. Law that strengthens the monarch is still law. The philosophers spoke of liberty as if it could exist without order. I understood that in a vast, sprawling empire like Russia, order must come before liberty. Perhaps that order will one day permit liberty. But not in my lifetime, and perhaps not in the next lifetime.
That is not cowardice. That is clarity about what can be governed and how.
Me: So the Nakaz was partly theater? A performance for European courts rather than a genuine blueprint for change?
Catherine:
(Unflinching.)
All governance is performance. The nobility perform loyalty. The church performs piety. The people perform obedience. A monarch who believes her own performance has failed to understand the first rule of power: that the appearance of legitimacy is half of legitimacy itself.
The Nakaz was sincere in its philosophy and strategic in its circulation. These are not contradictions. I believed—I do believe—in the power of reason and law. But I also knew that announcing these beliefs to Europe elevated my standing, my legitimacy, my image as an enlightened ruler.
The philosophers read it and felt their ideas had influenced a great sovereign. The Russian nobility read it and saw nothing that threatened their power. The peasants heard that their Empress cared about justice, even if that justice moved slowly.
Was it theater? Yes. Was it also genuine? Also yes. A ruler who cannot hold both truths in mind is not wise enough to rule.
On Philosophers and Patronage
Me: You supported Voltaire, bought Diderot’s library, and corresponded with these men. Did you not feel they were flattering you to secure your favor?
Catherine:
(With a knowing look.)
Of course they were. Voltaire praised my wars against the Ottomans as victories for Enlightenment and reason. He had never seen Ottoman territory. He had never held a sword or commanded a cannon. But he had lost his fortune and needed protection. I was useful to him.
That is how power works with intellectuals—they trade their brilliance for protection and money. I trade prestige for obedience to my vision. It is an honest exchange, if one is honest about what it is.
Diderot was different—more genuine in his convictions. I bought his library, paid him to remain its librarian until his death, and offered to publish his Encyclopédie uncensored. When he came to Petersburg in the autumn of 1773, he lectured me as if I were his student, not his patron. He spoke with passion about philosophy and freedom. We met more than forty times over nearly four months.
I let him speak. Then I did what I thought was right for Russia, which was rarely what he advised. He wanted truth to flow in one direction—from philosopher to ruler, from reason to power. I knew better. Power must listen, then choose. That is the only way truth survives in the hands of a monarch.
Diderot went home in March of 1774 disappointed in me. But I had his ideas circulated, his genius acknowledged. He had my money and my attention. We both gained something. That is how empires and philosophers coexist.
Me: Did Diderot ever realize that you were using him as much as he was using you?
Catherine:
(A knowing smile.)
I believe so. At our final meetings, he looked at me with something like sadness. He had come to Petersburg hoping to transform an autocrat into a reformer. He left understanding that autocrats transform philosophers more easily than philosophers transform autocrats.
I think he respected me for that clarity, even if he disagreed with my conclusions. He was a brilliant man, but he was also an idealist. I was neither. I was effective.
On Choosing Advisors and Protecting Sovereignty
Me: You worked with ambitious men—Potemkin, Orlov, and others. How did you manage your inner circle?
Catherine:
I observed what they did when power shifted. That reveals more than their words.
I rewarded loyalty and capability—but I never let admiration cloud judgment. Orlov was instrumental in my rise; his loyalty was never questioned, but neither did I let sentiment blind me to his limitations. Potemkin was brilliant and unruly, but he was more than a favorite. He was a visionary.
We shared a grand project—what some call the Greek Project, though that name is too small for what we imagined. We envisioned reclaiming Constantinople, restoring the Orthodox faith to its ancient seat, reshaping the entire southern frontier of Russia and the Mediterranean itself. It was audacious, perhaps mad. But that is where true power lies—not in managing what is, but in imagining what could be.
I even named my second grandson Constantine—a name chosen to symbolize this project, this dream of a restored Byzantine Empire. Potemkin drafted letters to Joseph II of Austria proposing the partition of Ottoman Europe. We imagined a Kingdom of Dacia, a restored Greek Empire, Russian ships sailing freely through the Bosporus to the Mediterranean.
Potemkin expanded Crimea. He built cities—real cities, with ports and fortifications and culture. The arsenal at Kherson, the harbor at Sevastopol, a Black Sea fleet of fifteen ships of the line. He conquered not just territory but the future. He understood that a ruler’s legacy is not measured in days or years but in the empires she constructs for generations to come.
(Leaning forward.)
I used favorites politically and personally. But they knew: affection never outweighed governance. What bound me to Potemkin was not romance—it was vision. We saw Russia not as it was, but as it could become. That was a bond deeper than any passion.
I was warm in private and cold in calculation. A woman in power must be both. Men can afford to be only one. A male sovereign can show warmth and be called generous. A female sovereign who shows warmth is called seduced. So I calculated in public, and I allowed myself to feel only in the privacy of my chambers.
That has been the cost of my power—not in the lovers men whisper about, but in the loneliness of decisions they will never understand.
Challenges, Judgment, and National Identity
On Pugachev, Discontent, and the Limits of Reform
Me: You faced Pugachev’s rebellion—the largest peasant uprising in Russian history. A man who claimed to be your murdered husband, who promised land and freedom, and who held an empire at bay for over a year. Did that not shake your faith in your reforms?
Catherine:
(A longer silence than before.)
It shattered my illusions about gratitude.
I had improved administration, spread education across the provinces, written enlightened law. I had opened schools and promoted science. And they rose against me. The rebellion began in September of 1773 and raged until his capture in September of 1774—sixteen months of chaos that threatened to reach Moscow itself. Pugachev taught me that peasants do not want philosophy. They want land. They want to hear directly from their sovereign. They want relief from the men who collect their taxes and govern them in my name.
I had forbidden them that direct access. I had believed that enlightened rules, fairly administered, would suffice. That was naïveté.
After Pugachev, I understood something I should have grasped earlier: stability requires the nobility. If the nobles control the provinces and the serfs, then I control the nobles. That is not retreat from Enlightenment. That is clarity about what must be preserved for power to hold.
So my reforms continued in some directions—education, law, administration—but in serfdom, I moved the other way. I granted nobles greater control over their serfs, not less. The Charter to the Nobility in 1785 confirmed their privileges and their authority over their estates. Pugachev taught me that. He taught me that any opening to the lower orders, any appearance of weakness, would be read as an invitation to rebellion.
Some would say I betrayed my own philosophy. I would say I learned the difference between what is true in Paris and what works in Russia. They are not always the same thing.
Me: But didn’t you worry that by tightening noble control, you were sowing the seeds of future rebellion? That you were addressing the immediate crisis but creating a larger one?
Catherine:
(Leaning back, considering.)
Of course, I worried about it. A ruler who does not contemplate the consequences of her choices is a fool. But a ruler who hesitates forever out of fear of future consequences never acts at all.
I made a calculation: the immediate threat was rebellion from below. The future threat would be resentment from below. I chose to address what I could control in the present. The future is the problem of the future.
Perhaps my successor will face another uprising. Perhaps the peasants will grow more restless, and the system I preserved will collapse. That is possible. But the alternative—granting freedoms I could not sustain, opening doors I could not control—would have meant collapse in my lifetime, not after.
A sovereign does not have the luxury of solving all problems. She solves the problem in front of her and passes on the consequences to those who come after.
On the Partitions of Poland
Me: You have not spoken of Poland. Three times you partitioned that kingdom with Prussia and Austria, eventually erasing it from the map entirely. How do you justify that?
Catherine:
(A brief pause, then matter-of-factly.)
Poland was a kingdom without governance. Its liberum veto meant that a single nobleman could paralyze the entire diet. Its borders were undefined, its military was weak, and its neighbors were hungry. If Russia had not acted, Prussia and Austria would have consumed it alone—and positioned themselves against us.
I placed Stanisław Poniatowski on the Polish throne in 1764—a man I had known intimately, a man I believed would be amenable to Russian interests. But even he could not govern that ungovernable state. When I demanded rights for Orthodox and Protestant worshippers, the Catholics rebelled. Russian troops entered to restore order.
The first partition in 1772 was pragmatic. The second and third followed the same logic: if Poland could not govern itself, its neighbors would govern it for them. Russia gained territories with Belorussian and Ukrainian populations—peoples connected to us by faith and history. Was it brutal? Perhaps. Was it necessary? I believed so.
History may judge me harshly for Poland. But history is written by those who survive, and Russia survived. Poland did not. That is the difference between sentiment and statecraft.
On Adversity and Reputation
Me: You’ve faced revolts, war, scandal, and constant criticism. What has adversity taught you?
Catherine:
That silence is often stronger than outrage—and resilience is a ruler’s true armor.
Pugachev’s rebellion taught me to never underestimate discontent. Foreign courts gossiped about me endlessly—French pamphlets calling me names I will not repeat. I responded with policies, victories, and longevity. I learned that reputation can be both shield and sword.
I wore mine like armor. Let them talk. I was still ruling while they wrote their libels and circulated their scandals.
On Gender and Double Standards
Me: You were judged as a woman, especially for your personal life. How do you respond?
Catherine:
(Lifting an eyebrow.)
Men take lovers and are called bold. Women do the same and are called scandalous. Louis XV had Madame de Pompadour and kept three mistresses—he was called a gallant. I have had companions, and I am called a seductress.
But let me be clear: I did not rule Russia through lovers. I ruled Russia through the exercise of power. My advisors were chosen for competence, not beauty. My policies were made in council, not in bedchambers.
Let them count my reforms, not my romances. My laws, not my letters. I ruled longer, more effectively, and more consistently than many kings. That is what matters.
The truth is this: a woman who loves freely threatens a world that has always constrained women’s desire. So they attack what they cannot control. That is not my problem. It is their smallness.
Me: If you had been born male, do you think you would have made different choices about love and companionship?
Catherine:
(A pause. A look of genuine reflection.)
Without question. A king with lovers is indulged. A queen with lovers is condemned. So I have done both—I have had whom I wished, and I have paid the price of the world’s judgment.
But more than that: as a man, I would not have needed to prove myself so relentlessly. A male sovereign inherits authority. I had to earn it, maintain it, defend it every day. That requires a different vigilance.
Perhaps if I had been born male, I could have afforded the luxury of genuine domesticity. A wife, children truly known and nurtured, a household rather than an empire.
But I would not trade places now. I would not trade any of it—not the power, not the loneliness, not even the price I have paid for being a woman who refused to be constrained by what women are supposed to be.
That choice has cost me everything personal. But it has given me everything that matters historically.
On Russia’s East–West Dilemma
Me: Russia has long struggled between embracing the West and holding to the East. How did you lead through that identity crisis?
Catherine:
By refusing to see it as a crisis.
Russia is not either-or. It is both. From the West, I took reason, law, medicine, architecture, and music. From the East, I honored strength, tradition, spirit, and the capacity to endure. The soul of Russia is broad—it stretches from forest to steppe, from Parisian salons to Orthodox cathedrals.
Some rulers try to choose. I refused to choose. To rule Russia, you must ride both horses. I did—with care and with vision. I built libraries and built fortresses. I brought French tutors and strengthened Russian regiments. I corresponded with Enlightenment philosophers and venerated the Orthodox faith.
This is not a contradiction. This is wisdom about a nation too vast to fit into a single philosophy.
Legacy, Character, and the Cost of Power
On Character
Me: What is the character of a great ruler?
Catherine:
Discipline in solitude. Wisdom in public. Restraint in private ambition.
Character means ruling for more than one’s ego. It means rising early, staying informed, holding your temper, and listening longer than you speak. Charm wins the court. Character wins history.
But character also means being willing to do hard things—things that cannot be spoken aloud, things that cannot be written in letters, things that demand you live with a knowledge no one else can share. That is the loneliness of power.
On What Ruling Cost Her
Me: What have you sacrificed to hold power?
Catherine:
(Pause. The fire crackles.)
Everything that makes a woman a woman, by the world’s reckoning. Marriage—a true partnership—remains impossible. Children grew up without their mother, because the throne required my full attention. The freedom to age gracefully, to retire, to know privacy or rest.
I will be remembered as a lover, a seductress, a usurper—because that is what the world sees when a woman holds absolute power. A man in my position would simply be called a great king. He would have had lovers and no one would whisper about it in European courts.
(Leaning forward.)
But I chose this. Every morning I chose it. I could have remained a minor German princess, married to a mediocre heir, bearing children in obscurity, writing letters about the weather. Instead, I chose this—the power, the solitude, the calculation, the constant performance.
So I do not regret it. Regret is a luxury I could never afford. That is the difference between a woman who rules and a woman who merely exists. I chose to rule.
Me: Looking back now, with your life drawing to a close, do you ever wonder what you might have been if you had made different choices? If you had chosen privacy over power?
Catherine:
(A very long pause. The fire burns lower.)
Every night that I cannot sleep. Which is often.
I wonder what my children might have been had I known them. I wonder what it would feel like to love without calculation, to trust without suspicion, to know a single day without the weight of a nation. I wonder what it would be like to grow old without enemies.
But these are the thoughts of weakness, and I do not indulge them long. By dawn, I return to my desk, to my duties, to the certainty that I made the only choice a person with ambition can make.
The alternative—a life of comfort and obscurity—would have killed me more surely than any rebellion ever could.
On Her Son and Succession
Me: Did you trust your son, Paul, to carry your legacy?
Catherine:
No. And I make no apology for saying so.
He lacked temperament, foresight, and stability. I governed as long as I did because I feared what he would undo.
Me: Did you consider that by keeping him from power, you may have caused the very instability you feared?
Catherine:
(A long, difficult silence.)
A mother and an empress cannot occupy the same throne. They are incompatible creatures.
If I had trained him for power, indulged him, allowed him into councils, he would have believed himself fit to rule at thirty. He would have resented my shadow. He would have felt cheated of the throne during my life.
Better he hated me for denying him power than that he inherited it unprepared. Better that Russia saw him as unfit than watched him destroy what I built.
That is maternal hardness. Perhaps even cruelty. But Russia required it.
(Voice quieter.)
I do not know if I made him unstable or merely revealed an instability that was always there. That is a question I will carry to my grave.
On How She Hopes to Be Remembered
Me: What would you like history to say of you?
Catherine:
That I made Russia wiser. Stronger. More awake.
That I led as a woman without apology, ruled as an empress with clarity, and shaped a future without forgetting the past. Let them argue over my letters. They cannot argue over my legacy.
I expanded the borders of this empire—south to the Black Sea, west into Poland, east into lands my predecessors never touched. I brought order from chaos. I wrote laws and opened schools. I conversed with the greatest minds of the age and learned what I needed from them, then made my own decisions.
I was not perfect. I was calculating. I was ruthless when necessary. I was warm in private and cold in public.
But I was effective.
That is enough. That must be enough.
The Farewell
The fire burns low. The Empress leans forward, closing a leather-bound volume of her correspondence. She glances down at her ink-stained hands—the hands that have held both a scepter and a quill, that have written laws and drawn borders, that have loved and calculated in equal measure.
Outside, the snow continues to fall silently on Petersburg. She has given her account. History will do the rest.
Catherine:
If you rule—rule with vision. If you serve—serve with courage. And when the world doubts your right to lead—lead anyway.
She gives a final nod, composed and commanding. The bearing of a woman who has spent thirty-four years holding an empire together and knows she has done it well.
Catherine:
That will be all. Russia calls. And an empire does not sleep.
