![]() ![]() ![]() Most historians who compare the Russia she inherited (or usurped) in 1762 with the Russia she bequeathed in 1796, and who weigh the enormous odds (hostile neighbours, a reactionary aristocracy and clergy, an enormous country with ruined finances, no roads and a resentful enslaved peasantry), end by adulating her. One of only three Russian rulers to be awarded the sobriquet ‘the Great’, Catherine, like Peter the Great, polarises biographers. ![]() Even in the company of her peers – Queen Elizabeth I of England, Queen Christiana of Sweden, the empress Maria Theresa – Catherine the Great stands out as an empire-builder, a larger-than-life, exceptionally astute, lucky and energetic politician. ![]()
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