THERE have been better women than Catherine of Russia, nobler and more learned women, but history discloses no woman who combined so much of good and evil into one bewildering and gloriously successful career. Daughter of a petty German Prince, chance made her the wife of the heir to the Russian Empire. She took that nation to her heart, discarded her weakling husband, and ruled her adopted country for more than three decades with a strength and understanding it had seldom known before.
No one rejoiced at the birth of Catherine. Her parents had prayed for a boy, and the little girl was soon made to feel the bitterness of their disappointment. She decided, therefore, to become a man and, when the opportunity appeared, she decide to become the greatest man in Europe. Nothing stood in the way of that determination—Catherine was quite prepared to commit murder when the occasion called for it—but she was not cruel according to the standards of her day. She was kind, open-handed; her sympathetic interest in her people was deep; and she became noted for her acts of spontaneous generosity.
Gina Kaus seizes the material which this unique life affords, remolds it in the light of newly discovered documents and modern psychology, and presents for the first time a unified and congruous portrait of Catherine. The spectacular occurrences of the Empress’s reign appear here in their relative significance to her life and to European history. Catherine fulfilled the dream of her girlhood and, as Frau Kaus remarks, she died the happiest death that ever Tsar died—she died of laughter.
