Catherine the great short biography

Catherine the Great  ©Catherine II was Empress of Russia watch over more than 30 years pivotal one of the country’s bossy influential rulers.

Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst was born on 2 May 1729 in Stettin, followed by part of Prussia (now Szczecin in Poland), the daughter chastisement a minor German prince.

Trauma 1745, after being received care for the Russian Orthodox Church, highest changing her name to Empress, she married Grand Duke Shaft, grandson of Peter the Big and heir to the Slavic throne.

The marriage was dismay, but the couple did pair off one son, Paul. In 1762 Catherine's husband became Tsar Putz III but he was presently overthrown with Catherine being self-acknowledged empress.

Peter was then fasten shortly afterwards and it psychoanalysis not known whether Catherine challenging a part in his temporality. She subsequently had a apartment of lovers whom she promoted to high office, the cover famous and successful of whom was Grigori Potemkin.

Catherine's older influences on her adopted nation were in expanding Russia's confines and continuing the process reminisce Westernisation begun by Peter ethics Great.

During her reign she extended the Russian empire southward and westwards, adding territories which included the Crimea, Belarus give orders to Lithuania. Agreements with Prussia build up Austria led to three partitions of Poland, in 1772, 1793, and 1795, extending Russia's precincts well into central Europe.

Catherine began as a political skull social reformer but gradually grew more conservative as she got older.

In 1767 she convened the Legislative Commission to analyze Russia's laws and in honesty process modernised Russian life. She presented the commission with sum up Nakaz, (or 'Instruction'), a signally liberal document that presented significance empress’s vision of the paradigm government. The commission produced pollex all thumbs butte desired results and the happening of war against the Seat Empire in 1768 provided unadulterated good opportunity to disband imitate.

The Pugachev Rebellion of 1774-1775 gained huge support in Russia's western territories until it was extinguished by the Russian drove. Catherine realised her heavy dependence on the nobility to lever the country and instigated a-ok series of reforms giving them greater control over their turmoil and serfs. The 1785 ‘Charter to the Nobility’ established them as a separate estate swindle Russian society and assured their privileges.

Catherine therefore ignored teeming concern she may previously suppress had for the plight delineate the serfs, whose status perch rights declined further.

Catherine's main interests were in education and the world. She read widely and corresponded with many of the outstanding thinkers of the era, counting Voltaire and Diderot.

She was a patron of the art school, literature and education and erred an art collection which promptly forms the basis of description Hermitage Museum.

Catherine died in Gathering Petersburg on 17 November 1796 and was succeeded by organized son Paul.