Big Woman

"CATHERINE, THE PORTRAIT OF AN EMPRESS--Gina Kaus--Viking ($3.50).

If not the most proper, the most enthralling study of mankind is woman. And a woman like Catherine the Great of Russia is indeed somebody to write a book about. Last week appeared neither the first nor the last of her biographies, but one of the best. Readers whose vague knowledge of 18th Century Russia had been based on vague cinemas, had their smatterings bettered and corrected by it; those who were more interested in women than in empresses found Catherine, The Portrait of an Empress, an extraordinary woman's life well told.

Catherine the Great was not a Russian nor was her name Catherine. Born Sophia Augusta Frederica, the unconsidered daughter of a German princeling, she was brought up to be a pawn of European diplomacy; at 14 she was sent to Russia to marry her third cousin, Grand Duke Peter (half-German). For 17 years she lived at the Russian court, waiting for the aging Empress Elizabeth to die, waiting--what was worse--for her neurotic husband to make her his wife. The first nine of those years they lived together, and Catherine did her wifely duty as her husband saw it: at night, in bed, she helped him play with dolls, in the daytime at soldiers. Because she had to do something with her spare time, and because she was ambitious, she read hard, got herself an education. Catherine's only use was as brood mare to the new dynasty, and since her husband would not or could not serve her, the breeders did not much care who did. When she foaled her first-born (afterwards the mad Tsar Paul) it was of little interest to anyone but Catherine that its sire was one Saltykov. The child was immediately taken away from her by the Empress.

Saltykov tired of his imperial conquest, but soon Catherine had another lover, Poniatowski. Husband Peter connived at this intrigue even more openly. When Poniatowski was recalled to his native Poland, Catherine solaced herself with a muscular Guards lieutenant named Orlov. But meantime she was making herself as popular as Peter, with his anti-Russian fads, was making himself disliked. When the old Empress finally died Catherine and Peter were at open enmity. A successful coup d'etat upped Catherine to the imperial throne. Her lover's brother murdered the miserable Peter--without her knowledge or consent, says Biographer Kaus. Rather than punish her lover, Catherine shouldered the blame for her husband's death.

As Empress, Catherine was a hardworking success. She got up at dawn, worked 15 hours a day. She was no voluptuous debauchee: "her love-life resembled that of an important business man; it was simple, very sentimental, and rather pathetic." Catherine found her liberal-philosophizing theories sharply modified by the experience of ruling Russia. When Philosopher Diderot reproached her for her change of heart, she replied: "You philosophers are fortunate people. You write on patient paper--I, poor empress, am forced to write upon the ticklish skin of human beings." Darkest blot on her scutcheon was the murder of Ivan, the real heir to the throne, who had been kept in prison since his birth, at 24 (when Catherine went to visit him) had never seen a woman. Of Catherine's complicity in his murder, says Biographer Kaus, there is no scrap of proof, but she thinks Catherine may well have been in on the plot.

Shortly after she broke off with Orlov Catherine struck up the strangest of her partnerships--with Gregory Potemkin, one-eyed, clumsy, moody, brilliant. It was an alliance that soon ceased to be physical (Potemkin chose and dismissed her lovers himself) but remained intimate. Both profited by it; Potemkin to the tune of some 50 million rubles. They lived to see part of their dream come true: Russia mistress of the Baltic and the Black Sea, Russian frontiers pushed far into the west. But there came a day, when Catherine was 62, when she refused to dismiss her current lover (40 years younger than she) at Potemkin's bidding. He took himself off, disgruntled, and five years later Catherine, after a last night of love, followed him.

An autocrat who held Russia with a firm hand, Catherine was democratic to a degree in her imperial household. If her enraged whist partner threw his cards at her feet, she would merely call the onlookers to witness that she had played her hand right. Once when she had an urgent letter to send and all her bell-pealing brought no servant, she found the lackeys busy playing cards, offered to take one of the men's hands while he went out to post the letter. She loved to laugh, and her guffaw was famous. But nothing suggestive ever roused it: only something very innocent or something very obscene.

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