Maggie McCormick > Recent Status Updates

“Through her open windows, Catherine could see minarets rising above the walls and breathe the scents of roses, jasmine, orange trees, and pomegranates. Surrounding the palace was the town, dominated by nineteen mosques and their high minarets, from which, five times a day. voices summoned the faithful to prayer; while she was there, Catherine ordered the construction of two new mosques. “
(In Bakhchisarai)

“Everything was done to deter me from this journey. I was assured that my progress would be bristling with obstacles and unpleasantness. They wished to frighten me with stories of the fatigue of the journey. These people had a very poor knowledge of me. They do not know that to oppose me is to encourage me, and that every difficulty they put in my way is an additional spur.”

“Sometimes you never feel meaner than the moment you stop being mean. It’s like how turning on a light makes you realize how dark the room had gotten. And the way you usually act, the things you would have normally done, are like these ghosts that everyone can see but pretends not to.”

“The physical side of her relationships offered only brief distraction. When Catherine dismissed lovers, it was not because they lacked virility but because they bored her. One need not be an empress to find it impossible to talk in the morning to a person with whom one has spent the night.”

Actually horrified by the amount of men who were in relationships with their nieces 🫩

Potemkin played hard to get when Catherine was telling him she was interested, he pretended that he was going to join a monastery to freak her out because he was jealous she had a (non-important) lover still around at the palace 😂

- Catherine started the first college of medicine in Russia and started orphanages to prevent infantcide- all children were given clean clothes, food, and an education
- She agreed to inoculate herself when smallpox threatened and then established several inoculation clinics in Russia, inoculating 2 million Russians by 1800!

- Polish government was called “The Polish Diet”?
- Catherine forced Stanislaus, her former lover before Orlov, to be King of Poland so she could use him as a pawn

- In the Nakaz, She wrote several lines dedicated to her wish to relieve serfs of their permanent servitude. All of these lines were struck away by nobles. The Nakaz ended up being only a quarter of the 526 articles she spent two years working on.
- The publishing of the Nakaz/ Summons to the Legislative commission took place 9 years before Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence!

- Russians were known as “Scythians”
- The Nakaz was Catherine’s great project to rewrite the chaotic Russian legal codes: She looked up to the great reforming Peter the Great, but he had ruled “by action” and left no written records of his laws.
-- Catherine heavily based The Nakaz on the works of Montesquieu and an Italian judge (Cesare Beccaria) . She heavily condemned the heavy use of torture

- Catherine’s lover Orlov wore a small portrait of Catherine on his chest but was very mopey because she refused to marry him (would disrupt some political goals of hers)
- Voltaire had a sexual relationship with his niece 🫩🤮
- Catherine bought all of Diderot’s books to get him out of debt and in turn he arranged for artists and architects to swarm Russia (which was her goal)

“Orlov may have mistaken Catherine for a needy woman; she was not. She was brave, proud, and confident. He wanted Catherine to belong to him during the day, in public, not merely for a few nocturnal hours behind silk curtains. For Catherine, this was impossible. She was no longer a grandduchess and could not remain simply a loving mistress. She was empress of Russia.”

Love it