Maggie McCormick’s Reviews > Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman > Status Update

- 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)

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