Catherine the Great: a benevolent despot

CATHERINE THE GREAT: Portrait of a Woman, by Robert K. Massie. Random House, 625 pp., $35.

She was pen pals with Voltaire, a hardworking single mother who always kept a lover. She rewrote Russia's laws, expanded its borders and powers and became Europe's greatest art collector. A gown in the Kremlin Armory testifies to her amazing waist -- whisper-thin when she was young.

Catherine the Great ascended to the Russian throne when her husband, Peter III, was removed in a coup in 1762. She herself led 14,000 soldiers to arrest him, charging along on a white horse. She went on to rule for 34 years, until she died of a stroke in 1796, at age 67.

She wrote diligently, to lovers, to diplomats, to friends, and left detailed memoirs, all put to good use by Robert K. Massie, biographer of the czars. His story of this epic life is warm, sure and confiding, even when plowing through yet another war with the Turks.

Catherine was a 14-year-old small-town German princess named Sophia when she was summoned to Russia by Empress Elizabeth, who was looking for a wife for her nephew, Peter III.

Sophia married Peter, a second cousin brought up in Germany by a domineering tutor who stunted him emotionally and intellectually. Sophia obligingly embraced Russian Orthodoxy, took the name Catherine, and worked hard at becoming Russian.

The marriage was awful. Catherine said it was never consummated. She retreated to books, immersing herself deeply in the works of the Enlightenment. After Elizabeth died, Peter was crowned but quickly made himself unpopular, and Catherine, considering herself much better fit to rule, was receptive to a coup. Peter acquiesced without a fight, was imprisoned and killed a week later in shadowy circumstances.

Early on, Massie mentions the steely ambition that will propel Catherine. Yet he never really plumbs it. We see, however, that she is curious, disciplined and orderly. She relishes laughter, and she needs to be loved. She is very much alive.

Catherine set out to draft new laws providing for "the safety of every citizen." Torture would be prohibited, not only as inhumane but unreliable -- agony made the victim say whatever he must to stop the pain. Serfs would be freed. Due process would be enshrined. Delegates to a Legislative Commission were selected to discuss the code, which in the end produced only disagreement. And then it was forgotten.

Having put aside the ideals of the Enlightenment, Catherine settled down to making her control unshakable and her empire more powerful. Still, when Diderot, who had compiled the Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, was threatened by penury, she bought his entire library and hired him as its librarian. She signed a decree to establish the Bolshoi Theater. She filled the Hermitage with paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens and Van Dyck.

She cried when she quarreled with her lovers, and cherished the ones who offered intelligent conversation. The favorite was Gregory Potemkin, he who built the supposedly fake "Potemkin" villages to impress her. This, Massie argues, is a myth. The villages were real.

Today, 215 years later, the authorities are still promising Enlightenment -- now they call it modernization -- and their people are still accusing them of building Potemkin villages. Catherine's life is as instructive as ever, and Massie has made it into a compelling read.