Catherine the Great Russian tsars history biography

CATHERINE THE GREAT

Learn how and why Ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt were invented and crafted during Renaissance. Discover the Old Testament as a veiled rendition of events of Middle Ages written centuries after the New Testament. Perceive the Crusaders as contemporaries of The Crucifixion punishing the tormentors of the Messiah. What if Jesus Christ was born in 1053 and crucified in 1086 AD?

Sounds unbelievable? Not after you've read "History: Fiction or Science?" by Anatoly Fomenko, leading mathematician of our time. He follows in steps of Sir Isaac Newton, finds clear evidence of falsification of History by clergy and humanists. Armed with computers, astronomy and statistics he proves the history of humankind to be both dramatically different and drastically shorter than generally presumed.

Peter the Great

Russian opera

Ivan the Terrible

Catherine and St.Petersburg

Catherine II was beautiful, ambitious, bright, and a well educated woman. She was raised in the spirit of the Enlightenment and wanted to use these progressive ideas in her reign. She worked hard for the success of the country and during her reign Russia moved forward on the world stage and in the westernization begun by Peter the Great. For the first time since Peter the Great, Russia had a leader who was effective and deeply involved in the country's life.

The daughter of, as a French ambassador called her father, a prince of "quite exceptional imbecility", Catherine the Great faced a number of obstacles on her road to the Russian throne. Through a strange bevy of political marriages she was betrothed to the Grand Duke and potentially future Emperor of Russia, Peter III, and, due to her precocious nature, eventually made the most of it. Before all this, at the age of four, she met Frederick William I of Prussia, and, being a right little snot, refused to kiss the hem of his cloak: "His coat is so short I cannot reach it!" she said. King Frederick responded, "The child is impertinent!" thus condemning Catherine to an evening of beatings administered by her power-hungry mother, Johanna. Obviously, with such an ill-mannered child, the only way to get power in the family would be to marry it. Fortunately for Johanna, such an opportunity presented itself some years later (unfortunately for Johanna, she herself eventually fell out of favor with the court and was cast out of Russia): while Catherine, at the tender age of fourteen, was contemplating a marriage proposal offered to her by her uncle (!), Empress Elizabeth of Russia deigned that she was to marry Elizabeth's nephew, Peter III (Elizabeth was Peter the Great's daughter). The deal here was that Peter III was the Grand Duke, destined to Emperor of Russia, and Elizabeth wanted to see an heir past him before giving up the ghost herself, so she tried to marry him off in hopes of speeding things along. Unfortunately, Peter thoroughly lacked charm and was startlingly ugly.

top