Terrible Tsarinas

the people. In the end, the most significant legacy of her reign

would be neither the monuments nor the laws, the ministers ap-

pointed or the battles won, nor all the festivals and fireworks, but

the birth of the true Russian language. Nobody around her had

yet sensed that, beneath the superficial calm, the country was un-

dergoing a revolution. Not only were the mindsets and the morals

changing imperceptibly, but the way in which people were choos-

ing and arranging words to express their thoughts. Freed from

the ancestral yoke of Church Slavonic, the Russian language of the

future was beginning to take shape. And was the son of a fisher-

man from the Far North who, through his writings, was making

the nobility literate.

Lomonosov’s greatest stroke of fortune was to have Eliza-

< 190 >

Elizabethan Russia

beth to help him in his extraordinary career; and Elizabeth’s

greatest stroke of fortune was in having Lomonosov to create, un-

der her wing, the Russian language of the future.

< 191 >

Terrible Tsarinas

Footnotes

1. Cf. Henri Troyat: Catherine la Grande, and Bilbassov: Catherine II.

2. Cf. Daria Olivier, op. cit.

< 192 >

X

HER MAJESTY AND THEIR IMPERIAL HIGHNESSES

1750 was a difficult year. Pulled in every direction, by world

events as well as family affairs, Elizabeth was at her wits’ ends.

Europe had fallen into a convulsion of competition and conflict,

and the grand ducal couple was doing no better; neither drama

seemed to have a clear plot or plan for the future.

Peter’s coarseness cropped up at every turn. His childish

behavior, which should have improved with age, only grew more

extreme. At the age of 22, he was still playing with dolls — di-

recting his little band of Holstein soldiers dressed in Prussian uni-

forms in parades at Oranienbaum, and organizing mock military

tribunals to condemn a foot soldier to be hanged. As for the

games of love, he made less and less pretense of having any inter-

est. He still boasted in front of Catherine about his alleged affairs,

but he made very sure never to touch her. Was he afraid of her, or

was she repulsive to him precisely because she was a woman and

he was so ignorant about that kind of creature?

Frustrated and humiliated, night after night, she distracted

herself with the many-volume French novels of Mlle. de Scudéry,

< 193 >

Terrible Tsarinas

Honoré d’Urfé’s 5000-page pastoral romance Astrea, Clovis by Des-

marets, Mme. de Sévigné’s Letters and — what nerve! — The Lives of

Gallant Ladies

by Brantôme. When she was good and tired of turn-

ing the pages, she would dress as a man (following the empress’s

example) and would go out to shoot ducks by the edge of a pond,

or have a horse saddled and go off at a gallop, aimlessly racing the

wind, struggling to calm her nerves. She was still sufficiently con-

cerned with propriety to start out riding sidesaddle, but as soon

as she thought she was out of sight, she would sit astride the

horse. Duly informed, the empress deplored this practice which,

in her view, might cause sterility in her daughter-in-law. Cath-

erine must have wondered whether to be touched or outraged at

this continued interest in her physical condition.

While the grand duke scorned her, other men were now

courting her — and more or less openly. Even her appointed men-

tor, the so-virtuous Choglokov, was charmed by her and would

drop a salacious compliment from time to time. Having been

pleased by the attentions of the Chernyshevs in earlier days, Cath-

erine now had the pleasure of basking in the assiduous attentions

of a new member of the family; his name was Zahar, and he was

certainly equal to his predecessors. At every ball Zahar was there,

gazing at her with adoration and waiting for his chance to dance

with her. There were even rumors that they had exchanged love

letters. Elizabeth was afraid they might go too far, and broke up

their flirtation. Chernyshev received on imperial order to rejoin

his regiment immediately, far from the capital.

But Catherine hardly had time to miss him, for almost at

once his place was taken by the seductive count Sergei Saltykov.

Descendant of one of the oldest and greatest families of the em-

pire, he was accepted among the chamberlains of the junior court

surrounding the grand duke and duchess. He was married to one

of the empress’s young ladies of honor, and had two children by

< 194 >

Her Majesty and Their Imperial Highnesses

her. He was thus a member of the race of “real men” and was

burning to prove it to the grand duchess, but prudence still held

him back. The couple’s new monitor and chambermaid, Miss

Vladislavov, an assistant to the Choglokovs, kept Bestuzhev and

the empress informed of the progress of this doubly adulterous

idyll.

One day, while Mrs. Choglokov was explaining to Her Maj-

esty, for the tenth time, her concern about the grand duke’s ne-

glect of his wife, Elizabeth finally had an inspiration. As her advi-