Not for nothing did the poet Derzhavin refer to Tsar Paul’s accession as an act of conquest: armed soldiers were everywhere. Its purpose is to see how Catherine II of Russia conceived of her power and how it was represented to her subjects. the time that shocked courtiers arrived at the Winter Palace on the morning after Catherine’s death, ‘the change was so great that it looked like nothing other than an enemy invasion’.2 All the empress’s ‘brilliance’ seemed to have vanished into thin air as her successor staged the first of the military parades that were to dominate life at his Court. Simon Dixon is the author of Catherine the Great (3.66 avg rating, 467 ratings, 43 reviews, published 2001), Bank to the Future (4.14 avg rating, 28 rati. ‘No one knew what to do,’ admitted Platon Zubov’s dwarf amanuensis, Ivan Yakubovsky: ‘The mind could not grasp that this time had come.’1 It did not take them long to realise, however, that in an intensely personal monarchy such as the Russian empire, the accession of a new ruler could immediately signal a radical reversal of regime. For Catherine came to power in St Petersburg as the result of a coup in which her reigning husband was overthrown. Finding it impossible to imagine anyone else in her place, the Court was stunned by her unexpected demise. Catherine's memoirs, which break off abruptly towards the end of 1759, represent the most seductive guide to her mind, and they, have led scholars to trace the roots of her ambition to power struggles at Elizabeth's court.

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Catherine the Great by Simon Dixon