In my earlier (and somewhat abbreviated) review of this book on Goodreads, I gave it four out of five stars. Looking back (and having read Ian Grey's far more against-the-grain biography to boot) since then, I think I might have been a bit generous. It's not bad, but... well, let me just start from the beginning.
"Is This a Biography, or an Encyclopedia?"
That was my first thought upon picking up this massive, 615 daunting page scarlet colossus at the local used book store. Indeed, in weight, thickness and volume, this tome more closely resembles a collegiate textbook than the New York Times bestseller its cover purported it to be. Still, my self-assigned mission this year to become as familiar as possible with Catherine the Great and the Imperial Russian court of her era (hence the two biographies of Catherine that I've already reviewed this year) forbade me to put it down considering its price tag was a scant $7.99. And so, into the basket (and subsequently onto my bookshelf) it went.
Reading through this monolithic skyscraper of a book, I could not help but be reminded of the digital librarian from the 2002 movie adaptation of The Time Machine, who described himself (with the pompous self-assurance of which only an AI or a China-watching blogger is capable) as "a compendium of all Human knowledge." I really wish I had begun my study of Catherine here and saved Rounding's more advanced biography and Troyat's more opinionated one, because I can scarcely think of any detail I've read in any other biography of Catherine that was not also mentioned here. If anything, I dare say it might have been too thorough.
For instance, I can understand that a biography of Catherine the Great, when discussing Catherine's early years at the Russian court, would want to give some background on the Empress Elizabeth, as she features heavily into this phase of Catherine's life and it is helpful to understand the motivations and mannerisms of the people Catherine had to interact with on a daily basis. However, does a biography of Catherine really need to have an entire 12 pages (28 - 39) summarizing Elizabeth's life from birth onward? Most of the events described in that chapter occurred before the book's subject was even born. It struck me as a bit of an unnecessary aside.
Later, again, after spending pages 302 - 307 describing the condition of Serfdom in Russia (which George Soloveytchik described in 1938 as "the worst type of slavery in modern history"), the author spends 6 more pages giving a summary of every apocryphal legend he can find in Russian lore that involves a serf, including two that take place long after Catherine's death. I found myself saying "this is fascinating, but what have legends about serfs after Catherine's death got to do with Catherine's response to serfdom?" Basically, any time the subject of the book even remotely makes glancing contact with the issue of serfdom, the reader can expect several pages of "let me tell you how bad it was for these people." By the time the author is finished chasing this rabbit, the back-of-book index's entry for the word "serfdom" includes 8 bullet points which take in 34 pages between them, and this index only includes pages that actually have the term itself in print. There came a point where I was actually rolling my eyes at it and saying "okay, I get it. Can we get back to the biography?"
Nonetheless, I will unequivocally say that this book is a resounding answer to my critique of Rounding's biography of Catherine, namely, that it presupposed the reader already knew something about the Minerva of the North, and about 18th century Russia. This book, with perhaps more back story than necessary, proceeds from the assumption that the reader has never heard of Russia. Ergo, for the reader who wants a jumping-off point to dive into a study of Catherinian Russia, this book provides all the sometimes-remedial background knowledge and "worldbuilding" one would need to establish a working knowledge. It's a great Catherine 101 course. Save Rounding's take on the subject for when you want a 301 credit.
Nothing New
While my annoyance at the book's volume could be turned into praise for thoroughness, I found it baffling that amid such a vast array of information, the author managed never to come up with anything new to say. His rather uninspiringly blase thesis on Catherine appears to be 'she didn't do as much as she set out to do and she didn't improve life in Russia that much but, well, she was great because... uh, because she was a woman.'
Joking aside, the book does come across as something of a Greatest Hits collection of biographies already written by other writers. Indeed, the Selected Bibliography at the end of the book includes 8 other biographies already written (including Rounding and Troyat, who I've mentioned here, as well as Ian Grey who I'll get to in a later review). When I read four biographies on the same woman and see that three of them are all citing the same sources, this is no surprise. But when I find that the fourth is citing the other three, I start to say "well why don't I read them myself, instead of reading what you thought of them?" ...And I won't comment on the paradox of a book reviewer asking that question.
All told, the sources cited seem to include more second-hand than first-hand sources, making this essentially a comprehensive review of what's already been said. Though I admit, this too could be explained away in the same manner as my first criticism: by saying this book was designed for those who had NOT already spent months reading everything they could get their hands on about the subject. There was, though, a third strike against this book which, while not exactly damning, gets filed under "bloody bizarre."
We Get It, Bob: You Hate America. Back To the Point.
It has become fashionable, in North American academic circles of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, to compensate for a lack of new or original thought by shoehorning as many "let me tell you how evil America is" sneers into one's work as possible, in an attempt to sound edgy and controversial (which is ironic considering that America-bashing ceased to be the counterculture and became the culture in America decades ago, but I digress). Having come back from years in Asia and listened to this nonsense from people who have rarely ever left the US and seen how bad life is in the rest of the world, yet who think they sound "informed" by quoting editorials off of the internet from others with no more experience than themselves, I've gotten used to it. So when I read a book by an ivory-tower academic with little to no real-world experience outside of the protective walls of an institute of higher indoctrination learning, I come in fully prepared to shake my head and let some of this drivel roll off my back with nought but a sigh.
What I have to ask Robert Massie though, is "how far backwards did you have to bend over to shoehorn that into a biography of a woman who never set her feet within 9,000 miles of anything that would ever be part of the US, and who was already old when the US first came into existence?"
The American colonies -and soon the new American republic, whose leaders used the language of the enlightenment- offered flagrant examples of hypocrisy... Twelve American presidents owned slaves, eight of them while in office. (p. 307)
The text in those three dots covers an entire paragraph of trite "blargh! 'Murica is bad!" allegations that are repeated at every Neo-Marxist gathering in the Western world by every welfare recipient in North America, vacillating between spin and oft-debunked legend. The weird thing is, it's not even tangentially related to anything discussed in this book. One could try and say "it's using parallelism as a lead-in to a discussion on serfdom." Well, wrong. It's not leading into anything. It's the last paragraph before a line-break.
This is a biography of a Russian Czarina.
What does your sniveling hatred of America have to do with that, Mr. Massie?
Of course, having already penned his screed, and being too devoted to his anti-nationalist leanings to be willing to admit its irrelevance, Massie tries, after the line-break, to turn the ship back onto course and draw parallels between the condition of agricultural slaves in early America and Russian serfs (never mind Soloveytchik's statement above that Russian serfs were far worse off, and never mind the 34 pages of evidence Massie gives in this book to support Soloveytchik's statement; for example, I never heard of an American slave getting exiled to Alaska). The author even tries to say the fact that Russian serfdom crossed all racial lines somehow made it "not as bad" as the institution of slavery left over in America's first 85 years as a relic of its European founders.
Having attempted (without much success, in my opinion) to claim this anti-American tangent was relevant, the author then tries to embed it tighter in his narrative by going from there back to yet another 4 pages about the conditions of serfs in Catherinian Russia, though as I mentioned above, this too is a section that leaves me wondering "does this biography of Catherine ever mention Catherine?"
Again, during the book's coverage of the second Russo-Turkish War (and the sidebar conflict against Sweden), the author gives a lengthy aside about the Russian phase of the naval career of one John Paul Jones, the first officer in the US Navy commissioned by Congress.
The thing is, there's little to justify his presence in this book, as he never even met Catherine and only once or twice met Grigory Potemkin. The only connection he has, by multiple degrees of separation, is that he was one of a group of foreign naval officers selected by Potemkin for service as admirals in the fledgling Russian Navy, which Jones accepted because the US Navy at that time was not large enough that Congress was even giving anyone the rank of admiral and he dreamed of stars on his collar (p. 511).
The author's main purpose in this segment, which has nothing to do with the book's alleged subject, is laid out as so plainly in a grossly opinionated little rabbit-chase where author isn't even bothering to hide his slant.
There is another story related to this Russian war with Turkey-this one is true-which centers on a figure few connect with Catherine of Russia or Gregory Potemkin. This figure is John Paul Jones, whom Americans know as the father of the United States Navy.
Jones began as nobody and died alone, rejected, and, once again, nobody. (p. 509)
After reading some cherry-picked scenes from Jones's life from pages 508-512, the reader, who by this time is wondering "where are you going with this," is treated to the revelation that Jones's career ended in disgrace when a peasant girl made allegations of rape against him (allegations even the author cannot avoid admitting were later revealed to be false).
Though unlike the rather clumsily drawn slave-serf connections earlier, this time around the author does not even bother making an attempt at explaining what bearing this story has upon the topic. Basically it's as though he no longer feels like hiding his glee at this "see? Another disgraced American! Ha ha ha ha! Didn't I tell you how evil that country was? Who cares if it's relevant to my topic? I'm just here to mock America. BLARGH!"
So, Who Should Read It?
The only conclusion I can draw is that the target audience of this book was a consortium of freshman students at a university somewhere in North America who, having no foreknowledge of history beyond what they've gotten in an American school (which would be little more then "let a teacher who has never left your country tell you why you should hate America and be ashamed of being born there, especially if you're white or male"), would require everything about 18th century Russia spoon-fed to them before getting around to addressing the life and impact of the woman whose name is in the title (though conspicuously absent from 30% of its pages). For that audience, this book would be great, and the author's occasional A.D.D. phases of "hey, let's bitch a little about a country that didn't even exist at the time I'm writing about" will be familiar enough to the readers that they'll feel like they're right back in a North American schoolroom and will be back to hanging on the author's every word.
Sarcasm aside, there are a great many people in the West whose knowledge of Pre-Soviet Russia is pretty much limited to the opening scene of the 1997 animated musical Anastasia. It can be presumed that there are, among that number, some who would like to remedy this. It can be further presumed that among this number, there are those who believe Catherine the Great would be a good place to start, yet who don't feel inclined to feverishly bury themselves in an entire library about her, and would prefer to get the gist from a single book and move on.
For that subset of people, this book is a great "absolute zero" to start from. By the time you have finished reading it (which is no small feat, as it's no small book), then if you can dismiss some of the off-topic ranting the author does, you will have been well and truly introduced to Catherine II, and have a reasonable idea of the Imperial Russian (and Eurasian geopolitical) framework in which she lived and had her successes and failures.
You can move on to Virginia Rounding, Henri Troyat, and Douglas Smith if you decide you want a bit more.
Works Cited
Massie, Robert K. Catherine the Great - Portrait of a Woman. New York, 2011. Random House.
ISBN 978-0-345-40877-8
Rounding, Virginia. Catherine the Great - Love, Sex and Power. London, 2006. St. Martins.
ISBN 978-0-312-37863-9
Soloveytchik, George. Potemkin - A Picture of Catherine's Russia. London, 1938. Percival Marshall publishers.
(no ISBN)
Troyat, Henri. Trans. Joan Pinkham. Catherine the Great. New York, 1977. E. P. Dutton.
(No ISBN)