Memoirs. Catherine the Great

“I can’t see a pure pen without any desire to immediately dip it in ink,” Catherine II honestly admitted in her memoirs, which were prohibited in tsarist Russia (even Nicholas I got acquainted with them for the first time, only After the death of Pushkin, a copy stored at that). And only in 1865, Herzen published the memoirs of the empress in London, and they completely became available to the domestic reader only at the beginning of the twentieth century. An incredible archive left by Catherine the Great has reached this day, which makes up dozens of volumes, in which her notes and letters, as well as journalism, plays, historical and philosophical works have been preserved.

This publication included the late edition of Memoirs (cover the period from 1744 to 1758), as well as the “Selected Letters” of the Empress.