Catherine the Great

Mirovich’s fate was not in doubt. On September 9, he was condemned to death and sentenced to beheading. Throughout the trial, Mirovich maintained an attitude of composure. This too militated against Catherine; it was said that only the knowledge that he would escape punishment could give a guilty man such calm dignity. Catherine was aware of this, and to rebuff this notion, when the court assigned a death sentence, she, for the first time in her reign, signed it. Mirovich thereby was to become the first Russian executed in the twenty-two years since Empress Elizabeth had vowed never to sign a death warrant.

When the day came, Mirovich faced death with serenity, so much so that many eyewitness were certain that he would be pardoned at the last minute. Mirovich’s behavior during his final minutes suggested that he thought so, too. He stood next to the block, exuding calm, while the crowd waited, expecting the arrival of a messenger from the empress bringing an order to commute the sentence. When no messenger arrived, Mirovich laid his head on the block. The executioner raised his axe and paused. Still no one came. The axe fell. Mirovich’s remains were left on public display until nightfall, when they were burned.

The details of the Mirovich conspiracy were never made public. The two guards, Vlasev and Chekin, were rewarded with promotion and seven thousand rubles each for “loyally performing their duty.” The sixteen soldiers who had been under their command guarding Ivan in the inner Schlüsselburg citadel each received one hundred rubles; in return, they pledged not to speak of what they had seen and heard.

In Russia, public doubts regarding the empress’s role in Ivan’s death could be managed. Within the Russian government, the court, the nobility, and the army, the opinion was that whether or not Catherine bore some responsibility, she had done what had to be done. In Europe, however, where Catherine had been working to present herself as a daughter of the Enlightenment, it was not so easy. Some supported what Catherine had done; others disapproved; some both approved and disapproved. Madame Geoffrin, the leader and hostess of the dominant literary and artistic salon in Paris, wrote to Stanislaus Poniatowski in Poland criticizing Catherine for becoming too involved in the trial and sentence. “The manifesto she [Catherine] has issued on the death of Ivan is ridiculous,” she said. “There was no necessity of her saying anything whatever. Mirovich’s trial was entirely sufficient.” To Catherine herself, with whom she occasionally corresponded, Madame Geoffrin wrote, “It seems to me that if I were on the throne, I should wish to let my actions speak and impose silence on my pen.”

Offended by these judgments from afar, Catherine fired back:

I am tempted to say to you that you discuss this manifesto as a blind man discussed colors. It was never composed for foreign powers, but to inform the Russian public of Ivan’s death. It was necessary to say how he died. To have failed to do so would have been to confirm the malicious rumors spread by the ministers of courts which envy me and bear me ill will.… In your country, people find fault with this manifesto; in your country they have also found fault with the Good Lord, and here people sometimes find fault with the French. But it is nonetheless true that here this manifesto and the criminal’s head have put an end to all fault-finding. Therefore, the purpose was accomplished and my manifesto did not fail of its object. Therefore, it was good.

With Ivan’s death there was no longer a legitimate adult claimant to the throne. Therefore, there was no focal point for a succession crisis. Until nine years later, in 1772, when Paul reached his majority at eighteen, Catherine’s crown was secure.

50

Catherine and the Enlightenment

IN THE MIDDLE of the eighteenth century, most Europeans still regarded Russia as a culturally backward, semi-Asiatic state. Catherine was determined to change this. The intellectual and artistic life of the century was dominated by France, and Catherine’s governess in Stettin had made French her second language. During her sixteen years as an isolated, embattled grand duchess, she had read many of the works of the great figures of the European Enlightenment. Of these, the writer with the greatest effect on her was François-Marie Arouet, who called himself Voltaire. In October 1763, after fifteen months on the throne, she wrote to him for the first time, declaring herself to be his ardent disciple. “Whatever style I possess, whatever powers of reasoning, have all been acquired through the reading of Voltaire,” she told him.