Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman

by Robert K. Massie

Catherine was often present, secluded on a platform behind a drawn curtain. She learned something about conditions in her empire, but the commission’s stumbling pace irritated her—so much so that at one point she rose from behind her curtain and walked out. Not only did the full assembly sessions disappoint her; some of the subcommittees made her angry. On one occasion, told that the subcommittee on towns had adjourned while waiting for additional copies of the Nakaz to be bound, she exploded, “Have they really already lost those copies which they have already been given?” In December, after five months of talk, she decided that she had heard enough and halted the commission session in Moscow. Hopeful that a change of place might revitalize the delegates, she ordered them to reconvene in St. Petersburg two months later. In mid-January, she set off in her sledge over the frozen road. A long string of other sledges, filled with delegates, followed.