ARCHIVE MUSEUM COMMEMORATES CATHERINE THE GREAT WITH SHOW

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MOSCOW, October 23 (RIA Novosti) - "The Sparkling Age of Catherine the Great" is the name of an exposition the Federal State Archives opened in their exhibition hall to commemorate the 275th birth anniversary of Russia's most brilliant and efficient Empress, reports the Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

Nee Sophia Augusta Frederica the Princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, Catherine II (1729-1796) came to Russia in 1744 as affianced bride of Grand Duke Peter Theodorovich, heir apparent to the Russian crown. She gave up her Protestant denomination to receive the name of Catherine in Eastern Christian baptism. The couple joined in wedlock the next year. Catherine's spouse ascended to the throne, 1762, as Peter III. The soul of folly, he fell victim to a Royal Guards plot, led by his consort, a few months later, to make Catherine autocrat.

"A crowned, hoop-skirted Tartuffe," Alexander Pushkin later sneered at the woman whose bigotry nearly balanced out her genius.

The present commemorative show is much more benign on her. It throws light on all the many stages of an eventful life-the timid teenage provincial, daughter of an obscure German princeling, baffled by the opulent Russian court, develops into the courageous mastermind of a daring palatial coup. An outstanding stateswoman, brilliantly endowed and educated friend of her time's foremost philosophers, a woman in love, forlorn mother of an illegitimate boy, and wise and loving granny-Catherine was all that.

A great choice of documents on display concern her life. Many documentary and material exhibits re-create the age of Russian enlightened absolutism. Medallion portraits of French revolutionary leaders from Prince Yussupov's collection appear side by side with a contemporaneous manuscript book that offers a detailed description of Masonic initiation rites.

Scribbled in a jerky hand, a letter from deposed Peter III to his triumphant wife makes a despondent entreaty to let him go abroad and give him means of subsistence. It is full of foreboding of violent death that loomed over the hapless man.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's widow applies for pension in elaborate lettering.

A love letter of infatuated Catherine, then 45 years old, to Grigori Potyomkin her favourite abounds in nervy slips of the pen.

Enthusiastic descriptions of gorgeous and imaginative masquerades are displayed next to dramatic records of prison questionings of Princess Tarakanova, ill-starred adventurer pretender to the throne.

Really, the show gives an unforgettable idea of the radiant and dark sides of that time-an era as no other.

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