preceded Benjamin Franklin in discovering electricity. But he was also concerned with the practical applications of science and so, still with the support of Shuvalov, he reorganized the first university, built an imperial porcelain factory, and established the art of glassmaking and mosaics in Russia.
Having very quickly recognized Lomonosov’s merits, Elizabeth repaid him in admiration and protection for the homage that he dedicated to her in his poems. She may have been only semiilliterate, but her instincts sometimes filled in where culture was lacking. It was that same instinct that had led her to choose as her lover, then as de facto husband, a simple peasant and former church cantor, and to entrust the education of her empire to another peasant, the son of a fisherman - a genius and a polygraph. In both cases, she resorted to a child of the people to help her raise the people. In the end, the most significant legacy of her reign would be neither the monuments nor the laws, the ministers appointed or the battles won, nor all the festivals and fireworks, but the birth of the true Russian language. Nobody around her had yet sensed that, beneath the superficial calm, the country was undergoing a revolution. Not only were the mindsets and the morals changing imperceptibly, but the way in which people were choosing and arranging words to express their thoughts. Freed from the ancestral yoke of Church Slavonic, the Russian language of the future was beginning to take shape. And was the son of a fisherman from the Far North who, through his writings, was making the nobility literate.
Lomonosov’s greatest stroke of fortune was to have Eliza«190»
Elizabethan Russia beth to help him in his extraordinary career; and Elizabeth’s greatest stroke of fortune was in having Lomonosov to create, under her wing, the Russian language of the future.
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Terrible Tsarinas
Footnotes 1. Cf. Henri Troyat: Catherine la Grande, and Bilbassov: Catherine II.
2. Cf. Daria Olivier, op. cit.
X
1750 was a difficult year. Pulled in every direction, by world events as well as family affairs, Elizabeth was at her wits’ ends.
Europe had fallen into a convulsion of competition and conflict, and the grand ducal couple was doing no better; neither drama seemed to have a clear plot or plan for the future.
Peter’s coarseness cropped up at every turn. His childish behavior, which should have improved with age, only grew more extreme. At the age of 22, he was still playing with dolls - directing his little band of Holstein soldiers dressed in Prussian uniforms in parades at Oranienbaum, and organizing mock military tribunals to condemn a foot soldier to be hanged. As for the games of love, he made less and less pretense of having any interest. He still boasted in front of Catherine about his alleged affairs, but he made very sure never to touch her. Was he afraid of her, or was she repulsive to him precisely because she was a woman and he was so ignorant about that kind of creature?
Frustrated and humiliated, night after night, she distracted herself with the many-volume French novels of Mlle. de Scudery,
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Terrible Tsarinas Honore d’Urfe’s 5000-page pastoral romance Astrea, Clovis by Desmarets, Mme. de Sevigne’s Letters and - what nerve! - The Lives of Gallant Ladies by Brantome. When she was good and tired of turning the pages, she would dress as a man (following the empress’s example) and would go out to shoot ducks by the edge of a pond, or have a horse saddled and go off at a gallop, aimlessly racing the wind, struggling to calm her nerves. She was still sufficiently concerned with propriety to start out riding sidesaddle, but as soon as she thought she was out of sight, she would sit astride the horse. Duly informed, the empress deplored this practice which, in her view, might cause sterility in her daughter-in-law. Catherine must have wondered whether to be touched or outraged at this continued interest in her physical condition.
While the grand duke scorned her, other men were now courting her - and more or less openly. Even her appointed mentor, the so-virtuous Choglokov, was charmed by her and would drop a salacious compliment from time to time. Having been pleased by the attentions of the Chernyshevs in earlier days, Catherine now had the pleasure of basking in the assiduous attentions of a new member of the family; his name was Zahar, and he was certainly equal to his predecessors. At every ball Zahar was there, gazing at her with adoration and waiting for his chance to dance with her. There were even rumors that they had exchanged love letters. Elizabeth was afraid they might go too far, and broke up their flirtation. Chernyshev received on imperial order to rejoin his regiment immediately, far from the capital.
But Catherine hardly had time to miss him, for almost at once his place was taken by the seductive count Sergei Saltykov.
Descendant of one of the oldest and greatest families of the empire, he was accepted among the chamberlains of the junior court surrounding the grand duke and duchess. He was married to one of the empress’s young ladies of honor, and had two children by
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Her Majesty and Their Imperial Highnesses her. He was thus a member of the race of “real men” and was burning to prove it to the grand duchess, but prudence still held him back. The couple’s new monitor and chambermaid, Miss Vladislavov, an assistant to the Choglokovs, kept Bestuzhev and the empress informed of the progress of this doubly adulterous idyll.
One day, while Mrs. Choglokov was explaining to Her Majesty, for the tenth time, her concern about the grand duke’s neglect of his wife, Elizabeth finally had an inspiration. As her advisor had just repeated, no child could be born if the husband failed to “have some input.” Thus it was on Peter that and not on Catherine that they should be concentrating. Elizabeth summoned Alexis Bestuzhev and went over with him the best ways of solving the problem. The facts were simple: after five years of marriage, the grand duchess had not been deflowered by her husband.
However, according to the latest news, she had a lover, a “normal” man, Sergei Saltykov. Consequently, it was essential, to avoid an annoying intrigue, to beat Saltykov to the prize and make it possible for Peter to fertilize his wife. According to Boerhaave, the court doctor, a minor surgical procedure would relieve His Highness of the phimosis that made him unable to satisfy his august bride. Of course, if the operation did not succeed, Sergei Saltykov would be on hand to fulfill the role of sire, incognito. Thus they would have a double guarantee of insemination. In other words, to ensure the future lineage of Peter the Great, they had better bet on both horses: by allowing Catherine to enjoy herself with her lover and, at the same time, by preparing her husband to have effective relations with her. Concern for the dynasty and family feeling combined to persuade the tsarina to use every arrow in her quiver. And anyway, not having had a child herself in spite of her many love affairs, she could not
