If you want to understand the dynamics at play in the Crimea, a good place to start is Eva Stachniak’s new novel about the woman who ruled Russia more than 250 years ago.
It’s not just because Catherine the Great sanctioned the peaceful annexation of the Baltic seaport in 1796 as part of her quest to expand Russia’s lands to both the north and south.
It’s more that, as a novelist, Stachniak gets inside the mind of this amazingly smart, albeit manipulative, woman who became one of the formidable forces in Russia’s history.
And in Russia, to know the past is to know the present.
But to understand Catherine, you first have to understand that other “Great” in Russia’s canon of absolute rulers, Stachniak says.
“It all goes back to Peter the Great,” the Toronto-based author says during a stop in Vancouver to promote Empress of the Night, which tells Catherine’s story through Catherine’s eyes. (In her previous novel, The Winter Palace, Stachniak tells the story of Catherine’s rise to power through the perspective of her servant who, it turns out, sometimes misinterpreted what she was seeing.)
Russia has always had rulers of unquestionable power but Stachniak says Peter is “the first one with a vision.”
Before Peter became tsar in 1682 at the age of 10, “Russia was a vast land colonized by Mongols who raped and pillaged and humiliated the Russians and then left.”
In modern idiom, Peter gave Russia a new narrative. “Russia was a nobody for a long time [but Peter wanted it] seen as an emerging power,” Stachniak says. “It was a legitimate request because Russia was now a powerhouse.”
Peter had visited Europe and had introduced some Western ways to his homeland. “Before Peter went west, Russian women were secluded and had to cover themselves and not talk to any man other than their husbands and brothers. He got them into schools and liberated them from total subservience.”
He gave the same sense of emerging strength to all Russians. “Peter the Great was the only tsar that the Communists respected,” Stachniak says. “Scholars could write positively about Peter making Russia big, making Russia count.”
And when you make everyone feel that sense of national pride, even the poor can feed on that power and feel nurtured by it.
By the time Catherine, who took power in 1762 after a bloodless coup overthrew her husband, there was feeling that the Crimea was part of Peter’s dream of a greater Russia.
“Peter the Great had the idea but Catherine and [Prince Grigory Potemkin, who orchestrated the peaceful annexation of Crimea] realize the vision.”
But Catherine’s vision was different than current day president Vladimir Putin’s. While people today link Russia’s history in the Crimea with Catherine, Stachniak notes that “when Potemkin annexed Crimea, one of Catherine’s orders was that Muslims have freedom of religion and culture. It was Stalin who came and deported all the descendents of Tatars and brought in ethnic Russians.”
It’s those ethnic Russians who supported Putin’s annexation last month.
“I think Putin is doing what a lot of Russian rulers did,” Stachniak says. “If you have trouble at home you need to give people something — greater pride. He’s reaching into the myth of making Russia great.”
Stachniak admires how Catherine, an outsider, was able to “read the Russian people.” If she wanted to change them, which she did, she needed to understand them.
It's a lesson we could all learn and Empress of the Night is an informative yet entertaining way to start.
You can read more of Stachniak's thoughts on how past and present intertwine on her website, EvaStachniak.com.
