Letters to the Editor
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What indeed was so great about Catherine?
She was so--what's the word--oh, yeah:
Uppity.
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Indeed
I find it in poor taste that a book review which only mentions the (untrue) rumor of Catherine's escapades with horses, and particularly emphasizes how our culture is obsessed with sexualizing women in power, should include a picture with a horse as its main image.
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Speaking of horses
I'd rather watch a woman have sex with a horse than continue enduring the godawful layout of the new Salon and its goddamn floating flash ads that obscure the site. I give this rag one more week to clean up, or I'm not coming back.
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Why so little on Catherine?
It is tempting frame this in the "nobody likes a strong woman" milieu, which is a valid one, no doubt. However, I think the fact that Russia was the most backwards of the great dynastic empires of Europe coupled with the fact it's also the most dissimilar in terms of culture and geography would probably be a better reason why its greatest queen got the snub.
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You're Basing This Article On A Myht??
Check out Snopes.com for the truth about Catherine and horsies.
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little error in an otherwise interesting article
To the author: Princess Sophie Auguste Friederike von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg was never married to a Paul II but to the Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich (the later Czar Peter III).
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Floating ads
I am with rip on this.
Flash ads are a waste of bandwidth, but lots of sites use them and I can tolerate them most of the time.
But this is the only site on which the ads actually obscure content.
I run Firefox on Linux. This problem does not happen with IE or Firefox on Windows. Don't know what it does on a Mac.
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stallions
Maybe that rumor about Catherine was a mis-translation:
clearly, she kept a lot of studs.
Good for her.
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The tone of Ms. Miller's review
Something about the way Ms. Miller writes put me off -- "Women who may have achieved little politically during their actual lives ... have managed to conquer significant chunks of retail real estate after their deaths."
As a history major and someone who has remained interested in that field, I applaud the many writers who are exploring the role of women in events. So much of what has previously been written skewed to the male perspective -- which I think is why strong female rulers like Catherine the Great -- got short shrift in the past. Because she was considered to be of "the weaker sex" she couldn't possibly have intelligence or wield power properly. Hence the lies and stories that get spread.
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The power of Mhyt
Hey, Anderson. What's so bad about basing an article on a Mhyt? I don't know many articles based on a Mhyt. Do you have the same prejudice against Fbales?
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One of the things Russian men do to intimidate American women
They insist on bringing up Catherine and the horse whenever the subject turns to feminism.
It's like their favorite Fun Fact About Women Leaders.
This is one of the reasons why American women should avoid marrying Russian men.
If you can find one who can talk about Catherine the Great without mentioning the horse, then don't marry him either, because he's probably gay.
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I find it offensive...
that readers are so uninformed about how magazines work that they blame the writer for the choice of the art department.
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Give Her More Credit
The reference to Elizabeth I highlights the failure of the review - and possibly the book - to emphasize the enormous pressure to marry that both women suffered. Catherine, of course, had already provided an heir, but I'm sure the biggest issue the aristocracy had with her was the gall of a woman ruling them without a husband to control her.
And let's back off Potemkin as power-behind-the-throne. As her lover and highest-level advisor, he would have been the target of everyone's envy, not to mention assassination plots. I'd guess Catherine spent far more time protecting him than he spent controlling her.
It takes a not-insignificant amount of determination even today for a woman to resist the societal pressure to marry. Those of us who succeed must then constantly balance love and romance in temporary arrangements against protecting ourselves financially and professionally.
Horse or no horse, fake villages or no fake villages, Catherine remains a role model.
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Re: You're basing this article on a myht??
Rob Anderson says:
"Check out Snopes.com for the truth about Catherine and horsies."
This article is not based on a myth. Snopes debunks the "sleeping with a horse" story just as this article does. It's better to read an article through before you post on it.
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Good History Channel show on Catherine
The History Channel has a series entitled "Engineernig an Empire," and one of the episodes was on the Russian Empire. I thought they did Catherine justice, so it goes to show you that the rest of the world is not incapable of initiating a fair discussion of powerful women. It seems to air every Monday at 9:00 and often repeats itself (I've seen the Mayan one twice already), so check it out sometime.
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Sexism, Powerful Females, and the love that dare not neigh its name!
I cannot imagine that if a male statesman were to indulge in the art of equiniminous love that he would be treated as shabbily as poor Catherine the Great.
Like the great political commentator Tina Fey once said about Catherine the Great "you fuck ONE HORSE and for the rest of eternity you're known as a horse fucker".
Indeed.
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Ads
That's funny... I don't see any ads at all, no floating ads, no popups, no flash.
Oh, that's right - I *subscribe*.
On other news sites, if I can't get what I want for free, I go elsewhere; the news is the news. But for original, consistently interesting content, I come here. The yearly subscription fee is even cheaper than my local newspaper.
If you don't want ads, then pay these nice people for their hard work that you seem to enjoy. Sheesh!
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Enlightened Despots
According to my history professors, Catherine was one of the socalled "enlightened despots" of European history. As such, she keeps company with Henry VIII and Elizabeth I of England, Frederick the Great of Prussia and Louis XIV of France. Although these rulers are positive examples of absolutism, in the end they were just absolutists. Too often the reforms they brought about died with them. When "the decider" died, his or her reforms died as well. In England, Henry and Elizabeth were followed by a succession of inept Stuart kings; Frederick the Great's successors were poor copies of their forebearer; and the last Bourbons in France were royal disasters. Catherine's legacy was a succession of czars that increased the empire but set the stage for the Russian Revolution that racked Russia in the twentieth century, ushering in a new form of despotism.