Historiography Rediscovers Catherine of Russia

After a long silence, historiography seems to have rediscovered, for a quarter of a century now, the figure of Catherine of Russia. Whatever the matrix of historians’ attention to Catherine, the main consequence has been a tendency to emphasise the complexity of her figure and the policies promoted during her reign, and to urge the abandonment of certain stereotypes used in the past to understand her work. In this essay, the author tries to reflect on three main themes of the historiographical discussion: the influence of the cultural atmo- sphere of the time on her analysis of society and her political programme (i.e., a reflection on the Enlightenment in Russia), with the closely related aspect of the form of government Catherine envisaged for the country; foreign policy and the merits of the Tsarina for the ex- pansion of the empire; the effects of her internal reforms, in particular the promulgation of the Statute on the administration of the provinces and the measures in favour of the nobility.