The Winter Palace: A Novel of Catherine the Great

In her final attempt at writing her memoirs—abandoned in 1794, two years before her death—Catherine the Great wrote: “Fortune is not as blind as people imagine. It is often the result of a long series of precise and well-chosen steps that precede events and are not perceived by the common herd.”

The woman behind these bold words has fascinated me for a long time. Or should I say, the women? For as I discovered as soon as I began exploring the idea of writing a novel about Russia’s most powerful Empress, there had been many Catherines.

First there was Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, a minor Prussian princess brought to Russia by Empress Elizabeth Petrovna as a potential bride for the Crown Prince. She arrived in Moscow at fourteen, with a mother whose meddling was soon to cause her more harm than good and—as it was duly noted by imperial spies—with trunks containing a meager supply of linens and very inferior jewels. If accepted by Empress Elizabeth, Sophie would someday become a future consort to a Russian Tsar; if not, she would be sent back to Zerbst with a few splendid gifts to remind her of what she had missed.

Then there was Catherine Alexeyevna, Russia’s Grand Duchess, a young bride of Karl Peter Ulrich, once Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, now Grand Duke Peter Fyodorovich of Russia. An unloved wife of an immature and politically inept Crown Prince who never reconciled himself to his adopted country and found his wife’s political talents a sign of her duplicity and a threat, this Catherine wrote in her memoirs:

There was also the Catherine who was a young, unhappy mother cruelly deprived of her children, her son snatched away before she had the time to take him in her arms, a mother forced to watch her child being brought up in ways she not only couldn’t approve of but also considered truly harmful. There she was, at twenty-five, a woman locked in a loveless marriage, abandoned by her first lover, threatened by her enemies, teetering on the edge of utter despair. And yet this young, still powerless Catherine who was forced to survive in the toxic and ruthless atmosphere of court politics possessed a precious gift, her ability to charm and entice those whom she met. It is from that period of her life that we have this touching portrait, written by her then lover, Stanislav Poniatowski, whom she would one day make the King of Poland:

Then there is Catherine the sole autocrat of All the Russias, a bold politician who seized power in a daring coup in June 1762, during one of the famous white nights of St. Petersburg. As her husband, the Emperor of a few months, was failing to comprehend the extent of his defeat, this Catherine, flanked by her faithful supporters, rode the streets of St. Petersburg greeted by cheering crowds. She was no longer in love with Stanislav Poniatowski. In her last long letter to him, she wrote:

This Catherine, the newly minted Empress, aware of her tenuous right to the throne, especially after she was forced to condone her husband’s murder, would claim her place in Russian history as the spiritual heiress of Peter the Great and lead her adopted country into prosperity and power. She would be an intelligent, pragmatic, and rational ruler bent on reforming Russia the best she could, a masterful politician claiming her own place at the political games of Europe, and a savvy manipulator of her own image. Posterity would remember this Catherine as an avid reader of history and philosophy; a writer of memoirs, plays, books for children, and hundreds of letters; a sophisticated collector of paintings and art that are still the heart of the Hermitage; and a builder of palaces we can still admire in St. Petersburg.

For me, born and raised in Poland, there is yet another Catherine, preserved in the painful memories of Russia’s neighbors: a ruthless Empress hungry for land, a Tsarina who defeated Turkey and helped herself to the Crimea, destroyed the Cossack sich, and—with the help of Prussia and Austria—wiped Poland off the map of Europe for more than one hundred years. It was her troops who massacred Turks at Ismael and Poles in the suburbs of Warsaw, and it was her name that in Polish, Turkish, and Ukrainian memories would be cursed for years to come.

My research into Catherine’s life started from reading biographies, old and new, not just of Catherine herself, but of her family members, lovers, friends, and courtiers. Then I moved on to historical accounts assessing her rule, to scholarly and popular articles on all aspects of her reign. I pored over eighteenth-century diaries, memoirs, and letters to get the flavor of the Russia of that era. I studied the design of eighteenth-century gardens, interiors, jewels, and clothes. I researched Russian food. I paid particular attention to the words of women from that time, noting their concerns and fears, aspirations and dreams.

One of my all-time favorite sources is The Russian Journals of Martha and Catherine Wilmot, compiled from diaries and many letters that the two Wilmot sisters wrote from Russia to their family in Ireland. For several years, they had been cherished houseguests of Princess Dashkova, a youthful friend and supporter of Catherine from the time of her coup, and they reported on everything that amused or intrigued them: funeral customs, the abundance of servants in Russian palaces and manor houses, the communal bathing of the Russian serfs. They also heard and recorded many personal stories about Catherine from their hostess, and I used some of them in the novel.

Having rented a spacious apartment on Millionnaya Street, a few minutes away from the Hermitage, I began my walks through the old city center. I chose June for my visit because I needed to experience the white nights I’d read so much about.

I visited the Winter Palace, much changed and enlarged since Catherine’s times, but still imbued with her spirit and her presence. Paintings she collected with such passion still hang on its walls. Objects she touched are still there: the peacock clock Prince Potemkin ordered for her in London; the spectacular collection of engraved gems she was so fond of; her carriages, her gowns, her china, and her many portraits, each a carefully crafted message about how she wished to be perceived. I visited Kunstkamera, Peter the Great’s first museum, where deformed fetuses still swim in glass jars, and the Petropavlovsky Fortress, with its splendid cathedral where Catherine lies buried.

As I always do on these research trips, I took copious notes and numerous pictures. I recorded details of the guards’ uniforms and chose things from museum displays my characters could have had in their possessions: travel necessities, garden furniture, gems, wallets, fans, and sumptuous court robes. And then I walked through the streets of old St. Petersburg, absorbing its sights, noting the position and intensity of the sun, the changing hues of the sky during the white nights, and, by the banks of the Neva, the steely waves of the still, cold river that did not discourage the Russian swimmers.

I ventured outside St. Petersburg to the palaces where Catherine spent her summers: Oranienbaum, Tsarskoye Selo, and Peterhof, where a porcelain sculpture of Zemira—one of Catherine’s beloved dogs—is still on display. I also visited the Monplaisir Pavilion, where Catherine often met with her Polish lover, Stanislav Poniatowski, and where Alexei Orlov woke her up on June 28, 1762, to take her to the capital, where she would proclaim herself Empress of All the Russias. All that time, I patiently searched for a clue, a hint, a point of entry into the story I wanted to tell.

It soon became clear to me that I could not do justice to the many themes of Catherine’s life in just one novel, that I needed to separate the early Catherine, struggling for power, from the supreme autocrat she would eventually become. Thus The Winter Palace is the first of two novels. Its successor, Empress of the Night, will focus on Catherine’s point of view, taking the reader into her mind and exploring how having power has transformed both the Empress and the woman. I see the two novels as bookends, tales of the quest for power and its legacy, echoing each other, foreshadowing the historical forces that would in the next two hundred years irrevocably change the lives of millions of Eastern Europeans. But that is still in the future.…

The Winter Palace took its final shape when I read one sentence in Catherine’s letter to Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams, the British Ambassador to Russia, her political mentor when she was still a vulnerable Grand Duchess unsure of her future: “Three people who never leave her room, and who do not know about one another, inform me of what is going on, and will not fail to acquaint me when the crucial moment arrives.”

Catherine is referring here to Elizabeth Petrovna, the Empress who brought her to Russia from Zerbst. The crucial moment is to be Elizabeth’s awaited death, which Catherine sees as her big chance to change her fortunes. But who are the three spies who will not fail to inform her? This sentence marks a moment in which all my historical research—the readings of biographies, memoirs, letters, and scholarly articles about Catherine the Great and Russia—came into focus and sprang to life.

The three spies had to be women, I reasoned, for Empress Elizabeth surrounded herself with women when she felt sick and vulnerable. But were they old or young? Were they servants or aristocrats? How did they become spies? Why did they do it? Did they want Catherine to be the next Empress?

They had to be Catherine’s political supporters, I decided. One of them could have been Princess Dashkova—she was already informing Catherine on the actions of her own sister, who had cast her lot with Catherine’s husband as his mistress. But the others? Whoever they were, I could not stop thinking of them.

I began collecting references to spies in the eighteenth-century letters and diaries, in the complaints of Ambassadors who suspected all embassy servants of selling their secrets to the highest bidder. Stanislav Poniatowski, in his memoirs, wrote of a palace valet who kept leaving the reception room only to come back moments later with a preoccupied grimace on his face. Determined to investigate the reason for this odd behavior, the Count approached the servant and assured his goodwill with a handsome gift. After pocketing the present, the young valet confessed that he had been just made a “deputy” spy in replacement of a preserve maker who had been taken ill, and who had—so far—been the principal spy assigned to this palace room.

There were many more such stories, and soon I began to imagine a Winter Palace in which spies eavesdropped on everyone, watching through secret peepholes, pretending to perform their work, reporting their findings to their masters and mistresses. I thought of the deceptions and betrayals that had to be part of such lives. I wondered what Catherine’s spies thought of her, how they perceived her actions, and how far they were prepared to go in order to help her. It was about that time that I heard Varvara’s voice. “My father was a bookbinder,” she said as she began her story of her arrival at the Winter Palace. I didn’t think, at first, that Varvara would be the novel’s sole narrator, but her voice turned out to be so strong, so engaging, that I knew I had to let her speak.

Varvara, or Barbara, was Polish, I decided, an immigrant to Russia like Catherine herself, an orphan forced to fend for herself, hoping to rise above her station and thus secure her survival. I decided that she should be slightly older than Catherine, and more familiar at first with the harsh realities of Winter Palace politics. I also made Varvara a double or even triple spy, working for Chancellor Bestuzhev and Empress Elizabeth, ordered to report on Catherine, until—charmed by the young Princess from Zerbst—Varvara first befriended and protected her, and then, bit by bit, began to see in Catherine Russia’s savior.

A spy is a marvelous narrator. In the corridors of the Winter Palace, Varvara can see and hear what remains hidden to others, so she is well suited to become my eyes and ears. She can comment with authority on the atmosphere of secrets and deceit that permeates the court life. She is not innocent. As she tries to navigate the stormy waters of the intrigues and deceit, she betrays and learns what it means to be betrayed. Many of her insights and observations are as valid now as they were in eighteenth-century Russia.

The novel’s plot covers a period of twenty years—from Catherine’s arrival in Russia in 1744, through her successful bid for power, to her decision, in 1764, to make her former lover, Stanislav Poniatowski, the King of Poland. These are formative years. Catherine has to survive and learn the ways of the court before she can become Empress. Varvara, her friend and her trusted spy, has to help her, and in the process also learns something about who she is and what power can do to her and the friendship she values so much.

All major events of The Winter Palace—the marriages, births, deaths, political plots and intrigues—are based on historical sources, and so are almost all of the novel’s characters. However, since Varvara herself is a fictional character, I sometimes allow her to witness and learn of events that are merely plausible. There are some scholars, for instance, who suggest that Peter, Catherine’s immature husband, was not always as foolish and annoying as Catherine wished him remembered in her memoirs. Stanislav Poniatowski, who had few reasons to like his lover’s husband, calls Peter a man of limited understanding but possessing a fundamentally good heart. He is not isolated in his opinion. Many historical accounts also show Peter as an abused child, a victim of parental neglect brought up by a harsh and cruel tutor. Princess Dashkova, in her memoirs, describes Peter as fundamentally kindhearted and well-meaning, though clearly unsuited for the role he was to play in Russian history. For these reasons I allowed Varvara to witness more favorable moments in Peter’s life, hoping to counterbalance Catherine’s quest to vilify the man whose murder she was forced to condone.

Having lived with Catherine on intimate terms for the last four years, I’m still in her thrall. Contradictions are still part of her appeal. A powerful woman who has forged her own way in a largely misogynous world, she is both ruthless and merciful, an enlightened reformer and a stubborn conservative. At times she is a passionate woman in love, but most of the time she is a crafty politician set on winning at all price. But through all these contradictions comes one dominant theme that I—having immigrated to Canada from Poland—understand exceedingly well: Catherine the Great was an outsider who had to reinvent herself in order to win her new country’s acceptance and approval. Like most successful immigrants of the past and present, she enriched her adopted country through her talents and hard work, but in the process of doing so, she also transformed herself.

In closing, one last thought. Even if I’m not sure that I agree with Clement Attlee, who famously claimed that “Russian Communism is the illegitimate child of Karl Marx and Catherine the Great,” I have to accept that Catherine’s reign determined the history not only of Russia but also of the lands my family and I come from.

Among my treasured family souvenirs there is a silver cigarette case with my grandfather’s name inscribed in Cyrillic letters. Like many Poles who were born in the territories claimed by the Russian Empire, he had been a soldier drafted into the Tsarist army, and the cigarette case was a parting gift granted to him upon his release. As I discovered soon after I began writing The Winter Palace, he was not the only one. From the eighteenth century on, all my ancestors on both my mother’s and my father’s sides had been reluctant subjects of Her Imperial Majesty Catherine the Great.

1. The novel starts with a quotation from a letter the future Catherine the Great wrote to the British Ambassador, Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams: “Three people who never leave her room, and who do not know about one another, inform me of what is going on, and will not fail to acquaint me when the crucial moment arrives.” What does this sentence tell us about the future Empress of Russia?

2. Varvara is an immigrant to Russia. She is an outsider in many other ways: a tradesman’s daughter among aristocrats, a Roman Catholic among Orthodox Christians, a Polish wife of a Russian officer. How does she cope with the need to belong? How much is she willing to sacrifice for a sense of home?

3. Catherine, too, is an immigrant. In seventeenth-century Russia, which is keen on developing its national identity, her Prussian blood is suspect. How does Catherine cope with xenophobia? How does she turn it to her advantage?

4. Much of the novel is about power. The characters crave it, gain it, lose it. How are the principal women characters—Varvara, Catherine, and Elizabeth—defined by their understanding of what power is? What in their background made them think that their definition of power is the right one? And what do men in the novel think of power? Powerful women? Their own role in a country ruled by a woman?

5. Why is power so important to these three women? What do they wish to do with it? How much are they willing to sacrifice for it? When they finally have it, what do they actually do?

6. Motherhood is another pivotal issue in the novel. Elizabeth wishes to be a surrogate mother to her nephew, Peter, and later to Catherine’s son Paul. Catherine and Varvara give birth to their own children. What does motherhood mean to each of them? How does it transform them? Why?

7. Darya and Paul are two children whose births we witness in the novel. How do their childhoods differ? What is expected of them? What emotional future do you envisage for them and why?

8. Love, lust, and marriage are always present at the Winter Palace. How do the three principal characters—Varvara, Catherine, and Elizabeth—understand them? How do they use love, lust, and marriage to further their own needs? Why?

9. The Russian court is the backdrop of the novel. Historical sources confirm that spying was ubiquitous there. How does being a spy affect Varvara? How does having spies affect Elizabeth and Catherine? How does being watched affect the lives of the courtiers?

10. Loyalty—national, political, and personal—is another important theme in The Winter Palace. How does each of the three main characters define loyalty? How do their definitions affect their actions?

11. Peter the Great transformed Russia. Is his presence felt in the novel? In what ways? What is your sense of Russia under Elizabeth and later under Catherine? Why does the country feel snubbed by the rest of Europe?

12. Toward the end of the novel Catherine decides to reassess her own needs as an Empress and her obligations as a friend and lover. Is she justified in this decision? How does she do it? What are Varvara’s expectations of their friendship, and what is Catherine’s assessment of it?

13. At the end of the novel, the reign of Catherine II has just begun. How much has Catherine sacrificed for her position? Is it possible to predict from her behavior as Grand Duchess what kind of a ruler she is going to be? What are her best qualities? Her worst?

14. Varvara leaves Catherine’s court. In the last chapter of the novel she meets one of Catherine’s former lovers, recently elected the King of Poland. What are Varvara’s feelings about Stanislav’s prospects? What does she fear? Why?

15. The novel ends with the image of Varvara beginning to tell Darya the story of her life in Russia. How much do you think she will tell her child? What will she keep to herself? Why?