HBO's "Catherine the Great": The Role of Peter III

Tsar Paul with the remains of Peter III

Dear Readers,

It should come as no surprise that I've been watching HBO's new drama regarding the reign of eighteenth-century Russia's enlightened monarch: Catherine the Great. Catherine was an exceptional woman who led Russia successfully for over thirty years. The length of her reign was nothing short of astounding for eighteenth-century Russia, over 4 times the average length of a Tsar(ina)'s rule after Peter the Great.  This alone is an incredible accomplishment, one which vaulted her rule into the (now defunct) category of "enlightened absolutist" monarchs in the eighteenth century. Though English language historians have often focused on her various sexual affairs and "favorites", Catherine deserves to be recognized as a powerful monarch for her achievements, not her scandals.

After seizing the throne, Catherine waged a number of successful campaigns against the Ottoman Empire, reformed the education system of the Russian Empire, making education to a greater (though still small) number of her subjects. Furthermore, as the HBO briefly mentions, her development of the Smolny Institute allowed select women to receive higher education for the first time in Russian history. She was a patron of the arts, and like Frederick II of Prussia a generation before, had graduated to the position of senior stateswoman of Europe by the time of her death in 1796.

Helen Mirren in her portrayal of Catherine II

The point of this post is not to review the HBO miniseries, but to delve into a specific aspect of it. For all its successes, the HBO miniseries falls dangerously short of the mark when portraying both Peter III of Russia (Catherine's husband) and Paul I of Russia (Catherine's son). Despite portraying Catherine as a complex and challenging historical figure, the miniseries leaves Peter and Paul to fulfill the role of fairly one-dimensional villains. Peter III ruled Russia for barely six months in 1762, before the coup which took him from the throne and his death a week later. Paul I ruled for a bit longer, four and a half years between November of 1796 and March of 1801. Like his father, he was deposed by army officers in favor of another ruler.

Both of these men, but particularly Peter III, have had few friends, both historiographically, and during their lifetimes. Largely, this is a result of their decision to rule as distinctly Germanic enlightenment-era monarchs in Russia. The Napoleonic era, and, of course, the experience of the twentieth century convinced Soviet historians that Peter and Paul were Germanic traitors, besotted with Prussia, who essentially got what they deserved. This language is repeated, largely verbatim, in the HBO miniseries. Catherine is portrayed as a woman who hates "Germany", Germans, and the German language.  This first post will discuss how the HBO series portray's Peter III, who is present in the series, in skeletal form. Grizzly. Subsequent posts will examine the life of Paul I, and other aspects of the show.

Emperor Peter III,, 1762, by Fyodor Rokotov

Over the last forty years, historians have significantly revised our understanding of both Peter III. An older generation of historiography, as well as Franz Szabo's recent English language survey of the Seven Years War, portrays Peter as a, "boorish, obnoxious, obstinate, and capricious young man of arrested development and limited intelligence."[1] These characterizations of  Peter III struggle to mesh with his policy record, which even Szabo notes involved the reduction of taxes, releasing the nobility from permanent military service, and forbidding the sale of serfs to large industries .[2] A further examination of Peter III's reign demonstrates that he was an advocate for religious toleration, allowing for the toleration of the Old Believers in Russia.[3] Peter III promoted educational institutions in Russia, and as noted above his wife would continue this policy during her reign.[4] As an enlightened monarch, Peter III decreed that it was a crime for landlords to kill their serfs, and those who did so would be exiled for life, (small steps, to be sure.)[5]

How can we account for this discrepancy between Peter III the mentally disabled (Szabo implies but fails to use this term) and Peter III the reformer?  

If Peter III was a reformer, and relatively effective ruler, why was he deposed? The answer to this riddle lies in his position as a monarch from German Central Europe who was also the ruler of a larger empire. Historian Peter Wilson has suggested that rather than focusing on Peter III's supposed obsession with Prussia, understanding his role as dual monarch who cared more about his position as Duke of Holstein-Gottorp than his position as Tsar of Russia. [6] Peter III of Russia, like George I of Britain, preferred the familiar politics of the small German state of his birth over the imperial politics of his inherited and adopted empire. George I disliked England, likewise, Peter III of Russia disliked Russia. As such, he ended a relatively successful war with Frederick of Prussia (the Seven Years War) in order to pursue aggressive foreign policy against Denmark. Again, his goals were that of a minor German prince, not the Tsar of Russia. In hindsight, this failure to embrace his role as the Tsar of Russia, rather than mental instability or "weakness" brought down his regime. Catherine II embraced her role as a Russian ruler to the exclusion of her former German identity, and as a result ruled a massive empire quite successfully for over thirty years. In order to achieve this, Catherine deposed and murdered in her husband, and her views on Peter III have dominated the historical memory of Peter's reign.

Both Peter III and his son Paul I allowed Prussian military thinking to dominate their regimes, both conducted drills of their own battalions of soldiers. In this way, they followed the example of Peter I "the Great" of Russia as well. Peter the Great had drilled a small, "toy" army of soldiers during the rule of his half-sister Sophia, and eventually used these soldiers to overthrow her. Like Peter III and Paul I, this earlier "toy army" was drilled by German-speaking instructors.[7] Both Peter III and Paul I were afflicted with a especially bad case of Prussomania, and for Peter, his decision to end the war with Prussia quite literally led to his downfall and death.

Another point of contention between historians: was Peter III murdered? Although there is a possibility that his death was natural, brought about by the stress of Catherine's coup d'état, it is much more likely that Peter III was murdered. At the end of the day, this issue is officially unresolvable, but it begs a question. Which seems more likely: that a 34 year-old man would die of complications from hemorrhoids (the official cause of death), or that a politically inconvenient former ruler would be murdered 8 days after his government was overthrown in a military coup?  In a conversation during the first episode in the HBO series, Paul I and Nikita Panin discuss the likehood of this event. As the HBO series clearly depicts Catherine II also ordered the murder of imprisoned former child-Tsar Ivan VI, when it appeared that he would be freed by disloyal army officers.

Peter's legacy remained contested even in his own time, with the appearance of perhaps as many as 40 "false" Peter III's.[8] Of these, the most famous was the Cossack leader Pugachev, but he was far from alone using Peter III's legacy with the common people of Russia.The greatest legacy of Peter III, however, is the way he was remembered by his son, the future Tsar Paul. Paul attempted to fulfill many of his father's ambitions, particularly in his reforms of serfdom, the nobility, and the military in Russia. Paul also receives much more attention in HBO's miniseries, and will be the subject of the next post on this miniseries.

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Thanks for Reading,


Alex Burns





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[1] Franz Szabo, The Seven Years War in Europe, 381. 

[2] Ibid, 382. 

[3]Carol S. Leonard, Reform and Regicide, 20. 

[4]Ibid, 21.
[5]Aleksandr Sergeevich Myl'nikov, "Peter III" in The Emperors and Empresses of Russia: Reconsidering the Romanovs, 121-122.  
[6] Peter H. Wilson, German Armies: War and German Politics, 279.
[7]Duffy, Russia's Military Way, 13-14, 200-201.

[8]нтонова И.В., Ярыкина И.Г. Интегрированный урок по курсу истории России и литературы в 8-м классе "Емельян Пугачёв: кровавый убийца или народный герой" (Chapter 6)