Women's Kingdom. The Russian Paradox

“It was truly a Russian paradox.

In a country of house-building, where many folk proverbs quite openly describe the status of a woman—‘The hen isn’t a bird, and a woman isn’t a person,’ ‘Who carries water? The woman! Who strikes with a bat? The woman! Why? Because she’s a woman’—the entire eighteenth century, the Russian state was ruled autocratically by five outstanding and very different ruling women.

For example, Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great. ‘She was hardly interested in state affairs,’ historians and contemporaries agree. So what did she do for 20 years on the throne? For instance, she was the supreme commander-in-chief—and what a commander! A lady who desperately feared blood and mice defeated Europe’s number one commander, Frederick the Great. Under her, in 1760, the Russians took Berlin… During Elizabeth’s reign, Russia grew by gaining a part of Finland. The first banks, gymnasiums, and a university were created in the country, and a theater was founded.

Or Catherine the Great. In the years she ruled, the whole world took Russia seriously. The country’s authority was reinforced by its might—vast territories, natural riches, and a victorious army. She annexed Crimea, Kakheti, Courland, Belarus, Volhynia. ‘I don’t know what will be like under you, but in our time not a single cannon in Europe could fire without our permission,’—these words by Chancellor Alexander Bezborodko reflect the results of her reign exactly.

The women-empresses left behind an immense Empire, with enormous problems, to male emperors—who, unfortunately, were unable to solve them.”