Catherine and the Petemkins

She put her lover and brilliant adviser, gregory potemkin, in charge of a political and economic development project. She wanted to push out the old nomadic inhabitants and replace them with russian settlers who would be promised freedom without serfdom. But again, all of these reforms hardly reached below the middle class. As long as they paid their taxes, their rent and they did not revolt, they hardly counted at all. Catherine also continued as a great patron of the arts and culture, theatre, academic journals, literature, drama, poetry, music. And cultural life in saint petersburg and moscow flourished. Her reputation also spread across europe as she continued her personal