Ekaterina Romanovna Dachkova

Entry by Elena Gretchanaia, 2003

Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova was born in Saint Petersburg on 17 [28] March 1743, to Count Roman Vorontsov and his wife Marfa, née Surmina, who died when Ekaterina was just two. She was brought up with the family of her uncle Mikhail Vorontsov, the State Chancellor. She received an excellent education, mastering four languages, and was espcially at ease in French. In February 1758 she married Prince Mikhail Dashkov. She gave birth to a daughter, Anastassia (1760-1831), and two sons, Mikhail (1762) and Paul (1763-1807). In 1759, she met the future empress Catherine II, and the two women became friends. In fact, Ekaterina played an active role in the coup d'état that put Catherine on the throne on 28 June 1762. Shortly afterwards, Ekaterina tried her hand at literature, translating the works of French philosophers such as Voltaire and Helvetius. After the death of her husband in 1764, she moved to Moscow. She wrote (non-extant) poetry and plays in Russian and French and translated the French encyclopedists. She also wrote articles on education, speeches for the academy, and numerous letters, and sang and composed. In 1768, she traveled in western Russia before going abroad with her son in 1770-71, and again in 1775-82, in order to give him a European education. She visited Germany, England, Holland, France, Italy, and Switzerland, and met Diderot, Voltaire, Raynal, William Robertson, Adam Smith, and Benjamin Franklin. On her return to Russia, Ekaterina was appointed director of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg on 24 January 1783, and on 21 October that same year she became director of the Imperial Russian Academy, founded on her own initiative. She began editing the journal Sobesednik lyubitelei russkogo slova (1783-84) and later the journal Novyja ezhemiesachnyja sochinenia (1786-96) (see bibliography). She was also the protector of several Russian writers. Her brilliance was widely acknowledged and she was invited to join the philosophical society of Philadelphia, the economic society of Saint Petersburg, the Irish Royal Academy, and the academies of Berlin and Stockholm. She led the Imperial Academy of Science in Saint Petersburg until 1794. That year saw the publication of the first Russian dictionary in six volumes, to which Ekaterina had contributed. When Paul I succeeded to the throne in 1796, Ekaterina was exiled to her village of Korotovo in north-western Russia, then to Troitskoye, south of Moscow. In 1801, the new Czar, Alexander I, invited her to return to court. She occasionally visited Saint Petersburg and Moscow but preferred to remain in Troitskoye. From 1803 to 1808 two young Irish women came to live with her. Martha Wilmot and her sister Catherine, who were related to one of Ekaterina's English friends encouraged her to write her memoirs. Ekaterina's major work, Mon Histoire, was written in French. The text, completed in 1805, recounts her life from childhood, describing the political events that put Catherine II on the throne, her own conversations with Diderot and Voltaire, and her years in exile. The book is in the tradition of French aristocratic memoirs with strong overtones of the genre known as apologia. In 1807, Catherine Wilmot took a copy of the text with her back to England. Martha was arrested at the Russian border in 1808 and burnt the original manuscript. Ekaterina died in Troitskoye on 4 [16] January, 1810. A second copy of the memoirs was found among her possessions. It was read widely among aristocratic circles prior to its publication. Ekaterina Dashkova is a striking case of a woman who transgressed the limits set for her sex in the 18th century. She was decried by a number of foreign contemporaries, particularly French writers, including C.-C. de Rulhière, Ch.-F.-Ph. Masson, and L.-PH. de Ségur, who all wrote memoirs on Russia. In Imperial Russia she was always considered a national treasure and a woman of unparalleled historical significance, although, after the Bolshevik revolution she was discredited for her support of the Czarist regime. Interest in her has grown significantly in recent years, particularly in Russia after the abolition of ideological censorship, where a number of new documents have shed light on her presidency of the two academies. She continues to be studied in the United States and Europe as well.

(transated by ((Susan Pickford)))

Works

Selected bibliography

Selected bibliography of images

Reception