The Presidential Library illustrates the accession of Catherine the Great

260 years ago, on July 9 (June 28, old style), 1762, Catherine II, known in world history as Empress Catherine the Great, ascended the Russian throne.

The unique sources of the Presidential Library such as documents, studies, letters and other materials included in the collection Catherine II (1729-1796) feature the details of the accession of the Empress, which occurred as a result of a coup d'état.

The future Russian empress, the German princess Sophia Augusta Frederick of Anhalt-Zerbst, arrived in Russia at the age of 15 as the bride of the heir to the throne, Peter Feodorovich. Catherine the Great (Ekaterina Alekseevna) - she adopted such a name in Orthodoxy - even at home she often heard stories about Russia and Peter the Great. After moving to a new homeland, the girl diligently studied the Russian language and acquired "knowledge of the character of the people". In her words and movements, there was a “special desire to please” - after all, she had to win sympathy in a foreign country. And she succeeded.

At the age of sixteen, she married the 17-year-old Grand Prince Peter Feodorovich, the nephew of Empress Elizabeth and the grandson of Peter I, the son of his daughter Anna and Karl Friedrich of Holstein-Gottorp. Possessing a gentle character, he inherited from his father "an unfortunate passion for the military". Historian Nikolai Firsov in the book Peter III and Catherine II. The First Years of her Reign (1915) notes that Peter "remained the Prince of Holstein until the end of his Russian high career".

Having ascended the throne in early January 1762 after the death of Empress Elizabeth, Peter III issued a number of unpopular laws in just a few months of his reign. They affected the interests of the Orthodox Church and the Russian army, outraged by his imitation of the Prussian king Frederick II, with whom Russia was at war. The guards, assigned to the campaign against Denmark for the Holstein duchy of Peter, grumbled. Relations between Peter III and Catherine did not work out. Dissatisfied with his wife, he not only could publicly insult her at the festival, but also expressed his intention to divorce and imprison Catherine in a monastery.

The events of July 9, 1762, which determined the fate of Russia for more than three decades, were described in detail by the historian and publicist Vasily Bilbasov in the book The History of Catherine the Second (1900).

In June 1762, according to him, the situation became serious and dangerous, no one cared about state needs. Catherine "correctly understood the mood of society, the state of mind". She was especially frank with the brothers Count Orlov, Grigory and Alexei, who recruited Catherine's supporters among the guards officers and lower ranks.

On the evening of July 8, by order of the emperor, who was in Oranienbaum, Captain Passek, a friend of the Orlovs, was arrested. The brothers decided to take action. “...Everything is ready to proclaim you”, - Alexei Orlov said to Catherine. Dressing hastily, she set off from Peterhof to Petersburg.

At Kalinka's village, where the Izmailovsky regiment was stationed, Catherine got out of the carriage. Soldiers and officers greeted her, wept for joy, and in the presence of the regimental priest, Father Alexei, the entire Izmailovsky regiment took an oath of allegiance to Empress Catherine II.

“An unprecedented procession” - Catherine, in front of her father Alexei in vestments, around the Izmailovtsy, went to the location of the Semyonovsky regiment. Semyonovtsy, having learned about this, ran out to meet them and joined the procession. Now everyone was moving along Sadovaya towards Nevsky Prospekt. The soldiers and officers of the Preobrazhensky Regiment also hastened to greet Catherine. The commanders - supporters of Peter III - tried to keep the Preobrazhensky in obedience to the emperor, but to no avail.

The soldiers of the Guards regiments mingled with the people pouring into the street. The crowd cheered. Orderly squadrons of horse guards appeared on Nevsky Prospekt, the guards called Catherine their savior and swore to die for her.

At 10 am Catherine arrived at the Winter Palace. Here, members of the highest state institutions, the Senate and the Synod, officials of the court and all secular and clergy persons who were then in the palace swore allegiance to the "autocrat of all Russia". As Bilbasov notes, Catherine was "proclaimed autocrat, elevated to the throne not by a conspiracy of several persons, but by the common desire and all possible assistance of all".

When Catherine ascended the throne, two more emperors were alive and well - Peter III Feodorovich, yesterday's emperor, and Ivan III Antonovich, "in diapers" crowned tsar. However, according to Bilbasov, “Peter III was kept in Ropsha, Ivan III in Shlisselburg, Catherine alone was free; but still she was the third in the count of persons who were recognized as emperors, to whom they swore allegiance, whose names ... were minted on coins. More than two years passed before both of these "former emperors" went to the grave and thereby actually determined the autocracy of Catherine. And, according to the historian, “all these two years ... Catherine, not in word, but in deed, tried to “justify the choice of the nation ”and already with her first steps bequeathed to us to firmly remember ... that she was “the second after the first Peter”“.