Catherine the Great Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

Print PDF

For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, The Memoirs of Catherine the Great and our BookBrowse Review of Catherine the Great.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. What did you know about Catherine the Great before reading this book? Were there things you learned from the book that matched your previous impressions of her? What did you learn about her that surprised you?
   


2. How important were Catherine's memoirs to the portrait Massie draws of her? What aspects of Catherine and her early life would we have missed had she not written her memoirs? What reasons might she have had for concluding them at the point she did and not writing about the years after 1758?
   


3. In the first chapter, Massie writes: "Even as Empress Catherine, at the height of her autocratic power, she wished not only to be admired for her extraordinary mind and obeyed as an empress, but also to find the elemental creature warmth that her brother—but not she—had been given by her mother" (pp. 6-7). In what ways did this wish manifest itself in Catherine's life?
   

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Random House. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.