Catherine the Great

Cultural  

1. An empress of Russia in the late eighteenth century who encouraged the cultural influences of western Europe in Russia and extended Russian territory toward the Black Sea. She is also known for her amorous intrigues, including affairs with members of her government.

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Example Sentences

An old Kremlin joke about Vladimir Putin is that the Russian president has only three trusted advisers: Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 1, 2025

She credits much of her fearlessness as a performer to her time spent on the Hulu series “The Great,” on which she played a fictionalized version of Russian empress Catherine the Great.

From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 17, 2024

It was the confidence of a leader who's already been in power for a quarter of a century and is set become the longest-serving Russian leader since Catherine the Great.

From BBC • Mar. 18, 2024

If he sees the term through to its end, he will become the longest-serving Russian leader since Catherine the Great in the 1700s.

From New York Times • Mar. 17, 2024

In this unfashionable region Catherine the Great, always indifferent to precedent and thrifty of purse, had built herself in her youth a many-peaked and cross-beamed cottage-orne on a bit of cheap land overlooking the bay.

From The Age of Innocence by Wharton, Edith