Contrary to popular belief, Catherine the Great did not die on the toilet. She did, however, suffer a stroke in the toilet (meaning bathroom) and died the next day, on November 6 (November 17, New Style), 1796. The rumour that Catherine died on the toilet likely originated in the imperial Russian court. Catherine’s enemies in the court spread many different rumours about her death. One particularly nasty rumour held that Catherine had died while attempting sexual intercourse with a horse.

Russians continue to admire Catherine, the German, the usurper and profligate, and regard her as a source of national pride. Non-Russian opinion of Catherine is less favourable. Because Russia under her rule grew strong enough to threaten the other great powers, and because she was in fact a harsh and unscrupulous ruler, she figured in the Western imagination as the incarnation of the immense, backward, yet forbidding country she ruled. One of Catherine’s principal glories is to have been a woman who, just as Elizabeth I of England and Queen Victoria gave their names to periods of history, became synonymous with a decisive epoch in the development of her country.

At the end of Catherine’s reign, Russia had expanded westward and southward over an area of more than 200,000 square miles, and the Russian rulers’ ancient dream of access to the Bosporus Strait (connecting the Black Sea with the Aegean) had become an attainable goal. At the end of her reign Catherine claimed that she had reorganized 29 provinces under her administrative reform plan. An uninhibited spender, she invested funds in many projects. More than a hundred new towns were built; old ones were expanded and renovated. As commodities were plentiful, trade expanded and communications developed. These achievements, together with the glory of military victories and the fame of a brilliant court, to which the greatest minds of Europe were drawn, have won her a distinguished place in history.