Catherine the Great Author:Zoe Oldenbourg Her contemporaries-men of the caliber of Voltaire and Diderot among them-called her the Star of the North, Minerva, admirable, autocrat, conqueror, peacemaker, and legislator; she was the Mother of Tsarina of the Russias, mother of her country, mother of her people, Cahterine the Wise, she was ther friend of the Enlightenment or, more modestly, ... more »an "enlightened despot." ...« less