History of Russia (1721–96) drills on the Russian army, and depriving Russia of a military victory by establishing his sudden alliance with Prussia. Making use of the discontent and fearing for her own position, Peter III's wife, Catherine, deposed her husband in a coup, and her lover's brother, Aleksey Orlov, subsequently murdered him, so in June 1762 Catherine became Catherine II, empress of Russia. Peter the Great had two wives, Yevdokiya Lopukhina (the daughter of a minor noble) and Marfa Skavronskaya (a Lithuanian peasant, renamed Catherine after her conversion to Orthodoxy). Catherine I's rise through Peter I's Table of Ranks from a simple peasant
History of the Jews in Russia ethnically-unique economic role. Documentary evidence as to the presence of Jewish people in Muscovite Russia is first found in the chronicles of 1471. The relatively small population of them were subject to discriminatory laws, but they do not appear to have been enforced at all times. The Jewish people residing in Russian and Ukrainian towns suffered numerous religious persecutions. Converted Jews occasionally rose to important positions in the Russian State, i.e. Peter Shafirov, vice-chancellor under Peter the Great was of Jewish origin. Their situation changed radically, during the reign of Catherine II, when the Russian Empire acquired rule over large