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
The Will of Peter the Great Baltic and the Black Sea.<...>" In 1985 Peter the Great, the mystical-absolutist, might have conceded, had he been aware of events, that the dialectical-materialist usurpers in the Kremlin were not doing so badly. The Will of Peter the Great The Will of Peter the Great is a political forgery which purported to be the testament of Peter I of Russia, which was allegedly a plan of the subjugation of Europe. For many years it influenced political attitudes in Great Britain and France towards the Russian Empire. Forged at the break of 19th century, it resurfaced during the Crimean War, during