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
Anna of Russia necessary for someone to be in an important position in the military. As time went on though, the program was later improved by other emperors and empresses, such as Catherine the Great. They began to include the arts and sciences into their schooling, rather than just the knowledge that is considered necessary for only a career in the military. Started by Peter the Great, Anna continued to fund the Russian Academy of Science. The point of this school was to further the sciences in Russia and to help bring the country that was so far behind up to where the