Yekaterina Dashkova

Born into an old House of Vorontsov, Countess Yekaterina Romanovna was the daughter of Count Roman Vorontsov (1717–1783), a member of the Senate, and his wife, Marfa Ivanovna Surmina (1718–1745), divorced Princess Dolgorukova. Her uncle Mikhail Illarionovich and older brother Alexander both served as Imperial Chancellor. Her younger brother Semyon was a Russian ambassador to Great Britain, and a celebrated Anglophile. She had two older sisters: Maria, later Countess Buturlina, who married Count Peter Buturlin, and Elizabeth, who married state advisor Alexander Polyansky. Among her godparents were Empress Elizabeth I and Grand Duke Peter Petrovich, later Emperor Peter III; her mother was a lady-in-waiting and very close friend of the Empress.

When Yekaterina was just 2 years old, Marfa died and Count Roman was an absent father, so the children were sent to different places. Alexander continued to live with their father, but Semyon was raised in the countryside by their grandfather and the three sisters went to live with their uncle Mikhail at the lavish Vorontsov Palace., who provided his nieces with an exceptionally good education and spared no expenses with them.

Yekaterina learned several languages (Russian, French, Italian and German), studied mathematics at the University of Moscow and read French literature – according to her memoirs, her favourites were Bayle, Montesquieu, Boileau and Voltaire. She also developed an interest in politics at a very young age and was allowed by her uncle to go through his papers, reading diplomatic letters from Russian ambassadors to illustrious foreigners like the Emperor of China (the content of which she describes in her memoirs), which gave her an inside look at how diplomacy worked. She grew up a well-educated, well-read, bright and intelligent girl.

At the end of 1782, Yekaterina returned to Russia and was welcomed by the Empress. Her son Pavel had become an adjutant of Grigory Potyomkin and married a lower-class woman, Anna Alferova, in January 1788, later leaving her for his mistress. Her daughter Anastasia was forced into an arranged marriage, ending in debt and involved in many scandals.

In January 1783, the princess was appointed director of the Imperial Academy of Arts and Sciences (known now as the Russian Academy of Sciences) by Catherine the Great. She became the first woman in the world to head a national academy of sciences. Famous in her own right as a philologist, she guided the ailing Academy to prominence and intellectual respectability. In October 1783, Yekaterina was also named the first president of the newly created Russian Academy and launched a project for the creation of a 6-volume dictionary of the Russian Languages in 1789. In 1783, she was the first foreign woman elected an honorary member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and was invited by her friend Benjamin Franklin to become the first woman to join the American Philosophical Society in 1789.

Just like her older sisters, Yekaterina went to live at the Russian court when she became a teenager and, by favour of her godmother Empress Elizabeth I, appointed as one of her maids-of-honour. There, she became acquainted with the Grand Duchess Catherine, 14 years older than her, and the pair bonded over their love of literature, particularly French Enlightenment authors, like Voltaire. She supported the Grand Duchess through her difficult marriage to Grand Duke Peter Petrovich. To Yekaterina's embarrassment, her sister Elizabeth became Peter's mistress.

At 15, she met 22-year-old Second Lieutenant Prince Mikhail Dashkov of the Imperial Guards and the two fell in love. The couple went to live in Moscow and married a year later, in February 1759. She became known as Princess Vorontsova-Dashkova or simply Princess Dashkova. The couple had three children: Anastasia (born in February 1760), Mikhail (born in January 1761) and Pavel (born in May 1763). Her son Mikhail died in the autumn of 1762.