Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
As a German princess, Catherine "won the support of her powerful mother-in-law, the Empress Elizabeth, despite the failure of her marriage to the headstrong and inexperienced Peter. She rapidly learned Russian and converted to the Orthodox Church. . . Despite seizing power in this manner, Catherine proved one of Russia's greatest rulers, expanding the empire southward to the Black Sea and enriching its prestige with an exceptional collection of art. . . . At one point, Catherine had considered freeing the serfs, but she soon saw that it was more politically expedient to tighten their bonds and the peasants' forced servitude enabled her to fund her cultural and imperial ambitions." [Furtado: 1001 Days] "But it was, in fact, the Poles and the Turks who were to suffer most from the rise of Russia, and by the time Catherine the Great had died in 1796 she had added another 200,000 square miles to an already enormous empire. . . . Under governmental direction, the country was evidently bent upon modernization in a whole variety of ways, although the pace and success of this policy have often been exaggerated. There still remained the manifold signs of backwardness: . . ." [Kennedy: Great Powers, p. 94-5]