There is a popular quote on Russian-language blogs that is attributed to the Russian autocrat. We checked whether the authorship of this statement really belongs to the daughter of Peter I.
The full phrase sounds like this: “Who is there in the world to defeat Russia? Russia can only be defeated by ourselves, by our dislike for it. And sometimes even betrayal, usually for European money.” This statement, attributed to Elizaveta Petrovna, is mainly found in blog posts - for example, in Facebook, "VKontakte" And social networks X. However, this quote can also be found on website St. Petersburg Metropolis of the Russian Orthodox Church. As follows from the publication on the metropolitan website, this phrase was quoted by the rector of the Peterhof Holy Trinity Church at His Imperial Majesty’s Own Dacha, Priest Alexy Ragin, as part of the Elizabethan readings in December 2024.
Elizaveta Petrovna ascended the throne in 1741 and ruled for 20 years. Her life and views are well studied, her decrees and orders are publicly available, and all surviving letters to her immediate circle were fully published back in the 19th century.
However, “Verified” was unable to find such a quote in any authoritative sources. There is no such phrase, in particular, in “Notes and letters"Empress, the most complete collection of correspondence of Elizabeth Petrovna. There is no statement in the memoirs of contemporaries, in National Corpus of the Russian Language and even in fiction dedicated to Elizaveta Petrovna.
If you study the spread of the phrase about dislike of Russia, the earliest mention of it, discovered by Verified, dates back to 2023. June 2 comments on the website “Stihi.ru” was left by user Fyodor Zorin. He wrote about NATO expansion and Russia’s “forced” attack on Ukraine, supporting his thoughts with an alleged quote from Elizaveta Petrovna.
Thus, this phrase has nothing to do with the Russian Empress. The quote was made up and attributed to her no earlier than 2023.
Cover photo: Charles van Loo. Coronation portrait of Elizabeth Petrovna (1760). Wikimedia Commons
Read on topic:
If you find a spelling or grammatical error, please let us know by highlighting the error text and clicking Ctrl+Enter.
