Княгиня Екатерина Дашкова и границите на Руското Просвещение
Princess Ekaterina Dashkova and the limits of the Russian Enlightenment

Summary/Abstract: Ekaterina Dashkova was the first and only female director of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The object of this study is not her contributions to the Russian Enlightenment, which are well researched, but a socio-psychological analysis of her complex and contradictory personality – the woman who implemented the European educational, scientific and social ideas in the then different Russian realities. Through a case study, I aim to outline the essence, the insurmountable contradictions and boundaries of the Russian Enlightenment. Most researchers of Dashkova tend to idealize her personality and do not mention the contradictions in her character, some of which were due to the contradictions of the age in which she lived. The events and interpretations in her Memoirs have been critically analyzed from the perspective of some bibliographic records and analyses of her public and educational views. The basis of the study is Dashkova’s Memoirs, which have attracted a great deal of research interest and which have been repeatedly published in many languages, as well as analyses of her correspondence with her brother Alexander Vorontsov, and the letters by her friend Martha Wilmot. Dashkova's complicated relationship with Empress Catherine II outlined the boundaries of the possible Enlightenment in Russia, as well as the utopia of the Enlightenment notion of human enlightenment in general.

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