The book is dedicated to the literary and, as a rule, sharply polemical experiences of Empress Catherine II, which reflected and embodied her policies. The Tsarina ruled not only with the help of decrees, but also with the literary pen, turning literature into politics and at the same time transferring the fashionable European paradigm of “a writer on the throne” to Russian soil. Wanting to become a legitimate member of the European “république des letteres”, Catherine carefully prepared the intellectual circles of Europe for the perception of her texts, involving Voltaire, Diderot, Grimm in their discussion, inviting diplomats and especially important foreign guests to theatrical performances of her plays. Each text of the empress, be it her two-volume “Antidote” or a cycle of comedies of 1772, historical dramas, anti-Masonic parodies or magazine polemics, carried a certain strategic charge - to mark the own boundaries of civilization, to outline the territory of free thought, to define the categories of reason, to mentally “conquer” past.