Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

The third axis of conflict was the rivalry for the mastery of Germany between Prussia and Austria. Russia always had a choice between alliance with Austria or Prussia: each had its own advantages. Russia had been allied with Austria from 1726, and it was only thanks to Peter III that it had switched to the Prussian option in 1762. Austria had not forgiven Russia for this betrayal, so Catherine and Frederick were stuck with each other. Foreign Minister Nikita Panin had staked his career on maintaining this alliance, but the Northern System – his network of northern powers including Britain – had never materialized beyond its Prussian fulcrum. Furthermore, it had given Frederick an influence over Russian policy in Poland and the Ottoman Empire that almost amounted to a veto.

However, Potemkin always believed that Russia’s interests – and his own – lay southwards, not northwards. He cared about the Austrian–Prussian and Anglo-French conflicts only in so far as they affected Russia’s relations with the Ottoman Empire around the Black Sea. The victories in the Russo-Turkish War had exposed the irrelevance of the Prussian alliance along with Frederick’s duplicity.

Serenissimus began to study diplomacy. ‘How courteous he is with everyone. He pretends to be jolly and chatty but it’s clear that he is only dissembling. Nothing he wants or asks for will be refused.’ In 1773–4, Potemkin had paid court ‘most assiduously’ to Nikita Panin.¹² The Minister was a dyspeptic monument to the slowness and obstinacy of Russian bureaucracy – piggy-eyed, amused and shrewd, he squatted astride Russian foreign policy like a swollen, somnolent toad. The diplomats regarded Panin as ‘a great glutton, a great gamester and a great sleeper’, who once left a despatch, unopened, in his robe de chambre for four months. He ‘passes his life with women and courtesans of the second order’ with ‘all the tastes and whims of an effeminate young man’. In reply to the Swedish Ambassador’s brave attempt to discuss affairs of state during a meal, he delivered the bon mot: ‘It is evident, my dear Baron, that you are not accustomed to affairs of state if you let them interfere with dinner.’ There was not a little admiration in Harris’s tone when he told his Court that ‘you will not credit me if I tell you that out of 24 hours, Count Panin only gives half an hour to the discharge of his duties’.¹³

Initially, Potemkin ‘thought only of establishing his favour well and did not occupy himself with foreign affairs in the direction of which Panin showed a predilection for the King of the Prussia’, noted the Polish King Stanislas-Augustus. Now he began to flex his muscles. Early in his friendship with Catherine, it is likely that Potemkin persuaded her that Russia’s interests were to maintain Peter the Great’s conquests on the Baltic and keep control of Poland, but then use an Austrian alliance to make the Black Sea a Russian lake. Catherine had never liked Frederick the Great nor trusted Panin, but Potemkin was suggesting a reversal of Russian policy in turning to Austria. This had to be done slowly – but tensions with Panin began to grow. When the Council sat one day, Potemkin reported that there was news of disturbances in Persia and suggested there might be benefits for Russia. Panin, fixated on Russia’s northern interests, attacked him bitterly, and an angry Potemkin broke up the meeting.¹⁴ The rivalry between the two statesmen and their two policies became more obvious.

Panin was not going to give up without a fight, and Catherine had to move cautiously because Potemkin was as yet unproven on the international stage. Panin grew nervous as it became clear that Potemkin was there to stay. In June 1777, Corberon wrote that Panin had even said to a crony: ‘Wait. Things can’t stay like this for ever.’ But nothing came of it as Potemkin consolidated his power. Catherine was deliberately pushing Potemkin forward on foreign policy: she had asked him to discuss affairs with the visiting Prince Henry of Prussia. When Gustavus III of Sweden, who had recently retaken absolute power in a coup, arrived on an incognito visit calling himself Count of Gothland, Potemkin met him and accompanied him during his stay. Potemkin’s challenge was to destroy Panin’s power, overturn the Northern System and arrange an alliance that would let him pursue his dreams in the south.

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The two eastern conflicts of Europe escalated simultaneously at the beginning of 1778 – in ways that made the Prussian alliance still more obsolete and freed Potemkin’s hand to begin building in the south. In both cases, Catherine and Potemkin co-ordinated diplomatic and military action.