Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

Catherine was delighted and praised him as an empress, lover and friend: ‘For all the labours exerted by you and the boundless care of my affairs, I cannot sufficiently express my recognition to you; you yourself know how sensitive I am to merit and yours are outstanding, just as my friendship and love for you are. Let God give you health and ever greater powers of body and soul.’⁴¹

In late August 1783, the Prince collapsed with a dangerous fever. Exhausted by his massive projects, perpetual travel, proximity to plague and bad water, Potemkin lay close to death in a pretty Tartar cottage amid the verdant pastures of Karasubazaar.

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Potemkin could not rest – but his health improved in mid-September. Europe still rumbled at Russia’s achievement. As his fever ebbed and flared up again, he inspected Russian forces. In what became a pattern, even a tradition, Catherine, Bezborodko and the ambassadors followed every spasm back in Petersburg. When he moved to the regional capital of the south, Kremenchuk, away from plague-ridden Crimea and Kherson, Catherine, ever the concerned wife, wrote, ‘You never take care of yourself while recovering. Just do me this favour, for once remember the importance of your health: the well-being of the Empire and my glory.’ She knew that the conquest and development of the south depended on him: ‘The most important enterprise in the world will turn into nothing without you. I praise your moving to Kremenchuk but this should not be done in the very depth of dangerous illness, I was horrified to hear you had covered 300 versts in such a state.’⁴²

The two Russian imperialists savoured their success. Potemkin lost himself in romantic neo-Classical dreams, while Catherine reacted with crude, almost Stalinesque satisfaction: ‘Upon the envy of Europe, I look quite calmly – let them jest while we do our business.’ She reaffirmed his permanence: ‘Know that I am committed to you for a century.’⁴³ To show it, she allotted 100,000 roubles to build him a new house that was to become the Taurida Palace.⁴⁴

He could not stop working. He knew that the Nogai Hordes would always create instability in the Kuban, so in a move that foreshadowed later stains on Russian history he drew up a plan to move the nomads and resettle them between the Volga and the Urals. The rumours reached the Nogai. Meanwhile that irritating Genghizid popinjay, Shagin Giray, lingered in the Taman and kept in contact with the Nogai Hordes. Perhaps encouraged by him, these had barely left Suvorov’s barbecued banquet on the steppe than they massacred their pro-Russian murzas. The energetic Suvorov immediately pursued the rebels and slaughtered them on 1 October.⁴⁵

The Russian Ambassador to the Porte was Potemkin’s university friend Yakov Bulgakov, who now monitored the Ottoman reaction while negotiating a trade agreement. He reported that the Turks ‘won’t quarrel over the Crimea if no new circumstance comes from Europe’. The final Treaty of Versailles ended the War of American Independence on 23 August/3 September, but it was too late. Prussia and France tried to raise some resistance and, in late September, Catherine still expected an Ottoman declaration of war ‘at any minute’, but Joseph had held firm against Vergennes and Frederick.⁴⁶ The Kaiser even acclaimed ‘the success of Prince de Potemkin’ to the Empress: ‘I know very well the value and difficulty in finding such good and loyal serviteurs like him and how rare it is in our profession to find someone who understands us.’ On 28 December 1783, the Turks implicitly recognized the loss of the Crimea in the new convention of Ainalikawak, negotiated by Bulgakov.⁴⁷

Letters and praise poured into Potemkin’s Chancellery. It was true that he had now ‘risen to the highest degree of power that Sovereigns accord to individuals’, as his general Igelstrom wrote to him.⁴⁸ More than that, ‘what the centuries had not completed, what Peter I had not managed’, wrote the writer Glinka, ‘this giant of his time was able to achieve’.⁴⁹ Catherine missed him most of all, writing her simplest confirmation of their partnership in early October: ‘Let God make you better and return here. Honestly when I am without you, I often feel I am without hands.’ The Prince replied that ‘Thank God, I get better every hour…and when I’m fully recovered, I’m coming to see my dear matushka.’⁵⁰

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Prince Potemkin returned to Petersburg in late November 1783 to find courtiers hostile to him in paroxyms of jealousy. His ally Bezborodko was beleaguered, so Potemkin defended him, only to find himself beset by enemies. ‘The envy of many’, observed Bezborodko, grateful for Potemkin’s support, ‘is clear.’ This took the form of an intrigue to discredit Serenissimus.