Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

Daria Potemkina was ambitious. Grigory was not going to make a career in that remote hamlet, buried like a needle in the sprawling haystack of Russia. She did not have connections in the new capital, St Petersburg, but she did in the old. Soon the family were on the road to Moscow.^*4

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Grisha Potemkin’s first glimpse of the old capital would have been its steeples. Deep in the midst of the Russian Empire, Moscow was the fulcrum of everything opposed to St Petersburg, Peter the Great’s new capital. If the Venice of the North was a window on to Europe, Moscow was a trapdoor into the recesses of Russia’s ancient and xenophobic traditions. Its grim and solemn Russian grandeur alarmed narrow-minded Westerners: ‘What is particularly gaudy and ugly at Moscow are the steeples,’ wrote an Englishwoman arriving there, ‘square lumps of different coloured bricks and gilt spire…they make a very Gothic appearance.’ Indeed, though it was built around the forbidding medieval fortress, the Kremlin, and the bright onion-domes of St Basil’s, all its twisting, cramped and dark alleys and courtyards were as obscure as the superstitions of old Orthodoxy. Westerners thought it barely resembled a Western city at all. ‘I cannot say Moscow gives me any idea other than of a large village or many villages joined.’ Another visitor, looking at the noble châteaux and the thatched cottages, thought the city seemed to have been ‘rolled together on coasters’.²⁸

Potemkin’s godfather (and possibly natural father) Kizlovsky, retired President of the Kamer-Collegium, the Moscow officer of the ministry in charge of the Court (Petrine ministries were called Collegia or Colleges), took the family under his protection and helped Daria, whether his mistress or just his protégé, move into a small house on Nikitskaya Street. Grisha Potemkin was enrolled in the gymnasium school attached to the university with Kizlovsky’s own son, Sergei.

Potemkin’s intelligence was recognized early; he had a brilliant ear for languages, so he soon excelled at Greek, Latin, Russian, German and French as well as passing Polish, and it was said later that he could understand Italian and English. His first fascination was Orthodoxy: even as a child, he would discuss the liturgy with the Bishop of the Greek convent, Dorofei. The priest of the Church of St Nikolai encouraged his knowledge of church ceremonies. Grisha’s remarkable memory, which would be noted later, enabled him to learn long tracts of Greek liturgy by heart. Judging by his knowledge and memory as an adult, he found learning perhaps too easy and concentration tedious. He bored quickly and feared no one: he was already well known for his epigrams and his mimicry of his teachers. Yet he somehow befriended the high-ranking clergyman Ambrosius Zertis-Kamensky, later Archbishop of Moscow.²⁹

The boy used to help at the altar, but even then he was either immersed in Byzantine theology or bursting to commit some outrageous act of mischief. When Grisha appeared before his godfather’s guests dressed in the vestments of a Georgian priest, Kizlovsky said: ‘One day you will really shame me because I was unable to educate you as a nobleman.’ Potemkin already believed he was different from others: he would be a great man. All manner of his predictions of his own future eminence are recorded: ‘If I’m a general, I’ll command soldiers; if a bishop, it will be priests.’ And he promised his mother that when he was rich and famous he would destroy the dilapidated houses where she lived and build a cathedral.^*5 The happy memories of this time remained with him for the rest of his life.³⁰

In 1750, the eleven-year-old travelled to Smolensk, escorted probably by his godfather, to register for his military service. The first time a boy dressed up in his uniform and felt the weight of a sabre, the creak of boots, the stiff grip of a tunic, the proud trappings of service, remained a joyful memory for every child–soldier of the dvoryantsvo. Noble children were enrolled at absurdly young ages, sometimes as young as five, serving as supernumerary soldiers, to get round Peter’s compulsory life service. When they actually became soldiers in their late teens they would technically have served for over ten years and already be officers. Parents signed their sons into the best regiments, the Guards, just as English noblemen used to be ‘put down for Eton’. In Smolensk, Grisha testified to the Heraldic Office about his family’s service and nobility, recounting his soi-disant Roman descent, and his connection to Tsar Alexei’s irascible Ambassador. The provincial office confusingly recorded his age as seven but, since children usually registered at eleven, it is probably a bureaucratic slip. Five years later, in February 1755, he returned for his second inspection and was put down for the Horse-Guards, one of the five elite Guards regiments.³¹ The teenager returned to his studies.