Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

The archives – particularly RGADA, RGVIA and AVPRI, all in Moscow, and RGIA, in Petersburg, and AGAD, the Polish State Historical Archive in Warsaw – remain full of unpublished material. In RGADA, for example, I have found a wealth of unpublished letters to and from Potemkin, on questions of state, on his personal finances and on his love life, including many anonymous love letters and letters from Alexandra Branicka. RGVIA, the War Ministry archive, contains the archive of Potemkin’s Chancellery and many fascinating state and private documents which I have used here. RGIA contains unpublished letters from Frederick the Great as well as personal accounts. In Warsaw, the huge Deboli archive has been under-used and there is also a wealth of letters from Potemkin to Stanislas-Augustus. Overall, the correspondence in these four archives contain a mass of unpublished material, much of which is used in the book: this includes letters to and from the Emperors Joseph and Leopold; Prince Kaunitz; Frederick the Great; King Gustavus III of Sweden; King Stanislas-Augustus of Poland; Prince Henry of Prussia; Potemkin’s nieces Countess Alexandra Branicka and Princess Tatiana Yusupova; his nephews Count Skavronsky and Count Branicki and Potemkin’s Polish allies and agents; his art dealers such as Lord Carysfort; visitors like Lady Craven, Reginald Pole Carew and Sénac de Meilhan; Count Simon Vorontsov and other Russian statesmen; the Prince de Ligne; the Comte de Ségur; the Earl of Malmesbury; the Duke of Leeds; Jeremy and Sir Samuel Bentham; the Prince de Nassau-Siegen; John Paul Jones; Lewis Littlepage; Francisco de Miranda; his secret diplomatic agents and Russian ambassadors from Vienna, Paris, Constantinople; his bankers, including Baron Richard Sutherland; and many fascinating jewels such as his shopping-list in Paris. Many of these correspondences, such as those with Stanislas-Augustus and Sutherland, stretch across all these archives.

Sadly, I have been able to use only a fraction of the materials I have found: some such as the huge materials on Potemkin and Poland or Potemkin’s military orders belong in other books; some such as those from Ligne and Malmesbury simply add interesting twists to relationships that are already well documented. Some are simply too detailed or obscure to use.

In the local museums in Ukraine and Russia, the archives often contain copies of documents long since sent to the Moscow RGADA or RGVIA, but I was lucky enough to find some rarities there too, like the original invitation to Potemkin’s ball in the Odessa State Local Historical Museum, which may be the only one in existence. There is also immense local knowledge of fact and legend that has not been tapped for a century, as well as information on characters, such as M. L. Faleev in Nikolaev, that is not available elsewhere.

In Britain, the PRO contains the unpublished despatches of Fitzherbert and Fawkener, which give a fresh account of Potemkin’s last months in Petersburg and which have rarely been used. The British Museum’s Bentham archive, though much has been published, still yields many unseen treasures. I found most useful the unpublished archive at Antony in Cornwall of Reginald Pole Carew’s diaries of his visits to Russia and his time with Potemkin. In Paris, AAE, the Foreign Ministry Archives at the Quai d’Orsay, contain a wealth of useful documents, many unpublished, as well as the complete account of the Comte de Langeron, which is invaluable. Parts of Langeron have been published in Russia and a full Western publication is being prepared.