Читаем Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair полностью

Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

The published material on Potemkin divides clearly into the prejudiced and the unprejudiced, or at least the mythical and the documentary. Naturally, I have treated anything connected to Helbig, The Memoirs of the Life of Prince Potemkin, Cerenville (both Helbig adaptions) or Saint-Jean (whose very identity is a mystery) as hostile or untrustworthy, while Castera is more useful. Even when recounting neutral stories, Charles Masson, Saint-Jean, and Helbig must be regarded as ‘myth-writers’, not historians. But the mythology of Potemkin is important too and tells its own tales, though I try to reassess it wherever possible using documents. Masson hated Emperor Paul and his Secret Memoirs were notoriously published in his lifetime, yet he records some Potemkin anecdotes that ring true. Eye-witnesses like Ligne, Ségur, Corberon, Richelieu, Miranda, Damas and Langeron (all foreigners) and Rostopchin, Tsebrikov, Ribeaupierre, Derzhavin, Bezborodko, Vorontsov, Zavadovsky, Wiegel, Engelhardt and Samoilov were prejudiced and subjective, but one senses that they were telling what they believed to be the truth. Some are openly malicious, such as Rostopchin and Vorontsov; Dolgoruky is malicious and a fantastist; while others such as Samoilov are supporters. Many fall somewhere in between. Bezborodko for example strikes one as studiously fair. The ‘Table Talk’, history of the Pugachev Rebellion and Historical Notes of A. S. Pushkin are other underused sources: the poet was captivated by Potemkin, knew his family and circle, and carefully recorded their stories, which I therefore treat as valuable anecdotal history from the people who knew him. Among the foreigners, Ligne’s and Langeron’s malicious accounts of Potemkin’s war record have completely blackened his reputation through all the histories ever since. Yet they are also invaluable, given Langeron’s fair tribute to Potemkin later in life. In Ligne’s case, unpublished letters in Potemkin’s archives give us the chance to put his prejudices in perspective. Richelieu’s, Stedingk’s and Miranda’s much more positive accounts of the same period have often been overlooked, and redress the balance.

In terms of published Western histories, I have used as my reference books the works of Isabel de Madariaga and J. T. Alexander, along with Marc Raeff, David Ransel, Roger Bartlett (Human Capital), John LeDonne (Ruling Russia), Anthony Cross (on the British in Russia), Lord and Zamoyski (on Poland) and Kinross and Mansel (on Constantinople). Of Potemkin’s previous biographers, Brückner is the most important, while Soloveytchik is useful but lacks all references.

ARCHIVES, PERIODICALS AND ABBREVIATIONS USED IN NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

AAE

Archives des Affairs Etrangères, Quai d’Orsay, Paris, volumes 68–139

AGAD

Archiwum Glowne Akt Dawnych w Warszawie

AGS

Arkhiv Gosudarstvennogo Soveta

AHR

American History Review

AKV

Arkhiv Knyaza Vorontsova

AVPRI