Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

Catherine had to tread carefully. She absolutely understood the dangers of raising the Orlovs too high. If she married Orlov, she would threaten Grand Duke Paul’s claim to the throne, and possibly his life, as well as outraging the magnates and the army. But she loved Orlov. She owed the Orlovs her throne. She had borne Grigory a son.^* This was an age when the imperial public and private lives were indissoluble. All through her life, Catherine longed for a family: her parents were dead; her aunt had terrorized her and taken away her son; the interests of her son were a living threat to her reign if not her life; even Anna, her daughter with Poniatowski, had died young. Her position was extraordinary, yet she yearned for an almost bourgeois home with Grigory Orlov, whom she regarded as her partner for life. So she let the question ride – and probably allowed the Orlovs to send this envoy to ask Razumovsky whether the precedent existed.

Yet the brothers were not the most subtle of operators. At one small party, Grigory boasted with gangsterish swagger that, if he wished, he could overthrow Catherine in a month. Kirill Razumovsky, the good-natured brother of Alexei, replied quick as a flash: ‘Could be; but, my friend, instead of waiting a month, we would have hanged you in two weeks.’³⁴ The guffaws were hearty – but chilling. When Catherine hinted at an Orlov marriage, Panin supposedly replied: ‘The Empress can do what she wishes but Madame Orlov will never be Empress of Russia.’³⁵

This vacillation was not a safe policy. In May 1763, while Catherine was on a pilgrimage from Moscow to Rostov-on-Don, she was given a shock that put paid to Orlov’s project. Gentleman of the Bedchamber Fyodor Khitrovo, who with Potemkin had raised the Horse-Guards for Catherine, was arrested. Under interrogation, he admitted planning to kill the Orlovs to stop the marriage and marry Catherine to Ivan VI’s brother. This was no ordinary officer muttering over his vodka but a player in the inner circle of Catherine’s conspiracy. Did Panin or Catherine herself create this decisive nyet to Orlov ambitions? If so, it served its purpose.

This brings us back to the question asked of Alexei Razumovsky, who toyed with the scroll in the bejewelled box until Chancellor Vorontsov held out his hand. Razumovsky tossed it into the fire. ‘No, there is no proof,’ he said. ‘Tell that to our gracious Sovereign.’³⁶ The story is mythical, but it appears in some histories that Razumovsky thus stymied Catherine’s wish to marry Orlov. In fact, Catherine was fond of both Razumovskys – two genial charmers and old friends of about twenty years. There probably was no marriage certificate. The burning of the scroll sounds like the droll Cossack’s joke. But, if the question was asked, it is most likely that Alexei Razumovsky gave the answer that Catherine wanted in order to avoid having to marry Orlov. If she needed to ask the question, she did not want an answer.³⁷

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Just as she celebrated success in Poland, Catherine faced another challenge from the simpleton known as ‘Nameless Prisoner Number One’, the Emperor in the tower. On 20 June 1764, the Empress left the capital on a progress through her Baltic provinces. On 5 July a tormented young officer, Vasily Mirovich, with dreams of restoring his family’s fortunes, launched a bid to liberate Ivan VI from the bowels of Schlüsselburg and make him emperor. Poor Mirovich did not know that Catherine had reconfirmed Peter III’s orders that, if anyone tried to free Prisoner Number One, he had to be killed instantly. Meanwhile Mirovich, whose regiment was stationed at Schlüsselburg, was trying to discover the identity of the mysterious prisoner without a name who was held so carefully in the fortress.

On 4 July, Mirovich, who had lost his most trusted co-conspirator in a drowning accident, wrote a manifesto proclaiming the accession of Emperor Ivan VI. Given the atmosphere of instability after the regicide of Peter III and the superstitious reverence Russians held for their tsars, he managed to recruit a few men. At 2 a.m. Mirovich seized control of the gates, overpowered the commandant and headed for Ivan’s cell. Shooting broke out between the rebels and Ivan’s guards and then abruptly ceased. When he rushed into the cell, he found the ex-Emperor’s body still bleeding from a handful of stab wounds. Mirovich understood immediately, kissed the body and surrendered.

Catherine continued with her trip for one more day but then returned, fearing that the conspiracy might have been wider. Under interrogation, it turned out that Mirovich was not the centre of a spider’s web, just a loner. After a trial in September, he was sentenced to death. Six soldiers were variously sentenced to run the gauntlet of 1,000 men ten or twelve times (which would probably prove fatal) – and then face exile if they survived. Mirovich was beheaded on 15 September 1764.