Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

However, Diderot soon began to irritate her – though if one compares his sojourn to Voltaire’s disastrous stay with Frederick the Great, it was a moderate success. Catherine naughtily claimed that he bruised her knees which he pummelled as he over-excitedly told her how to run Russia.¹⁰ He did at least introduce her to his companion Frederich Melchior Grimm, who became her dearest correspondent for the rest of her life.

Diderot’s sole achievement was probably to convince her, if Pugachev had not already done so, that abstract reform programmes had little use in Russia: ‘you only work on paper…’, she told him, ‘while I, poor Empress, I work on human skin.’¹¹ Catherine, said Diderot, had ‘the soul of Caesar with the seductions of Cleopatra.’¹²

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On 29 September, Paul, undermined by the Saldern Affair, married his Grand Duchess Natalia (formerly Wilhelmina), followed by ten days of celebrations. Count Panin remained Foreign Minister but he had to give up his position as Paul’s Governor, losing his rooms in the palaces. He was consoled with promotion to the highest echelon of the Table of Ranks, a pension of 30,000 roubles and a gift of 9,000 souls. To pacify the Orlovs, Catherine promoted their ally Zakhar Chernyshev to field-marshal and President of the College of War. But the Saldern Affair had damaged all of them: Catherine no longer trusted Panin but was stuck with his Northern System. She no longer respected Orlov, but his clan was a pillar of her regime. She forgave him the folly of Fokshany but would not take him back as a lover. She found her own son Paul narrow-minded, bitter and uncongenial. She could never trust him in government – yet he was Heir. She was bored with Vassilchikov yet she had made him her official favourite. Catherine, surrounded by a fierce rivalry between Panins and Orlovs, had never been more alone.¹³

This risky dilemma was also harming her image in Europe. Frederick the Great, that misanthropic genius who presided over an austere all-male court, was particularly disgusted: Orlov had been recalled to all offices, he fumed, ‘except that of fucking’. Frederick also sensed that the uncertainty at Court would threaten Panin and his Prussian alliance. ‘It is a terrible business’, declared the King of Prussia, ‘when the prick and the cunt decide the interests of Europe.’¹⁴ But by late January the freshly arrived Potemkin was deciding nothing. He could not wait any longer. He decided to force Catherine’s hand.

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Potemkin declared he was no longer interested in earthly glories: he was to take holy orders. He at once left Samoilov’s cottage, moved into the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, founded by Peter the Great, on the outskirts of eighteenth-century Petersburg, and lived, as a monk, growing a beard, fasting, reading, praying and chanting ostentatiously. The suspense of waiting, on the verge of success, in a political and personal hothouse, was, in itself, enough to strain Potemkin’s manic nature to the edge of a breakdown, which he soothed by immersing himself in Orthodox mysticism. But he was also a born politician with the appropriate thespian talents. His melodramatic retreat put public pressure on Catherine; he was almost going ‘on strike’, withdrawing his advice and support unless she gave him the credit for it. It has been suggested that he and the Empress arranged this together to accelerate his rise. The pair were soon to show they were quite capable of prearranged stunts, but in this case Potemkin’s behaviour seems equally divided between piety, depression and artifice.¹⁵

His cell, more like a coenobitic political campaign headquarters, saw much coming and going between fasts. Carriages galloped through the gates and departed again; servants, courtiers and the rustling skirts of imperial ladies, particularly Countess Bruce, rushed on and off the Baroque stage of the monastery like characters in an opera, bearing notes and whispered messages.¹⁶ First, as in every opera, there was a song. Potemkin let Catherine know that he had written one to her. It has the ring of Potemkin’s passion – and also the mawkishness that is the hallmark of love songs, then and now. But as a description of his situation, it is not bad. ‘As soon as I beheld thee, I thought of thee alone…But O Heavens, what torment to love one to whom I dare not declare it! one who can never be mine! Cruel gods! Why have you given her such charms? And why did you exalt her so high? Why did you destine me to love her and her alone?’¹⁷ Potemkin made sure Countess Bruce told the Empress how his ‘unfortunate and violent passion had reduced him to despair and, in his sad situation, he deemed it prudent to fly the object of his torment since the sight alone could aggravate his sufferings which were already intolerable.’¹⁸ He began ‘to hate the world because of his love for her – and she was flattered’.¹⁹