Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

‘A new scene has just opened,’ Sir Robert Gunning, the English envoy, reported to the Earl of Suffolk, Secretary of State for the North, in London on 4 March, having just watched the new Adjutant-General at Court, ‘which is likely to merit more attention than any that has presented itself since the beginning of this reign.’ Since this was the age of letter-writing, everyone now wrote about Potemkin. Diplomats were agog because, as Gunning saw at once, Potemkin was abler than both Prince Orlov and Vassilchikov. It is interesting that, just a few days after appearing as official favourite, even foreigners not intimate with the Court were informing their kings that Potemkin had arrived to love the Empress and help her rule. ‘Mr Vassilchikov the favourite whose understanding was too limited to admit of his having any influence in affairs or sharing his mistress’s confidence’, explained Gunning, ‘is replaced by a man who bids fair for possessing them both in the most supreme degree.’³⁶ The Prussian Ambassador Count von Solms went further to Frederick: ‘Evidently Potemkin…will become the most influential person in Russia. Youth, intellect and positive qualities will give him such importance…Soon Prince Grigory Grigorevich [Orlov] will be forgotten and Orlov’s family will drop to the common standard.’³⁷

Russia’s chief ally was even more repulsed than he had been by the arrival of Vassilchikov two years before. Thoroughly informed by Solms, Frederick the Great wrote to his brother Prince Henry ridiculing the newcomer’s name – ‘General Patukin or Tapukin’ – but recognized that his rise to power ‘might prove prejudicial to the well-being of our affairs’. Being Frederick, he coined a philosophical principle of misogynistic statesmanship: ‘A woman is always a woman and, in feminine government, the cunt has more influence than a firm policy guided by straight reason.’³⁸

The Russian courtiers observed Potemkin carefully, chronicling every move of the new favourite, even his jewellery and the decoration of his apartments. Every detail meant something that was important for them to know. Solms had already discovered that Potemkin’s arrival did not trouble the Panins.³⁹ ‘I think this new actor will play his part with great vivacity and big changes if he’ll be able to consolidate his position,’⁴⁰ wrote General Peter Panin to Prince Alexander Kurakin on 7 March. Evidently, the Panins thought they could use Potemkin to obliterate the credit of the Orlovs.⁴¹ ‘The new Adjutant-General is always on duty instead of all the others,’ Countess Sievers wrote to her husband, one of Catherine’s senior officials. ‘They say he is pleasant and modest.’⁴² Potemkin was already amassing the sort of power Vassilchikov never possessed. ‘If you want anything, my sweet,’ Countess Rumiantseva wrote to her husband, the Field-Marshal, down with the army, ‘ask Potemkin.’⁴³

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To her friend Grimm, Catherine paraded her exhilaration at escaping Vassilchikov and finding Potemkin: ‘I have drawn away from a certain good-natured but extremely dull character, who has immediately been replaced by one of the greatest, wittiest and most original eccentrics of this iron century.’⁴⁴

Skip Notes

* When Emperor Alexander I died in 1825, he was widely believed to have become a monk wandering the Russian vastness.

PART THREE Together

1774–1776

7

  LOVE

The doors will be open…I am going to bed…Darling, I will do whatever you command. Shall I come to you or will you come to me?

Catherine II to G. A. Potemkin

This was Potemkin, a great thing in days

When homicide and harlotry made great.

If stars and titles could entail long praise,

His glory might half equal his estate

This fellow, being six foot high, could raise

A kind of phantasy proportionate

In the then sovereign of the Russian people,

Who measured men as you would do a steeple.

Lord Byron, Don Juan Canto VII: 37

Everything about the love of Catherine and Potemkin is exceptional. Both were extraordinary individuals in the most unique of circumstances. Yet the love affair on which they were now embarked has features that are universal, even today. Their passion was so exhausting and tumultuous that it is easy to forget that they loved one another while ruling a vast empire – at war abroad, in civil war at home. She was an empress and he a subject – both of matching ‘boundless ambition’ – living in a highly competitive Court where everything was seen and every glance had political consequences. They often forgot themselves in their love and moods, but neither was ever completely private: Catherine was always the Sovereign, and Potemkin, from the first day, was more than a mere favourite, a politician of the first rank.