Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

The Panins had pulled off what was almost a coup d’état, forcing Catherine to swallow the humiliation of the hated Peter Panin saving the Empire. They were now, in their way, as much of a threat to Catherine and Potemkin as Pugachev. Having gulped Panin’s distasteful medicine, the lovers at once realized that they had to water it down. It was to get worse before it got better: the Panins demanded massive viceregal powers for the general over all towns, courts and Secret Commissions in the four huge provinces affected, and over all military forces (except Rumiantsev’s First Army, the Second Army occupying the Crimea and the units in Poland), as well as power to issue death sentences. ‘You see my friend,’ Catherine told Potemkin, ‘from the enclosed pieces, that Count Panin wants to make his brother the dictator of the best parts of the Empire.’ She was determined not to raise this ‘first-class liar…who has personally offended me, above all the mortals in the Empire’. Potemkin took over the negotiations with the Panins and the management of the Rebellion.³⁷

Catherine and Potemkin did not know that, before Kazan had fallen, Rumiantsev had signed an extremely beneficial peace with the Turks – the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainardzhi. On the evening of 23 July, two couriers, one of them Rumiantsev’s son, galloped into Peterhof with the news. Catherine’s mood changed from despair to gloating enthusiasm. ‘I think today is the happiest day of my life,’ she told the Governor of Moscow.³⁸ The Treaty gave Russia a toehold on the Black Sea, granting the fortresses of Azov, Kerch, Yenikale and Kinburn and the narrow strip of coastline between the Dnieper and Bug rivers. Russian merchant ships could pass through the Straits into the Mediterranean. She could build a Black Sea Fleet. The Khanate of the Crimea became independent of the Ottoman Sultan. This success was to make Potemkin’s achievements possible. Catherine ordered extravagant festivities. The Court moved to Oranienbaum three days later to celebrate.

This strengthened Potemkin’s position with Peter Panin, who waited excitedly in Moscow for confirmation of his dictatorial powers. The surviving drafts of these powers show that Catherine and Potemkin were equally excited about cutting the Panins down to size. They certainly did not hurry: Nikita Panin now realized that he might have overplayed his hand: ‘I could see from the first day that this affair was considered…an extreme humiliation.’ Potemkin was not overawed by the Panins: ‘he doesn’t listen to anything and doesn’t want to listen but decides everything with his mind’s impudence.’³⁹

When Potemkin wrote to Peter Panin a few days later with the Empress’s instructions, he spelt out, with all that ‘impudence’, that the appointment was completely thanks to his own efforts with the Empress: ‘I’m absolutely sure that Your Excellency will treat my actions as a good turn to you.’⁴⁰ General Panin received his orders on 2 August – he was only to command forces already fighting Pugachev and enjoy authority over Kazan, Orenburg and Nizhny Novgorod. Potemkin still had his tough cousin Pavel Sergeievich in Kazan as a counterbalance to the overmighty Panin: authority was split between them. Panin’s job was to destroy the Pugachev forces; Pavel Potemkin was to arrest, interrogate and punish. Not all the members of the Council quite understood that Peter Panin was not to be ‘dictator’: when Viazemsky suggested placing Pavel Potemkin’s Secret Commission under Panin, he received a laconic rebuttal in the imperial hand: ‘No, because it is under me.’⁴¹

The latest news from the Volga weakened the Panins yet further. It emerged that Mikhelson had beaten Pugachev several times right after the fall of Kazan, so that the news of its sacking was out of date by the time it rocked the Council in Petersburg. Far from marching on Moscow, Pugachev escaped southwards. Catherine’s political crisis had passed. The celebrations for the victory over the Turks began at Oranienbaum on the 27th with parties for the diplomatic corps. But Catherine was still busy watching the strange disturbances on the Volga.

It was always hard to tell if Pugachev was fleeing or advancing. Even his flight resembled an invasion. Rabbles rallied to him, towns surrendered, manors burned, necks snapped, bells were rung. In the remote Lower Volga, the local towns kept falling, culminating on 6 August in the sack of Saratov, where renegade priests administered oaths of allegiance to Pugachev and his wife, which undermined his imposture even more. Twenty-four landowners and twenty-one officials were hanged. But Pugachev was doing what every cornered criminal does: heading home, to the Don.

The victors swiftly fell out among themselves: Peter Panin and Pavel Potemkin, both arrogant and aggressive, undermined each other wherever possible on behalf of their respective relations in Petersburg. This was precisely the reason Potemkin had divided their responsibilities.