Catherine the Great

THE OUTSTANDING FIGURE of Catherine’s reign, other than Catherine herself, was Gregory Potemkin. For seventeen years, from 1774 to 1791, he was the most powerful man in Russia. No one else during her life was closer to Catherine; he was her lover, her adviser, her military commander in chief, the governor and viceroy of half of her empire, the creator of her new cities, seaports, palaces, armies, and fleets. He was also, perhaps, her husband.

Gregory Potemkin’s family had served Russian sovereigns for generations. His seventeenth-century ancestor Peter Potemkin had been sent by Tsar Alexis, the father of Peter the Great, on diplomatic missions to Spain and France. Determined to uphold the rank and dignity of his master, he demanded in Madrid that the king of Spain take off his hat whenever the tsar’s name was mentioned. In Paris, he refused to speak to the Sun King, Louis XIV, because an error had been made in the tsar’s titles. Later, in Copenhagen, he was received by the king of Denmark, who was ill and confined to bed. The envoy demanded that another bed be brought and placed next to the king so that he could negotiate from a position of absolute equality. This Potemkin, Gregory’s grandfather, died in 1700 at the age of eighty-three, demanding and eccentric to the end.

Gregory Potemkin’s father, Alexander Potemkin, was not dissimilar. As a young man in 1709, he fought in the Battle of Poltava against Charles XII of Sweden. Retired as a colonel to a small estate near Smolensk, Alexander Potemkin, while traveling, met an attractive, indigent young widow, Daria Skouratova. He was fifty and she was twenty, but he married her on the spot, forgetting to tell her that he already had a wife. Daria was pregnant before she discovered that she was married to a bigamist. She reacted by going to Potemkin’s first wife and asking for guidance. The older woman, whose life with her husband was unhappy, resolved the situation by entering a convent, in effect divorcing the colonel. Daria got along with her new husband no better than had her predecessor, but she eventually produced six children, five daughters and a son, Gregory.

The boy was born on September 13, 1739, and began life surrounded and coddled by a loving mother and five sisters. The family was unable to afford a tutor, and Gregory began his education with the village deacon. The pupil loved music, and the deacon had an exceptional voice; he enforced discipline on his precocious, obstreperous student by threatening to sing him no more songs. At five, Gregory was sent to live with his godfather, a senior civil servant in Moscow. With an ear for languages as well as music, he learned Greek, Latin, French, and German. As an adolescent, he was drawn to theology, but also to the army; whichever career he chose, he said, he wished to command. “If I become a general,” he declared to his friends, “I will have soldiers under my orders. If I become a bishop, it will be monks.” When he entered the recently founded University of Moscow, he won a gold medal for studies in theology. Then, losing interest, he refused to attend lectures and was expelled. He entered the army as a private in the Horse Guards, became a corporal, and, by 1759, a captain. In 1762, he joined the five Orlov brothers and Nikita Panin in the coup that put Catherine on the throne. It was during this tumult that he supplied the missing sword knot that Catherine borrowed for the march on Peterhof. Subsequently, when Catherine was distributing rewards for assistance in the coup, Captain Potemkin was given an army promotion and ten thousand rubles.

At twenty-two, Potemkin was tall and slim, with thick auburn hair. He was intelligent, educated, and spirited. His appearance at court and his introduction to Catherine were sponsored by the Orlovs, who admired the young soldier as an engaging conversationalist and a talented mimic who successfully impersonated the voices of people around him. One evening, Catherine asked him to mimic her. Without hesitation, he spoke to her in her own voice, perfectly imitating her idiom and German accent. Catherine, always seeking wit and humor, could not stop laughing. The impertinence was risky, but Potemkin had guessed that the empress would be amused and would forgive and probably not forget him. He had judged her correctly. Thereafter, he was often invited to her intimate evenings, which included no more than twenty people and from which all ceremony and formality were banned. She decreed that her guests must be good-humored and not speak badly of anyone. Lying and boasting were forbidden, and all unpleasant thoughts were to be deposited with hats and swords at the door. In this uninhibited atmosphere, Gregory—quick-witted, artistic, musical, and able to make the empress laugh—was always welcome.