Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin

Russian military and political leader

• Born: September 24, 1739
• Birthplace: Chizovo, Russia
• Died: October 16, 1791
• Place of death: Near Jassy, Moldavia (now Iaşi, Romania)

One of the most famous lovers of Empress Catherine the Great, Potemkin was also one of her principal advisers and military leaders. He was largely responsible for Russia’s annexation and development of the Crimea.

Early Life

Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin (gryih-GAWR-yuhih uhl-yihk-SAHN-druhv-yich puh-TYAWM-kyihn) was born the son of a minor nobleman and army officer who had retired to his estate in the Russian hinterland. The family into which he was born was not overly promising, for his father had married a beautiful young widow while still married to another woman. Even after his first wife retired to a convent to make way for the new one, Aleksandr Potemkin was no ideal husband, proving violent and jealous and even accusing his wife of adultery and threatening divorce.

Grigori was a brilliant but mercurial boy. Consigned to the care of the deacon in charge of the estate’s chapel, he played no end of mischievous tricks. However, the threat of being deprived of music quickly brought the boy to heel, and he applied himself to his studies with a fervor that alarmed his family. After his father’s death, he moved to Moscow to live with his uncle and godfather. There he was able to study at Moscow University, Russia’s oldest institution of higher learning. He also embarked upon a military career, rising rapidly in the Horse Guards and deciding to visit the glittering courts of St. Petersburg, the imperial capital. Although he was not overly wealthy, he was unwilling to appear poor in front of his well-heeled friends and quickly amassed substantial debts. This habit of overspending in the pursuit of high living would remain with him throughout his flamboyant life.

Life’s Work

Potemkin’s rise to power began with his role in the coup d’état that overthrew the incompetent Czar Peter III and installed his wife, Catherine the Great, as empress of Russia. He was instrumental in rallying support in the guards barracks, although his role in the coup itself is more murky. In an often-told story, Catherine was disguised in masculine garb that night, and when it was discovered that she had no sword-knot on her sword, Potemkin gallantly offered her his own. However, the earliest written account of this event has a number of notable discrepancies with known facts about Potemkin’s life.

In any case, Potemkin came to Catherine’s attention and she began giving him responsible positions and lavishing him with rewards. When she admitted him to court, he amused her with his talent for mimicry, even mocking her own strong German accent. Such boldness could easily have led him into grave trouble, but Catherine found Potemkin amusing and enjoyed the fascination she held for him. Her favor sparked anger, however, in her current favorite, Grigori Grigoryevich Orlov, and with his gigantic brother Aleksey, Orlov brutally beat Potemkin, leaving him disfigured.

Devastated, Potemkin shut himself away, even considering becoming a monk. Catherine herself took measures to bring him back to court, giving him various posts that would force him out of his self-imposed seclusion. He acquitted himself well in the First Turkish War in 1769, being promoted to the rank of major general, and was summoned back to St. Petersburg.

Having grown bored with Orlov by 1774, Catherine was looking for a new lover. After a brief interlude with another young officer, the empress summoned Potemkin to her bedchamber, beginning a liaison that would make him one of the most powerful men in all Russia. He shared her wide-ranging intellectual interests, and they made a formidable partnership, which some have claimed to have extended to a secret marriage. He proved a formidable adviser during the crisis of the revolt led by Yemelyan Ivanovich Pugachev, a disaffected Cossack who claimed to be Peter III.

Even after Potemkin no longer shared Catherine’s bed, he continued to select potential new lovers for her. Throughout and after his relationship with the empress, moreover, he continued his own amorous adventures, seducing a wide variety of ladies of the court, and even his own five nieces. Although disfigured and no longer possessing a slender figure, he remained extraordinarily attractive to women, in part as a result of his positions of power, but largely because of his wit and intelligence.

Once his intimate association with the empress was over, Potemkin threw his energies more thoroughly into the work of building her empire. He might not share her bed, but his adoration for her grew all the deeper, and as a result he determined that she should have the most brilliant and glorious empire he could secure for her. As his military rank grew, he involved himself in far-reaching military reforms. In these, he showed himself a humane figure, calling upon officers to take care of their men in a spirit of paternal benevolence, rather than regarding them as little more than two-footed beasts to be flogged into submission.

In 1782, Potemkin began the project that produced the most lasting fame of his name, the annexation and modernization of the Crimean Peninsula. At the time, the Crimea was an independent Tatar Khanate, Muslim and to a degree friendly with Turkey but not entirely in accord with the sultan. So long as the Crimea Khanate remained independent, it could threaten the open steppe of the Ukraine, long a source of instability because of its strong Cossack nationalism. Although Potemkin himself was afflicted with persistent ill health throughout the Crimean campaign, by 1783 he had broken down the last resistance among the Tatar tribes there, and formal annexation of the peninsula soon followed.

Potemkin then set about a program of building, creating the city of Sebastopol from the ground up as a major harbor and naval base and greatly improving a number of existing cities. He also constructed a number of ships to become the nucleus of a new Black Sea Fleet, although Catherine rebuked him when he proposed to name the flagship in her honor, warning him that it was better to be, than to appear to be but not be. However, he did not take that warning to heart, for he then set about creating a magnificent new city, Yekatarinoslav, on the banks of the Dnieper, when funds and materials were still woefully inadequate for the realization of his plans.

Potemkin was such a consummate showman that he could sweep visitors up in his visions for his new cities, to the point that they could imagine that they saw beautiful avenues and stately buildings where only muddy tracks and wooden hovels stood. When Catherine herself made a tour of inspection in 1787, Potemkin paid particular attention to beautifying the route she would follow, even at the expense of areas she would not see. However, modern scholars have questioned the extent to which he actually produced a false front of beauty over actual squalor, as the common expression “Potemkin village” implies.

In gratitude for his work in the Crimea, Catherine granted Potemkin the title of prince of Taurida (an old name for the region) and authorized the construction of the Tauride Palace in St. Petersburg. Potemkin continued his work of building and diplomacy in Russia’s southern lands, and in 1791, while on his way to peace talks in Jassy, he contracted typhoid and died.

Significance

Potemkin’s name has been immortalized in the expression “Potemkin village,” which originally referred to his beautification of the Crimea for his empress’s visit but has since been expanded to refer to any sham set up for the benefit of a visiting observer. However, there appears to be little evidence that he actually went so far as to strip entire areas of their population in order to line them up in front of false facades while the empress passed, then disassemble them like so many Hollywood sets and relocate them a few miles farther along the road, just in time for the empress’s arrival at the next village. These stories first appeared in the journals of a courtier known to hold considerable animosity for Potemkin and show evidence of being deliberately fabricated to damage Potemkin’s reputation.

More lastingly, Potemkin’s name was given to a battleship that became the site of a famous mutiny during the 1905 revolution, which was often called a dress rehearsal for the 1917 revolution that ultimately toppled the Romanov Dynasty and opened the way for the Bolshevik takeover later that year. The event was immortalized in 1925 by Sergei Eisenstein in a silent movie, and as a result the name “Potemkin” has become more closely associated with the battleship and its mutiny, eclipsing the original owner of the name.

Bibliography

Alexander, John T. Catherine the Great: Life and Legend. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Biography includes considerable discussion of Potemkin’s role in Catherine’s life.

Catherine II et al. Love and Conquest: Personal Correspondence of Catherine the Great and Prince Grigory Potemkin. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004. Excellent collection of primary source material sheds light on their intimate relationship.

Montefiore, Simon Sebag. Potemkin: Catherine the Great’s Imperial Partner. New York: Vintage, 2005. Looks at primary sources with a modern sensibility untainted by the prudery of intervening ages.

Soloveytchik, George. Potemkin: Soldier, Statesman, Lover, and Consort of Catherine of Russia. New York: Norton, 1947. Classic source, still good for basic overview of Potemkin’s life, useful also for an understanding of how earlier generations viewed the libertine side of his life.