Catherine the Great & Potemkin

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  The construction of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, as well as an oar-propelled flotilla, in less than ten years, was an equally astounding achievement that was to have far-reaching consequences down to the Crimean War and beyond. The effects of the Fleet and of harnessing the immense agricultural power of the steppes resounded and resounds into this century. Russia became a Near Eastern power for the first time. ‘The truly enormous achievement’, writes a modern historian, ‘made Russia…the arbiter of eastern Europe and allowed Russian might to outstrip Austrian and eclipse Ottoman power.’42 But Potemkin’s love of the south was never just about raw power: there was much romance in it. Sometimes he turned his hand to poetry. As he wrote for the Empress about the foundation of Ekaterinoslav:

  Scattered stones of ancient ruins

  Will answer your divine inspiration

  In pleasant, brilliant ways

  They’ll create a New Athens.43

  Skip Notes

  *1 Who were these ‘blackamoors’? Was Potemkin really trying to import black settlers – slaves from Africa? ‘Blackamoor’ surely meant ‘street arabs’ or urchins from London’s streets, whom today we would call vagrants.

  *2 Stavropol’s most famous son is Mikhail Gorbachev. Though General Suvorov was responsible for building some of these forts in his Kuban Line and was given credit as their founder in various Soviet histories, it was Potemkin who ordered their construction.

  *3 Sheikh Mansour and the nineteenth-century leader against the Russians, Imam Shamyl, an Avar, are the two great heroes of today’s Chechen rebels. When the author was in Grozny before the Chechen War in 1994, portraits of Sheikh Mansour’s finely featured and heavily bearded visage adorned the offices of the President and ministers. Grozny’s airport was named after him during Chechnya’s short independence in the 1990s.

  *4 The Kherson State History Museum has prints that show it in its nineteenth-century glory. But it does not stand any more. Plundered for its firewood and hated for its grandeur, it was destroyed during the Civil War.

  *5 ‘Potemkin’s Palace’ still stands in the centre of Dniepropetrovsk. The local museum contains some of the gold-encrusted mirrors, possibly made in his own factories, with which Potemkin planned to decorate the palace. On Potemkin’s death, only one storey was finished. The rest was built according to Starov’s plans during the 1830s: it became the House of the Nobility. In 1917, it became the House of Rest for Working People. It remains the House of Students. Ruined in the war, it was rebuilt in 1951. The two hothouses of the Winter Garden in Ekaterinoslav crumbled in 1794. Today, Gould’s garden, now a Park of Culture, is called ‘Potemkin Park’ and still has an English air.

  *6 This survived long after his death. The author found the place where it had stood: today, locals swim and dive from its seafront. Two storeys of white stone steps that led to the house survive along with Starov’s ornate white fountain, dated 1792. A basketball court stands on the palace’s foundations. The house was the Ship-Owners Club during the nineteenth century, but it was destroyed in the Revolution: a photograph shows it being dismantled for firewood. Ironically, today Moldavian-style mansions of New Russian millionaires are springing up, like distortions of Potemkin’s Palace, around the suburbs of Nikolaev.

  *7 Potemkin’s two creative planners, Starov and Gould, did well like everyone else who worked with him. He was evidently a very generous employer, as the fortunes of Faleev, Zeitlin, Shemiakin, Garnovsky and many others prove. Ivan Starov was a rich man, dying in 1808.

  20

  ANGLOMANIA: THE BENTHAMS IN RUSSIA AND THE EMPEROR OF GARDENS

  My love affair is at an end…I must certainly quit Petersburg…So it is lucky that an offer of Prince Potemkin offers me a good opportunity…

  Samuel Bentham to his brother, Jeremy Bentham

  On 11 December 1783, Prince Potemkin summoned to his apartments in Petersburg a young Englishman named Samuel Bentham, whose love affair and now broken heart had been followed by all society like a running soap opera, and offered him a glorious new career. This offer led, not only to the most adventurous life in war and peace ever enjoyed by an Englishman in Russia, but also to a farce in which an ill-sorted company of Welsh and Geordie artisans were settled on a Belorussian estate which they were to develop into Potemkin’s own industrial empire. The experiences of Samuel Bentham, soon to be joined on Potemkin’s estate by his philosopher brother Jeremy, reveal not just Serenissimus’ boundless dynamism but the way he used his own estates as the arsenal and marketplace of the state, with no boundary between his own money and that of the Empire.

  Samuel Bentham was the youngest of seven children – Jeremy was the eldest – and they were the only two who survived. Their father Jeremiah was a well-connected lawyer whose patron was the future Whig Prime Minister, the original but devious Earl of Shelburne, nicknamed the ‘Jesuit of Berkeley Square’ by his many enemies. They were a touchingly close family, writing to each other constantly, worrying about Samuel’s escapades in Russia. The brothers shared a brilliant intelligence, a driving energy and an outstanding inventiveness, but personally they were opposites: Jeremy, now almost forty, was a shy, scholarly judicialist. Samuel was loquacious, sociable, irritable and amorous. Trained as an engineer but uninhibited by the profession, he was an inventive polymath and entrepreneur. In some ways he shared Potemkin’s restless ebullience – he was ‘always running from a good scheme to a better…life passes away and nothing is completed’.1

  In 1780, while Jeremy worked on his judicial reforms in London, Samuel, aged twenty-three, departed on a voyage that took him to the Black Sea coast (where he observed the burgeoning Kherson) and thence to St Petersburg, where he called on Potemkin. He hoped to make his fortune, while Jeremy wanted him to propose his legal ideas to the Empress.2 Serenissimus monitored young Bentham’s progress. The Englishman realized that the Prince was the man who could put his ideas into practice. Potemkin wanted his help with the Dnieper rapids and his estates and made a vague offer to him soon after meeting him.3 But Samuel wanted to travel so, in 1781, the Prince despatched him on a trip to Siberia to analyse its industries, providing him with a couple of soldiers as guards. On his return, the Prince gave his papers on Mines, Fabricks and Salt-Works4 to the Empress.

  Potemkin was looking for talented engineers, shipbuilders, entrepreneurs and Englishmen: Samuel was all of these things. Writing to his brother Jeremy from Irkutsk in Siberia, Samuel boasted about his new contact – ‘the man in power’.5 It was obvious to the excited traveller that he and this anonymous potentate were made for each other:

  This man’s business is to greater amount than any other’s I have heard of in the Empire. His position at Court is also the best on which account, as well as that of his riches, Governors of course bow down to him. His chief affairs lie about the Black Sea. He there farms the duties on some articles, builds ships for the Crown, supplies the army and the Crown in general with all necessaries, has fabricks of various kinds and is clearing the waterfalls of the Dnieper at his own private expense. He was very anxious to have assistance in his undertakings before I left St Petersburg.6

  However, on his return Bentham was distracted by something much more alluring.

  * * *

  —

  The object of his affections was Countess Sophia Matushkina, pretty niece and ward of Field-Marshal Prince Alexander Golitsyn, the Governor of Petersburg whose failures of command during the Russo-Turkish War were now obscured by the prestige of age. Samuel and the Countess, roughly the same age, met in the Field-Marshal’s salon, fell in love and managed to meet twice a week. Their passion was fanned by the operatic intrigues made necessary by the disapproval of old Golitsyn and the interest shown by the whole Court. The Field-Marshal was against any courtship, yet alone marriage, between his ward and this English golddigger. The Empress, however, who combined mischief with a certain amorousness
herself, let the Court know that she was thoroughly enjoying the scandal.

  At this point, Samuel’s ambitious imagination ran wild. ‘If you have anything to say to me for or against a Matrimonial Connection,’ he asked Jeremy, ‘let me know.’ He loved the girl – and her position, for he added disarmingly: ‘She is heiress to two Rich People.’ Samuel decided his love affair had caused such interest that it would help him get a job from the Empress, a novel sort of curriculum vitae, though one not unknown in Russia: ‘I am fully disposed that a desire Her Majesty has to assist my Match goes a great way in disposing her in my favour…she fully believes it was my Love induced me to offer my Services.’ He also wrote letters to Field-Marshal Golitsyn declaring, ‘it’s already more than five months since I loved your niece’. This can only have further incensed the Field-Marshal, who banned the couple from seeing each other.

  The courtiers relished this forbidden romance as much as the Empress – and, even while annexing the Crimea, Potemkin was also kept informed. It was a wonderful moment to be an Englishman in Petersburg and Samuel lived a dizzy social existence, bathing in the attention of magnates and countesses. Petersburg was full of Englishmen – Sir James Harris, and his successor as British envoy Alleyne Fitzherbert, patronized him. His only enemy among them was the permanent Scotsman at court – Dr Rogerson, that accomplished gambler and usually fatal doctor. Perhaps suspecting Bentham’s motives, Rogerson told Catherine that Samuel was not worth meeting because he had a speech defect.7 This did not hold him back. Samuel’s two best Russian friends were on Potemkin’s staff, Princess Dashkova’s son, Prince Pavel Mikhailovich Dashkov, and Colonel Korsakov, the engineer, both educated in Britain. The Russians took Bentham to the salons of all the magnates who kept open tables for foreigners. Here is a typical undated day in Samuel’s social whirl: ‘Breakfasted at Fitzherbert, dined by invitation at the Duchess of Kingston’s [back on another visit], then to Prince Dashkov’s, to Potemkin’s but as he was not at home, went to Baroness Stroganov and from there to supper at Dashkov’s.’8

  Probably at Catherine’s prompting, her favourite, Lanskoy, now intervened on Samuel’s behalf, telling Sophia’s aunt and mother that ‘the Empress thought they did wrong to oppose the young Countess’s inclinations…This only irritated the aunt more.’ There were few cities in the world, even in Italy, as well arranged for intrigue as Petersburg, where the Court itself set the pace and where battalions of servants made the business of sending notes, eavesdropping and watching for secret signs at windows cheap and comprehensive. So, aided by his friends, Samuel and Sophia enjoyed Romeo and Juliet scenes on balconies in the dim gardens of palaces. Valets and coachmen bore secret letters that were pressed into manicured hands. Countess Sophia let down perfumed epistles to Sam from her windows.9 Samuel, intoxicated by the grandeur of those involved in his affairs, suffered from the delusion common to many in love that they are the centre of the known world. He felt the very cabinets of Europe had forgotten wars and treaties, and were exclusively discussing his trysts.

  Therefore when Potemkin returned triumphantly with the Crimea and Georgia at his feet, Samuel was convinced that Serenissimus’ first question would be about his love. The Prince was much more interested in the Englishman’s shipbuilding potential. But he knew from his courtiers that Bentham’s affair was doomed. The Empress may have liked teasing the Golitsyns – but she was never going to support an Englishman against the scions of Gedimin of Lithuania. So Lanskoy, imperial intervention manifested in flesh, intervened again: the affair must end.

  * * *

  —

  On 6 December, the crestfallen Samuel called on the Prince, who had Korsakov offer him a job at Kherson. Samuel resisted Potemkin’s offer – still hoping Countess Sophia’s love would lead to marriage. But it was all over. Petersburg was no longer such fun. Samuel resolved to leave ‘out of delicacy’ to the pining Countess, so he accepted the job. Potemkin appointed him lieutenant-colonel with a salary of 1,200 roubles a year and ‘much more for table money’. The Prince had many plans for young Samuel – he was going to move his dockyards below the bar in the Dnieper and he wanted Samuel to erect his various mechanical inventions ‘under his command’.

  The fortunate Colonel was now almost in love with Potemkin, like so many Westerners before and after him. It is interesting how Bentham perceived the Prince’s unique position: ‘his immediate command is all the Southern part of the country and his indirect command is the whole Empire’. The melodramatic lover of the months before was now replaced by Potemkin’s self-congratulatory protégé: ‘While I enjoy the share of the Prince’s good opinion and confidence which I flatter myself I possess at present, my situation cannot be disagreeable. Everything I propose to him, he accedes to.’ When the Prince was interested in someone, he treated him with more respect than all the generals of the empires of Europe put together: now Samuel was that person. ‘I go to him at all times. He speaks to me whenever I come into the room giving me the bonjour and makes me sit down when the stars and ribbons may come ten times without his asking them to sit down or even looking at them.’

  Potemkin’s idiosyncratic management style bemused Colonel Bentham: ‘as to what employment I am to have at Kherson or elsewhere…’. Serenissimus also mentioned ‘an Estate on the Borders of Poland…One day he talks of a new port and dockyard below the Bar, another he talks about my erecting windmills in the Crimea. A month hence I may have a regiment of Hussars and be sent against…the Chinese and then command a ship of 100 guns.’ He was to end up doing almost all of the above. He certainly could not complain that working for Potemkin was going to be boring. However, as to his immediate destiny, he could only inform his brother: ‘I can tell you nothing.’

  * * *

  —

  On 10 March 1784, the Prince abruptly departed from Petersburg for the south, leaving Bentham’s arrangements to Colonel Popov, his head of Chancellery.10 At midnight on Wednesday, 13 March, Bentham followed in a convoy of seven kibitkas. Samuel kept a diary of these days: he arrived in Moscow on Saturday to meet Potemkin. When he presented himself to the Prince on Sunday morning in his usual frockcoat, Serenissimus called in ever-ready Popov, told him to list the boy in the army, cavalry or infantry, whichever he liked – he chose the infantry – and put on his lieutenant-colonel’s uniform.11 Henceforth Bentham always wore his green coat with scarlet lapels, scarlet waistcoat with gold lace, and white breeches.12

  A season of travelling with the Prince round his empire was a privilege accorded to very few foreigners – but Potemkin only tolerated those who were the best company. For six months, Samuel travelled round the Empire ‘always in the same carriage’ as Potemkin: ‘The journey I have been making this spring with the Prince, to me who do not think much of fatigue, has been in every respect highly agreeable…I had not for a long time spent my time so merrily.’13 They headed south via Borodino, Viazma and Smolensk, passed through Potemkin’s estates at Orsha on the upper Dnieper, noting that Potemkin’s leather tannery already employed two tanners from Newcastle. They then headed off to Potemkin’s southern headquarters, Kremenchuk. Bentham must have been with the Prince when he inaugurated his new Viceroyalty of Ekaterinoslav. They were in the Crimea by early June: they must have visited the new naval base at Sebastopol together. On the road, Lieutenant-Colonel Bentham experienced the way that Potemkin ran his empire from the back of a speeding sledge that travelled thousands of versts in a spray of ice.

  Somewhere in this perambulating horse-powered seat of government, the Prince decided that Lieutenant-Colonel Bentham was not to stay in Kherson. In July, Bentham arrived at his new posting – Krichev. Potemkin’s sprawling estate ‘on the borders of Poland’ was another world, all of its own.14

  * * *

  —

  Bentham was appointed the sole master of an estate that was ‘larger than any county of England’ and indeed than many German principalities: Krichev itself was, according to Be
ntham, over 100 square miles, but it was right next to another Potemkin estate, Dubrovna, which was even larger. At Krichev, there were five townships and 145 hamlets – 14,000 male serfs. Together, the population of these two territories was ‘upwards of 40,000 male vassals’, as Samuel put it, which meant that the whole number of inhabitants must have been at least double that.15

  The Krichev–Dubrovna estates were not only big but also strategically vital: when Russia annexed these Polish territories in the First Partition of 1772, Catherine gained control of the upper reaches of two of Europe’s greatest trading rivers: the right (north) bank of the Dvina that led to Riga on the Baltic and the left or east bank of the Dnieper, on which Potemkin was to build so many of his cities. When Catherine granted lands to Potemkin in 1776, he may have requested estates that happened to have access to both rivers and therefore were potential trading stations with both the Baltic and the Black Sea: ideal for making small ships, Potemkin’s lands flanked the north bank of the Dnieper for an awesome fifty miles.

  Potemkin was already the master of an industrial empire, best known for its factories making Russia’s most beautiful mirrors, a sign of the boom in demand for looking-glasses that literally reflected the eighteenth century’s new self-awareness.*1 And then there was Krichev.16 Bentham found a brandy distillery, factory, tannery, copperworks, textile mill with 172 looms making sailcloth, a rope walk with twenty wheels, supplying Kherson’s shipyards, a complex of greenhouses, a pottery, a shipyard and yet another mirror-factory. Krichev was an extension of Kherson. ‘The estate…furnishes all the principal naval stores in the greatest abundance by a navigable river which…renders the transport easy to the Black Sea.’17 The trade went in both directions: there was already a surplus of cordage and sailcloth that was traded on to Constantinople, while there was a booming import–export business to Riga. This was Potemkin’s imperial arsenal, his manufacturing and trading headquarters, his inland shipyard and the chief supplier of his new cities and navy on the Black Sea.