On 2 June, Their Imperial Majesties finally parted on the steppes at Kizikerman. Joseph headed west towards Vienna, Catherine north towards Moscow. On 8 June, the Empress reached Poltava, the site of Peter the Great’s victory over Charles XII of Sweden. Potemkin re-enacted the battle in what Ségur called a huge ‘animated tableau, living and moving, almost a reality’ with 50,000 troops playing Russians and Swedes. Catherine’s eyes shone with Petrine pride. Then Serenissimus presented her with the pearl necklace that he had shown Miranda. In return, Catherine issued a charter acclaiming Potemkin’s achievements in the south, granted him 100,000 roubles and the new surname title of ‘Tavrichevsky’ – he was henceforth known as Kniaz Potemkin-Tavrichesky, Prince Potemkin of Taurida.*5
‘Papa,’ she wrote on 9 June, ‘I hope that you let me leave tomorrow without big ceremonies.’ Next day, on the approaches to Kharkov, the weary pair parted. Catherine, accompanied by Branicka and ‘your kitten’ Skavronskaya, as well as the ‘Pocket Ministers’, met her grandsons, Alexander and Constantine, in Moscow. When she reached Tsarskoe Selo on 22 July, all the travellers on this magical voyage ‘had to return to dry political calculations’.10
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The driest of these calculations was the persistent allegation that Potemkin had deceived Catherine: the calumny of the ‘Potemkin Village’. As soon as they arrived back, the ‘Pocket Ministers’ were interrogated by Potemkin’s enemies to learn if Kherson, Sebastopol, the flocks and fleets, were real. But the ‘Potemkin Village’ was invented by a man who had never visited the south, let alone seen Potemkin’s achievements for himself.
Even in the 1770s, malicious rumours had alleged that Potemkin had done nothing in the south. That was manifestly untrue, so now his foes, and those of Russia, whispered that the whole show was a stupendous fraud. The embittered Saxon envoy Georg von Helbig, who was not on the journey, now coined his phrase ‘Potemkinsche Dörfer’, a concept so suited to political fraud, especially in Russia, that it entered the language to mean ‘a sham, a façade, an unreal achievement’. Helbig did not stop at using his clever phrase in his diplomatic despatches but also published a biography, Potemkin der Taurier, in the magazine Minerva of Hamburg, during the 1790s, which was taken up by the enemies of Russia. Later a full version was published in German in 1809, which was expanded and published in French and English in the nineteenth century. It thus laid the foundation of a historical version of Potemkin that was as fabricated and unjust as it claimed his villages to be. It did not fit Serenissimus – but the mud stuck.11
The cruise along the Dnieper provided the basis of the ‘Potemkin Villages’: Helbig claimed the settlements there were composed of façades – painted screens on pasteboards – that were moved along the river and seen by the Empress five or six times. Helbig wrote that thousands of peasants had been torn from their homes inside Russia and driven along the riverbank at night with their flocks to be ready for the arrival of the Empress next morning – 1,000 villages had been depopulated and many died of hunger during the resulting famine. The foreigners simply saw the same peasants every day.
The accusation of ‘Potemkin Villages’ had already been alleged years before the trip ever happened. When Kirill Razumovsky visited Kherson in 1782, the very existence of the town was a ‘pleasant surprise’, evidently because he had been told the project was just a mirage.12 All foreign visitors to the south were warned in Petersburg that it was a big lie: Lady Craven reported, a year before Catherine set off, that ‘those at Petersburg who were jealous of Potemkin’s merit’ told her there was no water in the Crimea – ‘his having the Government of Taurida, and commanding the troops in it, may have caused the invention of 1000 ill-natured lies about this new country…to lessen the share of praise, that is his due’.13 The Empress had been told for years – whether by the Heir’s circle or by envious courtiers – that Potemkin was inventing his achievements. Garnovsky reported to the Prince, before Catherine departed, that she was being told that she would see only painted screens, not real buildings. In Kiev, the stories became more insistent. One of the reasons Catherine was so keen on the trip was surely to check on things for herself: when Potemkin tried to delay her departure from Kiev because arrangements were not complete, she told her secretary Khrapovitsky that she wanted to see for herself ‘in spite of its non-readiness’.14
There is absolutely no evidence in Potemkin’s own orders or in the accounts of eye-witnesses for the ‘Potemkin Villages’. He certainly began his preparations for Catherine’s visit as early as 1784, so it is not necessary for us to believe that the whole show was created overnight: that year, General Kahovsky reported that palaces had been built or old houses redecorated for her imminent visit. Potemkin used travelling palaces – but most of Catherine’s palaces were permanent: the ones at Kherson survived for more than a century afterwards. In Bakhchisaray, the Khan’s Palace was to be ‘repaired’ and ‘repainted’. The next year, in a list of improvements across the Crimea from building new salt stores in Perekop to Gould’s chestnut-tree ‘paradise’ in Kaffa, Potemkin was ordering that, in Bakhchisaray, Kahovsky was to build up ‘the large street where the Empress will pass’ with ‘good houses and shops’.15 This order to improve some existing buildings is the nearest the thousands of documents in Potemkin’s archives yield as evidence of cosmetic presentation. Miranda is a key, unprejudiced witness because he accompanied Potemkin on his pre-trip inspection, but saw nothing being falsified. On the contrary, this witness testifies to the massive reality of Potemkin’s work.
What about the dancing peasants and their herds on the riverbanks? It was simply impossible to move such numbers around in those days, especially at night. Cattle and sheep perish if so driven. Potemkin’s inability to conceal the fiasco of the lost kitchen of Kaidak, where he himself had to cook dinner for the two monarchs, is more evidence that he was unlikely to have been able to move thousands of men and animals across vast distances to deceive his guests.16 Nor were these flocks completely new: the nomads there had always kept cattle and sheep. Potemkin added to them and improved their quality: Miranda saw the flocks of sheep on the steppe,17 while, a year earlier, Lady Craven proves that Potemkin did not need to use magic on the riverbanks and steppes: she watched huge, grazing herds of ‘horses, cows and sheep approaching, making at once a simple and majestic landscape full of peace and plenty’.18 The flocks were there already. They were real.
The crowds did not need to be forced to see the Empress. No tsar had visited the south since Peter the Great sixty years earlier, so who would not hurry to gawp at not one, but two Caesars? Even in Smolensk, crowds turned out to see the Empress from twenty leagues away.19 Besides, the local peasants surely wished to sell produce to the imperial kitchens. When Lady Craven visited Bakhchisaray a year earlier, a solitary, unknown foreigner, the streets were lined by curious and enthusiastic Tartars and soldiers, so their reaction to the arrival of two monarchs was only slightly greater.20 This is not to say there was no element of show on the banks of the Dnieper: on the contrary, Potemkin beautified and ornamented everything that he could. He was a political impresario who understood the power of presentation and enjoyed the aspect of ‘play’ in politics, which was entirely self-conscious and deliberate.21
Today, a visit by a head of state is routinely prepared and minutely choreographed in detail, houses repainted, streets cleaned, tramps and whores arrested, banners festooned across streets. Brass-bands play, indigenous schoolchildren dance, and the stops at well-stocked shops are prearranged.22 In many ways, this was the first such visit. Everyone knew that the Amazons, Cossacks and instant English gardens were shows, just as Queen Elisabeth II knows that the Zulu impis with assegai and shields who perform on her trips are not typical inhabitants of Johannesburg.*6 This was what Ségur meant when he said that Potemkin had ‘an amazing knack of overcoming all obstacles, conquering Nature…cheating the eye of the dreary uniformity of the long stretches of san
dy plain’.23
It is certainly true that, wherever the Empress went, the local officials tidied up the streets, added a lick of paint to buildings and concealed ugliness. In two towns, Kharkov and Tula, not part of Potemkin’s show-route, the governors did conceal things from her and may have built false houses.*7 Thus it is ironic that the sole accounts of ‘Potemkin villages’ suggest they were not perpetrated by Potemkin at all.24 One could argue that Potemkin was the inventor of modern political spectacle – but not that he was a fairground huckster.
Serenissimus did not need to falsify towns and fleets, as the foreigners, from Miranda to Joseph, testify.25 The Empress could not visit every site and even Potemkin was deceived by his officials, but Kaiser Joseph made a point of inspecting everything and admitted that all was real – though he revealingly added that, if he had not seen things with his own eyes, he would not have believed it.26 Ligne also went out on his own and discovered ‘superb establishments in their infancy, growing manufactures, villages with regular streets surrounded with trees and irrigated…’.
Catherine, among other allegations, had been specifically told that Potemkin had ruined the army by reforming the cavalry. When she saw his magnificent light cavalry at Kremenchuk, she felt anger at those who had lied to her, exclaiming to Ligne, ‘Wicked people – how they deceived me!’27 This was the reason for Catherine’s double joy at finding that the rumours were lies and her keenness to tell her grandsons and officials like Count Bruce what she had seen: ‘It is nice to see these places with my own eyes. They warned me against the Crimea, scaring me and dissuading me from seeing it for myself. Having arrived here, I wonder the reason for such rash prejudice.’ She even admitted ‘her great surprise’ that Kherson was so developed. But her assertions did not stop the calumnies against Potemkin.28
‘Already the ridiculous story has been circulated that pasteboard villages were painted on our roads…that the ships and guns were painted, the cavalry horseless,’ Ligne wrote to Paris. He touched at once on the reasons for it: ‘Even those among the Russians,…vexed at not being with us, will pretend we have been deceived.’ Ligne knew ‘very well what legerdemain tricks are’, but the achievements were real.29 Potemkin was well aware of the lies spread about him by his enemies. ‘And the main thing’, he wrote to Catherine afterwards, ‘is that malice and jealousy could never harm me in your eyes.’ The Empress said he was right: ‘You’ve smacked your enemies’ fingers.’30
Their fingers might have been smarting, but that did not stop them for long. Back in Petersburg, Potemkin’s enemies were determined to discredit him, despite all the evidence. Overexcited courtiers like Evgraf Chertkov (the witness at Potemkin’s wedding to Catherine) did not help by telling everyone, ‘I saw miracles, which appeared there only God knows how…It was like a dream…Only he [Potemkin] is able to do such things.’31 This was exactly what enemies like Grand Duke Paul wanted to hear.
The Tsarevich summoned Ligne and Ségur to question Potemkin’s achievements. He was not going to let the truth interfere with his prejudices. ‘In spite of all these two travellers have been able to tell him, he does not wish to be persuaded that things are in as good a state as one tells him.’32 When Ligne conceded that Catherine could not see everything, Paul exploded: ‘Oh! I know it very well. It’s why this bitch of a nation does not want to be governed only by women!’33 This determination, even at Court, explains the persistence of the lies even when eye-witnesses disproved them. The lies were amplified by critics of Russian expansion. It is easy to imagine how, once Potemkin and Catherine were dead, this calculated disinformation became transformed into the gospel of history. Even the 1813 English adaptation of Helbig’s work concluded that the ‘envy which fastens itself upon great men has magnified what was but show, and diminished what was real’.34 Potemkin was a victim of his own overwhelming triumph. The ‘Potemkin Village’ is itself one of history’s biggest shams.
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The new Prince of Taurida sank into one of his bouts of depressed exhaustion, a symptom of the anti-climax after such manic overwork and dazzling success. He remained a few days in Kremenchuk and, in mid-July, set up Court at Kherson, where he fell ill, languishing on his divan, brooding and playing with diamonds. This was not an ideal time for the Prince to be depressed. Since October 1786, he had been in charge of all Ottoman policy and ‘arbiter of peace and war’. Now the Ottoman Empire was moving towards war. Ever since the loss of the Crimea and Georgia, and the admission of Russian influence in the Danubian Principalities, the Ottomans had sought the chance to claw back these shameful concessions.35
There was tumult in Istanbul as early as March and into May. ‘Here, the public talk only of war,’ reported Potemkin’s best agent, N. Pisani, a scion of one of Istanbul’s professional diplomatic families who interpreted and spied for everyone. Sultan Abdul-Hamid, pressured by his pro-war Grand Vizier, Yusuf-Pasha, and the muftis, was deliberately testing Russian resolve: in 1786, the Hospodar of Moldavia Mavrocordato was driven out; Russia gave him refuge. The Georgian Tsar Hercules was being attacked by the local Pasha. The Turks backed Sheikh Mansour and his Chechens, so Potemkin strengthened his Mozdok Line. The Porte refortified its bases from the Kuban to the Danube, from Anapa and Batumi to Bender and Ismail, and rebuilt its fleets, hence the show of strength off Ochakov on Catherine’s visit. ‘The warriors’, added Pisani, ‘become daily more insolent and commit all sorts of excesses.’36
Potemkin, feeling strong with his new fleet and Catherine’s imminent visit, had certainly played a part in this escalating brinkmanship. In December 1786, he had ordered Bulgakov, envoy to the Porte, to demand that these pinpricks in the Danubian Principalities and the Caucasus cease forthwith.37 He offered either war or the guarantee of Russian Black Sea possessions in return for security for the Ottoman Empire. At that moment, the Sublime Porte leaned towards security. His language was strong, but not excessively provocative. If it had been so, the Ottomans would have attacked during Catherine’s visit. Cobenzl thought Potemkin’s demands ‘very minor’.38 In March, Potemkin ordered Bulgakov: ‘We do everything to avoid war but it will certainly follow if they ignore our requests…Try to explain to the Sultan how minor and just they are.’39 When Bulgakov consulted with Potemkin at Kherson that June, the aim was to avoid war, not cause it. In August, Potemkin specifically told Bulgakov to ‘win another two years’.40 Delay was necessary, preparations unfinished.41
Serenissimus’ martial boasting may have looked like a longing for war, but he had gained the Sech, Crimea and Georgia with the threat of war, without losing the bones of a single Ekaterinoslav Grenadier. He knew that ultimately he would have to fight the Turks because their resentment increased with each Russian success. But it is clear that he talked war in order not to have to fight it. However, Potemkin has been blamed for causing the war through his blunderingly aggressive diplomacy. This view is partly based on the hindsight that Russia was bullying the weak Turks, while in fact the Porte was raising armies and fleets that were much improved since their dismal performance in the First Turkish War. It is also based on ignorance of the war fever in Istanbul and the Ottoman policy of provoking Russia in the Caucasus and on the Danube. If the Prince is guilty of anything, it was creating the Black Sea Fleet and arranging the imperial visit to the Crimea: these declared that the Russian presence on the Black Sea was permanent, but also suggested that this was the Porte’s last chance to dislodge it. So the arms race and provocations were mutual and simultaneous. The war was caused by a mutual tightening of the screw so that ultimately it came before either side was fully ready for it.
The Russian envoy returned to find Constantinople infected with war fever. Grand Vizier Yusuf-Pasha, supported by the Janissaries and the imams, was deliberately, according to Pisani on 1 June 1787, ‘animating the canaille…to intimidate their Sovereign to make him believe the people want war and that otherwise they will rebel against him’. The mob was riot
ing. Recruits from Asia poured through the city on their way to Ismail, the main fortress of Moldavia. Ottoman armies numbered 300,000. Only the peaceful resolve of the Sultan and his prestigious Capitan-Pasha (Grand Admiral) Hassan-Pasha restrained them.42 Prussia, Sweden, Britain and France encouraged the Turks – indeed Pisani reported, ‘I have in my hands the notebook of the plan’ by French officers to retake the Crimea. Finally, the Sultan buckled. The Porte made impossible demands to Bulgakov, such as the return of Georgia and the acceptance of Turkish consuls in Russian cities. Bulgakov rejected them, was arrested on 5 August and thrown into the Seven Towers. On the 20th, Ottoman ships attacked two Russian frigates off Ochakov. After a six-hour battle, the Russians escaped. It was war.43
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‘I am afraid you have no more nails on your fingers,’ Catherine declared to Potemkin on 24 August, writing to discuss their strategy, and membership of her Council. ‘You’ve chewed them all off.’44 How well she knew him. The relationship between Catherine and Potemkin entered a new phase that month: their letters became much longer as the theatre of operations and diplomacy broadened. More than ever, they became partners in both glory and anguish, public and private. They corresponded like an old couple who happen to rule an empire, loving yet often irritated, exchanging political ideas and gossip, giving each other confidence, praise, new clothes and sick remedies. But the Prince, sitting in Kremenchuk, shivered from spasms of fever, and sank deeper in dysphoric darkness. Contrary to the usual histories, he did not neglect his duties but became exhausted because he had concentrated so much power in his own hands. This worried Catherine: ‘You do everything yourself so you have no rest.’45
Catherine the Great & Potemkin Page 59
