Catherine the Great & Potemkin

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  28 Stedingk pp 188 and 195, Stedingk to Gustavus III 28 October 1791 and Jennings to Fronce ud, St Petersburg.

  29 AKV 8: 39, 25 December 1791, Jassy.

  30 AKV 13: 223–8, Bezborodko to Zavadovsky 17 November 1791, Jassy.

  31 Ligne, Mélanges vol 22 p 82, Prince de Ligne to CII 1793.

  32 Ségur quoted by Castera vol 3 p 333.

  33 AKV 13: 223–8, Bezborodko to Zavadovsky 17 November 1791, Jassy. As ever with the Prince, the difference between the legend and the truth is marked: the chaos, corruption and destruction of the armies that he left in Jassy, for example, fill all accounts. Yet Count Bezborodko, who always cast a sardonic but just eye on Potemkin, found that the grain magazines were full, the army was in ‘a very good state’, provisions were generous, and the fleet and flotilla were numerous, if not built of the best wood, and that, despite Potemkin’s Cossack obsession, he had to admit ‘the light Cossack forces are in the best state possible’.

  34 AAE 20: 362, Langeron. Pushkin quoted in Lopatin, Perepiska p 470. Castera vol 2 p 177. Wiegel vol 1 pp 28–9. Samoilov col 1560. Derzhavin in Segal vol 2 pp 291–2. Ligne, Mélanges vol 7 pp 171–2, Ligne to Comte de Ségur 1 August 1788. On the state of the army: Potemkin undoubtedly allowed his colonels to run their regiments profitably with minimal supervision, though he was now introducing inspectors to stop outrageous abuse. Nor was he remotely interested in Prussian drilling or endless ceremonial. He was said by foreigners (for example, Damas pp 114–16) to discourage all exercises, yet his archives reveal his instructions for training his marine commandos already quoted above. SBVIM vol 4 p 217, where GAP gives training instructions, criticizing officers who teach manoeuvres ‘seldom fit to be used in battle’ and recommends easy marching to walk faster without getting tired and simple training in forming squares, shooting and reloading. GAP simply disdained the slavish and pedantic following of Prussian training and tactics and evolved his own style regardless of Western opinion but based on Tartar, Cossack and Russian traditions. This offended French and German officers – hence Langeron, Damas and Ligne. Finally on the corruption of the Russian army under GAP, it is worth noting that Louis XVI’s army was crippled with corruption and that commissions in the British army, though partially reformed in 1798, were still sold until 1871 when Gladstone abolished them. So GAP’s system was probably no worse than that at Horse-Guards in London.

  35 SIRIO 54 (1886): 147–9, Richelieu, ‘Mon voyage’.

  36 RA (1879) 1 pp 2–25, Popov to CII 8 October 1791.

  37 RGADA 5.131.4–4, CII to Popov ud, November 1791.

  38 Engelhardt 1997 pp 97–102. Author’s visit to Golia Monastery in Iaşi, Rumania, October 1999.

  39 Khrapovitsky pp 383–5, 387.

  40 AKV 18: 36, Prince V. . Kochubey to S. R. Vorontsov 28 July/9 August 1792.

  41 Khrapovitsky pp 407–8, 236. Madariaga, Russia p 562.

  42 Ligne, Mélanges vol 22 p 82, Ligne to CII 1792. Harold Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna p 292. For Popov, see RP 2.1.19 and AKV 8: 58, Rostopchin to S. R. Vorontsov 28 September 1792, St Petersburg.

  43 Rear-Admiral J. P. Jones to Potemkin 13 April 1789, quoted in Otis p 359. Statement to chief of police quoted in Morison p 388. RGVIA 52.2.64.12, Ségur to GAP ud, summer of 1789, St Petersburg, unpublished.

  44 Stedingk p 226, Stedingk to Gustavus III 6/17 February 1792. AKV 8: 48–50, Rostopchin to S. R. Vorontsov 13/24 February 1792, St Petersburg.

  45 Masson p 195. As Catherine continued most of Potemkin’s policies, Zubov had the job of executing them, but he did so with none of the master’s lightness of touch and flexibility. His sole achievements were the greedy and bloody partition of Poland that Potemkin had hoped to avoid and the bungled negotiations to marry Grand Duchess Alexandra to the King of Sweden, a marriage the Prince had suggested. This was the humiliation that accelerated Catherine’s final stroke. Zubov’s very Potemkinian expedition to attack Persia was recalled after the Empress’s death.

  46 Masson pp 58–9. AKV 13 (1879): 256, Bezborodko to S. R. Vorontsov 15 May 1792, Tsarskoe Selo.

  47 Masson p 124. Ligne, Mélanges vol 24 p 183. The Prince de Ligne said they were planning to remove Paul as early as 1788. Ligne to Kaunitz 15 December 1788, Jassy.

  48 McGrew p 237. ZOOID 9 (1875): 226, rescript of Paul I 11 April 1799. On the library: Bolotina, ‘Private Library of Prince GAPT’ 252–64, 29 May 1789. Paul orders library sent to Kazan Gymnasium, 29 March 1799. It arrived in Kazan in ‘18 carts’ and in 1806 was placed in the Library of Kazan State University.

  49 Czartoryski p 62.

  50 RP 1.1 p 72. AAE 20: 134–5, Langeron, ‘Evénements 1790’. Sophie de Witte/Potocka built a palace and a beautiful park called Sopheiwka which remains popular in today’s Ukraine. She also owned estates in the Crimea and planned to build a new town there, named after herself. One of her sons by Witte, Jan, became the Russian secret policeman in charge of observing the potential Polish revolutionaries against Alexander I in Odessa during the 1820s. The Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz was one of them. See Ascherson p 150.

  51 Wiegel vol 1 p 43. RP 4.2 p 214. RP 2.1 p 5. She kept a shrine to GAP at her famous estate, Belayatserkov. There is a portrait of her with her children, now at the Alupka Palace in the Crimea, in which the bust beside her is said to be GAP. It is possible that GAP’s heart is buried at Belayatserkov. Branicka also built a fabulous park that still exists in Ukraine called Alexandria. She was much loved for giving villages to her peasants and endowing them with their own agricultural banks to finance their farming.

  52 RP 1.1 p 30. RP 1.1 p 29. RP 3.1 p 10. RP 1.2 p 120. Skavronskaya was also made Grand Mistress of Court by Alexander I. Her husband Count Giulio P. Litta was a high official under Alexander and Nicholas I

  53 Yusupov pp 6–9. RP 1.1 p 10 and RP 4.2 206. See also T. Yusupova in Russkiy Biographicheskiy Slovar (1916).

  54 Anthony L. H. Rhinelander, Prince Michael Vorontsov, Viceroy to the Tsar pp 75–6. Henri Troyat, Pushkin pp 214–25. Vorontsov personally commanded one of some of Nicholas I’s campaigns against Shamyl and the Chechen/Daghestan Murids who defied Russian attempts to control the North Caucasus. Vorontsov and Lise appear in ‘Hadji Murat’ by Leo Tolstoy: see Tolstoy, Master and Man and Other Stories (Harmondsworth 1977).

  55 RP 1.1 p 30. RP 1.1 p 29. RP 3.1 p 10. RP 1.2 p 120. Alan Palmer, Metternich pp 36, 136, 137, 148, 322.

  56 The actual Potemkin family multiplied in the nineteenth century, but not the lines closest to the Prince’s story. Pavel Potemkin’s son Count Grigory died at Borodino, while his other son Sergei married but had no children. Mikhail Potemkin had two children by Tatiana Engelhardt, but their one son, Alexander, had no children. The other lines, however, multiplied exceedingly. The last of one noble line was Alexander Alexeievich, who was the ultimate marshal of the Smolensk nobility and was killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918 when they captured him in the Crimea as he tried to escape Russia. His daughter, Natalia Alexandrovna Potemkina, lived on in Simferopol, one of the Prince’s cities, and died in 2000. Thus ended one noble branch of Potemkins.

  57 Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924 pp 217, 515–16.

  58 Kenneth Rose, George V p 320.

  59 Vallentin p 523.

  60 Author’s visit to Golia Monastery in Iaşi, Rumania, October 1998. Fanica Ungureanu, Professor of Economic Science, Iaşi University, showed the author the place.

  61 Author’s visit to Potemkin monument, Republic of Moldova, 1998.

  62 RGADA 11.966.1–2 pp 1, 2, Popov to CII October 1791 and 27 March 1792.

  63 RGADA 11.956.1, Popov to CII, p 2; Popov to CII 27 March 1792. ZOOID 9: 390–3. Gravestone monuments in Kherson Fortress Church including Soldatsky. RGADA 16.696.2.35, General-en-Chef Kahovsky to CII 27 February 1792; p 35, Kahovsky to CII 2 February 1792. RGVIA 1287.12.126.31 and 21 (1823) CII’
s rescripts on GAPT’s monuments quoted in ‘New Work of I. P. Martos’, in E. V. Karpova, Cultural Monuments, New Discoveries pp 355–64.

  64 ZOOID 9: 390–3, about the gravestone monuments of Kherson Fortress Church, including Soldatsky. ZOOID 5 (1863): 1006, about the place of GAP’s burial by I. Andreevsky: Emperor Paul I to Alexander Kurakin 27 March 1798 and Kurakin to the local Govenor Seletsky, received on 18 April 1798. It is ironic that this was the same A. B. Kurakin whose letter to his friend Bibikov, when he was in Paul’s entourage on his trip to Europe in 1781–2, had ensured that Paul was excluded from power as long as Catherine lived. On Paul and GAP’s body, see AAE 20: 331, Langeron, 1824: ‘The commander of the fortress had the courage to disobey but reported that [Paul’s] order had been obeyed’. Langeron was close to Paul’s court.

  65 AAE 20: 331, Langeron writes in 1824 of his disgust that the family had not yet built GAP the monument he deserved. Karpova pp 355–64. RGVIA 1287.12.126.23–4 A. Samoilov to Alexander I. GAOO 4.2.672.2, Alexander I rescript to build GAP monument 1825. But, as soon as Paul was murdered by his Guards officers in 1801 and his son Alexander succeeded promising to govern ‘like my beloved grandmother Catherine the Second’, GAP was rehabilitated and a monument commissioned in Kherson. The sculptor I. P. Martos was commissioned, but work was soon stopped by one of the frequent rows between Potemkin’s heirs about money – it was to cost the vast sum of 170,000 roubles – and did not start again until 1826. The colossal bronze Classical monument, finally unveiled in 1837, depicted Potemkin in Roman armour and robes with a huge sword and plumed helmet, on top of a pedestal reached by steps and guarded by the figures of Mars, Hercules, Apollo and Neptune. But during the Revolution Kherson changed hands back and forth and it was the Petluraists who tore down Martos’s Roman GAP to avenge the liquidation of the Zaporogian Sech. They tossed it into the yards of the local museum. The Nazis later either stole it or destroyed it.

  66 AAE 20: 331, Langeron, ‘Evénements 1791’. ZOOID 9: 390–3.

  67 ZOOID 5 (1863): 1006, I. Andreevsky. Milgov letter from Kherson 12 October 1859 published in St Petersburg journal Vedomosti no 918 January 1860.

  68 ZOOID 9: 390–3, N. Murzakevich 30 August 1874.

  69 Father Anatoly, priest of St Catherine’s Church. Author’s visit to Kherson July–August 1998.

  70 B. A. Lavrenev, Potemkin’s Second Burial.

  71 ZOOID 9: 390–3, Soldatsky. L. G. Boguslavsky to E. V. Anisimov 15 July 1786, Kherson.

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  In the case of a character about whom such a malicious mythology developed, even during his lifetime, a word on sources is helpful. I have been very fortunate to find much new and unpublished material in the various archives. Of the Russian archives, large amounts were published in the last century in SIRIO and ZOOID, as well as in historical journals such as RA and RS and collections of documents such as Dubrovin’s Bumagi Potemkina (SBVIM). Then there are the published Vorontsov archives that remain a key source. All contain materials ignored or forgotten. For example, SIRIO contains documents such as Richelieu’s ‘Voyage en Allemagne’ and Catherine’s own account of Potemkin’s ball, which have been relatively neglected in the West. Overall these are invaluable and usually accurate, though I have checked the originals wherever possible.

  V. S. Lopatin’s newly published collection of the Catherine–Potemkin correspondence is a massive work of scholarship and research, the fruit of twenty years’ labour, and I have used it liberally. This is now indispensable to any student of this epoch. Even these over 1,000 letters are unlikely to be complete and there are more notes between the two of them still be catalogued. Lopatin’s collection of letters between Suvorov and Potemkin and his account of their relationship are equally obligatory reading, for his research has successfully reinterpreted their relationship. That said, Lopatin’s accounts sometimes lean towards the romantic – he accepts for example that Catherine was the mother of Elisaveta Temkina and gave birth to her in Moscow in 1775; and that Catherine visited Chizhova on her return from Mogilev. His datings of the letters are always sensitive and plausible, but there are occasions, such as the letters referring to Cagliostro, where Western research proves that the timing must be much later. In my awe of, and gratitude for, Lopatin’s monumental work, I have humbly corrected these assertions or at least suggested doubt.

  The archives – particularly RGADA, RGVIA and AVPRI, all in Moscow, and RGIA, in Petersburg, and AGAD, the Polish State Historical Archive in Warsaw – remain full of unpublished material. In RGADA, for example, I have found a wealth of unpublished letters to and from Potemkin, on questions of state, on his personal finances and on his love life, including many anonymous love letters and letters from Alexandra Branicka. RGVIA, the War Ministry archive, contains the archive of Potemkin’s Chancellery and many fascinating state and private documents which I have used here. RGIA contains unpublished letters from Frederick the Great as well as personal accounts. In Warsaw, the huge Deboli archive has been under-used and there is also a wealth of letters from Potemkin to Stanislas-Augustus. Overall, the correspondence in these four archives contain a mass of unpublished material, much of which is used in the book: this includes letters to and from the Emperors Joseph and Leopold; Prince Kaunitz; Frederick the Great; King Gustavus III of Sweden; King Stanislas-Augustus of Poland; Prince Henry of Prussia; Potemkin’s nieces Countess Alexandra Branicka and Princess Tatiana Yusupova; his nephews Count Skavronsky and Count Branicki and Potemkin’s Polish allies and agents; his art dealers such as Lord Carysfort; visitors like Lady Craven, Reginald Pole Carew and Sénac de Meilhan; Count Simon Vorontsov and other Russian statesmen; the Prince de Ligne; the Comte de Ségur; the Earl of Malmesbury; the Duke of Leeds; Jeremy and Sir Samuel Bentham; the Prince de Nassau-Siegen; John Paul Jones; Lewis Littlepage; Francisco de Miranda; his secret diplomatic agents and Russian ambassadors from Vienna, Paris, Constantinople; his bankers, including Baron Richard Sutherland; and many fascinating jewels such as his shopping-list in Paris. Many of these correspondences, such as those with Stanislas-Augustus and Sutherland, stretch across all these archives.

  Sadly, I have been able to use only a fraction of the materials I have found: some such as the huge materials on Potemkin and Poland or Potemkin’s military orders belong in other books; some such as those from Ligne and Malmesbury simply add interesting twists to relationships that are already well documented. Some are simply too detailed or obscure to use.

  In the local museums in Ukraine and Russia, the archives often contain copies of documents long since sent to the Moscow RGADA or RGVIA, but I was lucky enough to find some rarities there too, like the original invitation to Potemkin’s ball in the Odessa State Local Historical Museum, which may be the only one in existence. There is also immense local knowledge of fact and legend that has not been tapped for a century, as well as information on characters, such as M. L. Faleev in Nikolaev, that is not available elsewhere.

  In Britain, the PRO contains the unpublished despatches of Fitzherbert and Fawkener, which give a fresh account of Potemkin’s last months in Petersburg and which have rarely been used. The British Museum’s Bentham archive, though much has been published, still yields many unseen treasures. I found most useful the unpublished archive at Antony in Cornwall of Reginald Pole Carew’s diaries of his visits to Russia and his time with Potemkin. In Paris, AAE, the Foreign Ministry Archives at the Quai d’Orsay, contain a wealth of useful documents, many unpublished, as well as the complete account of the Comte de Langeron, which is invaluable. Parts of Langeron have been published in Russia and a full Western publication is being prepared.

  The published material on Potemkin divides clearly into the prejudiced and the unprejudiced, or at least the mythical and the documentary. Naturally, I have treated anything connected to Helbig, The Memoirs of the Life of Prince Potemkin, Cerenville (both Helbig adaptions) or Saint-Jean (whose very identity is a mystery) as hostile or un
trustworthy, while Castera is more useful. Even when recounting neutral stories, Charles Masson, Saint-Jean, and Helbig must be regarded as ‘myth-writers’, not historians. But the mythology of Potemkin is important too and tells its own tales, though I try to reassess it wherever possible using documents. Masson hated Emperor Paul and his Secret Memoirs were notoriously published in his lifetime, yet he records some Potemkin anecdotes that ring true. Eye-witnesses like Ligne, Ségur, Corberon, Richelieu, Miranda, Damas and Langeron (all foreigners) and Rostopchin, Tsebrikov, Ribeaupierre, Derzhavin, Bezborodko, Vorontsov, Zavadovsky, Wiegel, Engelhardt and Samoilov were prejudiced and subjective, but one senses that they were telling what they believed to be the truth. Some are openly malicious, such as Rostopchin and Vorontsov; Dolgoruky is malicious and a fantastist; while others such as Samoilov are supporters. Many fall somewhere in between. Bezborodko for example strikes one as studiously fair. The ‘Table Talk’, history of the Pugachev Rebellion and Historical Notes of A. S. Pushkin are other underused sources: the poet was captivated by Potemkin, knew his family and circle, and carefully recorded their stories, which I therefore treat as valuable anecdotal history from the people who knew him. Among the foreigners, Ligne’s and Langeron’s malicious accounts of Potemkin’s war record have completely blackened his reputation through all the histories ever since. Yet they are also invaluable, given Langeron’s fair tribute to Potemkin later in life. In Ligne’s case, unpublished letters in Potemkin’s archives give us the chance to put his prejudices in perspective. Richelieu’s, Stedingk’s and Miranda’s much more positive accounts of the same period have often been overlooked, and redress the balance.

  In terms of published Western histories, I have used as my reference books the works of Isabel de Madariaga and J. T. Alexander, along with Marc Raeff, David Ransel, Roger Bartlett (Human Capital), John LeDonne (Ruling Russia), Anthony Cross (on the British in Russia), Lord and Zamoyski (on Poland) and Kinross and Mansel (on Constantinople). Of Potemkin’s previous biographers, Brückner is the most important, while Soloveytchik is useful but lacks all references.