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Grigori Potemkin [commander, political consultant]

Дата публикации: 20 сентября 2007
Публикатор: Научная библиотека Порталус
Рубрика: RUSSIA (TOPICS) FAMOUS RUSSIANS →
Источник: (c) http://russia.by
Номер публикации: №1190295760


Grigori Potemkin

Also known as: Grigorii Aleksandrovich Potemkin, kniaz, Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin, Grigori Alexsandrovich Potemkin

Born: 1739
Died: 1791
Occupation: commander, political consultant

______________________________


"His rarest quality was a physical, intellectual and moral courage that set him absolutely apart from the rest of mankind, and because of this we understood each other perfectly." CATHERINE THE GREAT


Military commander, statesman, and courtier, who survived his term as Catherine the Great's lover to serve as her most influential advisor.


BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
Grigori Potemkin's career and especially his rise to power at the court of Catherine the Great must be seen against the background of the Empress's personality and the characteristics of her reign. Sensual and self-indulgent but well-educated and highly intelligent, Catherine was initially drawn to Potemkin for physical reasons, but it was his own keen intelligence that enabled him to survive at court as her chief advisor long after he had ceased to be her paramour. On the other hand, her desire for glory on the battlefield, her designs against the Ottoman Empire, her grandiose ambitions for the restoration of the Byzantine Empire under Russian auspices, and her dreams of expansion in Asia all created an atmosphere in which a "doer" such as Potemkin could flourish. By no means a great general or a valiant warrior, he supported Catherine in all of her undertakings, mixing flattery with genuine confidence in her abilities and enthusiasm for her schemes, and he was more than willing to serve her personally in battle if circumstances dictated.

Potemkin was born at Chizheva near Smolensk in western Russia, attended the University of Moscow and in 1755, at the age of 16, entered the Horse Guards during the reign of the empress Elizabeth (1740-61), daughter of Peter the Great. Childless, Elizabeth had called in her Prussian nephew Peter of Holstein to be her heir and had arranged his marriage with a German princess, Sophia-Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst, who upon her marriage and conversion to Greek Orthodoxy was rechristened Catherine. Elizabeth died in January 1761 and was duly succeeded by Peter (III) as planned, but the new Tsar was not only incompetent and unpopular, he was positively deranged. When it became known that he intended to put Catherine aside and marry his mistress, Catherine's lovers and other supporters rallied to overthrow Peter and put her on the throne in his place (July 28, 1762). As a member of his regiment, Potemkin, now 23, participated in the coup, in the course of which he met Catherine for the first time. Given the conflicting accounts of the episode, his exact role remains something of a mystery. Like the others who aided her at the critical moment, he was rewarded with 10,000 rubles, 400 serfs, and the gift of a small estate. Soon made a Kamer-Junker at court, he was promoted to the rank of junior lieutenant shortly after Catherine's accession, but the details of his early career are obscure. On poor terms with the Orlov brothers, consecutive lovers of Catherine and chief architects of her coup, the story that the loss of his eye in 1763 occurred in a duel with one of them is a myth; his blinding was the result of a medical mishandling of a local infection.

Returning to court at Catherine's urging, Potemkin was given his first command with the Izmailovsky Horse Guards in 1766 and the following year was sent to Moscow where he served in connection with the sessions of the Legislative Commission appointed by Catherine to devise a new law code for Russia. Transferred from military to court service, he worked as guardian of the delegations to the Commission sent by various Asiatic tribesmen; during this time he developed his lifelong interest in the Asian inhabitants of the Empire. A Gentleman of the Household as early as 1768, Potemkin was still relatively unknown at court when he left for the first Russo-Turkish War (1768-74), and it was only after two years at the front (1771-73) that he would become romantically involved with the Empress or, perhaps better, that she would become romantically involved with him.

Potemkin's first post as he resumed his military career was an assignment to the staff, first of Field Marshal Dmitry Golitsyn and then to that of his replacement General Nikolai Rumiantsev. Because of his court connections, Rumiantsev made Potemkin his aide-de-camp, which guaranteed Potemkin both safety and easy promotion. Potemkin, however, desired a chance to demonstrate himself as a soldier and appealed directly to the Empress for a post at the front. There, as cavalry commander, he distinguished himself in battles in what is now eastern Rumania, and participated in the brilliant victories that earned Rumiantsev the rank of field marshal. Though still a junior commander, Potemkin's role in routing a Turkish army earned him a promotion to lieutenant-general and the award of the coveted Orders of St. Anne and St. George. By this time, he was recognized as one of the best cavalry commanders in Russia and had once again come to the attention of Catherine, who had recently ended her long affair with Grigori Orlov. Late in 1774, when the Empress had Potemkin reassigned to her personal service, he returned to St. Petersburg.


He Becomes Catherine's Lover

When Grigori Potemkin assumed the role of lover of Catherine II, she was 44; he was ten years her junior. In the permissive moral climate of the 18th century and the even more permissive atmosphere of the Russian court, Potemkin's relationship with the Empress was anything but a secret, and he served openly as her escort and consort in all public affairs. Once installed in the Imperial Palace in the suite below hers, the new favorite rose rapidly through the ranks, being appointed, in short order, a Count of the Russian Empire, a member of Catherine's Secret Council, vice-president of the Council of War, and Knight of the Order of St. Andrew, and was granted the Order of Alexander Nevsky. Frederick II (the Great) awarded Potemkin the Black Eagle of Prussia, while a host of other medals and awards were soon forthcoming from Poland, Denmark, Sweden, and especially Austria, where the Emperor Joseph II made Potemkin a prince of the Holy Roman Empire. Only France and England withheld their highest honors.

A man of mercurial temperament, religious but dissolute, Potemkin was a spendthrift, a gambler, a hearty eater, and a heavy drinker, as well as a seducer of women, including his five nieces. Full of good humor, but rough, moody, vain, jealous, and temperamental, Catherine saw him as courageous, devoted, intelligent, and judicious. Fascinated by his coarse masculinity, in her moments of chagrin she called him her Cossack, Muscovite, Tatar, imbecile, or infidel.

That Catherine was truly in love with Potemkin there can be no doubt, as demonstrated by her 23 surviving--and priceless--letters, written to him either in French or Russian. Besides her devotion, the Empress bestowed upon her beloved enormous benefices in lands, estates, serfs, clothing, orders of distinction, medals, jewels, and cash. The true nature of Potemkin's own feelings for Catherine may never be known although there seems to be no doubt that he genuinely admired her intellect and her talents as a ruler. There is some reason to believe that Catherine and Potemkin were secretly married, or at least married in each other's eyes, for Catherine refers to him as her husband and spouse in her love letters and to herself as his wife. In any case, their romantic relationship, passionate and feverish as it certainly was on the Empress's part, lasted but two years. The end of their affair and of Potemkin's role as Catherine's lover did nothing to terminate their mutual admiration or their intellectual and political association. In order to retain his hold on Catherine, Potemkin shrewdly undertook to replace himself in her bed with lovers of his choosing. Knowing that he could continue to fill her needs outside the bedchamber, Potemkin cheerfully selected a series of good-looking nonentities.

Although Catherine's affair with Potemkin had run its course by 1775, he remained thereafter a major figure at the court and was its virtual director. As far as Catherine was concerned, her confidence in Potemkin's abilities never flagged, and she was ever mindful of the proper way in which she might reward him for his friendship, devotion, and good counsel. She conceived of a new state to be erected in the Balkans from a Russian conquest of the Rumanian principalities of Moldavia, Wallachia, and Bessarabia; the new entity, with proper attention to classical antecedents, was to be called the "Kingdom of Dacia" and to have Potemkin as its king. Catherine also had intentions in the regions south of the Caucasus Mountains where, bemused again by her readings in antiquity, she contemplated a revival of the Kingdom of Armenia under Russian auspices--again with Potemkin as its sovereign. He was especially enthusiastic and supportive of her dream of reviving the Byzantine Empire as a vassal of Russia--her so-called "Greek Project"--with one of her two grandsons to be placed on its throne, ruling either from Constantinople or Athens.

By 1776, Potemkin's position at court was sufficiently strong for him to assume appointments at a considerable distance from the capital. Accepting the position of governor of New Russia, Azov, and Astrakhan, as well as that of the governorship of Saratov founded in 1781, he took charge of the new lines of fortifications being constructed along the Dnieper River. He devoted considerable energy to the settlement of the newly acquired southern lands with peoples drawn especially from among the Greek Orthodox Slavs and Rumanians of the Balkans eager to escape Turkish rule. He also founded a number of settlements, some of which--Kherson, Sevastopol, Ekaterinoslav and, above all, the port of Odessa completed shortly before Catherine's death--grew to become important cities. The grateful Empress rewarded him with the Anichkov Palace in St. Petersburg (later the residence of the Dowager Empress of Russia, mother of the last tsar) and obtained the rank of Prince of the Holy Roman Empire from her colleague and crony on the Austrian throne, Joseph II. Appointed commander of all of the light cavalry and the other irregular troops in the army, Potemkin devoted himself to military organization, redesigning the uniforms to facilitate fighting, limiting corporal punishment, and setting inspectors to supervise health and sanitation.


Presides Over Annexation of Crimea

The successful conclusion of the Russo-Turkish War by the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji in 1774 left the Khanate of the Crimea, the last remnant of the Mongol Empire in Europe, a virtual vassal of Russia; now Potemkin, with Catherine's authorization, began formulating his plans for its outright annexation. Potemkin was put in command of the army sent to occupy the territory. Proceeding with little serious opposition, Potemkin successfully occupied the peninsula and on July 26, 1783, its formal annexation was announced.

The annexation of the Crimea began the greatest period of Potemkin's career. In St. Petersburg, Catherine had built for him the magnificent Taurida Palace, which from 1906 to 1917 would be used to house the Russian Imperial Duma (Parliament); she also gave him a magnificent estate on the Crimean Peninsula, with gardens designed by an English architect that were the talk of Europe. Potemkin was allowed to play a major role in the development of the new provinces acquired in the south. It was he who presided over the transfer of the Greek and Armenian population of the territory and the establishment of new colonies for them in the Ukraine: the Greeks were settled at Mariupol on the Sea of Azov; the Gregorian Armenians were settled at Grigoriopol and New Nakhichevan near Rostov-on-the-Don; and the Catholic Armenians were settled at another new town called Ekaterinoslavl.

By 1784, Potemkin had attained the highest military rank possible, that of field marshal. President of the War College (ministry), he was then placed in charge of the organization of the Black Sea Fleet, all the while advising Catherine on economic and other affairs and negotiating treaties. Devoted to the glory of Russia, which he saw incarnated in the person of its Empress, never for a moment did Potemkin flag in his devotion to his former lover, nor she in her faith in his devotion to Russia or to her personal cause. Of the 92 million rubles Catherine is said to have spent on her favorites, no less than 50 million are estimated to have been lavished on Potemkin.


The "Potemkin Villages" Are Erected

In 1787, Potemkin supervised the famous "progress" of Catherine II, down the Dnieper River in the company of Joseph II. It was on this route that Potemkin is said to have erected the dummy hamlets--derisively referred to in the West as the "Potemkin villages"--filled with happy peasants in holiday garb singing and dancing to vodka supplied for the occasion. The same year saw the outbreak of the second Russo-Turkish War (1787-91) and, though Potemkin's reformed army did less well than expected, the war reached a victorious conclusion, and Catherine heaped additional cash, orders, and estates on her hero. All the while Potemkin made continual use of his St. Petersburg residence, the Taurida Palace, which he had surrounded by a park with its own lake, and which he had filled with gardens, pavilions, and statuary. However, in 1791, his health impaired by a number of fevers experienced in the south, Potemkin died suddenly on October 16. He was buried in the church of St. Catherine in Kherson, in the Crimea, where his niece Alexandra erected a mausoleum to hold his remains. On learning the news, a disconsolate Catherine collapsed.

Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin was perhaps the most significant of the individuals who formulated the "tsarist system" without actually sitting upon the Russian throne, the system that made Russia a great nation from the reign of Peter the Great until the end of that of Nicholas I (1825-55). Whether as courtier, soldier, governor, statesman, administrator, or planner, Potemkin conducted himself in an exemplary manner, and no ruler could have asked for a more trusted advisor, loyal patriot, or devoted subject. In an Empire officially ruled by the sovereign, Potemkin was certainly the greatest of the de facto prime ministers in Russian history. One can only speculate, for example, on the manner in which he would have dealt with Napoleon had he lived to be 70 instead of dying at 52.

Careless of his appearance, socially inept, and by no means a military hero on the order of Alexander Suvorov or Mikhail Kutuzov, Potemkin made innumerable enemies but never lost the favor of his sovereign. He fought battles, increased the territory of the Russian Empire by a third, reorganized the army, founded cities, and moved entire populations, yet his greatest achievement was his ability to retain the favor of Catherine the Great long after their liaison had come to an end. Given Catherine's intelligence and practical approach to affairs of state, this says more about the nature of Potemkin's undoubted genius than anything else, and it has been said that the Empress never fully recovered from his death.


-- Contributed by J. Donald Hughes, Professor of History, University of Denver, Denver, Colorado


PERSONAL INFORMATION
Name variations: Gregory. Born Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin at Chizheva, near Smolensk, in western Russia, in 1739; died on October 16, 1791; member of a ranking provincial family of Lithuanian origin; son of a tyrannical retired colonel who died when he was seven; sent to Moscow to live with his godfather Grigori Kislovskoi; unmarried (except, perhaps, to Catherine the Great); children: none.

CHRONOLOGY
1739 Born at Chizheva, near Smolensk
1762 Participated in the coup d'état that placed Catherine the Great on throne of Russia
1774 Blinded in one eye; Battle of Khotin; became major general
1774 Promoted to second lieutenant; admitted to Catherine's inner circle
1776 Ceased to be the Empress's lover but remained her confidant
1783 Presided over the annexation of the Crimea
1789 Captured towns of Bender and Akkerman
1791 Died; buried in the Crimea


FURTHER READINGS

Potemkin, Grigori. Collected Papers, 1744-1793 (in Russian). St. Petersburg, 1893-1895.


Alexander, John T. Catherine the Great: Life and Legend. Oxford University Press, 1989.


Soloveytchik, George. Potemkin; Soldier, Statesman, Lover and Consort of Catherine of Russia. New York, 1947.


Troyat, Henri. Catherine the Great. Dutton, 1980.

Опубликовано на Порталусе 20 сентября 2007 года

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