Prince Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin-Tavricheski was a Russian military leader, statesman, nobleman and favourite of Catherine the Great.
Background
Potemkin was born on October 11, 1739 into a family of middle-income noble landowners. The family claimed Polish ancestry. His father, Alexander Potemkin, was a decorated war veteran; his mother Daria was "good-looking, capable and intelligent", though their marriage proved ultimately unhappy. Potemkin received his first name in honour of his father's cousin Grigory Matveevich Kizlovsky, a civil servant who became his godfather. It has been suggested that Kizlovsky fathered Potemkin, who became the centre of attention, heir to the village and the only son among six children. As the son of an (albeit petty) noble family, he grew up with the expectation that he would serve the Russian Empire.
Education
He was educated at the University of Moscow.
Career
Potemkin entered the horseguards in 1755. He helped bring Catherine II to power as empress and was given a small estate. He shone in the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–74 and became Catherine’s lover in 1774. Made commander in chief and governor-general of “New Russia” (southern Ukraine), he remained friendly with her, and his influence was unshaken despite Catherine’s taking subsequent lovers.
Potemkin was deeply interested in the question of Russia’s southern boundaries and the fate of the Turkish Empire. In 1776 he sketched the plan for the conquest of Crimea, which was subsequently realized. He was also busy with the so-called Greek project, which aimed at restoring the Byzantine Empire under one of Catherine’s grandsons. In many of the Balkan lands he had well-informed agents.
After he became field marshal, in 1784, he introduced many reforms into the army and built a fleet in the Black Sea, which served well in Catherine’s second Russo-Turkish War (1787–91). The arsenal of Kherson, begun in 1778, the harbour of Sevastopol, built in 1784, and the new fleet of 15 ships of the line and 25 smaller vessels were monuments to his genius. But there was exaggeration in all his enterprises. He spared neither men, money, nor himself in attempting to carry out a gigantic scheme for the colonization of the Ukrainian steppe; but he never calculated the cost, and most of the plan had to be abandoned when but half accomplished. Even so, Catherine’s tour of the south in 1787 was a triumph for Potemkin, for he disguised all the weak points of his administration—hence the apocryphal tale of his erecting artificial villages to be seen by the empress in passing. (“Potemkin village” came to denote any pretentious facade designed to cover up a shabby or undesirable condition. ) Joseph II of Austria had already made him a prince of the Holy Roman Empire (1776); Catherine made him prince of Tauris in 1783.
When the second Turkish War began, the founder of New Russia acted as commander in chief. But the army was ill-equipped and unprepared; and Potemkin, in a fit of depression, would have resigned but for the steady encouragement of the empress. Only after A. V. Suvorov had valiantly defended Kinburn did he take heart again and besiege and capture Ochakov and Bendery. In 1790 he conducted the military operations on the Dniester River and held his court at Iaşi with more than Asiatic pomp. In 1791 he returned to St. Petersburg, where, along with his friend A. A. Bezborodko, he made vain efforts to overthrow Catherine’s newest and last favourite, Platon Zubov. The empress grew impatient and compelled him in 1791 to return to Iaşi to conduct the peace negotiations as chief Russian plenipotentiary.
Achievements
Personality
Potemkin "exuded both menace and welcome"; he was arrogant, demanding of his courtiers and very changeable in his moods but also fascinating, warm and kind. It was generally agreed among his female companions that he was "amply endowed with 'sex appeal'".
Ultimately Potemkin proved a controversial figure. Criticisms include "laziness, corruption, debauchery, indecision, extravagance, falsification, military incompetence and disinformation on a vast scale" but supporters hold that only "the sybaritism [devotion to luxury] and extravagance. .. are truly justified", stressing Potemkin's "intelligence, force of personality, spectacular vision, courage, generosity and great achievements". Though not a military genius, he was "seriously able" in military matters. Potemkin's contemporary Ségur was quick to criticise, writing that "nobody thought out a plan more swiftly [than Potemkin], carried it out more slowly and abandoned it more easily". Another contemporary, the Scotsman Sir John Sinclair, added that Potemkin had "great abilities" but was ultimately a "worthless and dangerous character". Russian opponents such as Semyon Vorontsov agreed: the Prince had "lots of intelligence, intrigue and credit" but lacked "knowledge, application and virtue".
Connections
That Catherine II and Potemkin married is "almost certain", according to Simon Sebag Montefiore; biographer Virginia Rounding expresses some doubt. In December 1784 Catherine first explicitly referred to Potemkin as her husband in correspondence, though 1775, 1784 and 1791 have all been suggested as possible nuptial dates. In all, Catherine's phrasing in 22 letters suggested he had become her consort, at least secretly. Potemkin's actions and her treatment of him later in life fit with this: the two at least acted as husband and wife. By late 1775, however, their relationship was changing, though it is uncertain exactly when Catherine took a secretary, Pyotr Zavadovsky, as a lover.
Potemkin had no legitimate descendants, though it is probable he had illegitimate issue. Four of his five sisters lived long enough to bear children, but only the daughters of his sister Marfa Elena (sometimes rendered as 'Helen') received Potemkin's special attention. The five unmarried Engelhardt sisters arrived in court in 1775 on the direction of their recently widowed father Vassily. Legend suggests Potemkin soon seduced many of the girls, one of whom was twelve or thirteen at the time. An affair with the third eldest, Varvara, can be verified; after that had subsided, Potemkin formed close—and probably amorous—relationships successively with Alexandra, the second eldest, and Ekaterina, the fifth.
Potemkin also had influential relatives. Potemkin's sister Maria, for example, married Russian senator Nikolay Samoylov: their son Alexander was decorated for his service under Potemkin in the army; their daughter Ekaterina married first into the Raevesky family, and then the wealthy landowner Lev Davydov. She had children with both husbands, including highly decorated General Nikolay Raevsky, Potemkin's great-nephew. His wider family included several distant cousins, among them Count Pavel Potemkin, another decorated military figure, whose brother Mikhail married Potemkin's niece Tatiana Engelhardt. A distant nephew, Felix Yusupov, helped murder Rasputin in 1916.