Catherine the Great

58

Vasilchikov

FOR ELEVEN YEARS, from 1761 to 1772, Catherine had been faithful to Gregory Orlov. She was fiercely proud of him, often praising his bravery, generosity, and loyalty to her and the crown. Although his achievements were not balanced by sparkling intelligence and his character defects included selfishness, conceit, and indolence, he still had exhibited the courage and masculine charm that had originally attracted her. Having failed to persuade her to marry him, and finding himself unable to dominate her, he found other women. Catherine suffered but looked away. In 1771, he had rehabilitated himself by his heroic behavior during the Moscow plague. Impressed, she gave him another assignment intended to enhance his prestige. The battlefield stalemate in southern Russia had led to an attempt to negotiate peace with the Turks. Catherine appointed Gregory to be Russia’s chief negotiator, and, in March 1772, he left for the Danube. As he departed, she wrote to Frau Bielcke in Hamburg, “He must appear to the Turks as an angel of peace in all his great beauty.” In the peace talks, however, his egotistical clumsiness brought him down. He insisted that Russian demands be treated as those of a conqueror and stuck to this position with such arrogance that the offended Turkish emissaries suspended negotiations. Before this denouement, his position in St. Petersburg had already collapsed. On the day he departed for the south, Catherine was told that her “angel” had begun another affair. Orlov’s reign had lasted thirteen years and she had forgiven him much—this was too much. Weary of this recurring behavior, Catherine made up her mind to end the relationship. She did not bring herself to this rupture easily, but once decided, she resolved to do it in a way that would make reconciliation impossible. She waited until he was far away.

Nikita Panin, no friend of the Orlovs and seeing the empress oscillating between rage and despair, pushed forward a replacement for Orlov, a twenty-eight-year-old Horse Guards officer, Alexander Vasilchikov. Catherine admitted, “I cannot live one day without love,” but it was hardly a question of love with this candidate. Alexander Vasilchikov appeared innocuous. He came from an old noble family; he was modest and sweet-tempered; his manners were polished; he spoke perfect French. Dining at court, Catherine noticed these qualities, along with his handsome face and beautiful black eyes. The Prussian minister noted the empress’s good humor in the young man’s presence and the corresponding nervousness of Orlov’s relatives. When Vasilchikov was presented with a gold snuffbox, his reluctance to accept intensified the donor’s desire to give him more. By August, he had become a gentleman-in-waiting; by September, a court chamberlain. Then, suddenly, the young man was installed in Orlov’s apartment in the Winter Palace, his rooms linked to Catherine’s apartment by the private stairway. He was appointed adjutant general and given a hundred thousand rubles, along with an annual salary of twelve thousand rubles; and jewels, a new wardrobe, servants, and a country estate. This remarkable ascent astonished the court, tempered by the widespread belief that once Orlov returned, Vasilchikov would not last a week.

Gregory was still waiting for negotiations to resume in the Balkans when he received an urgent message from his brother Alexis, in St. Petersburg: the empress had taken a new lover, a young Guards officer, described by Alexis as “good looking, amiable, and a complete nonentity.” Russia’s chief delegate abandoned the peace talks immediately and rushed back to St. Petersburg. On the city’s outskirts, he was abruptly halted; on Catherine’s orders he was instructed to retire to his estate at Gatchina. The pretext was that because of plague the previous year, all travelers from the south were required to pass through a period of quarantine before entering the capital. The truth was that Catherine was afraid of Gregory. She had new locks put on her doors and surrounded her apartment with loyal soldiers. Even with this added security, the slightest noise made her imagine that Orlov was coming, and she was always ready to flee. “You don’t know him,” she said. “He is capable of killing me and the Grand Duke Paul.”

From Gatchina, Gregory begged to see her. She refused but sent him messages, telling him that he must be reasonable, must go away and travel for his health. Gregory retorted that he had never felt better. She asked him to send back the jeweled miniature portrait of her which he had worn over his heart. He refused to send the portrait but returned the diamonds from the frame.

After four weeks in “quarantine,” Orlov suddenly reappeared in society, behaving as though nothing had happened. He pretended not to notice that Vasilchikov was attending to duties that had been his; he even indulged in his own brand of humor by making friends with the new favorite, praising him loudly and joking about himself. It was Vasilchikov who blushed with embarrassment when, at night in the presence of the entire court, including Orlov, the empress gave him her arm to escort her to her apartment. No one knew how to react. Before long, Orlov realized that the pretty-faced “nonentity” had triumphed. He knew that Catherine was not in love; that she had taken this young man for the same reason he collected mistresses: a need for a companion who would be always available and submissive. Realizing that his own position was becoming ridiculous, he requested permission to travel. Catherine agreed without uttering a word of recrimination. Indeed, before he left, Orlov allowed himself to be awarded a trove of additional rubles and was given the right to use the title of Prince of the Holy Roman Empire.

Gregory Orlov’s departure brought peace to court, but for Catherine it was a peace paid for with boredom. Vasilchikov was handsome, but his intellect and personality were so limited as to make conversation impossible. Catherine, wearied by a day of administering her empire, wanted to be intellectually stimulated, amused, and distracted in her hours of relaxation. Vasilchikov had none of these skills, and she soon realized that she had linked herself to a bore incapable of saying anything interesting or funny. He did his best. He was attentive, dutiful, well meaning, and decorative. Nothing helped; she found him increasingly, and then unendurably, boring. Later favorites, picked out by the empress for their physical appearance, had to be acclaimed for their superior mental qualities—or, at least, for the speed with which they were learning. Vasilchikov possessed neither these aptitudes nor prospects. The twenty-two months of his tenure as favorite witnessed some of the most traumatic, challenging, anxiety-producing events of Catherine’s reign: the partition of Poland, war with Turkey, the Pugachev rebellion. She needed someone to talk to who could offer support and consolation, if not useful political or military advice. That Vasilchikov was unable to provide anything of this kind was obvious to everyone.

Thus Vasilchikov, not Orlov, had turned out to be the primary victim of this boudoir upheaval, and no one knew better than the wretched favorite himself. He was sufficiently sensitive to realize that he bored his mistress and that he was viewed as only a stopgap. His shy, sweet temper, which had been one of his assets, turned peevish and sour. His description of his life with the empress is the wail of an abandoned child:

I was nothing more to her than a kind of male cocotte, and was treated as such. I was not allowed to receive guests or go out. If I made a request for myself or anyone else, she did not reply. When I wished to have the Order of St. Anne, I spoke to the empress about it. The next day I found a thirty thousand ruble banknote in my pocket. In this way, she always stopped my mouth and sent me to my room. She never condescended to discuss with me any matters that lay close to my heart.

Catherine kept him on because, having made the unfortunate choice of this obscure young guardsman, she thought it would be cruel to dismiss him for faults for which he was not responsible. Finally, however, when she could endure him no longer, she wrote to Potemkin, “Tell Panin that he must send Vasilchikov away somewhere for a cure. I feel suffocated by him and he complains of pains in his chest. Later he could be appointed envoy somewhere as ambassador—somewhere where there is not too much work to do. He is a bore. I burned my fingers and I shall never do it again.”

Although Vasilchikov’s performance in the role of favorite was probably the weakest of any of Catherine’s lovers, she accepted most of the blame. He was a sudden replacement, installed when she was angry at the frequently and flagrantly unfaithful Gregory. “It was a random choice,” she admitted later, “made out of desperation. I was more heartbroken at that time than I can say.”

The hapless Vasilchikov departed, generously pensioned for his efforts and good intentions. He retired to a large country estate near Moscow—a gift from the empress. Over the years, he aged into a quiet country gentleman, ignored and mostly forgotten by his sovereign. Once he had gone, she replaced mediocrity with genius and boredom with intellectual fireworks. She sent for Potemkin.

59

Catherine and Potemkin: Passion

THE OUTSTANDING FIGURE of Catherine’s reign, other than Catherine herself, was Gregory Potemkin. For seventeen years, from 1774 to 1791, he was the most powerful man in Russia. No one else during her life was closer to Catherine; he was her lover, her adviser, her military commander in chief, the governor and viceroy of half of her empire, the creator of her new cities, seaports, palaces, armies, and fleets. He was also, perhaps, her husband.

Gregory Potemkin’s family had served Russian sovereigns for generations. His seventeenth-century ancestor Peter Potemkin had been sent by Tsar Alexis, the father of Peter the Great, on diplomatic missions to Spain and France. Determined to uphold the rank and dignity of his master, he demanded in Madrid that the king of Spain take off his hat whenever the tsar’s name was mentioned. In Paris, he refused to speak to the Sun King, Louis XIV, because an error had been made in the tsar’s titles. Later, in Copenhagen, he was received by the king of Denmark, who was ill and confined to bed. The envoy demanded that another bed be brought and placed next to the king so that he could negotiate from a position of absolute equality. This Potemkin, Gregory’s grandfather, died in 1700 at the age of eighty-three, demanding and eccentric to the end.

Gregory Potemkin’s father, Alexander Potemkin, was not dissimilar. As a young man in 1709, he fought in the Battle of Poltava against Charles XII of Sweden. Retired as a colonel to a small estate near Smolensk, Alexander Potemkin, while traveling, met an attractive, indigent young widow, Daria Skouratova. He was fifty and she was twenty, but he married her on the spot, forgetting to tell her that he already had a wife. Daria was pregnant before she discovered that she was married to a bigamist. She reacted by going to Potemkin’s first wife and asking for guidance. The older woman, whose life with her husband was unhappy, resolved the situation by entering a convent, in effect divorcing the colonel. Daria got along with her new husband no better than had her predecessor, but she eventually produced six children, five daughters and a son, Gregory.

The boy was born on September 13, 1739, and began life surrounded and coddled by a loving mother and five sisters. The family was unable to afford a tutor, and Gregory began his education with the village deacon. The pupil loved music, and the deacon had an exceptional voice; he enforced discipline on his precocious, obstreperous student by threatening to sing him no more songs. At five, Gregory was sent to live with his godfather, a senior civil servant in Moscow. With an ear for languages as well as music, he learned Greek, Latin, French, and German. As an adolescent, he was drawn to theology, but also to the army; whichever career he chose, he said, he wished to command. “If I become a general,” he declared to his friends, “I will have soldiers under my orders. If I become a bishop, it will be monks.” When he entered the recently founded University of Moscow, he won a gold medal for studies in theology. Then, losing interest, he refused to attend lectures and was expelled. He entered the army as a private in the Horse Guards, became a corporal, and, by 1759, a captain. In 1762, he joined the five Orlov brothers and Nikita Panin in the coup that put Catherine on the throne. It was during this tumult that he supplied the missing sword knot that Catherine borrowed for the march on Peterhof. Subsequently, when Catherine was distributing rewards for assistance in the coup, Captain Potemkin was given an army promotion and ten thousand rubles.

At twenty-two, Potemkin was tall and slim, with thick auburn hair. He was intelligent, educated, and spirited. His appearance at court and his introduction to Catherine were sponsored by the Orlovs, who admired the young soldier as an engaging conversationalist and a talented mimic who successfully impersonated the voices of people around him. One evening, Catherine asked him to mimic her. Without hesitation, he spoke to her in her own voice, perfectly imitating her idiom and German accent. Catherine, always seeking wit and humor, could not stop laughing. The impertinence was risky, but Potemkin had guessed that the empress would be amused and would forgive and probably not forget him. He had judged her correctly. Thereafter, he was often invited to her intimate evenings, which included no more than twenty people and from which all ceremony and formality were banned. She decreed that her guests must be good-humored and not speak badly of anyone. Lying and boasting were forbidden, and all unpleasant thoughts were to be deposited with hats and swords at the door. In this uninhibited atmosphere, Gregory—quick-witted, artistic, musical, and able to make the empress laugh—was always welcome.

Others at court noticed that a strong mutual admiration was developing, and there was gossip. It was said that Potemkin, encountering the empress in a palace corridor, had fallen on his knees, kissed her hand, and not been reprimanded. The Orlovs did not like these stories. Gregory was the established favorite and the father of her child, Bobrinsky; he and his brothers had been endowed with enormous power and wealth. It seemed to them that Potemkin had begun to trespass. By some accounts, Potemkin was called to Gregory Orlov’s room, where, to teach him a lesson, the two brothers, Gregory and Alexis, fell on him and beat him. Later, it was rumored that it was in this struggle that Potemkin lost the sight in his left eye (a more believable explanation is that he was permanently blinded because of faulty treatment of an infection by an incompetent doctor). Whatever the cause, this disfigurement so upset Potemkin that he withdrew from court. When the empress asked about him and was told that he was suffering from a physical disfigurement, she sent word that this was a poor reason and that he should return. He obeyed.

Catherine began making use of Potemkin’s administrative talents in 1763, when, aware of his interest in religion, she appointed him assistant to the Procurator of the Holy Synod, who oversaw church administration and finances. She simultaneously advanced his military career, and, by 1767, he was a senior commander in the Horse Guards Regiment. The following year, he became a court chamberlain. When the Legislative Commission met, he was assigned to be trustee of the Tartars and other ethnic minorities in the Russian empire. Thereafter, Potemkin always had a special interest in Catherine’s non-Russian subjects; in later years, holding supreme power in the south, his entourage always included tribal leaders of all faiths. His early love of ecclesiastical controversy continued. He rarely missed an opportunity to discuss points of religious belief with leaders of all faiths. When the First Turkish War began, in 1769, he immediately volunteered for the front. With Catherine’s permission, he joined the army of General Rumyantsev, in which he served first as Rumyantsev’s aide-de-camp and then as an outstanding leader of cavalry. In recognition of his services, he was promoted to the rank of major general and chosen in November 1769 to carry Rumyantsev’s campaign reports to the empress. In St. Petersburg, Potemkin was received as a prominent commander and invited to dine with the empress.

When he returned to the army in the south, it was with Catherine’s permission to write to her privately. She was surprised that he was slow to use this privilege. On December 4, 1773, she prompted him:

Sir Lieutenant General and Chevalier: I suppose you have your eyes so thoroughly trained on Silestra [a Turkish fortress on the Danube under siege by the Russian army] that you haven’t time to read letters.… Nonetheless I am certain that everything you undertake can be ascribed to nothing but your ardent zeal toward me personally and toward the dear fatherland which you love to serve. But since I very much desire to preserve fervent, brave, clever, and skillful individuals, so I ask you not endanger yourself.… Upon reading this letter you may well ask: why was it written? To which I can offer the following reply: so that you had confirmation of my opinion of you, for I am always most benevolent toward you. Catherine.

Potemkin could hardly fail to see an invitation in this language. In January 1774, once the army was in winter quarters, he took leave and hurried to St. Petersburg.

He arrived to find the government and Catherine struggling with multiple crises. The war with Turkey was entering its sixth year, the Pugachev rebellion was spreading, and Catherine’s intimate relationship with Alexander Vasilchikov was in its final stage. Potemkin, believing he had been summoned for personal reasons, was dismayed to find Vasilchikov still firmly embedded. He asked for a private audience with Catherine, and on February 4 he went to Tsarskoe Selo. She told him that she wanted him to remain close. He returned to court, where he seemed happy; he continued to make Catherine laugh, and he was generally recognized as the heir presumptive to the office of favorite. One day, supposedly, he was walking up the palace staircase when he met Gregory Orlov descending. “Any news at court?” Potemkin asked. “Nothing in particular,” Orlov answered. “Except that you are going up and I am coming down.” Vasilchikov managed for a few more weeks to cling to his perch because Catherine worried about the impression a change would make in St. Petersburg and abroad; she was also afraid of alienating Panin by dismissing his nominee. Most important, she wanted to be certain that her new choice was the right one.

Frustrated by Catherine’s procrastination, Potemkin decided to force the issue. He came to court only rarely, and when he did, he had nothing to say. Then he disappeared entirely. Catherine was told that Potemkin was suffering from an unhappy love affair because a certain woman did not reciprocate his love; that his despair was so deep that he was thinking of entering a monastery. Catherine complained, “I do not understand what has reduced him to such despair.… I thought my friendliness must have made him realize that his fervor was not displeasing to me.” When these words were reported to Potemkin, he knew that Vasilchikov was about to depart.

Employing his flair for the dramatic, Potemkin decided to increase the pressure on Catherine. At the end of January, he entered the Monastery Alexander Nevsky on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. There, affecting melancholy, he began growing a beard and observing the daily routine of a monk. Panin understood Potemkin’s game. The counselor requested an audience and told the empress that while the merits of General Potemkin were universally recognized, he had been sufficiently rewarded, and that nothing more need be given this gentleman. In case further advancement were contemplated, Panin observed, he wanted her to understand that “the state and yourself, Madam, will soon be made to feel the ambition, the pride, and the eccentricities of this man. I fear that your choice will cause you much unpleasantness.” Catherine replied that the raising of these issues was premature. Given Potemkin’s abilities, he could be useful as a soldier and as a diplomat. He was brave, clever, and educated; such men were not so numerous in Russia that she could allow this one to hide in a monastery. Therefore, she would do everything in her power to prevent General Potemkin from taking holy orders.

Catherine did not want to risk Potemkin making his withdrawal permanent. According to one story, she dispatched her friend and lady-in-waiting Countess Prascovia Bruce to the monastery to see Potemkin and tell him that, if he would return to court, he could rely on the empress’s favor. Potemkin did not smooth the emissary’s path. On her arrival at the monastery, he asked her to wait, saying that he was about to engage in prayer and could not be interrupted. Wearing monastic robes, he walked in procession with the monks, participated in the service, and prostrated himself, murmuring prayers, before an icon of St. Catherine. Eventually, he rose, made the sign of the cross, and came to speak to Catherine’s envoy. Countess Bruce’s message had a convincing ring; moreover, Potemkin was impressed by the court rank of the messenger. Persuaded, he shed his monastic cassock, shaved off his beard, put on his uniform, and returned to St. Petersburg in a court carriage.

He became Catherine’s lover—and immediately became intensely jealous. Apart from lying next to her hapless husband, Peter, Catherine had slept with four men before Potemkin—Saltykov, Poniatowski, Orlov, and Vasilchikov. The existence of these predecessors, and mental images of her as the sexual partner of other men, tormented Potemkin. He accused the empress of having had fifteen previous lovers. In an attempt to calm him, Catherine secluded herself in her apartment on February 21, writing a letter entitled “A Sincere Confession,” which gave an account of her previous romantic experiences. It is unique in the annals of written royal confessions; an all-powerful queen attempting to win forgiveness from a demanding new lover for previous actions in her life.

In spelling out the details of her past life, she began with the circumstances of her marriage, and then described the painful disappointments of the love affairs that followed. Her earnest, apologetic, almost pleading tone laid bare how desperately she wanted Potemkin. She began by explaining how Empress Elizabeth’s anxiety concerning her failure to produce an heir to the throne had led to her first love affair. She admitted that, under pressure from the empress and Maria Choglokova, she had chosen Sergei Saltykov, “chiefly because of his obvious inclination.” Then Saltykov was sent away, “for he had conducted himself indiscreetly:”

After a year spent in great sorrow, the present Polish king [Stanislaus Poniatowski] arrived. We took no notice of him, but good people … forced me to notice that he existed, that his eyes were of unparalleled beauty, and that he directed them (though so nearsighted he doesn’t see past his nose) more often in one direction than in another. This one was both loving and loved from 1755 till 1761, [which included] a three year absence. Then the efforts of Prince Gregory Orlov[,] whom again good people forced me to notice, changed my state of mind. This one would have remained for life had he himself not grown bored. I learned of … [his new infidelity] on the very day of his departure to … [the peace talks with the Turks] and as a result I decided that I could no longer trust him. This thought cruelly tormented me and forced me out of desperation to make some sort of choice [Vasilchikov], one which grieved me then and still does now more than I can say.…

Then came a certain knight [Potemkin]. Through his merits and kindness, this hero was so charming that people … were already saying that he should take up residence here. But what they didn’t know was that we’d already called him here.…

Now, Sir Knight, after this confession, may I hope to receive absolution for my sins? You’ll be pleased to see that it wasn’t fifteen, but a third as many: the first [Saltykov] chosen out of necessity, and the fourth [Vasilchikov] out of desperation, cannot in my mind be attributed to any frivolity. As to the other three [Poniatowski, Orlov, and Potemkin himself], if you look closely, God knows they weren’t the result of debauchery, for which I haven’t the least inclination, and had fate given me in my youth a husband whom I could have loved, I would have remained true to him forever. The trouble is that my heart is loath to be without love even for a single hour.… If you want to keep me forever, then show as much friendship as love, and more than anything else, love me and tell me the truth.

Along with Catherine’s interpretation of her own romantic history, this letter displays the impact of Potemkin’s personality on her. Potemkin understood this. Assured that he eclipsed everyone who had gone before, he wrote to Catherine, demanding what he now saw as his due:

I remain unmotivated by envy toward those who, while younger than I, have nevertheless received more signs of imperial favor than I, but am solely offended by the possibility that in Your Imperial Majesty’s thoughts, I am considered less worthy than others. Being tormented by this … I have been so audacious as to beg that should my service be worthy of your favor … my doubt [would] be resolved by rewarding me with the title of adjutant general to Your Imperial Majesty. This will offend no one, and I shall take it as the zenith of my happiness.

The rank of adjutant general was the official status of Catherine’s favorites, but that his advancement would offend no one was nonsense. In addition to Vasilchikov, who admittedly no longer counted, it would offend the Orlovs, Panin, most of the court, and Catherine’s son, Grand Duke Paul, the heir to the throne. Ignoring all this, Catherine replied the following day in a letter that mingled official wording with private tongue-in-cheek irony:

Sir Lieutenant General: Your letter was handed to me this morning. I found your request so moderate with regard to your services rendered to me and fatherland, that I ordered an edict prepared rewarding you with the title of Adjutant General. I admit that I am also very pleased that your trust in me is such that you addressed your request in writing directly to me, and did not go through any intermediaries. Rest assured I remain toward you benevolent. Catherine.

Catherine then wrote to General Alexander Bibikov, who was then commander of the troops opposing Pugachev, to tell him that she had appointed Potemkin her personal adjutant, “and, as he thinks that you, being fond of him, will rejoice at this news I am letting you know. It seems to me that considering his devotion and services to me, I have not done much for him, but his joy is hard to describe. And I, looking at him, feel glad that I see near me at least one person who is entirely happy.” She also made Potemkin lieutenant colonel of the Preobrazhensky Guards, the most famous regiment of the Imperial Guard, in which she herself, as sovereign, was colonel. A few days later, the British minister, Sir Robert Gunning, informed London of these developments:

Mr. Vasilchikov, the favorite, whose understanding was too limited to admit of his having any influence in affairs, or sharing his mistress’s confidence, is now succeeded by a man who bids fair to possessing them both, in the most supreme form. When I acquaint Your Lordship that the empress’s choice is equally disapproved by both the Grand Duke’s party [including Panin] and the Orlovs … you will not wonder that it has occasioned a very general surprise.

As the news swept through the court, Countess Rumyantseva wrote to her husband, the general, who, a few months before, had been Potemkin’s superior in the Turkish war, “The thing to do now, my sweet, is to address yourself to Potemkin.”

Panin, despite his warning to Catherine about Potemkin, was pleased by the change because it promised to diminish the influence of the Orlovs. No concern was shown for the hapless Vasilchikov, who, still living in the palace, became simply an inconvenience. Catherine was enraptured by her new favorite; this extended to taking pride in his reputed success with other women. “I’m not surprised that the entire city has ascribed to you a countless number of women as your lovers,” she wrote to him. “No one on earth is better at busying himself with them, I suppose, than you.” She wanted him now, however, exclusively for herself. Less than a week after writing her “Sincere Confession,” she waited at night for Potemkin to come to her. The following day, she wrote to him:

I don’t understand what kept you. And you didn’t even come. Please, don’t be afraid. We are quite too shrewd. No sooner had I lain down than I rose again, got dressed, and went to the doors of the library to wait for you, where I stood in a drafty wind for two hours. And not till midnight … did I return out of grief to lie down in bed where, thanks to you, I spent … [a] sleepless night.… I want to see you and must see you, no matter what!

Potemkin remained jealous of everyone, flaring up when she paid attention to anyone else. One night at the theater, when she made friendly remarks to Gregory Orlov, he got up and stormed out of the imperial box. Catherine cautioned him to moderate his attitude toward this former lover:

I only ask you not to do one thing: don’t damage, and don’t even try to damage, my opinion of Prince Orlov, for I should consider that to be ingratitude on your part. There’s no one whom he [Orlov] praised more to me and whom … he loved more both in former times and now till your arrival, than you. And if he has his faults, then it is unfit for either you or me to judge them and to make them known to others. He loves you, and they [the Orlov brothers] are my friends, and I shan’t part with them. Now there’s a lesson for you. If you’re wise, you’ll heed it. It wouldn’t be wise to contradict it since it’s the absolute truth.

In April, Potemkin moved into the apartment immediately beneath the private apartment of the empress; their rooms were now connected by the private, green-carpeted spiral staircase. Because they kept different hours—Catherine normally rose to begin work at six and retired at night by ten; Potemkin often talked and played cards until dawn and rose at noon—they did not regularly sleep together in the same bed. Instead, at night one climbed, or the other descended, the spiral staircase in order to spend time together.

When they became lovers, Catherine was forty-four, ten years older than Potemkin. She was inclining toward plumpness, but her mental acuity and vitality remained exceptional. And Potemkin could see that his passion for this woman was powerfully reciprocated, which only added to her attractiveness. He might have settled into the luxurious life of an imperial favorite and collected the rewards that came with that position. But Potemkin had no interest in simply becoming the purveyor of private pleasures to the empress. He wanted a life of action and responsibility, and he meant to achieve it with the support of the woman who personified Russia.

Catherine was eager to accept him on this basis. She thought him the handsomest man she had ever met; she scarcely noticed the damaged eye. At thirty-four, he had gained weight and his body was no longer slim. Biting his nails had become an obsession. None of this mattered. To Grimm, she wrote: “I have parted from a certain excellent but very boring citizen [Vasilchikov] who was immediately replaced—I do not myself quite know how—by one of the greatest, most bizarre, and most entertaining eccentrics of the iron age.”

From the beginning there were quarrels. Hardly a day passed without a scene, and almost always it was Potemkin who began the quarrel and Catherine who took the first step toward reconciliation. He questioned the permanence of her feeling for him and worried her and himself with questions and reproaches. Because most of his letters and notes are lost, there is only a slender record of what he wrote to her, but her letters to him give an idea of what he had said to her. In any case, she had to soothe and flatter him like a spoiled child:

No, Grishenka, it’s quite impossible that my feelings for you will change. Be fair with yourself: how could I love someone after you? I think there’s no one like you and I don’t give a damn about everyone else. I hate change.

There is no reason to be angry. But no, it’s time to stop giving you assurances. You must be most, most, most certain by now that I love you.… I want you to love me. I want to appear desirable to you.… If you want, I shall paraphrase this page for you in three words and cross out all the rest. Here it is: I love you.

Oh, my darling, you should be ashamed. What need do you have of saying that he who takes your place hasn’t long to live? Does using fear to compel someone’s heart look like the right thing to do? This most loathsome method is utterly contrary to your way of thinking in which no evil dwells.

Not only jealousy, but also Potemkin’s sensitivity to the possible impermanence of his new position provided a subject for argument. He refused to be treated as merely the empress’s favorite. There is a letter from him, annotated in the margins by Catherine and returned to him, which exhibits one of their arguments and its reconciliation:

IN POTEMKIN’S HAND:

Allow me, my precious dear, to say these final words that I think will end our quarrel. Do not be surprised that I am uneasy about our love. Beyond the innumerable gifts you have bestowed on me, you have placed me in your heart. I want to be there alone, preferred to all former ones, since no one has so loved you as I. And since I am the work of your hands. So I desire that you should secure my place, that you should find joy in doing me good, that you should devise everything for my comfort and find therein repose from the great labors that occupy your lofty station. Amen.

IN CATHERINE’S HAND:

I permit you.

The sooner the better.

Be calm.

One hand washes the other.

Firmly and solidly.

You are and will be.

I see it and believe it.

I am happy with all my soul.

My foremost pleasure. It will come by itself. Let your thoughts be calm. Your feelings are tender and will find the best way.

End of quarrel. Amen.

Thus began the period in Catherine’s life when she had a lover and partner who gave her almost everything she wanted. Their intimacy permitted Potemkin to walk into her bedroom in the morning with only a dressing gown over his naked body, although the room was crowded with visitors and court officials. He scarcely noticed because his thoughts were on the fascinating conversation interrupted a few hours before when Catherine, declaring that she must have some sleep, had left his apartment below and returned to her room.

Because they worked in different parts of the palace during the day, they wrote notes to each other; continuations of their conversations. These were protestations of love mingled with affairs of state, court gossip, reproachful chiding, and discussions of mutual health. Catherine’s names for him were “My golden pheasant,” “Dearest Pigeon,” “Kitten,” “Little dog,” “Papa,” “Twin Soul,” “Little parrot,” “Grisha,” and “Grishenka.” Also: “Cossack,” “Muscovite,” “Lion in the Jungle,” “Tiger,” “Giaour (Infidel),” “My good sir,” “Prince,” “Your Excellency,” “Your Serene Highness,” “General,” and “My sweet beauty to whom no king can compare.” Potemkin’s forms of address to her were more formal, emphasizing the difference in station: “Matushka,” “Madame,” or “Your Gracious Imperial Majesty.” Catherine worried because he carried her little notes in his pocket and often pulled them out to reread. She feared that one would drop out and be picked up by the wrong person.

For a person with an orderly German mind who exercised strict self-control, the emotional intensity Catherine experienced with Potemkin was both liberating and distracting. She had to choose between drawn-out, draining sexual pleasure and her duties as a ruler. She tried to have both, and both ran concurrently in her mind. She was not free to be with him whenever she wanted; she compensated by secretly surrounding herself with thoughts of him; she did this while reading papers or listening to officials delivering reports, hour after hour. Because she was not free to spend these honeymoon days alone with him, Catherine poured her love onto these little scribbled slips of paper.

Potemkin, too, was immersed in passion, but he was uneasy about something else. He realized that he owed his new preeminence exclusively to the empress, and that just as she had summoned and then dismissed Vasilchikov, so, too, she could, at any moment, replace him. There was, of course, a climactic step that would change his status. His plan was extravagant, impracticable—perhaps only a daydream: he wanted to legalize their union by marriage. He spoke to her about it soon after he became the official favorite, and it was a measure of his power over her that she considered it. For Catherine, it would not have been easy; she was wary of surrendering power. This time, because of her love for Potemkin, she may have agreed.

If there was a marriage, this is a widely believed version of how it happened:

No one was to know. But to be a proper Orthodox ceremony, it had to include a chuch, a priest, and witnesses. These arrangements were made. On June 8, 1774, after a dinner in honor of the Izmailovsky Guards, Catherine, wearing the uniform of the regiment, and accompanied only by a favorite maid, set out in a boat from the Fontanka Canal, crossed the Neva River to the Vyborg side, and entered an unmarked carriage, which took her to the St. Sampsonovsky Church. There, Potemkin, wearing his general’s uniform, was waiting. Only five people were present: Catherine, Potemkin, her maid, her chamberlain, and Potemkin’s nephew Alexander Samoilov. The marriage was performed.

Is this story true? No documents have ever been seen, but there are other forms of evidence. In 1782, Sir Robert Keith, the British ambassador to Austria, walking with Emperor Joseph II, asked about the rumors. “Does it appear, sir, that Prince Potemkin’s weight and influence is diminished?” “Not at all,” the emperor replied, “but they have never been what the world imagined. The empress of Russia does not wish to part with him, and for a thousand reasons, and as [with] many connections of every sort, she could not easily get rid of him even if she wished to.” Why, if Potemkin were merely a favorite, could Catherine not get rid of him? She had gotten rid of Orlov, who, with his brothers, had put her on the throne, and who was also the father of her son, Bobrinsky. A marriage, however, had created a different situation. Perhaps this was what the emperor was saying.

Ambassadors, as well as emperors, like to pose as having inside knowledge. Philippe de Ségur, the French ambassador in St. Petersburg, told Versailles in 1788 that Potemkin had “certain sacred and inalienable rights which secure the continuance of his privilege.… A lucky chance enabled me to discover it, and when I have thoroughly researched it, I shall on the first occasion inform the king.” No such occasion presented itself. The French Revolution broke out a year later, Ségur returned home, and five years later the king, Louis XVI, was guillotined.

The strongest written evidence appears in the language of Catherine’s daily messages to Potemkin beginning in the late spring of 1774. She addresses him as “dear husband” and “my master and tender spouse” and signs herself “your devoted wife.” She never called any other lover, before or after Potemkin, “husband,” or referred to herself as his “wife.” In June and July 1774, immediately after the marriage—if one occurred—she wrote, “I kiss you and embrace you with all my body and soul, dear husband.” A few days later: “Dearest darling, dear spouse, pray come and cuddle with me. Your caresses are so sweet and pleasing.”

The history of Russia offers the strongest evidence of all. After their physical passion had dimmed, Catherine and Gregory Potemkin continued a special relationship that was often incomprehensible to everyone around them. Marriage would provide an explanation. If they were secretly married and still deeply cared for each other but had agreed on a modus vivendi, it could account for the unique authority wielded by Potemkin in Catherine’s Russia for the rest of his life. During this time—over fifteen years—he received and returned Catherine’s devoted loyalty and affection. This was true even when both were sleeping with other people.

60

Potemkin Ascending

POTEMKIN SOARED in rank and power. His appointments as adjutant general to the empress and lieutenant colonel of the Preobrazhensky. Guards had been the first visible signs of this ascent, and a stream of titles, honors, and privileges soon followed. On May 6, 1774, Sir Robert Gunning reported to Whitehall, “There has been no instance of so rapid a progress as the present one. Yesterday, General Potemkin was admitted to a seat on the Privy Council.” A month later, he was appointed vice president of the College of War and governor-general of New Russia, an immense stretch of territory north of the Crimea and the Black Sea. For his services in the Turkish war, he was awarded a diamond-studded sword and a miniature portrait of the empress set in diamonds to be worn over his heart, a gift previously awarded only to Gregory Orlov. One after another, he received the highest grades of Russian and foreign decorations: first, on Christmas Day 1774, the Order of St. Andrew, the highest order in the Russian empire; then came the Black Eagle from Prussia, the White Eagle from Poland, the White Elephant from Denmark, and the Holy Seraphim from Sweden. Catherine was not universally successful in decorating her hero. Austria declined to make him a Knight of the Golden Fleece because he was not a Roman Catholic, and attempts to obtain the Order of the Garter from Great Britain were flatly refused by King George III. The University of Moscow, which had expelled him for laziness, gave him an honorary degree. When Potemkin spoke to one of the professors who had been active in having him dismissed, he asked, “Do you remember how you got me kicked out?” “At the time, you deserved it,” the professor replied. Potemkin laughed and slapped the old man on the back.

Catherine sent him jewels, furs, porcelain, and furniture. His food and wine were charged to her at a cost of one hundred thousand rubles a year. The five daughters of his widowed sister, Maria Engelhardt, were brought to court; all five were created maids of honor. Catherine was attentive to Potemkin’s mother. “I have noticed that your mother was most elegant, but that she has no watch,” she said at one point. “Here is one I ask you to give her from me.”

When Potemkin first asked to be brought onto the Imperial Council, he was rebuffed. Describing what happened next, a French diplomat wrote:

On Sunday, I happened to be seated at table next to … [Potemkin] and the empress, and I saw that not only would he not speak to her, but he did not even answer her questions. She was quite beside herself and we were utterly upset. Upon getting up from the table, the empress retired alone, and when she returned her eyes were red. On Monday, she was more cheerful. He entered the Council the same day.

Potemkin understood that his rise stirred jealousy and that his future depended not only on his relationship with Catherine but on what he achieved in his work. The court quickly realized that this new favorite would be neither a puppet like Vasilchikov nor an amiable, indolent fixture like Gregory Orlov. Courtiers then divided into those who attempted to ingratiate themselves with the new figure and those who opposed him.

Nikita Panin was between these two groups. He had opposed Potemkin’s rapid advancement, but his hatred of the Orlovs was greater than his wariness of the ambitious newcomer. Potemkin at first sought to win Panin’s favor for its own value and because it was a path to conciliation with Grand Duke Paul. Panin owed his permanent influence to his years as Paul’s childhood tutor and his role in bringing Catherine to the throne. It was this, not his present position at the College of Foreign Affairs, that enabled Panin to continue living at the palace. “As long as my bed remains in the Palace, I shall not lose my influence,” he said. Potemkin’s efforts to reach out to Paul and the old councillor had mixed results. As long as Potemkin avoided Panin’s privileged domain of foreign relations, relations between the two remained correct. Paul, however, was so opposed to everyone personally close to his mother that Potemkin’s efforts in this direction were fruitless.

During the spring of 1774, with the Turkish war continuing and the Pugachev rebellion still unresolved, Potemkin was given additional assignments. Catherine ordered that all papers and correspondence regarding the rebellion be addressed to him. Soon, his days were occupied with drafting documents, writing letters, and helping her think through the decisions she had to make. She consulted him about everything from important state affairs to trivial personal matters. He was now correcting her Russian spelling, grammar, and style, not only in official documents but in personal letters: “If there are no mistakes,” she wrote to him, “please return the letter and I will seal it. If there are some, kindly correct them. If you want to make any changes, write them out.… Either the ukase and the letter are perfectly clear, or else I am stupid today.” Meanwhile, outside the palace, Potemkin was dealing with military, financial, and administrative questions at the College of War. He involved himself in decisions on strategy, establishing recruiting quotas, designing soldiers’ uniforms, purchasing horses for the army, and drawing up lists of candidates for military honors and decorations. He attended meetings of the Imperial Council, where, increasingly, he began to challenge the arguments and decisions of his older colleagues.

Catherine was impressed and pleased by his efforts, but she complained that they were taking too much of his time. She was not seeing him enough. “This is really too much!” she protested. “Even at nine o’clock I cannot find you alone. I came to your apartment and found a crowd of people who were walking about, coughing, and making a lot of noise. Yet I had come solely to tell you that I love you excessively.” Another time, she wrote, “It is a hundred years since I saw you. I do not care what you do, but please arrange that there should be nobody with you when I come. Otherwise, this day will be unbearable; it is sad enough as it is.”

Despite love, war, and rebellion, theology and church matters still absorbed Potemkin. He would leave an important political or military meeting to take part in a theological discussion. Any cleric, eminent or obscure, Russian Orthodox, Old Believer, Catholic priest, or Jewish rabbi, was received. He liked to surround himself with new and interesting people and never missed a chance of talking to men and women who had traveled; he stored away what they told him. His relations with foreign diplomats were less close because he felt that it was important to remain on good terms with Panin. At the same time, he was not completely uninvolved. On the anniversary of Catherine’s accession to the throne, the diplomatic corps was entertained at a lavish supper at Peterhof. Potemkin, not Panin, was the host.

His first opportunity to reveal his talent for grand-scale showmanship came at the beginning of 1775, when Catherine celebrated the end of the Turkish war. It was Potemkin who persuaded her to stage these celebrations in Moscow, Russia’s ancient capital and the heart of the empire, and he became the producer and master of ceremonies of parades, fireworks, illuminations, balls, and banquets. It was in this role that Potemkin had a serious altercation with Nikita Panin. Catherine had given Potemkin instructions regarding honors for the war heroes of the Russian army, and Nikita Panin believed that his brother, General Peter Panin, was to receive insufficient recognition. Potemkin was forced to admit that the empress herself had made the decision and that he was carrying it out. The argument soon moved on to Potemkin’s increasingly frequent incursions into Panin’s traditional domain, foreign affairs. Panin was annoyed that at meetings of the council, Potemkin had questioned, and sometimes contradicted, his opinions. When a report arrived concerning disturbances in Persia, and Potemkin suggested that it might be in Russia’s interest to encourage these disturbances, Panin declared that he would never be a party to such a policy. Potemkin rose and walked out of the room.

There was one foreign policy decision Catherine made at this time in which Potemkin played no part. In the summer of 1775, King George III of England requested the loan—the rental, actually—of Russian troops to fight in America against his rebellious colonial subjects. London’s first instruction on this matter came on June 30, 1775, from the Earl of Suffolk at the Foreign Office to Sir Robert Gunning, the British ambassador:

The rebellion in a great part of his Majesty’s American colonies is of such a nature as to make it prudent to look forward to every possible exertion. You will endeavor to learn whether, in case it should hereafter be found expedient to make use of foreign troops in North America, His Majesty might rely on the Empress of Russia to furnish him with a considerable corps of her infantry for that purpose. I need not observe to you that this commission is of the most delicate nature. In whatever method you introduce the conversation, whether with Mr. Panin or the empress, you will be very careful to do it unaffectedly, so as to give it quite the air of an idle speculation of your own and by no means that of a proposition.

Soon, the British government was more specific. What was wanted was a Russian force of twenty thousand infantry and one thousand Cossack cavalry, for which Britain was prepared to meet all expenses—transport to America, maintenance, and pay. Catherine considered the request. She was indebted to the king and England for the assistance rendered five years before when the Russian fleet made its passage from the Baltic to the Mediterranean—the voyage that had led to Russia’s naval victory over the Turks at Chesme. She was flattered that her soldiers were respected by England. And she was strongly sympathetic to George III’s difficulties—she herself had just dealt with a massive rebellion in Pugachev’s uprising. She nevertheless refused the king’s request. When she did so, Gunning appealed to Panin and then tried the new man, Potemkin, but Catherine was adamant. Even a personal letter from King George could not persuade her. She wrote back a friendly letter, wishing the king success, but still saying no. An important but unexpressed reason was that she considered that Russia’s future lay in the south, along the Black Sea. Despite the peace treaty with Turkey, she sensed that the settlement would not be permanent and that another war would be coming. When this war began, Catherine knew that she would need the twenty thousand soldiers herself.^*

61

Catherine and Potemkin: Separation

DESPITE THE INTENSITY of their early passion, the relationship between Catherine and Potemkin was never smooth. After their first winter and spring together, the notes she wrote to him began spelling out her emotional journey from passion to disappointment, disillusion, frustration, exasperation, and pain. Catherine burned most of his notes to her, but in what she wrote to him, there is evidence of both sides of their arguments:

My dear friend, I don’t know why, but it seems you are angry with me today. If not, and I’m mistaken, so much the better. And as proof, run to me. I’m waiting for you in the bedroom. My soul hungers for you.

Your long letter and stories are quite excellent, but what’s foolish is that there isn’t a single affectionate word for me. What need do I have to listen to the huge lies … [told you by] other people which you reported to me in such detail? It seems to me that, while repeating all this nonsense, you were obliged to remember that there is a woman in this world who loves you and that I, too, have a right to a word of tenderness.

You were in a mood to quarrel. Please inform me once this inclination passes.

Precious darling, I took a cord with a stone and tied it around the neck of all our quarrels, and then I tossed it into a hole in the ice.… And should this please you, pray do the same.

I wrote you a letter this morning devoid of all common sense. You returned this letter to me, I tore it in pieces in front of you and burned it. What more satisfaction could you desire? Even the church aspires to no more once a heretic has been burned. My note has been burned. You should not want to burn me too.… Peace, my friend. I stretch out my hand to you. Do you wish to take it?

Do me this one favor for my sake: be calm. I am a bit merrier after my tears, and only your agitation grieves me. My dear friend, my darling, stop tormenting yourself, we both need peace so our thoughts can settle down and become bearable, or else we’ll end up like balls in a game of tennis.

It was on January 13, 1776, that Catherine wrote to her ambassador in Vienna, instructing him to ask Emperor Joseph II to grant to her favorite the title of Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. This title, which did not require the holder to profess Catholicism, was awarded to Potemkin in March 1776; thereafter, he was addressed as “Prince” and “Your Serene Highness.”

On March 21, 1776, she signed a decree permitting him to use the title. Something between them went wrong, however, and a few days after sending him an angry note, she wrote a plea.

Such rage ought to be expected from Your Highness should you wish to prove to the public as well as to me how great is the extent of your unruliness. This will of course be an indisputable sign of your ingratitude toward me, as well as your slight attachment to me. For this fury is contrary to both my desire and to the difference in our affairs and stations. The Viennese court has no equal and it will now be able to judge how reliable I am in recommending people for their highest honors. And so this is how you show your concern for my reputation.

Then she reversed her approach and made another appeal:

My Lord and Dear Husband! I shall begin my answer with that line which touches me most of all: who ordered you to cry? Why do you give greater authority to your lively imagination than to the proofs which speak in your wife’s favor? Was she not attached to you two years ago by the bonds of Holy Matrimony? My dear, you suspect the impossible of me. Have I changed my tune, could you be unloved? So now consider for yourself: were my words and deeds in your favor stronger two years ago than now?

Should you not find pleasure in constantly quarreling with me … then I beseech you to dampen your hot temper.… I am truly someone who loves not only affectionate words and behavior but an affectionate face as well.… I remain full of hope, without which, I, like all other people, could not live.

May God forgive you … the injustices you’ve shown me.… Catherine was never insensitive. Even now she is attached to you with all her heart and soul.… I don’t understand why you call yourself unloved and repugnant, and me gracious to everyone but you.… Repugnant and unloved you can never be. I believe that you love me, though quite often your words lack any trace of love. Who desires your peace and tranquility more than I?

In May 1776, Potemkin replied to a letter from her regarding a lack of oversight in the Preobrazhensky Guards. Her letter had spoken of a “blind eye” being turned to the affairs of the regiment. Deeply offended by her probably unintended reference to his physical defect, Potemkin replied:

Your Most Gracious Majesty, when I direct my sight in any direction, then it’s not with a blind eye. I renounce any position in which matters will be removed from my oversight. However, should my talents and desire at some time cease, then someone better can be selected to which I shall readily and fully consent.

Catherine responded:

I read your letter.… For God’s sake, come to your senses.… Is it not in your power to do away with this discord? Even the opinion of the foolish public depends on whatever respect you intend to give this matter.

To Catherine, Potemkin now always seemed angry, whereas the theme running through her letters was her desire for peace and harmony. There were moments of reconciliation and assurances of continued affection. Over time, however, she wearied of Potemkin’s outbursts. Eventually, she reached the point where she warned that if he did not change his behavior, she would have no choice but to withdraw her love—as a means of self-preservation. She was simply too fatigued by the never-ending quarrels. She had sought in Potemkin a refuge from the pressures and loneliness of exercising power, but now their relationship had become another burden. His bad-tempered anger had started to take on a public face. He had begun talking to his relatives, even describing his fights with Catherine. She wrote to him:

To present this comedy to society is highly regrettable for it’s a triumph for your enemies and mine. I did not know till now that they were so thoroughly informed of what goes on between us. I have no confidant in matters that concern you for I honor our secrets and do not disclose them to anyone for discussion.… I repeat and have repeated this to you a hundred times: stop your raging so that my natural tenderness might return, otherwise you will be the death of me.

Potemkin replied:

Matushka, here is the result of your agreeable treatment of me over the past several days. I clearly see your inclination to get along with me. But you have let things go so far that it is becoming impossible for you to be kind to me. I came here to see you since without you life is tedious and unbearable. I noticed that you were incommoded by my arrival. I do not know whom or what you are trying to please; I only know that it is not necessary and to no purpose. It seems to me you have never before been so ill at ease. Your Most Gracious Majesty, I shall go through fire for you. But if it has finally been decided that I am to be banished from you, then at least let it not be before the entire public. I do not tarry to withdraw, although this is equal to losing my life.

By the time Potemkin’s liaison with the empress had lasted two and a half years, the storms were worsening. He constantly reproached her for condoning intrigues against him and permitting his enemies to remain in her entourage; she complained that he was no longer loving, tender, and cheerful. Moments of truce were followed by continued fighting. Sometimes, his truculent behavior so completely exasperated her that she, normally quick to forgive and take the first step toward reconciliation, would indulge in an outburst of her own. But her anger never lasted, and when Potemkin continued sulking for days and she did not see him, she was miserable. A turning point in their relationship was approaching. Catherine understood this:

Your foolish acts remain the same; at the very moment when I feel safest, a mountain drops on me.… To a madcap like you … tranquillity is an unbearable state of mind.… The gratitude I owe you has not vanished and I suppose there has never been a time when you haven’t received signs of this. But now you take away all my force by tormenting me with new fabrications.… Please tell me whether I should be grateful to you for that. Until now I always thought that good health and restful days were esteemed for something in this world, but I would like to know how this is possible with you.

In an embittered effort to analyze their discord, she began with sarcasm:

Listening to you talk sometimes, some might say that I am a monster who has every possible fault: I am frightfully two-faced when I am in pain; when I cry, this is not the result of my sensibility, but something entirely different. And therefore you must despise me and treat me with contempt. Such an exceedingly tender way of behaving can only have a positive effect on my mind. Yet this mind, as wicked and horrible as it may be, knows no other way of loving than to make happy the one it loves.… Pray tell, how would you behave if I continuously reproached you with the faults of all your acquaintances, all those whom you respect or whose services you employ, if I held you responsible for their silly blunders? Would you be patient or impatient? And if, seeing you impatient, I were to be offended, get up, stomp away, slamming the doors behind me, and if, after that, I were to be cold to you, refuse to look at you, and to add threats to all that? … For God’s sake, please do all in your power to keep us from quarreling again for our quarrels always arise from nothing but irrelevant rubbish. We quarrel about power, never about love. This is the truth.

This was, indeed, the truth; it was the crux of the problem. The question of power constantly gnawed at Potemkin. He had always craved power, and it had always come to him easily. This had been true when he was a small boy, an only son, and the idol of a mother and five sisters. It had been his goal when he was at the university and declared that he would command either soldiers or monks. It was to seek recognition that he had spurred forward to present the new empress with his sword knot, and when he mimicked Catherine’s voice and accent and made her laugh. It was his objective when he left the army and hurried to St. Petersburg, hoping to become the favorite. Now, he had acquired titles, wealth, land, and high office. The empress had raised him to unprecedented heights and even perhaps had sealed their union by marriage. What more did he want? What more power could Catherine bestow? He was the first man in the empire, but he remained unhappy and unfulfilled. He had made clear that all the customary rewards of his position—titles, orders, money—were not enough. He wanted supreme power in an unrestricted sphere.

The problem was that despite everything he had done and everything he had been given, his position rested entirely on Catherine. He knew this. He saw that if their quarreling continued, there was a possibility that, one day, the empress might triumph over the woman and turn on him and dismiss him. He would then be no more than the stumbling Orlov and the pitiable Vasilchikov. He was not willing to risk this. The moment had arrived when he had to choose between love and power. He chose power. It meant withdrawal from love and from Catherine. Not complete withdrawal, however. Mysteriously to all who were watching, even as the nature of their physical relationship was changing, the bonds between the two remained strong, so strong that his political power did not seem to decline. Rather, it seemed to grow.

The court, observing the changing relationship between the lovers, assumed that Potemkin would soon be dismissed. On June 22, 1776, when it was learned that the empress was presenting him with the Anichkov Palace, which Empress Elizabeth had built on the Nevsky Prospect for Alexis Razumovsky, it was believed that this gift was in order to provide Potemkin with a town residence when he moved out of the Winter Palace. This was partially true. In preparing for a physical separation, the question had arisen as to where Potemkin would live. Catherine had encouraged him to remain in the Winter Palace, but she also set about finding another place for him, should he prefer that. Potemkin, having repeatedly threatened to leave, complained when she began to take him at his word. She responded:

God knows I don’t intend to drive you out of the palace. Please live in it and be calm.… If you wish to divert yourself by traveling around the provinces for a while, I shan’t stand in your way. Upon your return, pray occupy your quarters in the palace as before. As God is my witness, my attachment to you remains firm and unlimited, and I’m not angry. But do me one favor: spare my nerves.

Potemkin thanked her, but with a quibble:

Your Most Gracious Majesty: Having learned … of my being presented with the Anichkov house, I kiss your feet. I express my humblest gratitude. Most merciful mother, God, having given you all resources and power, did not give you, to my misfortune, to know human hearts. God Almighty! Make known to my sovereign and benefactress how grateful I am to her, how devoted I am and that my life is dedicated to her service. Your Most Gracious Majesty, keep in your protection and care a person devoted to you body and soul, who remains in the most sincere manner till death.

Your Majesty’s most loyal and most devoted servant,

Prince Potemkin

Potemkin never lived in the Anichkov Palace. Once it had been repaired, he used it for evening entertainments when he was in St. Petersburg. Two years later, he sold it.

The Orlovs, who had introduced Potemkin to Catherine, had grown to hate him. Believing that the favorite’s dismissal was imminent, Alexis Orlov, taking advantage of his permanent privilege of speaking frankly to the empress, told her that she should realize the damage her favorite was causing and go ahead and dismiss him. Orlov went further: “You know, Madam, I am your slave. My life is at your service. If Potemkin disturbs your peace of mind, give me your orders. He shall disappear immediately; you shall hear no more of him.” Catherine mentioned this conversation to Potemkin, and the generally unexpected result was that, under pretext of illness, Alexis Orlov resigned from his offices and withdrew from court.

62

New Relationships

IN THE WINTER and spring of 1776, as the passion binding Catherine and Potemkin was ebbing and the rancor between them mounting, she found Gregory’s successor. He was Peter Zavadovsky, a protégé of Field Marshal Rumyantsev, the commander of the victorious Russian army in the war with Turkey. When Rumyantstev returned to St. Petersburg, he brought with him two young Ukrainians, Zavadovsky and Alexander Bezborodko. Both were well educated and had served on Rumyantsev’s staff during the war and the peace negotiations. When Catherine asked Rumyantsev to recommend talented officials for her personal secretariat, the field marshal gave her these two names. Both were appointed and both were to have brilliant careers.

At first, Zavadovsky appeared to have more of the qualities necessary to succeed. Born of a good family, he had accompanied the field marshal to the battlefield, where his courage had earned him the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was thirty-seven, the same age as Potemkin, had a handsome figure, a classical education, a good mind, and a modest, courteous manner. Bezborodko, on the other hand, was vulgar in appearance and rude in manner, but, in the long run, he was to have the more spectacular career. Zavadovsky lived for a short time in the glow of imperial favor before settling back into life as a highly respected civil servant, while Bezborodko, on the basis of exceptional intelligence and hard work, ended by becoming a prince and chancellor of the empire.

Catherine’s notice of Zavadovsky was natural enough. His dark good looks, six-foot form, and quiet dedication appealed to the empress, and, within a month, with Potemkin’s agreement, she had attached him to her personal staff as her personal secretary. Bezborodko remained a clerk in the chancellery. At the end of July 1775, Zavadovsky began dining with Catherine and Potemkin.

Zavadovsky’s successful appearance in the middle of the stormy relationship between Catherine and Potemkin was achieved with the mutual agreement of the two principals. Both were eager to resolve the situation without further damage, and Zavadovsky assisted by serving as a buffer. At first, the new arrangement worked: the presence of the quiet, discreet Ukrainian provided Catherine with relief from Potemkin’s extreme demands and wilder mood swings; she needed this in order to govern the empire. She did not, however, wish to lose the emotional support, the rare energy, and the unique political and administrative qualities supplied by Potemkin. Potemkin also needed a figure like Zavadovsky. He was eager, even desperate, to find a solution that would ensure his position as the most important man in the empress’s life while also giving him sufficient autonomy to act freely and not always have to fear that he would wake up one morning to learn that he had been replaced. Both wanted an arrangement that would preserve the valuable core of their relationship; Potemkin wanted to keep his power and banish his insecurities; Catherine wanted a man to love, but she needed stability and predictability. In Zavadovsky, she believed she had found the right man. At the beginning, Potemkin agreed.

By March 1776, Catherine, her relationship with Potemkin still unresolved, was sexually involved with Zavadovsky. The court and diplomatic corps were thoroughly bewildered; except for the fact that it was now Zavadovsky rather than Potemkin who escorted Catherine to her private apartment at the end of the evening, nothing seemed to have changed. Potemkin went on living at the Winter Palace and was always present whenever Catherine appeared. He and Catherine seemed no less affectionate in public, nor was there any sign of strain or jealousy between the incoming and outgoing favorites. In fact, Potemkin’s attitude toward Zavadovsky was cheerful, almost like that of an elder brother.

Zavadovsky pleased her as she had hoped he would. He was ardent, and—unique among her lovers—coveted neither honors nor riches. Their language was passionate; Catherine addressed him with loving diminutives and he called her Katya and Katyusha. When he moved into the Winter Palace, all might have been well had he not developed an obsessive love for Catherine and a consequent fierce jealousy of Potemkin. He wanted—then demanded—an exclusive intimacy, and complained that his predecessor’s shadow always lay across his path. Catherine tried to explain her situation and feelings; Zavadovsky refused to listen. This was to bring about his downfall.

On June 28, Zavadovsky’s position as favorite was made official. Several days earlier, Potemkin had left the capital for Novgorod, not to return for four weeks. During his absence, Zavadovsky remained unhappy; he was not a courtier and court life bored him; his French was too poor to allow him to participate in social conversations. Potemkin was unhappy, too. When he returned at the end of July, he complained that he was lonely and had no place to go. Catherine replied, “My husband has written me, ‘Where shall I go? Where shall I find my proper place?’ My dear and beloved husband, come to me. You will be received with open arms.”

Potemkin, having initially approved of his successor, now realized that Zavadovsky had become a threat, not only to his private but also to his public position. He complained to Catherine. She, who had hoped for domestic peace, found that she had to cope with jealous scenes from both Zavadovsky and Potemkin. In the spring of 1777, Potemkin stayed away from Catherine’s birthday celebrations, retreating to a country estate. From there he issued an ultimatum demanding Zavadovsky’s dismissal. Catherine refused:

You ask for Zavadovsky’s removal. My reputation will greatly suffer should I carry out this request. With this, our discord will become firmly established, and I’ll only be considered the weaker for it.… I’ll add that this would be to do an injustice to an innocent person. Don’t demand injustices, stop your ears against slanderers, heed my words. Our peace will be restored. Should you be moved by my grief, then dispel even the thought of estranging yourself from me. For God’s sake, I find just imagining this intolerable, which proves again that my attachment to you is stronger than yours [to me].

Potemkin would not relent; Zavadovsky had to go. In the summer of 1777, after less than eighteen months as the favorite, he left, bitter and disconsolate, taking her parting gift—eighty thousand rubles and an annual pension of five thousand rubles—and closed himself off in his estate in the Ukraine. That autumn, Catherine made a halfhearted effort to bring him back, but 1777 was a year of political crisis; by then Potemkin ruled as viceroy over Catherine’s southern empire, and his support was too important to be jeopardized by turmoil in her private life. Zavadovsky remained away from court for three years, returning in 1780 to St. Petersburg, when he was appointed a privy councillor. In 1781, he became the director of the state bank, which was founded on a plan he had submitted. Subsequently, he became a senator and ended his career as minister of education to Catherine’s eldest grandson, Alexander I.

The new relationship worked out between the empress and Potemkin had given each of them freedom to choose other sexual partners, while preserving affection and close political collaboration between themselves. Catherine often missed him. “I am burning with impatience to see you again; it seems to me that I have not seen you for a year. I kiss you, my friend. Come back happy and in good health and we shall love each other.… I kiss you and I so much want to see you because I love you with all my heart.” In her letters, she made a point of informing him that her new favorite—whoever he happened to be at the moment—sent his love or respects. She made her lovers write directly to him, mostly fawning declarations of how much they, too, missed, admired, or even worshipped him. The young men did this because they knew that, in comparison to Potemkin’s influence, their own was nonexistent.

• • •

Meanwhile, Potemkin continued to love Catherine in his own way. His physical passion for her had faded, but his affection for and loyalty to her remained. Meanwhile, he was transferring his sexual approaches from one young woman to another. Among these were three of his five nieces, Alexandra, Varvara, and Ekaterinia, the daughters of his sister Maria Engelhardt.

Varvara (Barbara) attracted her uncle first. Golden-haired, flirtatious, and demanding, she knew at the age of twenty how to control the prince, who then was thirty-seven. He made herculean efforts to please her. His letters to her were ardent, far more so than any he had written to Catherine:

Varinka, I love you, my darling, as I have never loved anybody before.… I kiss you all over, my dearest goddess.… Good-bye, sweetness of my lips.… You were sound asleep and do not remember anything. When I left you I tucked you in, and kissed you.… Tell me, my beautiful, my goddess, that you love me.… My sweetest, you dare not get out of health; I shall spank you for that.… I kiss you twenty-two million times.

Varvara had no difficulty imposing her will on her doting uncle. She teased and misled him. When Potemkin left for the south, she pretended to be lonely and sad. This prompted the empress to write to him, “Listen, my dearest, Varinka is very sick; it is your absence that is causing it. You are wrong. You will kill her while I am getting more and more fond of her.” The young woman was actually deceiving them both; she had fallen in love with young Prince Sergei Golitsyn and was trying to find a way to win Potemkin’s and Catherine’s permission to marry him. She succeeded, married, and, with Sergei, produced ten children.

Her sister Alexandra (“Sashenka”) came next. She was two years older than Varvara, and the liaison between her and Potemkin was less passionate but more serious and durable. For the rest of his life, they were devoted to each other, and even after she had married an influential Polish nobleman, Count Xavier Branitsky, Sashenka was often at Potemkin’s side. When she was not with him, she was with the empress, having become one of Catherine’s favorite ladies-in-waiting. She was slender, with brown hair, blue eyes, high cheekbones, and impeccable dignity. Of his nieces, Sashenka meant the most to Potemkin. It was to her that Potemkin left most of his wealth; as an elderly woman, she estimated her fortune to be twenty-eight million rubles. Nevertheless, until Catherine’s death, Sashenka spent most winters in the Winter Palace, and when the empress died, Sashenka quietly retired to a wooden house in the country.

The prettiest and laziest of the Engelhardt sisters was Ekaterina (Catherine), who yielded to Potemkin because she did not want the bother of resisting him. This relationship was less turbulent than the one with Varvara and less affectionate than that with Sashenka. Ekaterina married Count Paul Skavronsky, but when Catherine appointed the count as minister to Naples, his wife refused to accompany him, remaining in St. Petersburg because her uncle wanted her to stay. When she finally departed for Italy, she found her husband chronically ill in bed. She left him there and spent her days and nights reclining on a sofa, wrapped only in a black fur coat, playing cards. She refused to wear the large diamonds Potemkin had given her or the Parisian dresses bought for her by her husband. “What’s the use of all this? Who wants it?” she asked. While she was in Italy, Potemkin died, and when her husband also died, she returned to Russia, married an Italian count, and lived with him for the rest of her life.

There was contemporary disapproval of relationships between uncles and nieces, but it was muted, and outright condemnation was almost nonexistent. In Russia and elsewhere in Europe, the glittering, tightly enclosed eighteenth-century worlds of royalty and aristocracy made physical attraction between relatives more likely and criticism more limited. At thirteen, Catherine herself (then Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst) had dallied with her uncle George before she left for Russia to marry her second cousin, Grand Duke Peter. In Russia, however, there was an exception to the generally lackadaisical attitude toward Potemkin’s affairs with his nieces. Gregory’s mother, Daria Potemkina, emphatically did not approve of her son’s relations with her granddaughters. No one listened to her. Potemkin laughed at her censorious letters, balled them up, and tossed them into the fire.

Catherine was not jealous of these young women because they were sleeping with Potemkin. What she envied them was their youth. Her own youth had been wasted. She had been sixteen when she married a wretched boy. She was a mature woman of twenty-five before she had her first sexual encounter, and this was with a heartless rake. Now approaching fifty, she still saw in Potemkin’s nieces the ardent young girl she could have been. She hated growing old. Her birthday, so publicly celebrated, was for her a day of mourning. In a letter to Grimm, she wrote, “Would it not be charming if an empress could be always fifteen?”

63

Favorites

WHEN CATHERINE, then Sophia, arrived in Russia at the age of fourteen, she learned that “favorite” was the term used to describe an established and formally recognized lover of the woman on the throne, Empress Elizabeth. While she was still a married grand duchess, Catherine herself had three lovers: Saltykov, Poniatowski, and Gregory Orlov. None of these was her “favorite”; she was not yet the empress. Orlov, of course, remained Catherine’s lover after she reached the throne, thereby becoming her first favorite. During her lifetime, Catherine had twelve lovers: the first three, named above, before she reached the throne at thirty-three, the other nine during her thirty-four years as empress. Of the twelve, she loved five: Poniatowsky, Orlov, Potemkin, Zavadovsky, and Alexander Lanskoy. For another three—Saltykov, Ivan Rimsky-Korsakov, and Alexander Mamonov—she felt passion. Three others—Vasilchikov, Simon Zorich and Alexander Yermolov—were quickly chosen and quickly discarded. The twelfth and last, Platon Zubov, was in a category of his own.

Usually there was only a brief interval between the departure of one of Catherine’s favorites and the arrival of the next. Most favorites had no influence on government policy, but they were always close to Catherine’s ear, and, throughout her reign, reports of their rise and fall filled the dispatches of foreign ambassadors attempting to interpret the significance of each change. Several of Catherine’s lovers played a mere decorative role in the life of the woman who drew them from obscurity and eventually sent them back into the shadows. There was always keen competition for the role. The candidate chosen was rewarded with jewels, money, palaces, and country estates. When he was sent away, the parting was almost always managed without tears or recriminations; occasionally a former lover later reappeared at court.

Most of Catherine’s favorites were young officers originally selected for their handsome faces, but their selection and presence was not due solely, or even primarily, to sensuality on Catherine’s part. She wanted to love and be loved. She had lived with an impossible husband in an emotional vacuum. To read her letters to Potemkin is to realize that, as much as physical satisfaction, she wanted intelligent, loving companionship.

Having accepted that he was no longer the imperial favorite, Gregory Orlov consoled himself by falling in love with, and asking to marry, his fifteen-year-old second cousin, Catherine Zinovieva, with whom he set off on an extended journey to western Europe. The empress, although piqued to find herself replaced so quickly, interceded on his behalf with the Holy Synod, arranging for it to set aside the church ban on marriages of people from the same family. In 1777, Orlov was finally able to marry. But his bride had tuberculosis and her health continued to deteriorate. Despite the fact that Orlov lavished care on her and took her everywhere for treatment, she died four years later in Lausanne. Orlov returned to St. Petersburg, where his own health declined. He suffered from hallucinations and lapsed into dementia. On April 12, 1783, he died at the age of forty-six. His will left his immense fortune to Alexis Bobrinsky, his son with Catherine.

However impetuously Catherine may sometimes have behaved in the first, private stage of a love affair, she was always dignified in public. She never apologized for her favorites or indicated that she considered these arrangements unseemly. All of her favorites were openly acknowledged; indeed, nothing seemed more normal than the matter-of-fact attitude with which these men were regarded by the court and society. Their presence at court was a constant. She was the heavily burdened ruler of a great empire as well as a proud and passionate woman, and she had neither time nor inclination to explain or quibble. She was lonely and she needed a partner, someone with whom to share not power but conversation, laughter, and human warmth. Therein lay one of the problems confronting her: the love of power and the power to attract love were not easy to reconcile.

• • •

Except for Zavadovsky, all of her favorites were Guards officers, and most came from families of the lesser nobility. When a new favorite was named, he was shown to an apartment near hers in the imperial palace. Upon arrival, he found in his dressing table drawer a large bundle of rubles, a welcoming gift from the empress. He began a life of stultifying regularity. At ten every morning, he began his day by calling on the empress in her apartment. In public, he was treated as a high court official. He accompanied Catherine everywhere and was alertly and respectfully attentive to her wishes as she proceeded through her long days. His arm was always ready to escort her at court, dinner, and to her seat at the palace theater. When she drove out in her carriage, he sat beside her. He stood next to her at court receptions, sat with her at card tables, and, at ten every evening, he offered his arm and accompanied her to her apartment. Other than these duties, he lived in near isolation. After Potemkin and Zavadovsky, most of Catherine’s favorites were not allowed to make or receive visits. She lavished presents and honors on these young men, but it was unusual for existence in this golden cage to be prolonged for more than two years. On parting, almost all received extravagant gifts; none experienced vindictiveness.

Most of the favorites were young men whose youth and social inexperience offered a striking contrast to the dignified demeanor of their imperial patroness. The differences in age and station confused the court and created a whirlwind of gossip in Europe. But the specific manner and intimate practices by which these favorites pleased Catherine are unknown. Only in the cases of Potemkin and Zavadovsky is private correspondence available, and, in this regard, it is unspecific. Those seeking physical details of Catherine’s romantic liaisons will learn nothing; neither in her own words nor in the words of others are there any references to sexual preferences and behavior. Her bedroom door remains closed.

With the exception of her relationships with Potemkin, Zavadovsky, and, at the end, Zubov, Catherine compartmentalized her life, keeping politics, administration, and diplomacy separate from her private life. Fearing that a lover might try to exploit her emotions and reach for political power, she did not permit her favorites to play a role in government. As she grew older, her need for intimacy and support made Catherine more vulnerable, and favorites who showed interest in her intellectual and artistic pursuits were likely to last longer. Lanskoy (1780–84) and Mamonov (1786–89) were examples of this. Then Lanskoy died and Mamonov betrayed her by falling in love with someone else.

Until the procession of young Guards officers began, Catherine’s love affairs had not shocked Europe. The example set by other contemporary monarchs left scant grounds for rebuke. Monarchs everywhere had mistresses or lovers. In Russia, Peter the Great had children by his mistress before marrying her and making her an empress. Empress Anne and Empress Elizabeth had both paved the way for the acceptance of favoritism in Russia. Catherine’s political achievements also made flaws in her private life easy to overlook or discount; beyond that, she conducted her court “with the greatest dignity and exterior decorum,” said Sir James Harris, the British ambassador in the 1780s.

The problem, as the years went by, was not the institution of favoritism but the extreme youth of the favorites and the discrepancy between their ages and Catherine’s. As attention focused increasingly on the question of age, Catherine explained that these relationships served an important pedagogical function. Her young men, she said, were being schooled to ornament a sophisticated, cosmopolitan court; they were to be accomplished and useful, not just to the monarch personally but ultimately to the empire. In her correspondence with Grimm, she explained that these young men were so extraordinary that she was obliged to give them opportunity to develop their talents.

When Peter Zavadovsky fell from favor, Potemkin looked around for a candidate whom Catherine might accept and whose loyalty to him he could trust. His choice was thirty-two-year-old Simon Zorich, a Russian officer of Serbian descent. Zorich was tall, handsome, and polite, although he lacked notable intelligence. He had an honorable war record; he had displayed bravery in battle against the Turks and had borne up well during five years as a prisoner of war. Returning to Russia in 1774, he became an aide to Potemkin. In May 1777, with Zavadovsky’s departure, he became the new favorite.

Zorich’s tenure was briefer than Zavadovsky’s. His new position went to his head. Catherine made him a count, but he demanded to be made a prince like Orlov and Potemkin. His complaints offended the empress; Zorich had been in favor for only ten months when she told Potemkin, “Last night I was in love with him; today I cannot stand him any more.” Potemkin had ignored the fact that Catherine needed someone she could talk to. As the relationship deteriorated, Zorich could not understand why the woman who had covered him with riches had suddenly retreated. Blaming Potemkin, he determined to fight for his place. He challenged Potemkin; the prince disdainfully turned his back and walked away. In May 1778, only a year after his arrival, Zorich was dismissed with a pension. A compulsive gambler, he was later discovered embezzling army funds and died in disgrace.

Zorich was replaced by a twenty-four-year-old Guards officer, Ivan Rimsky-Korsakov, whose term lasted two years. The new favorite was handsome, played the violin, and had a fine tenor voice. In Catherine’s eyes, his male beauty evoked the heroes of ancient Greece, and in her letters to Grimm she refers to her new lover as “Pyrrhus, king of Epirus whom every painter should paint, every sculptor should sculpt and every poet should sing.… He makes no gesture, no movement, that is not graceful and noble.”

His brilliance did not encompass the intellect, however. When Catherine gave him a mansion in St. Petersburg, he decided that it needed a library to proclaim his new status. He had shelves built and then called on the capital’s leading bookseller. What books were wanted, he was asked. “You understand that better than I,” said the new bibliophile. “Big books at the bottom, then smaller books, and so on up to the top.” The bookseller unloaded many rows of unsold German Bible commentaries bound in fine leather. Soon afterward, the British ambassador probed the favorite’s background and discovered that he had “changed his original common name of Ivan Korsak to the better-sounding one of Ivan Rimsky-Korsakov.”^*

Despite Catherine’s praise, most in the Russian court expected Rimsky-Korsakov to last only briefly, because everyone except the empress saw that his heart was not in his work. He was expected to be in constant attendance, was forbidden to leave the palace, and became bored and restless. He escaped into the arms of Countess Bruce, Catherine’s principal lady-in-waiting and for years one of her closest friends. Foolishly, the couple believed that they could carry on their affair inside the palace. They managed for almost a year, but it ended abruptly one day when the empress opened a door and discovered them making love. Catherine sent a message to Rimsky-Korsakov informing him that she would be generous provided he left St. Petersburg immediately. Countess Bruce was commanded to return to her husband.

There was more to this tangled plot. Catherine, the court, and Countess Bruce soon learned that Rimsky-Korsakov had been using Bruce as a decoy with whom to pass the time and alleviate his boredom. His real object was a beautiful young countess, Catherine Stroganova, married to one of the wealthiest men in Russia. The Stroganovs had just returned from six years of living in Paris, and, on first seeing the handsome “king of Epirus,” the young countess fell in love. Only when the disgraced Rimsky-Korsakov left for Moscow and Countess Stroganova immediately followed him, was the extent of this operatic, labyrinthine double betrayal fully revealed. Count Stroganov behaved with patrician dignity. Worried that his young son would be affected by public scandal, he installed his wife in a Moscow palace, where she and her lover lived happily for thirty years. There, they brought up the three children they had together.

For six months following the Rimsky-Korsakov debacle, Catherine remained alone, but at Easter in 1780 a new favorite, Alexander Lanskoy, appeared. Then twenty-two, he came from an impecunious family of the provincial nobility and had served as an officer in the Horse Guards. When he found that he lacked sufficient funds to keep pace with his brother officers, he asked for reassignment to a provincial garrison, where his expenses would be lower. His application was rejected at the College of War by Potemkin himself, who then, surprisingly, appointed the young man his personal aide-de-camp and introduced him to Catherine. Lanskoy had an elegant bearing and a sensitive face; Catherine described him as “kind, gay, honest, and full of gentleness.” In November 1779, he was was officially installed in the palace apartment vacated by Rimsky-Korsakov. The usual shower of riches descended: jewels, a hundred thousand rubles, and a country estate. Two cousins became officers in the Preobrazhensky Guards; three sisters came to court as maids of honor, married noblemen, and became ladies-of-the-bedchamber.

Catherine’s admiration for this adoring acolyte stimulated her pedagogical belief that more Russians should be trained to serve the empire. Lanskoy responded wholeheartedly to this approach. His education had been modest, and his devotion to Catherine was based on her role as his teacher as much as her position as empress. When she discovered his desire to learn, she helped him write to Grimm in French.

Lanskoy did not arouse in Catherine the passion she had for Orlov or Potemkin, but his gentleness and devotion inspired in her an almost maternal affection. He was intelligent and tactful; he refused to take any part in public affairs; he was artistic, had good taste, and was seriously interested in literature, painting, and architecture. He became an ideal companion, accompanying her to concerts and the theater, sitting quietly and listening as she talked, even helping her to design new gardens at Tsarskoe Selo.

As the months stretched into years, Catherine’s young lover became indispensable to her. Even the cynical Bezborodko admitted that “compared to the others, he was an angel. He had friends, did not try to harm his neighbors, and often he tried to help people.” From time to time, there were rumors that Potemkin was jealous of this nonthreatening young man and that Lanskoy was on the brink of dismissal. This was far from the truth. Potemin was thoroughly satisfied, and Catherine was free to devote herself to Lanskoy, whose good humor, she said, had made Tsarskoe Selo “into the most charming and pleasant of places where the days passed so quickly one did not know what had become of them.”

Four years passed, a longer period than Catherine had spent with any lover since she had separated from Orlov twelve years earlier. On June 19, 1784, Lanskoy complained of a sore throat. It grew worse. A high fever set in. Suddenly, five days from the onset, he died of inflammation of the throat. It was said to have been diphtheria.

The suddenness of this death was overwhelming, and the reaction of the woman left behind was uncontrollable grief. She collapsed into bed and for three weeks refused to leave her room. Her son, his wife, and her beloved grandchildren all were refused admittance; they heard only endless sobbing behind her bedroom door. Potemkin came immediately from the south. He and others tried to comfort her, but, as Catherine later told Grimm, “they helped, but I could not endure the help. No one was able to speak, to think in accord with my feelings. One step at a time had to be taken, and with each step a battle had to be endured; one to be won; one to be lost.” Eventually, Potemkin managed to calm and distract her. “He succeeded in awakening us from the sleep of the dead,” she said.

Her weeping stopped, but her depression remained. As she described it to Grimm:

I am plunged into the most profound grief and my happiness no longer exists. I thought that I myself would die from the irreparable loss of my best friend. I had hoped that he would become the support of my old age.… This was a young man whom I was educating, who was grateful, gentle and honest, who shared my pains and who rejoiced in my joys.… I have become a desperate, monosyllabic creature. I drag myself about like a shadow. I cannot set eyes on a human face without the tears choking my mouth. I do not know what will become of me, but I do know that in all my life I have never been so unhappy as now that my best, dearest, and kindest friend has abandoned me like this.

Lanskoy left to Catherine the fortune he had acquired as her favorite; she divided it equally among his mother, brother, and sisters. She could not face spending the rest of the summer at Tsarskoe Selo without him, did not appear in public until September, and refused to return to the Winter Palace until February. Eventually, when she went back to Tsarskoe Selo, it was to place a Grecian urn dedicated to his memory in the garden where they had worked together. The inscription read, “From Catherine to my dearest friend.”

In the procession of Catherine’s favorites, it seemed that the ending of a significant relationship was often followed by the appearance of a lesser figure. Orlov had been followed by Vasilchikov, and Zavadovsky by Zorich. Now, this sequence recurred: after the death of Lanskoy came Alexander Yermolov, although not immediately. The deep wound caused by Lanskoy’s death healed slowly, and the favorite’s apartment remained vacant for a year. When she resumed life, she found only tepid consolation in the thirty-year-old Yermolov.

He, like most of the others, was a Guards officer, and he, like Lanskoy, had served as an aide to Potemkin. The prince approved of Yermolov, whom he thought to be safe and knew to be ignorant and uninterested in being taught anything. He was handsome and seemed honest, which suited Catherine at that moment. She was in no mood for another ardent young student; in her mind, no one could compete with the charm, brilliance, and devotion of Lanskoy. By the spring of 1785, she was writing to Grimm, “I am once more inwardly calm and serene.… I have found a friend who is very capable.”

During his seventeen months as favorite, Yermolov made little claim on Catherine’s time or interest. In the end, he engineered his own demise. He had been Potemkin’s protégé, but he began behaving toward Potemkin as if he considered himself the prince’s equal. Secure, he thought, in his position, he began to criticize the prince to Catherine. He reported every scandalous story, true or false, that reached his ears. He passed along an accusation that Potemkin was pocketing the pension intended for the deposed khan of the Crimea. The denouement was predictable. In June 1786, an infuriated Potemkin descended on Yermolov at court and shouted, “You cur, you monkey, who dares to bespatter me with the mud of the gutters from which I have raised you.” Yermolov, who was proud, put his hand on his sword hilt, but a sudden blow from Potemkin sent him reeling. Then Potemkin burst into Catherine’s’s apartment and roared, “Either he or I must go! If this nonentity of nonentities is allowed to remain at court, then I quit the state’s services as of today.” Yermolov was dismissed immediately and was given 130,000 rubles in cash and permission to live abroad for five years. Catherine never saw him again.

After Yermolov’s dismissal, Catherine followed her pattern of replacing a nonentity with a seeming paragon, someone she believed was another Lanskoy. Alexander Mamonov, then twenty-six, was another Guards officer, handsome, educated, fluent in French and Italian, and the nephew of the generous Count Stroganov, whose young wife had run off with Rimsky-Korsakov. Only one evening after Yermolov’s dismissal, Mamonov escorted Catherine to her apartment. “They slept until nine o’clock,” Catherine’s secretary wrote in his notebook the following morning. The new favorite was immediately promoted to high rank in the Preobrazhensky Guards and in May 1788 was elevated to the rank of lieutenant general. Later that month, Catherine made him a count. Her private name for him was “L’habit rouge” (the Red Coat), after the color of his favorite uniform. Because he was more intelligent than most of his predecessors, she occasionally asked his advice on political matters. Although she treated him seriously to his face, she spoke of him to others as a doting mother might speak of her child: “We are as clever as the very devil; we adore music; we hide our fondness for poetry as though it were a crime,” she wrote to Grimm. To Potemkin, she reported enthusiastically: “Sasha is beyond price … an inexhaustible source of gaiety, original in his outlook and exceptionally well-informed.… Our whole tone is that of the best society. We write Russian and French to perfection; our features are very regular; we have two black eyes and eyebrows, and a noble, easy bearing.”

Despite Catherine’s initial enthusiasm, her relationship with Mamonov began to cool after eighteen months. By January 1788, the favorite was showing signs of weariness, and there were rumors that he was attempting to evade his intimate duties. In fact, Mamonov found the restrictions involved in life with Catherine burdensome. In St. Petersburg, he was rarely permitted out of her sight, and he hated trips outside the capital, when he was shut up for days on a boat or in a coach; he complained that he found traveling in her coach “stifling.”

In the spring of 1788, he began a clandestine affair with twenty-five-year-old Princess Darya Scherbatova. Soon he was writing to Potemkin, begging to be released from his relationship with Catherine. Potemkin replied sternly, “It is your duty to remain at your post. Don’t be a fool and ruin your career.” By December 1788, Mamonov was in a state of decline, warning that he could no longer perform. Nevertheless, at the beginning of 1789, he was still the official favorite, and Catherine remained deaf to any suggestions that he be replaced. Then, on the evening of February 11, 1789, they quarreled, he asked to resign, and she wept all the next day. Potemkin briefly patched things up, but Mamonov confided to a friend that he considered his life “a prison.” On February 21, Catherine tearfully complained that Mamonov was “cold and preoccupied.” In the weeks that followed, the empress saw him infrequently; on April 21, 1789, her sixtieth birthday, she passed the day in seclusion. By then, Mamonov’s affair with Scherbatova was known to many at court, although still not to Catherine. On June 1, Peter Zavadovsky, the former favorite, was told that Mamonov was determined to marry Scherbatova, whom he described as “a girl most ordinary, not possessing either looks or other gifts.” On June 18, Mamonov finally came to the empress to confess. Beginning his argument with duplicity, he complained that she was cold to him and asked her advice as to what he should do. She understood that he was asking to be released, but, in order to keep him at court, she suggested that he marry Countess Bruce’s thirteen-year-old daughter, one of the richest heiresses in Russia. Catherine was surprised when he declined—and then suddenly the whole truth came out. Trembling, Mamonov admitted that for a year he had been in love with Scherbatova, and that six months earlier, he had given his word to marry her. Catherine was shocked, but she was too proud not to be magnanimous. She summoned Mamonov and Scherbatova and saw immediately that the young woman was pregnant. She pardoned Mamonov and granted the couple permission to marry, even insisting that the ceremony be performed in the palace chapel. She did not attend, but gave them a hundred thousand rubles and a country estate. “God grant them happiness,” she said, stipulating only that they leave St. Petersburg.

She had been generous, but behind her generosity was a woman badly hurt. “I cannot express how I have suffered,” she wrote to Potemkin. “Can you imagine?” He was guilty of “a thousand contradictions and contradictory ideas and irrational behavior.” That anyone should think she had kept him against his will made her indignant. “I have never been anybody’s tyrant and I hate constraint,” she said.

The greater misfortune was Mamonov’s. Somehow, he mistook the empress’s parting generosity for lingering embers of passion. In 1792, tiring of his wife, he began writing the empress from Moscow, pleading for a renewal of the imperial liaison, lamenting his youthful “folly” in precipitating the loss of her favor, a memory, he said, that “constantly tortures my soul.” Catherine did not reply.

What was Catherine seeking in these ornamental young men? She has suggested that it was love. “I couldn’t live for a day without love,” she had written in her Memoirs. Love has many forms, however, and she did not mean sexual love alone, but also companionship, warmth, support, intelligence, and, if possible, humor. And also respect—not just the respect automatically due an empress, but the admiration a man gives an attractive woman. As she grew older, she wanted assurance that she could still attract a man and keep his love. A realist as well as a romantic, she knew and accepted the fact that because she was their sovereign, young men were drawn to her for reasons and with goals different from hers. Desire for love and sex played little part in attracting her lovers to her; they were motivated by ambition, desire for prestige, wealth, and, in some cases, power. Catherine knew this. She asked them for things other than simple sexual congress. She wanted an indication of pleasure in her company, a desire to understand her point of view, a willingness to be instructed by her intelligence and experience, an appreciation of her sense of humor, and an ability to make her laugh. The physical side of her relationships offered only brief distraction. When Catherine dismissed lovers, it was not because they lacked virility but because they bored her. One need not be an empress to find it impossible to talk in the morning to a person with whom one has spent the night.

The history of her youth and young womanhood helps explain her relationships with favorites. She had been a fourteen-year-old stranger brought to a foreign land. At sixteen, she had married a psychologically crippled and physically blemished adolescent. She spent nine years untouched by this man in their marriage bed. She had no family: her mother and father were dead; her three children were spirited away at the moment of birth. As the years passed, she became caught up in a search for the Fountain of Youth. Today, there are various ways of prolonging the illusion of youth, but in Catherine’s day there were not. She attempted to preserve her youth by identifying it with the affection—simulated, if necessary—of young men. When they were unable to prolong that illusion, either they or she ended the charade, and she tried again with someone else.

Catherine had twelve lovers. What shocked her contemporaries was not this number, but the age difference between Catherine and her later favorites. She crafted an explanation: she categorized these young men as students whom she hoped to develop into intellectual companions. If they did not completely measure up—and she did not pretend that one would become another Voltaire or Diderot, or even another Potemkin—then she could at least say that she was helping to train them for future roles in administering the empire.

How severely should her young favorites be judged for allowing themselves to be used; specifically, for submitting to a sexual liaison with someone they did not love? This is not just an eighteenth-century question, nor one to be asked only of young men. Women have always submitted to sexual relationships with men they do not love. Beyond physical force, and arrangements made by family, they usually have reasons similar to those of Catherine’s young men: ambition, a desire for wealth, for some form of power, and possible future independence. Catherine’s young men did not always independently aspire to become favorites. Rising from the lesser nobility, they were frequently urged on by relatives who hoped that the shower of imperial benevolence would also fall on them. Nor was it widely seen as immoral. Indeed, there was no case involving one of Catherine’s favorites in which the young man’s family raised a warning finger and said, “Stop! This is wrong!”

Catherine conducted the public side of her romantic life on an open stage. Privately, writing in her memoirs or to Potemkin or other correspondents, she included glowing descriptions of the young men who became her favorites. These descriptions erred on the side of poor judgment and excess sentimentality, nothing else. About herself, she was honest; she admitted to Potemkin that she had taken four lovers before him; she wrote in her memoirs about the difficulty of resisting temptation in a setting like the Russian court. Who she was and where she came from helped determine her relationships with men. Perhaps if she had been the daughter of a great king, as Elizabeth I of England had been; perhaps if she, like Elizabeth, had been able to use virginity and abstinence as prizes to tempt and manipulate powerful men, the lives of these two preeminent woman rulers in the history of European monarchy would have been more similar.

*In the eighteenth century, a request of this kind was not extraordinary. Kings and princes, mostly German, happily rented their soldiers to the highest bidder. England eventually hired thousands of Hessians, who made themselves hated throughout the American colonies. The impact that twenty thousand Russians might have had on eighteenth-century America can only be imagined.

*The family decided to keep the new name, and the nineteenth-century composer Nicholas Rimsky-Korsakov came from a collateral branch.