Tall, handsome, intelligent and charming, Grigory Potemkin was a Russian aristocrat, one of the most powerful favorites of Empress Catherine the Great.
During his lifetime, the imposing Potemkin accumulated strong honors, functions and titles endowed by his ten-year-old mistress, the Empress. He even received two princely titles. He became the prince of the Holy Roman Empire and the prince of the Russian Empire. He also held the rank of Field Marshal, and was at the head of the Russian military hierarchy as president of the War College.
Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin was born on this day in 1739 in the village of Čižovo near Smolensk in a middle-class noble family. After completing his studies at the famous Moscow University, he joined the cavalry guard.
The Empress noticed him as a young officer in 1762, and they became close ten years later. He allegedly helped her overthrow her husband, a disappointing and incompetent empress, weak Peter III. She viewed her husband as a ‘creature worthy of pity’. After she became empress, she ruled the country for 34 years and revived it with reforms. Her reign is considered the "Golden Age" in the history of the Russian Empire.
The relationship between the Empress and Potemkin was full of passion from the beginning. They wrote passionate letters to each other, and for the first time they ‘consumed’ the connection in a sauna in the basement of the Winter Palace. She was 44 and he was 34. He immediately became her favorite and was given some of the highest positions and positions in the Russian Empire. He spent the next 17 years enjoying the position of the most influential man in Russia, and publicly enjoyed immense luxury and wealth.
He assisted the Empress in running the business, receiving as a gift numerous estates and titles. Allegedly, Potemkin and the Empress were secretly married in the Church of the Ascension in Moscow. They even had a daughter, Jelisaveta Grigorjevna, who had the surname Tjomkin, and that was her father's abbreviated surname. At the request of Catherine II. Austrian Emperor Joseph II proclaimed Potemkin prince of the Holy Roman Empire.
They became strong political allies, but as Potemkin's role at court grew, so did that in Catherine's bedroom. The relationship broke down because Potemkin increasingly imposed his political worldview and will on his beloved. And soon new favorites appeared on the scene. Catherine was otherwise known for her lewd sex life, and reportedly as many as 300 men went through her life. But that didn't affect their relationship too much, she became purely friendly, and his influence on the Empress was never really shaken more seriously. He continued to participate in decision-making. However, the former lover decided not to leave things to chance, knowing how much influence a man in the Empress's bed could have, so he became a kind of pimp and started bringing young men who she might like. He thus influenced the choice of her lovers and rejected those who were not to his liking.
Potemkin also indebted Russia by annexing Crimea to it, and not only by fulfilling the Empress's sexual desires for many years. He achieved impressive success in the newly conquered Russian southern provinces, in which he was the absolute ruler. He helped both Russian and foreign colonists, founded several new cities, and created the Black Sea Fleet.
In 1790 he led war operations on the Dniester River, and a year later he returned to St. Petersburg in 1791, trying again to gain the Empress's favor and attention again. Her most important lover at the time was Prince Plato Zubov, forty years his junior.
The Empress, known for remaining generous and benevolent after her relationship with all her men, soon entrusted him with a delicate state job. She appointed him an envoy in peace negotiations with the Ottoman Empire. But on the way to Iasi where negotiations were arranged. Potemkin passed away. He was 52 years old at the time of his death. A descendant of great minds, he was born on September 24, 1739, in Iasi, on the territory of today's Romania. The founder of cities such as Sevastopol, Kherson and Nikolaev, died on October 16, 1793, while on his way to Nikolaev, and was buried in the Cathedral Church in Kherson.
Empress Catherine the Great died five years after her longtime favorite.
