It is perhaps surprising that Prince Grigory Potemkin has not more often
come under the magnifying glass of biographical scholarship. His name has
been assimilated into contemporary parlance in a sense that has come to be
associated with the Russian nation itself. He has become the embodiment
of the brilliant and imposing facade, masking the squalor and dilapidation
within, the rotten apple that has become of his old Empire. This has
particularly been the case with the often referred to and little
understood ‘Potemkin villages’. The name of Potemkin has become legend,
even having a titular role in the Revolution that was to scar Russia for
74 years. Like most legend he is rarely understood and has become couched
in a mythology that only serves to further blur this most unique figure.
The impressive scholarship of Simon Sebag Montefiore is at its best in
cutting through the significant mythology that surrounds the most serene
prince. He is quick in despatching the considerable sexual innuendo and
cliché that has become received wisdom in portraits of Potemkin and will
be familiar to anyone who has studied any Russian history. For much of
the book he manages to keep discussion of the influence Potemkin wielded
at court outside the bedroom door, an achievement in its own right.
This scholarly achievement is despite the fact that, in deconstructing
the Prince’s early life, Montefiore has to rely largely on the spurious
accounts of figures such as Saint Jean and Georg von Helbig – figures that
the author freely admits to being ‘myth-writers’. While the ambiguity of
his subject’s early life is deftly handled by Montefiore and his account littered with
caveats, it merely serves as a background to his later and more impressive
rise to the very top of the Imperial hierarchy. The position of power
held by Potemkin is almost unfathomable in the modern context of
democratic control and the cult of checks and balances. It is likely that
this is the reason his power has seemed to dilute with each re-telling and
criticism, often founded on envious portrayals released after the Prince’s
death, colours many accounts. Montefiore falls into no such evidentiary
traps.
It is the analysis of the Prince’s position as favourite to Catherine II
that many readers will find most enlightening. This fiery duumvirate
ruled Russia like none had before and have since. Indeed, their
destinies are so deeply intertwined that this tome serves almost as well
as treatment of Europe’s most formidable Empress since Elizabeth I.
Catherine the Great comes across as passionate as she was calculating, as
regal as she was disarmingly humble. The Empress was an enigma to rival
the man whom, the author convincingly argues, she secretly married in
1774.
The chapters dealing with the Prince’s southern ambitions and his ‘Greek
project’ are truly engaging. It was this dedicated classicist, so
inspired by the prospect of the conquest of Constantinople (Tsargrad in
Russian mythology) in the name of the ‘Third Rome’ that would influence
nearly two centuries of Russian Messianism. His role in the recasting
Russian foreign policy, most acutely in relations with Prussia, has often
been obscured and unfairly underestimated and Montefiore has gone some way
to redressing the balance. With such original and incisive research into
these spheres of Potemkin’s influence it is unfortunate that his Caucasian
exploits are left somewhat untouched.
While some specialists may quarrel with Montefiore’s interpretation of
the consequences of the 1783 treaty of Georievsk, his forensic eye and
readable style place Montefiore among biography’s top names. In focusing
on an under-exploited and highly intriguing figure, Montefiore has done
what biography should do – produce an engaging and learned volume that
highlights gaps which could be filled by future scholarship. In doing so,
Simon Sebag Montefiore has produced perhaps the best treatment of Prince
Potemkin in any language since Adamczyk’s 1936 work.
Reviewed by Michael Redman
