Catherine the Great

by Robert K. Massie

  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 qui
bble. 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. Th
ere, 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.