220 years ago, on October 16, 1791, in the Romanian steppe, 40 versts from the city of Iasi, a carriage stopped near the village of Pyrlitsy. From there, be careful …
He looked around and said with satisfaction, “That's all. Nowhere to go, I'm dying. Put me on the ground - I want to die in the field. It was Field Marshal General, Governor General of the Novorossiysk Territory, Count and Most Serene Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, Grigory Potemkin-Tavrichesky.
A week later, when the news of his death reached St. Petersburg, Empress Catherine the Great said: “Prince Potemkin played a cruel joke with me by his death. Now the entire burden of reign lies with me alone. And I have no one to lean on”.
And after a period insignificant by the standards of history, the memory of this person will shrink to the very offensive expression "Potemkin villages", which means deliberately malicious deception in order to hide unseemly phenomena behind a decent facade. The situation is saved a little by the classics of cinema with the battleship of the same name and historical novels. From the latter, you can learn that the Most Serene Prince is a very dark person. Sybarite, adventurer, embezzler, enchanting glutton. He is always unkempt, dressed in a greasy robe, biting his nails, lying on the couch and directly from this couch oppresses the Russian people's commander Suvorov, appropriating his victories.
Siberian hippos
The most interesting thing is that there is some truth in all this - evidence has been preserved about Potemkin's gluttony, and about his habits, which seem uncivilized, if not completely wild. Another thing is that these certificates belong mainly to foreigners. Of course, if there is a hunt, then you can trust them, why not. Moreover, we have already been accustomed to the fact that a view from the outside, they say, is more reliable. But if it comes to that, then we have to admit the correctness of the Scottish guest worker, 18th century engineer John Perry, who argued that hippos are abundant in Siberia, in the upper reaches of the Lena River.
Tales about Potemkin are just one of the series of these metaphysical Siberian hippos. Let's say gluttony. Alexander Langeron, a Russian citizen of French origin, repeatedly recalled that His Serene Highness was extremely whimsical, luxurious and intemperate in food. Of course, we immediately imagine mountains of some exotic pineapples in champagne, which Potemkin throws into his mouth. However, it is not known whether the Frenchman knew the saying of his people: "You can eat a five-course dinner and stay hungry." As for the real prince, according to the recollections of his nephew, Count Alexander Samoilov, on campaigns he preferred peasant food - sour black bread, sauerkraut, garlic and pickles, considering this food useful for health. In everyday life, however, for his table he ordered to prescribe caviar from the Urals, fish from Astrakhan,puff pastry from Kaluga and could not stand it if there was no grated radish at lunch. Perhaps, according to the Frenchman, this is also a luxury. But such "excesses" could then be afforded to any merchant from Zamoskvoretsk …
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Or here is the next passage: "Oh, such a high-ranking nobleman and, imagine, bites his nails." Well, gnawed. Ugly. And what, the charter of the garrison and guard service forbids biting nails? No, it’s a bad habit, of course. Potemkin understood this perfectly and tried to get rid of her. When he worked, there were always either apples or peeled turnips on the table, so that you could give free rein to the habit, but not reach the hands.
By the way, modern psychologists would say that such things are the result of nervousness and overexertion. Potemkin, on the other hand, for fifteen years actually dragged on himself the unbearable burden of managing a huge empire, so nail biting is not the worst way to calm the nervous system. Peter I, for example, never parted with a weighty cane, and his nervous breakdowns poured out on the heads and backs of those close to him in the form of such blows, from which it was possible to move away to the forefathers. Better nails …
Cherevichki for Ochakov
Sometimes one gets the impression that Potemkin was deliberately flaunting his extravagance, creating a kind of information curtain on real affairs. Having received a very good education and perfectly knowing ancient history, he, unlike many European diplomats, was able to draw practical lessons from it. In any case, from the tale about the Greek strategist Alcibiades, who, having chopped off his expensive dog's tail, said: "Better the Athenians gossip about this quirk of mine and not poke their noses into anything else."
In 1788, while besieging the strongest Turkish fortress of Ochakov, the prince suddenly equips the adjutant Baur in Paris. Practically "behind the cherevichki". That is, for fashionable shoes for her relative Praskovya Potemkina. The French are delighted with the ridiculous trick of the "Russian barbarian". In Paris, they stage a vaudeville about a wild nobleman who pleases the ladies, not giving a damn about the dangers of war. Meanwhile, Baur, not forgetting to visit fashionable Parisian shops and workshops, performs the main task: bribes the mistress of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who gets the secret plans for the fortress. Baur, hiding the documents in a heap of "cribs", freely takes them out of France - and voila. Ochakov, on whose fortifications the best French engineers worked, was taken by Potemkin.
But still quite recently, in 1787, the same French and Austrians made fun of the Most Serene Prince, who accompanied Catherine the Great on her journey along the Black Sea region: show how densely and richly populated new regions of Russia. In fact, this wild land remains a sparsely populated desert that can not provide either soldiers or provisions. And the Black Sea fleet, supposedly built by the prince, cannot be compared with the Turkish Black Sea fleet."
The Turks were the first to buy into such statements from "authoritative" European sources. And they, having declared war on Russia, paid dearly for their gullibility. Potemkin villages, among which were Kremenchug, Yekaterinoslavl (Dnepropetrovsk), Kherson and Sevastopol, showed that the words of the Most Serene Prince are unlikely to diverge from the deeds. The resources of the Black Sea steppes ensured the complete victory of Russia.
And the Highness Prince probably did not think about the gratitude of the descendants. In the end, already the heir of Catherine, her son Paul I, somehow in his hearts said: "What can be done to correct all the evil that Potemkin brought Russia?" To which he received the answer: "Give up the Crimea and the Black Sea." We must assume that Paul would have been pleased with us: we managed to correct all Potemkin's "evil" …