In 1762, Catherine, wife of Czar Peter III, staged a coup against her ineffectual husband and proclaimed herself empress of Russia. Over the next few years Catherine ruled alone, but kept a series of lovers. The Russians called these men the vremienchiki, "the men of the moment," and in 1774 the man of the moment was Gregory Potemkin, a thirty-five-year-old lieutenant, ten years younger than Catherine, and a most unlikely candidate for the role.
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He quickly became the love of her life. Catherine promoted Potemkin higher and higher in the hierarchy, eventually making him the governor of White Russia, a large southwestern area including the Ukraine. As governor, Potemkin had to leave St. Petersburg and go to live in the south.
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Catherine's dream was to start a war with Turkey, recapture Constantinople for the Orthodox Church, and drive the Turks out of Europe. She offered to share this crusade with the young Hapsburg emperor, Joseph II, but Joseph never quite brought himself to sign the treaty that would unite them in war. Growing impatient, in 1783 Catherine annexed the Crimea, a southern peninsula that was mostly populated by Muslim Tartars. She asked Potemkin to do there what he had already managed to do in the Ukraine— rid the area of bandits, build roads, modernize the ports, bring prosperity to the poor. Once he had cleaned it up, the Crimea would make the perfect launching post for the war against Turkey.
The Crimea was a backward wasteland, but Potemkin loved the challenge. Getting to work on a hundred different projects, he grew intoxicated with visions of the miracles he would perform there.
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The empress was delighted, but her ministers were skeptical—Potemkin loved to talk. Ignoring their warnings, in 1787 Catherine arranged for a tour of the area. She asked Joseph II to join her—he would be so impressed with the modernization of the Crimea that he would immediately sign on for the war against Turkey. Potemkin, naturally, was to organize the whole affair.
And so, in May of that year, after the Dnieper had thawed, Catherine prepared for a journey from Kiev, in the Ukraine, to Sebastopol, in the Crimea. Potemkin arranged for seven floating palaces to carry Catherine and her retinue down the river.
The journey began, and as Catherine, Joseph, and the courtiers looked at the shores to either side, they saw triumphal arches in front of clean-looking towns, their walls freshly painted; healthy-looking cattle grazing in the pastures; streams of marching troops on the roads; buildings going up everywhere.
At dusk they were entertained by bright-costumed peasants, and smiling girls with flowers in their hair, dancing on the shore. Catherine had traveled through this area many years before, and the poverty of the peasantry there had saddened her—she had determined then that she would somehow change their lot.
To see before her eyes the signs of such a transformation overwhelmed her, and she berated Potemkin's critics: Look at what my favorite has accomplished, look at these miracles!
They anchored at three towns along the way, staying in each place in a magnificent, newly built palace with artificial waterfalls in the English-style gardens. On land they moved through villages with vibrant marketplaces; the peasants were happily at work, building and repairing.
Everywhere they spent the night, some spectacle filled their eyes—dances, parades, mythological tableaux vivants, artificial volcanoes illuminating Moorish gardens. Finally, at the end of the trip, in the palace at Sebastopol, Catherine and express realized before him Joseph discussed the war with Turkey. Joseph reiterated his concerns.
Suddenly Potemkin interrupted:
"I have 100,000 troops waiting for me to say 'Go!' "
At that moment the windows of the palace were flung open, and to the sounds of booming cannons they saw lines of troops as far as the eye could see, and a fleet of ships filling the harbor. Awed by the sight, images of Eastern European cities retaken from the Turks dancing in his mind, Joseph II finally signed the treaty. Catherine was ecstatic, and her love for Potemkin reached new heights. He had made her dreams come true. Catherine never suspected that almost everything she had seen was pure fakery, perhaps the most elaborate illusion ever conjured up by one man.
Interpretation.
In the four years that he had been governor of the Crimea, Potemkin had accomplished little, for this backwater would take decades to improve.
But in the few months before Catherine's visit he had done the following: every building that faced the road or the shore was given a fresh coat of paint; artificial trees were set up to hide unseemly spots in the view; broken roofs were repaired with flimsy boards painted to look like tile;
everyone the party would see was instructed to wear their best clothes and look happy; everyone old and infirm was to stay indoors. Floating in their palaces down the Dnieper, the imperial entourage saw brand-new villages, but most of the buildings were only facades. The herds of cattle were shipped from great distances, and were moved at night to fresh fields along the route.
The dancing peasants were trained for the entertainments; after each one they were loaded into carts and hurriedly transported to a new downriver location, as were the marching soldiers who seemed to be everywhere.
The gardens of the new palaces were filled with transplanted trees that died a few days later. The palaces themselves were quickly and badly built, but were so magnificently furnished that no one noticed. One fortress along the way had been built of sand, and was destroyed a little later by a thunderstorm.
The cost of this vast illusion had been enormous, and the war with Turkey would fail, but Potemkin had accomplished his goal.
To the observant, of course, there were signs along the way that all was not as it seemed, but when the empress herself insisted that everything was real and glorious, the courtiers could only agree.
This was the essence of the seduction: Catherine had wanted so desperately to be seen as a loving and progressive ruler, one who would defeat the Turks and liberate Europe, that when she saw signs of change in the Crimea, her mind filled in the picture.
🤔 Умозаключение - е нищо чудно, че не са ни освободили 18 век. Руснаците са били заети с пернишки мелодрами и са били същите позьори, които са и сега. 😑
