Then came the Revolution: the Bolsheviks gleefully dug up the graveyard of St Catherine's that contained the bodies of officers killed in the siege of Ochakov. There are yellowed photographs, kept by the local priest today, that show a macabre revolutionary scene; crowds of peasants in the clothes of 1918 point at the wizened skeletons still with hair, wearing the braided tailcoats, breeches and boots of Catherine's era - while in the background we can spot the jackboots and leather coats of the Chekist secret police.69
Twelve years later, in 1930, a young writer named Boris Lavrenev returned to his hometown of Kherson to visit his sick father. He went for a walk through the fortress and saw a sign outside St Catherine's that read 'Kherson's Anti-Religious Museum'. Inside he saw a pyramidal glass case. There was 'a round brown thing' inside it. When he got closer, he saw it was a skull. On the table next to it was written: The skull of Catherine I I's lover Potemkin'. In the next-door case there was a skeleton, still with shrivelled muscles on the bones. A sign read: The Bones of Catherine II's lover Potemkin'. In the third case, there were remains of a green velvet jacket, white satin trousers and rotten stockings and shoes - Potemkin's clothes.
Lavrenev rushed out of the church and sent a telegram to the ministry in charge of protecting art. When he was back in Leningrad, a friend wrote to tell him that the 'museum' was closed. Potemkin was gathered up, put in a new coffin in the vault and bricked up again. 'So in 1930 in Kherson,' wrote Lavrenev, 'Field-Marshal Serenissimus Prince Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin, who was the exhibit of the Kherson Anti-Religious Museum, was buried for the second time.'70
On 11 May 1984, the mystery of Potemkin once again proved irresistible to local bureaucrats: the chief of Kherson's Forensic Medical Department L.G. Boguslavsky opened the tomb and found '31 human bones ... belonging to the skeleton of a man, probably of 185 cm ... of about 52-55 years old' who had probably been dead for about 200 years. But there were apparently some epaulettes in the coffin too, said to belong to a British officer of the time of the Crimean War. The coffin was more modern, but it had a Catholic as well as an Orthodox cross on it. The analysts decided this was undoubtedly Potemkin.
In July 1986, Boguslavsky wrote to Professor Evgeny Anisimov, the distinguished eighteenth-century scholar, who was unconvinced by the evidence: if it was Potemkin, why a Catholic cross on the coffin and why the British epaulettes? Were they concluding that this was Potemkin out of wishful thinking instead of forensic analysis? Quite apart from the fascinating question of the identity of the British officer whose uniform was found there, was it Potemkin or not?
The size, age and dating of the body were right. The old coffins, leaden, gilded or wooden, as well as the medals, any remaining icons and the clothes, all disappeared in the Revolution. The Catholic coffin, which was shorter than the skeleton, was probably supplied in 1930. The English epaulettes are from another grave, the relics of the ignorant Bolshevik pilfering. So, in 1986, the Prince of Taurida was once again buried for, if one counts the viscera of Jassy and all the other excavations, the eighth time - and again forgotten.71
St Catherine's Church is now again filled with worshippers. The first thing one sees if one peers from the outside between Starov's Classical pillars is a wooden and iron rail around a solitary flat white marble gravestone, seven foot long and three wide, that lies right in the middle underneath the cupola. Inside, beneath a large gilded crest set on the stone, one reads:
Field Marshal Serenissimus Prince Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin of Taurida Born 30th September 1739 Died 5th October 1791.
Buried here 23rd November 1791
Around the edge of the marble there are seven gilded rosettes, each engraved with his victories and cities.[114] An old lady is selling candles at the door. Potemkin? 'You must wait for the priest, Father Anatoly,' she says. Father Anatoly, with long straight blond hair, blue eyes and the tranquillity of clergy in provincial towns, represents a new generation of young Orthodox brought up under Communism and he is most pleased to show a foreigner the tomb of Potemkin. No one has opened the tomb for a few years and no foreigner has ever seen it.
Father Anatoly lights six candles, walks to the middle of the floor and opens a concealed wooden trapdoor. The steep steps fall away into darkness. Father Anatoly leads the way and uses the wax to stick the first candle to the wall. This lights up a narrow passageway. As he walks along he fixes other candles to illuminate the way until he reaches a small chamber: it was once lined with icons and contained the silver, lead and wooden coffins of Potemkin, 'all stolen by the Communists'. The simple wooden coffin, with a cross on it, stands on a raised dais in the midst of the vault. The priest sticks the remaining candles around the chamber to light it up. Then he opens the lid of the coffin: there is small black bag inside containing the skull and the numbered bones of Prince Potemkin. That is all.
There is one final mystery: the heart. It was not buried at Golia like the
entrails and brains but was placed in a golden urn. But where was it taken? Samoilov said it was placed under the throne of St Catherine's in Kherson, but Father Anatoly says there is no trace of it. The likeliest scenario for the heart is that it this was the object removed by Archbishop Iov Potemkin in 1818. Where did he take it - Branicka's estate or Chizhova, where Serenissimus asked to be buried? Today, the villagers of Chizhova still believe the heart of Potemkin was buried there in the family church where he learned to sing and read.
This would be most fitting: the Empire, which Serenissimus did so much to build, is in ruins today and most of Potemkin's conquests are no longer Russian. If his innards are in Rumania and his bones in Ukraine, it seems right that his heart rests in Russia.
Roar on, roar on, О waterfall!
Gavrili Derzhavin, The Waterfall
LIST OF CHARACTERS
Prince Grigory Potemkin of Taurida, Catherine II's secret husband, statesman, soldier
Catherine II the Great, born Princess Sophia of Zerbst, Empress of Russia 1762-96
Abdul-Hamid I, Ottoman Sultan, 1774-88
Jeremy Bentham, English philosopher and creator of utilitarianism Samuel Bentham, brother of above, inventor, naval officer, shipbuilder Alexander Bezborodko, Catherine's secretary, then foreign minister Ksawery Branicki, Polish courtier married to Potemkin's niece Alexandra Engelhardt
Alexandra Branicka, Potemkin's favourite niece, nee Engelhardt, married to above
Alexei Bobrinsky, natural son of Catherine and Grigory Orlov Praskovia Bruce, Catherine's confidant, supposed to be sampler of favourites Count Cagliostro, Italian charlatan
Zakhar Chernyshev, early admirer of Catherine, courtier, war minister, ally of the Orlovs
Ivan Chernyshev, brother of above, courtier, navy minister Count Louis Cobenzl, Austrian ambassador to Petersburg Elisabeth Countess of Craven, aristocratic English adventuress, traveller, writer
Comte de Damas, French aristocrat and officer in Potemkin's army Ekaterina Dashkova, nee Vorontsova, Catherine's supporter and irritant Ekaterina Dolgorukaya, wife of Russian officer, mistress of Potemkin Elisabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, Empress 1741-61 Mikhail Faleev, entrepreneur, quartermaster, merchant, builder of Nikolaev Frederick II the Great, King of Prussia 1740-86 Frederick William, nephew of the above, King of Prussia 1786-97 Mikhail Garnovsky, minder of the Duchess of Kingston, Potemkin's homme d'affaires