AAE 20: 362, Langeron. Pushkin quoted in Lopatin, Perepiska p 470. Castera vol 2 p 177. Wiegel vol 1 pp 28-9. Samoilov col 1560. Derzhavin in Segal vol 2 pp 291-2. Ligne, Melanges vol 7 pp 171-2, Ligne to Comte de Segur 1 August 1788. On the state of the army: Potemkin undoubtedly allowed his colonels to run their regiments profitably with minimal supervision, though he was now introducing inspectors to stop outrageous abuse. Nor was he remotely interested in Prussian drilling or endless ceremonial. He was said by foreigners (for example, Damas pp 114-16) to discourage all exercises, yet his archives reveal his instructions for training his marine commandos already quoted above. SBVIM vol 4 p 217, where GAP gives training instructions, criticizing officers who teach manoeuvres 'seldom fit to be used in battle' and recommends easy marching to walk faster without getting tired and simple training in forming squares, shooting and reloading. GAP simply disdained the slavish and pedantic following of Prussian training and tactics and evolved his own style regardless of Western opinion but based on Tartar, Cossack and Russian traditions. This offended French and German officers - hence Langeron, Damas and Ligne. Finally on the corruption of the Russian army under GAP, it is worth noting that Louis XVI's army was crippled with corruption and that commissions in the British army, though partially reformed in 1798, were still
sold until 1871 when Gladstone abolished them. So GAP's system was probably no worse than that at Horse-Guards in London.
SIRIO 54 (1886): 147-9, Richelieu, 'Mon voyage'.
RA (1879) 1 pp 2-25, Popov to CII 8 October 1791.
RGADA 5.131.4-4, CII to Popov ud, November 1791.
Engelhardt 1997 pp 97-102. Author's visit to Golia Monastery in Ia§i, Rumania, October 1999.
Khrapovitsky pp 383-5, 387.
AKV 18: 36, Prince V. . Kochubey to S. R. Vorontsov 28 July/9 August 1792.
Khrapovitsky pp 407-8, 236. Madariaga, Russia p 562.
Ligne, Melanges vol 22 p 82, Ligne to CII 1792. Harold Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna p 292. For Popov, see RP 2.1.19 and AKV 8: 58, Rostopchin to S. R. Vorontsov 28 September 1792, St Petersburg.
Rear-Admiral J. P.Jones to Potemkin 13 April 1789, quoted in Otis p 359. Statement to chief of police quoted in Morison p 388. RGVIA 52.2.64.12, Segur to GAP ud, summer of 1789, St Petersburg, unpublished.
Stedingk p 226, Stedingk to Gustavus III 6/17 February 1792. AKV 8: 48-50, Rostopchin to S. R. Vorontsov 13/24 February 1792, St Petersburg.
Masson p 195. As Catherine continued most of Potemkin's policies, Zubov had the job of executing them, but he did so with none of the master's lightness of touch and flexibility. His sole achievements were the greedy and bloody partition of Poland that Potemkin had hoped to avoid and the bungled negotiations to marry Grand Duchess Alexandra to the King of Sweden, a marriage the Prince had suggested. This was the humiliation that accelerated Catherine's final stroke. Zubov's very Potemkinian expedition to attack Persia was recalled after the Empress's death.
Masson pp 58-9. AKV 13 (1879): 256, Bezborodko to S. R. Vorontsov 15 May 1792, Tsarskoe Selo.
Masson p 124. Ligne, Melanges vol 24 p 183. The Prince de Ligne said they were planning to remove Paul as early as 1788. Ligne to Kaunitz 15 December 1788, Jassy.
McGrew p 237. ZOOID 9 (1875): 226, rescript of Paul I 11 April 1799. On the library: Bolotina, 'Private Library of Prince GAPT' 252-64, 29 May 1789. Paul orders library sent to Kazan Gymnasium, 29 March 1799. It arrived in Kazan in '18 carts' and in 1806 was placed in the Library of Kazan State University.
Czartoryski p 62.
RP 1.1 p 72. AAE 20: 134-5, Langeron, 'Evenements 1790'. Sophie de Witte/Potocka built a palace and a beautiful park called Sopheiwka which remains popular in today's Ukraine. She also owned estates in the Crimea and planned to build a new town there, named after herself. One of her sons by Witte, Jan, became the Russian secret policeman in charge of observing the potential Polish revolutionaries against Alexander I in Odessa during the 1820s. The Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz was one of them. See Ascherson p 150.
Wiegel vol 1 p 43. RP 4.2 p 214. RP 2.1 p 5. She kept a shrine to GAP at her famous estate, Belayatserkov. There is a portrait of her with her children, now at the Alupka Palace in the Crimea, in which the bust beside her is said to be GAP. It is possible that GAP's heart is buried at Belayatserkov. Branicka also built a fabulous park that still exists in Ukraine called Alexandria. She was much loved for giving villages to her peasants and endowing them with their own agricultural banks to finance their farming.
RP 1.1 p 30. RP 1.1 p 29. RP 3.1 p 10. RP 1.2 p 120. Skavronskaya was also
made Grand Mistress of Court by Alexander I. Her husband Count Giulio P. Litta was a high official under Alexander and Nicholas I
Yusupov pp 6-9. RP 1.1 p 10 and RP 4.2 206. See also T. Yusupova in Russkiy Biographicheskiy Slovar (1916).
Anthony L. H. Rhinelander, Prince Michael Vorontsov; Viceroy to the Tsar pp 75- 6. Henri Troyat, Pushkin pp 214-25. Vorontsov personally commanded one of some of Nicholas I's campaigns against Shamyl and the Chechen/Daghestan Murids who defied Russian attempts to control the North Caucasus. Vorontsov and Lise appear in 'Hadji Murat' by Leo Tolstoy: see Tolstoy, Master and Man and Other Stories (Harmondsworth 1977).
RP 1.1 p 30. RP 1.1 p 29. RP 3.1 p 10. RP 1.2 p 120. Alan Palmer, Metternich pp 36, 136, 137, 148, 322.
The actual Potemkin family multiplied in the nineteenth century, but not the lines closest to the Prince's story. Pavel Potemkin's son Count Grigory died at Borodino, while his other son Sergei married but had no children. Mikhail Potemkin had two children by Tatiana Engelhardt, but their one son, Alexander, had no children. The other lines, however, multiplied exceedingly. The last of one noble line was Alexander Alexeievich, who was the ultimate marshal of the Smolensk nobility and was killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918 when they captured him in the Crimea as he tried to escape Russia. His daughter, Natalia Alexandrovna Potemkina, lived on in Simferopol, one of the Prince's cities, and died in 2000. Thus ended one noble branch of Potemkins.
Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924 pp 217, 515-16.
Kenneth Rose, George Vp 320.
Vallentin p 523.
Author's visit to Golia Monastery in Ia§i, Rumania, October 1998. Fanica Ungu- reanu, Professor of Economic Science, Ia§i University, showed the author the place.
Author's visit to Potemkin monument, Republic of Moldova, 1998.
RGADA 11.966.1-2 pp 1, 2, Popov to CII October 1791 and 27 March 1792.
RGADA 11.956.1, Popov to CII, p 2; Popov to CII 27 March 1792. ZOOID 9: 390-3. Gravestone monuments in Kherson Fortress Church including Soldatsky. RGADA 16.696.2.35, General-en-Chef Kahovsky to CII 27 February 1792; p 35, Kahovsky to CII 2 February 1792. RGVIA 1287.12.126.31 and 21 (1823) CII's rescripts on GAPT's monuments quoted in 'New Work of I. P. Martos', in E. V. Karpova, Cultural Monuments, New Discoveries pp 355-64.