Potemkin, GREGORY ALEXANDROVITCH, the most celebrated of the Empress Catharine II.'s favourites, was born near Smolensk on 16th September 1739, the descendant of a noble but impoverished Polish family. Having entered the Russian army, he managed (1762) to attract the notice of the czarina by his handsome face and athletic figure; he was attached to her household, and in 1774 was preferred as her recognised favourite. From 1776, when the Emperor Joseph of Austria made him a prince of the Holy Roman Empire, till the year of his death he was the director of the Russian policy in Europe. It was at his instigation that the khan of the Crimea put himself (1783) under Russian protection. Four years later Catharine paid a visit to his government in the south, and the 'hoax' which he then played off on his sovereign is described by De Ségur (Mémoires). He caused an immense number of wooden painted houses to be constructed, and grouped into towns and villages along the route the czarina was to take, and hired people to act the part of villagers, merchants, tradesmen, and agriculturists, engaged in their various pursuits. The czarina's vanity was hugely gratified at the seeming improvements of the country under her rule, and she covered Potemkin with titles and honours. Almost immediately after this a war broke out with the Turks, and Potemkin was placed at the head of the army, with Suwaroff serving under him. Otchakoff was taken after a terrible siege, and Suwaroff won the great fights of Bender and Ismail—of all of which Potemkin reaped the credit when he entered St Petersburg in triumph in 1791. That same year he was seized with sudden illness whilst travelling between Jassy and Otchakoff, and died October 15, and was buried at Kherson. He was a man of considerable ability in court intrigue and statesmanship; his skill as a general has been both affirmed and denied. Personally he was licentious, coarse in his habits, and utterly tyrannical and unscrupulous; in spite of his lavish extravagance he heaped up an immense fortune.
See Mémoires (Lond. 1812), and the Life in German by his secretary Saint-Jean (new ed. Karlsruhe, 1888).