A 20,000 Candle Party

On May 11, 1791, one of the most extravagant and sumptuous parties of Catherine the Great’s reign was held in the Tauride Palace, the St. Petersburg residence of Prince Grigory Potyomkin. The celebration marked the successful capture of the Izmail Fortress from Turkey. Yet as significant as this victory was, what was really being celebrated was something much greater.

There were many layers of meaning underlying the celebration at the Tauride Palace, but first and foremost among them was that the victory marked yet another step toward the fulfillment of a grandiose, semi-utopian scheme that had been conceived many years before by Potyomkin and the Empress. It was the dream of advancing southward, to the Bosporus, to Istanbul, or, as Russians preferred to call it, to Constantinople, to the great city where once upon a time Byzantine emperors ruled and from whence Christianity came to Rus. This was the dream that drove many Russian politicians. Despite the illusoriness and irrationality of the idea, its echoes still reverberate today.

In the early sixteenth century, Philotheus, a monk at the Yelizarov Monastery north of Pskov, submitted an epistle to Moscow’s Grand Prince Vasily III. This epistle formulated an idea that would become a catalyst of Russian history over the coming centuries. As Philotheus explained it, the sack of Rome by barbarians (410 ad) was a form of punishment of the emperors for having allowed themselves to fall under the influence of heretics. This led to the rise of Constantinople – the Second Rome. And the defeat of Constantinople by the Turks (1453 ad) resulted from the Orthodox Byzantine emperor entering into a union with the “heretical” Roman pope, the head of the Catholic Church. What city could now take its place? Philotheus had no doubt that Moscow was the answer to that question. “Moscow is the Third Rome, and a fourth shall never be.” These famous words have since been repeated by philosophers, poets, and politicians.

One might have thought that the enlightened, worldly Catherine, who grew up in Germany, could have little in common with a medieval Russian monk, but somehow she succumbed to the spell of his idea. Since Moscow was the Third Rome, then its ruler must be the patron of all Orthodox Christians and, therefore, the Balkans must be given Moscow’s protection, an idea which in turn implied that Moscow had a God-given duty to take back Constantinople. It made no difference that Catherine was governing out of St. Petersburg and not Moscow, and that Constantinople had for centuries been known as Istanbul. There was simply a great yearning for Russia’s army to reach the Bosporus.

Catherine’s reign saw two wars with the Ottoman Empire, both of which went rather well for Russia. In 1791, when Prince Potyomkin held his great celebration, the second of these wars was reaching its conclusion. By then, Russia had a firm hold on the northern Black Sea coast and had taken possession of Crimea. All of these achievements were perceived as steps toward an overarching goal – the rebirth of the Byzantine Empire. Russian diplomats were developing their famous “Greek Project,” which envisioned the creation of an Orthodox principality centered in Constantinople.

It was no coincidence that Catherine’s second grandson was named Constantine, since the plan was for him to rule over this future state. It was also no coincidence that Catherine gave the empire’s newly acquired cities along the Black Sea coast Greek names (such as Sevastopol and Simferopol) and neither was the timing of her famous tour of the Crimea, organized with all possible and impossible extravagance by her all-powerful favorite, Grigory Potyomkin, who had just been given the title of Prince of Tauris (the ancient Greek name for Crimea). Potyomkin’s new title and the name of his residence – the Tauride Palace, all of this was fraught with symbolism that was perfectly transparent to everyone at court. Lastly, it was no coincidence that the great poet of that period, Gavrila Derzhavin, was commissioned to write a poem on the occasion that would for decades serve as a sort of hymn for Russia. The poem began with the words:

Гром победы, раздавайся!
Веселися, храбрый Росс!
Звучной славой украшайся.
Магомета ты потрёс!

Triumph’s thunder, loudly rumble!
Rejoice, Rus, for you are brave!
Wear your glory like a mantle.
Mohammed quivers like a slave!

The notion that the Islamic world (Mohammed) had been dealt such a horrible blow was surely exaggerated, although the victory was truly significant. Izmail was a large fortress on the Danube, and for several months Russian troops had been unable to capture it until Potyomkin finally put the siege under the command of General Alexander Suvorov, who was quickly able to overcome Turkish resistance. The Turkish Pasha, who had claimed that the sky would fall to earth and the Danube reverse its course before the Russians would take Izmail, turned out to be wrong. Soon afterwards, the sultan was forced to begin negotiations.

Воды быстрые Дуная
Уж в руках теперь у нас;
Храбрость Россов почитая,
Тавр под нами и Кавказ.

The waters of the Danube River
Are securely in our hands;
Russian courage they now honor
In Tauris and Caucasian lands.

This quatrain also stretches the truth. The mouth of the Danube did indeed come under the control of Russia, but certainly not the entire river. Tauris (Crimea) was indeed incorporated into the empire, but it would be many decades before the same could be said of the entire Caucasus.

But Potyomkin needed a poem that elegized the empress (the poem’s refrain ran “Praise to you Catherine for this/Praise to you, gentle as a mother”), but at the same time underscore his own great military achievements. And this brings us to another layer of meaning underlying Potyomkin’s celebration.

By the time of his celebration, Prince Potyomkin of Tauris enjoyed every possible privilege and no constraints were placed on his power. His influence on the empress and on politics was tremendous, his wealth was unprecedented, largely because Catherine was constantly giving him vast lands, his chest was covered with countless medals of the most diverse sorts, and men of much higher birth groveled before him. Any diplomat arriving in St. Petersburg, no matter what country he represented, immediately hurried to pay his respects to the prince. Some historians even suggest that the empress had entered into a secret marriage with her favorite.

Grigory Potyomkin

Nevertheless, the prince was 52, so by the standards of the day he was already an old man. The empress was 62, and not in great physical shape. Neither of them, however, had any intention of foregoing earthly pleasures. Potyomkin always had some nice young “niece” by his side, who would be introduced to the art of love by her affectionate “uncle” and then given a nice dowry and found a suitable husband. Catherine was no less assiduous in running through disposable “favorites.” This did not mean, however, that the empress’ attachment to the aging prince was in any way diminished. His influence was enormous.

Yet while Potyomkin was in the South, busily expanding Catherine’s empire, rumors from St. Petersburg started to reach him about the rising star of a vacuous, handsome, and incredibly impudent young man by the name of Platon Zubov, with whom the empress was hopelessly smitten. Potyomkin had a keen nose for trouble, and even at such a great distance he was able to smell it now. He sensed that Zubov, unlike many other pretty faces that came before him, posed a serious threat to his influence. He ordered that the empress be informed that he would soon be coming to St. Petersburg, saying he had to have a bad tooth removed (the play on words was surely intentional: zub, in Russian, means “tooth”). In December of 1790, Izmail finally fell. After this achievement, His Highness was free to leave the military theater and in January he arrived in St. Petersburg. One would have thought that Zubov was no match for the huge, heavyset, swarthy Potyomkin, but it turned out things were not so simple.

Platon Zubov

During the prince’s four months in St. Petersburg, he spent almost a million rubles on countless amusements and parties – a fantastic sum at the time. The empress was still unable to take her eyes off Zubov. This was the context in which Potyomkin decided to throw a huge celebration in the Tauride Palace. He had to remind Catherine about the great services he had performed, show her what he was capable of doing for her, and plant the thought in her head that it might not be a good idea to trade in a great warrior and politician for an insignificant boy.

Soon the Tauride Palace was in the process of being transformed, pipes were being installed so that hot water could warm the air, and an indoor lawn was being planted. Hundreds of musicians, dancers, and singers had been rehearsing for weeks. Derzhavin was writing his poem and a young musician from Potyomkin’s entourage, Osip Kozlovsky, was composing a melody based on the majestic polonaise that was supposed to open every ball.

When the day arrived, casks of wine and roast bull meat were served to the public in front of the palace. So many people showed up that when the empress arrived she was frightened, taking boisterous cries of greeting as the beginning of a riot. As Catherine entered the palace, three hundred musicians and singers broke into “Triumph’s thunder, loudly rumble!” The palace halls were illuminated with 140,000 torches and 20,000 candles. Potyomkin could not lower himself to use tallow candles, which produced smoke, so all of the wax produced in neighboring provinces was bought up for his party. The entire palace seemed to sparkle and glimmer. Crowds of stunned courtiers attended the celebration and each of them received a gift.

Sitting next to Potyomkin at the head of the table, Catherine was astonished and delighted, but this did nothing to slacken her passion for Zubov. This extravaganza turned out to be a farewell feast of sorts. Soon afterwards, the empress ordered the prince to leave the capital and return to the South, where his presence was needed. She continued to consult him on all political matters, but that was it. Potyomkin left in humiliation and died a few months later while traveling through the town of Jassy, in present-day Romania. Before dying, he asked to be carried from his carriage to a field.

Catherine was devastated, although this did not prevent her from appointing Zubov to many of the positions that Potyomkin had held and giving him many of the late prince’s lands. She herself had only five years to live. When she died, her son and heir Pavel, who despised the impudent Zubov, took back most of his wealth. Platon Zubov lived until 1822 on his estate, where he earned the reputation of a greedy and cruel master. Not long before his death, he married a pretty peasant girl he saw stacking hay by the side of the road.

Incidentally, Catherine II’s “Greek Project” was never realized. Yet Triumph’s Thunder continues to be performed to this day, mostly at nationalistic gatherings.