of a great empire as well as a proud and passionate woman, and she had neither time nor inclination to explain or quibble. She was lonely and she needed a partner, someone with whom to share not power but conversation, laughter, and human warmth. Therein lay one of the problems confronting her: the love of power and the power to attract love were not easy to reconcile.
• • •
Except for Zavadovsky, all of her favorites were Guards officers, and most came from families of the lesser nobility. When a new favorite was named, he was shown to an apartment near hers in the imperial palace. Upon arrival, he found in his dressing table drawer a large bundle of rubles, a welcoming gift from the empress. He began a life of stultifying regularity. At ten every morning, he began his day by calling on the empress in her apartment. In public, he was treated as a high court official. He accompanied Catherine everywhere and was alertly and respectfully attentive to her wishes as she proceeded through her long days. His arm was always ready to escort her at court, dinner, and to her seat at the palace theater. When she drove out in her carriage, he sat beside her. He stood next to her at court receptions, sat with her at card tables, and, at ten every evening, he offered his arm and accompanied her to her apartment. Other than these duties, he lived in near isolation. After Potemkin and Zavadovsky, most of Catherine’s favorites were not allowed to make or receive visits. She lavished presents and honors on these young men, but it was unusual for existence in this golden cage to be prolonged for more than two years. On parting, almost all received extravagant gifts; none experienced vindictiveness.
Most of the favorites were young men whose youth and social inexperience offered a striking contrast to the dignified demeanor of their imperial patroness. The differences in age and station confused the court and created a whirlwind of gossip in Europe. But the specific manner and intimate practices by which these favorites pleased Catherine are unknown. Only in the cases of Potemkin and Zavadovsky is private correspondence available, and, in this regard, it is unspecific. Those seeking physical details of Catherine’s romantic liaisons will learn nothing; neither in her own words nor in the words of others are there any references to sexual preferences and behavior. Her bedroom door remains closed.
With the exception of her relationships with Potemkin, Zavadovsky, and, at the end, Zubov, Catherine compartmentalized her life, keeping politics, administration, and diplomacy separate from her private life. Fearing that a lover might try to exploit her emotions and reach for political power, she did not permit her favorites to play a role in government. As she grew older, her need for intimacy and support made Catherine more vulnerable, and favorites who showed interest in her intellectual and artistic pursuits were likely to last longer. Lanskoy (1780–84) and Mamonov (1786–89) were examples of this. Then Lanskoy died and Mamonov betrayed her by falling in love with someone else.
Until the procession of young Guards officers began, Catherine’s love affairs had not shocked Europe. The example set by other contemporary monarchs left scant grounds for rebuke. Monarchs everywhere had mistresses or lovers. In Russia, Peter the Great had children by his mistress before marrying her and making her an empress. Empress Anne and Empress Elizabeth had both paved the way for the acceptance of favoritism in Russia. Catherine’s political achievements also made flaws in her private life easy to overlook or discount; beyond that, she conducted her court “with the greatest dignity and exterior decorum,” said Sir James Harris, the British ambassador in the 1780s.
The problem, as the years went by, was not the institution of favoritism but the extreme youth of the favorites and the discrepancy between their ages and Catherine’s. As attention focused increasingly on the question of age, Catherine explained that these relationships served an important pedagogical function. Her young men, she said, were being schooled to ornament a sophisticated, cosmopolitan court; they were to be accomplished and useful, not just to the monarch personally but ultimately to the empire. In her correspondence with Grimm, she explained that these young men were so extraordinary that she was obliged to give them opportunity to develop their talents.
When Peter Zavadovsky fell from favor, Potemkin looked around for a candidate whom Catherine might accept and whose loyalty to him he could trust. His choice was thirty-two-year-old Simon Zorich, a Russian officer of Serbian descent. Zorich was tall, handsome, and polite, although he lacked notable intelligence. He had an honorable war record; he had displayed bravery in battle against the Turks and had borne up well during five years as a prisoner of war. Returning to Russia in 1774, he became an aide to Potemkin. In May 1777, with Zavadovsky’s departure, he became the new favorite.
Zorich’s tenure was briefer than Zavadovsky’s. His new position went to his head. Catherine made him a count, but he demanded to be made a prince like Orlov and Potemkin. His complaints offended the empress; Zorich had been in favor for only ten months when she told Potemkin, “Last night I was in love with him; today I cannot stand him any more.” Potemkin had ignored the fact that Catherine needed someone she could talk to. As the relationship deteriorated, Zorich could not understand why the woman who had covered him with riches had suddenly retreated. Blaming Potemkin, he determined to fight for his place. He challenged Potemkin; the prince disdainfully turned his back and walked away. In May 1778, only a year after his arrival, Zorich was dismissed with a pension. A compulsive gambler, he was later discovered embezzling army funds and died in disgrace.
Zorich was replaced by a twenty-four-year-old Guards officer, Ivan Rimsky-Korsakov, whose term lasted two years. The new favorite was handsome, played the violin, and had a fine tenor voice. In Catherine’s eyes, his male beauty evoked the heroes of ancient Greece, and in her letters to Grimm she refers to her new lover as “Pyrrhus, king of Epirus whom every painter should paint, every sculptor should sculpt and every poet should sing.… He makes no gesture, no movement, that is not graceful and noble.”
His brilliance did not encompass the intellect, however. When Catherine gave him a mansion in St. Petersburg, he decided that it needed a library to proclaim his new status. He had shelves built and then called on the capital’s leading bookseller. What books were wanted, he was asked. “You understand that better than I,” said the new bibliophile. “Big books at the bottom, then smaller books, and so on up to the top.” The bookseller unloaded many rows of unsold German Bible commentaries bound in fine leather. Soon afterward, the British ambassador probed the favorite’s background and discovered that he had “changed his original common name of Ivan Korsak to the better-sounding one of Ivan Rimsky-Korsakov.”*
Despite Catherine’s praise, most in the Russian court expected Rimsky-Korsakov to last only briefly, because everyone except the empress saw that his heart was not in his work. He was expected to be in constant attendance, was forbidden to leave the palace, and became bored and restless. He escaped into the arms of Countess Bruce, Catherine’s principal lady-in-waiting and for years one of her closest friends. Foolishly, the couple believed that they could carry on their affair inside the palace. They managed for almost a year, but it ended abruptly one day when the empress opened a door and discovered them making love. Catherine sent a message to Rimsky-Korsakov informing him that she would be generous provided he left St. Petersburg immediately. Countess Bruce was commanded to return to her husband.
There was more to this tangled plot. Catherine, the court, and Countess Bruce soon learned that Rimsky- Korsakov had been using Bruce as a decoy with whom to pass the time and alleviate his boredom. His real object was a beautiful young countess, Catherine Stroganova, married to one of the wealthiest men in Russia. The Stroganovs had just returned from six years of living in Paris, and, on first seeing the handsome “king of Epirus,” the young countess fell in love. Only when the disgraced Rimsky-Korsakov left for Moscow and Countess Stroganova immediately followed him, was the extent of this operatic, labyrinthine double betrayal fully revealed. Count Stroganov behaved with patrician dignity. Worried that his young son would be affected by public scandal, he installed his wife in a Moscow palace, where she and her lover lived happily for thirty years. There, they brought up the three children they had together.
For six months following the Rimsky-Korsakov debacle, Catherine remained alone, but at Easter in 1780 a new favorite, Alexander Lanskoy, appeared. Then twenty-two, he came from an impecunious family of the provincial nobility and had served as an officer in the Horse Guards. When he found that he lacked sufficient funds to keep pace with his brother officers, he asked for reassignment to a provincial garrison, where his expenses would be lower. His application was rejected at the College of War by Potemkin himself, who then, surprisingly, appointed the young man his personal aide-de-camp and introduced him to Catherine. Lanskoy had an elegant bearing and a sensitive face; Catherine described him as
