The Lovers of Catherine the Great

It gets lonely at the top, and even larger-than-life monarchs like Catherine the Great needed a bit of romance now and then. Tune in and learn more about Catherine's lovers -- and if she ever found the true love she was looking for -- in this podcast.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm King Lambert and I'm Sarah Downey, and today's topic
is the lovers of Catherine the Great. We already talked

(00:21):
about her husband in previous episodes. I don't know if
you remember. He's the one she deposed and then sort
of had killed rings a bell and he was pretty awful,
and yet her son had him dug up and buried
next to her. Spending eternity next to someone you despise
has to be its own kind of hell. So who
would she rather be next to? We're going to be

(00:43):
taking a look at a whole list of fellows in fact,
and the first is Sergei salty Covin. We mentioned him
in a previous episode in this three part Catherine the
Great series. It was possibly by him that she had
her son, although possibly also by her husband and the
circumstances of the time. She was in a desperately unhappy marriage.

(01:04):
Her sex life with her husband was practically non existent,
and she needed to produce an air so this relationship
was encouraged, and Saltykov was charming and a bad bad boy.
He was handsome and he was very slick, so in
other words, he seemed like a good idea, and these
honeyed words were hard to resist for our young, sad Katherine.

(01:28):
She's vulnerable and the people at court wanted her to
get pregnant, so they're kind of nudging her into this
relationship with Saltikov. But she made the mistake of falling
in love with him, and he soon grew tired of
her one night, stood her up for a date and
that was the end of that. A hard lesson to learn.
Fortunately for Katherine, there is another fellow to follow in

(01:50):
his footsteps. That's Stannis Way to Ski and Stennis Way
is a very good dancer, which is lucky for him
because that's what ketch his Catherine's eye. At the time
of their affair, she was twenty six, and he described
her as having a mouth which seemed to invite kisses
and a merry disposition if you want a little idea

(02:11):
of who Catherine was in her youth. And he was
a virgin, so he's the exact opposite of the darnly
Saltykov because in him she could find both sex and
emotional fulfillment. So moving on, up as far as the
equality of her men. But it was a very secret affair,
and that's until her husband finally found out. At first

(02:32):
he was angry. He didn't want his wife to be
having an affair, but then he decides that Katiski is fun.
He's a pretty nice guy, and maybe hey, they should
go on double dates or something, which doesn't sound fun
to anyone else involved, except for the sort of crazy
emperor when I think he was just mad at first
about the secrecy, and once he found out it was

(02:54):
an affair, it's like, oh, well, I'm having an affair.
This is fine. Let's all four of us hang out
and party all night. No wanted to do that, but
I mean, he's you know, he is who he is,
so you have to. He probably invited some puppets to
of the know him well. And a lot of these
details we should mention come from Virginia Roundings biography of
Catherine the Great, which is pretty fantastic. So by point

(03:15):
of toy Ski, she had her daughter Anna Petrovna, who
is the one who died, but their love was doomed
by circumstance during his absence on a diplomatic absence. Her
coup took place, and when she took the throne, she
told him not to return because now was not the
time for love in her life. This was time to
rule and to get down to business. She wrote to

(03:37):
him a quote, I very much like goodbye. The world
is full of strange situations, which is a pretty good
breakup line as far as breakup lines go. She looks
out for him, though she doesn't just toss them off,
and when Augustus the third of Poland dies, Katherine make
sure that her former lover is elected as the new king,
although this doesn't end up being the best deal for

(03:58):
him because she partitions Poland and he abdicates in seventeen
but still it's the thought that counts Catherine, and a
little detail on him. He instituted salons in Poland like
the Parisians had, only his recalled Thursday dinners, and we're
full of Polish luminaries and intelligent discussions, very finer things

(04:20):
club definitely so well. Catherine is settling into the role
of being the Empress. She doesn't have a lover for
a little bit, but that doesn't last for that long.
She says to herself that she needs a young man
in her life. And it keeps her healthy. So in
seventeen sixty one we have Gregory or Love and we
also mentioned him in a previous podcast. He was the

(04:41):
father of her son, Alexei, and he and his brothers
were involved in that mysterious death of her husband too,
so we know he's definitely one of Catherine's right hand men.
And he helped save Russia from plague, so you can
imagine he was a very busy man. They were together
for a eleven years, they're practically married, and then rather

(05:03):
suddenly it was over. For one thing, he was very
powerful in her court and there were people who would
do anything to take him down, and she was also
told that he cheated on her, so she replaced him
in her life for a time in seventeen seventy two
with the completely underwhelming Alexander Vassilchikov total rebound. He was
not worth it. Of course, after eleven years with Orlov,

(05:26):
a breakup is more like a divorce, and Katherine still
loves him, and an observer writes that she finds it
hard to do without him. She experiences an emptiness and
not having someone to whom she can open her heart
on everything, and she also describes him as this, If
you ever see him, you will see, without doubt, the
most handsome man you have ever seen in your life.

(05:47):
So there you go, Katherine. The pretty ones are always
hard to say goodbye to. She tried to part with
him on very generous terms, as far as lands and
money and family statusco but it was quite the matic breakup.
There was a lot of back and forth and maybe
he's coming back or he's not a little bit of
a power imbalance that She kept warm feelings for him

(06:09):
for the rest of her life and a great deal
of respect. He remained involved in the government, and he
also helped found the Free Economic Society, and she was
inconsolable upon his death in seventeen eighty three. She didn't
eat for days, even though the years leading up to
it she was prepared for it. He'd become deranged and

(06:29):
feeble minded. He'd been ill for a while. That already
broke her heart. But even then side ned about Orlov
before we move on completely from him. He's the source
of the famous or Lov diamond, which he bought to
please Catherine, and it has muddled origins, like all of
the best jewel stories. Do did it come from? An

(06:50):
idol in a Brahmin temple perhaps, or maybe the possession
of the assassinated King of Persia. Nobody knows exactly, but
it's one of the Roman of Crown jewels, so it
has a very illustrious history. So let's go back to Vasilchikov,
or rather let's go past him, because after that she
needed someone special and someone who would open up her

(07:13):
heart like or lofted, and that brings us to Gregory
pat Chompkin, the most famous of Catherine's loves. And that's
because although his time as her lover was fairly short,
he became the most powerful man in the government. They
were basically co rulers, and after the passion was gone,
the respect and the friendship remained. So he was born

(07:35):
in seventeen thirty nine and he studied theology at the
University of Moscow before spending some time in the Guard.
So that's mainly what we know about his early life.
It's this monkish existence followed by military style service. And
he becomes Catherine's lover in seventeen seventy four, and even
though their relationship only goes on for two years, it's

(07:56):
this very deeply felt one. It an up and down relationship.
In the early days, Catherine wrote him a letter that said,
in order for me to make sense when you were
with me, I have to close my eyes, or else
I might really say what I have always found laughable,
that my gaze is captivated by you, an expression that

(08:17):
I used to think was stupid, improbable and unnatural, but
which I now see might be possible. This is something
different for Catherine. Yeah, she was infatuated with him from
the start, and they write each other constantly. You can
imagine how that would be today, maybe just leaving little
notes of emails and notes for each other. But it's

(08:37):
not all smooth sailing, because they're both so passionate and
they're both very demanding. He's jealous, she's terrified that he'll
get bored with her, and neither one wants to believe
that the other one could possibly love them as much
as they do, so nothing is ever enough. And in
other words, it was a bit of a roller coaster,

(08:58):
and those, of course get tie ring. Her letters are
full of anxiety. She repeatedly refers to herself as ill, mad, weak,
and most tellingly wrote, oh how awful it is to
love extraordinarily, But Telkins demands go beyond the bounds of
what you expect from someone in a relationship with you.
He wants political positions that proclaim his status. And it's

(09:21):
not just an ego thing. He's very politically minded. In fact,
that's one of the things that Catherine loved about him.
They can have really good conversations there and even match
with each other. But he ascends the ranks very very
quickly and very impressively. And of course a lot of
people think this is just because he's Catherine's new boy toy,
but he was, of course, but he was also a

(09:43):
very talented and political man. He's good at political matters,
he's good at military matters. He suited for his ascension.
And we've got a good quote from of all people, Stalin,
who said, what was the genius of Catherine the Great?
Her greatness lay in the choice Prince Petchumpkin and other
such talented officials to run the state. So relationship with

(10:06):
Chumpkin has the stolen seal of approval. And here's just
a little rundown of some of some of the honors.
Some of the honors he receives, the Order of Saint Alexander,
Nevsky in Poland. He receives the Order of the White Eagle,
Katherine's counsel. He's the General in chief of the College
of War, he's the commander in chief of the Cossacks
and Cavalry. He's a count. He's got command of the

(10:29):
Petersburg troops. He's a prince of the Holy Roman Empire.
And he gets a lot of money and even some peasants.
I think I'm gonna get you some peasants for your birthday.
There feeling a little feudal this year, I guess. And
a few of his accomplishments. He built a fleet in
the Black Sea, he built the harbor of Sebastopol, he
helped the next Crimea. He did a lot in his

(10:51):
in his time and government, and when he died in
sevente you can imagine how that shook her world. But
we do have a few lingering questions of her relationship
that always come up, the main one of which is
where they secretly married, And some people say yes, And
in their letters they often refer to each other as
husband and wife. So it's entirely possible that they had

(11:14):
some sort of ceremony, and it probably wasn't a legal one,
though if if they did have one, it may have
been a way of expressing their deep commitment to each other,
a commitment that would last, and actually one that would
last after their physical relationship was over. And another question
that always comes up, did she become pregnant by a
punkin and Rounding says no. She became very ill during

(11:38):
their romance and disappeared for a bit from the public eye.
But Catherine blamed it on eating twenty peaches in an afternoon,
a fact we put on our Twitter at Miston History
if you didn't see it, and we're Georgia girls, and
even we can't eat twenty peaches in one Afternoon's terrible idea,
and it's just too bizarre of a fact to be
made up. No one make up something that's so potentially horrified.

(12:03):
I'm gonna go with a peach explanation and we haven't.
Excerpt from another letter that Catherine wrote again that gives
you a good idea of the state of their relationship.
I need not to see you for about three days,
if that is possible, to give my mind time to
calm down and for me to come to my senses,
or you will soon grow bored with me, and how
could it be otherwise? I am very very angry with

(12:25):
myself today and scolded myself and tried in every way
to be more sensible. And these, of course, are the
words of a woman who's losing her head, falling head
over heels, scared of her lack of control, and an
empress cannot afford to be a fool for love. So
Catherine obviously needs a different kind of relationship, something that

(12:46):
it's just a little easier honor. And that brings us
to Peter Zavadovski. And in many of our podcasts we
have talked about infidelity. If you're a long time listener,
you know that, and we've been accused of being too
narrow minded about that. We dispute the claim. In some
cases it isn't really infidelity, of both parties are aware

(13:07):
of the other's extramarital sexual activities and accept and encourage them.
But in others it is a case of simmering anger
and jealousy, and especially of powerlessness, because often in the
tales we've told, one of the people involved is a
royal and as carte blanche, and you might lose your
head if your husband thinks you slept with someone else,

(13:28):
and he himself would like to sleep with someone else.
And well, and if you're a guy sleeping with Lola Montez,
as we learned, all bets are all the first. This
is a dangerous game to play, but in the case
of Zavadovsky, this is a fairly welcome introduction of a
third party into a relationship. Yeah, because clearly the relationship

(13:48):
between Chompkin and Catherine wasn't sustainable. They couldn't keep this up.
He still wants to be top dog, though he's not
going to be cast aside. He's going to maintain some
sort of position and in his government. So a way
to diffuse the situation, a way for them to still
function as friends and confidence is to bring somebody else in.

(14:10):
And Zavadovski wasn't as high maintenance as the Champkin, but
he also wasn't cut out for this position of male mistress.
He was a bit bewildered in his new role, wasn't
quite sure how to handle it, and a sort of
diplomacy it required. Of course, he's both a subject and
a lover, which is a strange power dynamic. He kind

(14:31):
of lost it after a while. He wasn't He wasn't
ready for this. Katherine doesn't have the patients to deal
with that. I know. I really love this note she
wrote him. It starts off one, stay with me to
believe it when I say something. Three, do not quarrel
hourly about trifles, So showing him. But most important, Tompkin
realizes that this situation works out well for him, Like

(14:54):
I was saying, it's a way to diffuse the situation
and maintain his power. So he allies as well. I'm
gonna keep Katherine stocked. He was the procure and first
he brings her semyon Zorik, who ends up trying to
get rid of the Chumpkin, which never works. Katherine will
always like him better than you, dude in question. Then

(15:14):
Ivan Rimsky Korsakov, who is hot, young, and all male,
as she describes him, is the most ridiculous quote I
think I've ever read in a podcast. There are plenty.
He was also described by an outsider as silly, and
he must have been because he cheated on Katherine and
then went blabbing about it all over town. So the
Chumpkin help put a stop to that one right away.

(15:36):
But finally we come to Alexandra A Lanskoy and this
one Katherine picks out herself because it doesn't look like
Chompkin has a really great record. Yes, he did not
work out. He doesn't know her taste at all, So
unlike Rimsky Korsakov, this guy is a good man. He
loves her, he respects her, he makes her happy, and
they simply enjoy each other's company. It's sort of taking

(15:59):
things down and watch for her. He doesn't disrupt her
life in any way. Instead, he adds to it and
he entertains her. He's he's kind to her, and she
hopes that she'll grow old with him. But in June
seventeen eighty four, he fell ill and it progressed very suddenly.
Within a week he was dead. Katherine was devastated and
inconsolable for months and wrote, I do not know what

(16:21):
will become of me. But in seventeen eighty five she
has another distraction year Maloff, another boy who has been
found by the Champkin, who also tries to get rid
of Chompkin and does not succeed. None of them will,
And in seventeen eighty six the Champkin brings her another man,
Mom and Off Mom and Off is also young and

(16:41):
good looking, like a lot of Catherine's later lovers, and
she says that he has a most excellent heart with
a great store of honesty. He has wit enough for
four and he mainly sounds like a whiney little breath.
I don't think she had great judgment on this one.
Apparently he had cheated on her as well, and he
wanted to end his affair with Katherine, but it ended

(17:02):
badly because instead of you know, manning up and doing
it in a gentlemanly sort of way, he blamed her
for everything. Not all man perhaps No. So she is
out of the game for a little bit until a
twenty two year old catches her eye in nine. She
was sixty at the time, and his name was plot
on zoo Ball. And somehow this twenty two year old

(17:25):
ends up more powerful than Tompkin, who comes back and
tries to overthrow him re establish his own position. Uh,
he's sneaky, and he's greedy, and just in general he
sounds completely awful. Her taste really goes down and beIN
he's wonderful, and everyone around her is just shaking their
heads and going no, no, no. And we mentioned his

(17:47):
wandering eye, but somehow he ends up with the title
of Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, so apparently they're
just handing those out at the time. But at least
Catherine's son Paul did one good thing after her death.
He told soup Off to get out of Russia, although
later Zuboff came back and helped assassinate him either. Yea,

(18:08):
So Catherine has this incredibly promiscuous reputation, but history kind
of shows she has just a series of monogamous relationships,
one after each other. They're a lot, but hey, and
her personality in her life just haven't been represented accurately
in history. She's been besmirched. She was a woman of

(18:28):
great depth, a complicated ruler, and a woman who loved fiercely.
I rather like her. But as for her most famous lover,
Sarah take it away. It brings us to the horse,
of course, and if you haven't heard the horse story,
it goes like this, Katherine has this special hoist devise
to help her have sex with a horse, and it breaks,

(18:51):
and the horse falls on her in the middle of things,
and she dies. So we've talked about some pretty weird
people on this podcast or in our past podcast episode
seriously their unusual sexual proclivities and thinking, Caligula, this is you.
But this is not that kind of episode. As we've learned,
Catherine was in love with love and also with sex,

(19:13):
and this quality in a woman never goes remarked upon.
Even today. You can listen to stuff Mom never told
you for a lot more on that sort of thing.
But long before Catherine died, she was frequently the subject
of lewd jokes because of her personal life. It's the
easiest way to attack someone who's politically powerful by zeroing
in on their personal life instead of their policies. Well,

(19:35):
especially when it is a sixty year old empress withfend
And this reputation as a woman of lustful inclinations happened
to coincide with a courtiers tale in sixteen forty seven
of Russians being particularly preoccupied with sodomy, especially of the
equine variety. There is absolutely no basis for this, but

(19:58):
a story like that just takes off on its own.
Kavine was a horsewoman, after all, and there are also
some rumors about her lover at Lunkoy, who is the
nice lover, He's the one we kind of line, yes,
in the lineup. He's the one we think you should pick.
But there was a story that he odeed on aphrodisiacs,
and he kept on talking about horses and weird stories

(20:19):
about horses, and people started thinking, Uh, this is Catherine's lover.
Maybe there's something strange with her going on too exactly,
it all gets tangled up together, and there you have
at the birth of a piece of gosson that would
indoor for hundreds of years. So watch him now, I will,
but not before I make a few recommendations. First, if

(20:42):
you want to learn more about Catherine and all of
our musings about her, you should try following us on
Twitter at Myston History or checking out our Facebook fan page.
If you have something to add to this discussion yourself,
maybe your own opinion about the horse, you can email
us at History Podcasts at how stuff works dot com.
And if you want to learn a little more about gossip,

(21:02):
we have a really good article on it, how Gossip Works,
and you can find it by searching on our homepage
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