Grigory Potemkin - A Formidable Facade of Russian Power

In this episode, we dive deep into the chaotic, brilliant, and often misunderstood life of Grigory (or is it Grigori?) Potemkin, the most powerful man in 18th-century Russia—and the only one who could truly keep up with Catherine the Great.

Was he a visionary statesman who expanded the Russian Empire to the Black Sea, or was he the ultimate "fake it 'til you make it" icon? We’re peeling back the layers of the legend to see what lies behind the most famous cardboard cutout in history.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The "Potemkin Village" Myth: We tackle the enduring story of the fake portable villages built to impress Catherine during her tour of Crimea. Did they actually exist, or was this the 1787 version of a smear campaign?
• A Royal Romance: Explore the intense, volatile, and deeply intellectual partnership between Potemkin and Catherine the Great. From secret marriages to their "political partnership" that lasted long after the romance faded, we look at why they were the ultimate Enlightenment power couple.
• The One-Eyed Titan: From losing an eye in a mysterious brawl (or was it a stray tennis ball?) to his legendary mood swings and midnight feasts, we explore the eccentric personality that made him a favorite of the court and a target for his rivals.

Why Potemkin Matters Today

Whether you’re a fan of Russian history, a lover of political intrigue, or just obsessed with 18th-century gossip, Potemkin’s life offers a masterclass in branding and power. His influence shaped the borders of modern-day Europe and left us with a metaphor for political deception that we still use centuries later.

Join us as we travel from the glittering palaces of St. Petersburg to the dusty steppes of the south to find out if Grigori Potemkin was a master architect or just history's greatest set designer.

Keywords: Grigori Potemkin, Grigory Potemkin, Catherine the Great, Russian Empire, Potemkin Villages, Crimea History, 18th Century History, Romanov Dynasty, Black Sea Fleet, Russian Enlightenment, Political History Podcast.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:05

Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Dirt Nap City, the podcast about interesting dead people. Did I get it right?

SPEAKER_02 0:19

Is that it? That's it. It's been a minute, but yeah, you got it.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Alright. Welcome Kelly. Thank you. My name is Alex. This is my friend Kelly, and we're talking about interesting people who are also deceased.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Yep, yep. That's the two criteria. Interesting and dead.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Yeah. So today I'm I'm not even gonna make you guess this. Because I don't know if we can I don't think I have a clue that makes you guess that would make you guess it. But we're gonna talk about. Remember we talked about Russian history before? It's kind of crazy, right? Russian history. Yeah, remember we talked about Russ Putin? Yeah. Russ Butin. And remember the thing about him was that he um smelled like a goat. Well, he did smell like a goat. And then he was just kind of this outsider that kind of worked we wormed his way into the inside, remember? And he was like responsible for the Russian Revolution, and it was like this.

SPEAKER_02 1:16

And he was uh hitting on the hitting on the queens or the the czar's wife at the time.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Oh yeah, he was crazy, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:22

I mean it was a as a good episode. Listen to that episode. It is a good episode.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Well, Russia's always kind of got a guy like that. That that um that in they you know a lot of countries have advisors. Russia's always got a guy, right? These guys always got this guy that's like that just hovering off to the side of of power that's not like technically in charge, but somehow running everything.

SPEAKER_02 1:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

And Resputin was like that, remember? I mean, he had, like you said, the goat, and uh you can't kill him, and he had the beard, and um, because you can't really say you're the guy if you're in charge, like if you're technically in charge. But the guys that I'm talking about are like not in charge, they're behind somehow, they're in the orbit and they're kind of end up running everything, whispering in the ear of the royal family, influencing decisions, and everybody else is looking around going, Why is this guy in charge? Right? That was kind of how Ris Butin was. But a hundred years before Rasputin in Russia, there was another guy that was the same way. Please, please tell me this name was Boris. No, no, no, it wasn't Boris. But this guy was even kind of more powerful and even maybe harder to figure out. And I don't know, I mean, you might have heard of him. Um, I've heard of him through like a figure of speech when you talk about something having a have you ever heard of a Potemkin village? Have you ever heard that Potemkin?

SPEAKER_02 2:54

No, is that like those little dolls that go inside each other? No, no, the Russian nesting dolls. I thought they were called Potemkins.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

No, no, no, no. A Potemkin village is basically if you call something a Potemkin village, that means that like it's all fake. That like you're just like it's there's there's a veneer and then nothing behind it. And it has to do with this guy's story, Gregory Potemkin.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

Gregory uh Gregory, probably. Sure. Gregory Gregory Potemkin. That's that reminds me a little bit of uh Hot Fuzz. Did you ever see the movie Hot Fuzz? No, where Simon You've never seen Hot Fuzz? No. Oh my god, that is one of the best movies ever. Simon Pegg um goes into this village, he's a he's a cop from London, and he gets put into this little small thing, and then everything turns out to be fake. It's all a facade.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

So maybe there's some inspiration there from Potemkin. Probably, probably. I mean, yeah, it was the kind of the original. Um, yeah, Gregory, probably. You're you're right. Gregory G-R-I-G-O-R-I. Yeah, Gregori Potemkin. Maybe, yeah, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 4:04

If you're Russian and and your name is Grigori, hit us up, not at Dirtnap City, and uh, we'd love to hear what how you spell your name.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Yeah, yeah, that'd be great. So we'll talk about Russian. Is that an example of what you that I do?

SPEAKER_02 4:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That'd be great.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Kelly says that he uh he tries to uh swerve sometimes, and I just uh I hold the wheel steady.

SPEAKER_02 4:31

Right there, ten and two, man. Ten and two at 50 miles an hour. Alex, the speed limit is 75. I don't care, man. I don't care.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

All right. So I want to talk a little bit about we'll do a lot of detours into Russian history because I think this stuff is all fascinating and so different than the way we live today. Um, so this guy, uh Potemkin, he was born in 1739 in Smolinks, which was the Russian Empire. Russian Empire was huge, like it was Russia, all of Russia today, plus a lot of Western Europe. And then he died in 1791 in the Ottoman Empire in Moldova. And so if you can picture like what Europe looks like now, everything was either part of Russia or the Russian Empire or the Ottoman Empire, like it was just huge, and the Ottoman Empire would also like be the Middle East and Northern Africa. It was just all died with his feet up, right? In the Ottoman Empire. Oh, I get that. Yeah. I actually don't know the connection with I was gonna look that up, the actual connection with the the Ottoman, kind of like Afghans, like you know, the blankets that our grandmothers used to make. Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 5:52

Why are they called Afghans or Afghan towns?

SPEAKER_01 5:54

I picture when you go to Afghanistan, just everyone's got one of those blankets on. Crusade blanket. That's why they call it Afghanistan.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

It's so hot here.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

The country was named after the blankets. Yeah, remember those? You I'm sure your grandma has some.

SPEAKER_02 6:08

Oh, we had Afghans, yeah, yeah. My mom still calls a blanket an Afghan. Hand me that Afghan. By the way, hundred years, hundred years. My grandmother? Yes, yeah, yeah. My grandmother, my grandmother uh is all about the now. She didn't, she grew up in India, so they might have a different word for it, but uh, but she was all about the Afghan.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

Yeah. Um, okay, so um Grigory, our boy Potemkin, yeah. He was born um the only son of six kids, and he was a nobleman.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

And so do you know what a nobleman is? Well, uh you hear about it a lot, right?

SPEAKER_02 6:48

You hear about people being noble, some sort of uh honor honorarium for somebody in royal, you know, kind of in the like a duke or a duchess or a like like a earl.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

I think it was just under those people. So um you you picture this this kind of Russian empire back then, and it was probably a lot of like wealth inequality, right? Yeah, and so noblemen were upper class, or even really upper middle class, there wasn't really a middle class, but even if you had something, you were probably in the one percent, you know? Yeah, so you it doesn't mean you're like extremely wealthy, but you're still like in the one percent. You own land and you have status that way, yeah. And that when you were a nobleman, that means you have a pipeline into the military and into the government. You could be an officer in the military, you could get introduced to powerful people, even if you weren't just like upper middle class, not a great, you know, it's not like you live in a castle or anything, but most of the you know, they had basically three classes of people back then. You had noblemen, like I just described, yeah, serfs, and then you and then you had serfs or peasants, yeah. Um, and then you just had like people that were like shopkeepers.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

That's the middle class of that time, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Yeah, yeah. Um, but they were probably really poor. But the you don't want to be a surf, that's what you don't want to be. I mean, surfing sounds fun. The Beach Boys made surfing sound uh fun. But it's S E R F, right? Yeah, you don't want to be this kind of surf. So do you know what a surf is? It's like not quite a slave technically, but you know, pretty damn close to being a slave.

SPEAKER_02 8:34

Are these like the untouchables uh in in India? I don't know. You know what I'm talking about? The caste system?

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not I don't I don't know the comparison, but probably, right? I mean, you're tied to the land.

SPEAKER_02 8:50

So with Afghans, they use Afghans to tie you to the land.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

So you're not owned by people, but you're kind of you can't leave the land. You're kind of like tied to that. So the people don't own you. So if the the land gets sold, then you stay with the land, you don't go with the people. Okay, and but you don't make any money either. No, it's a sustenance farming, right? But you have to pay taxes, but you don't have to pay taxes with money, you pay taxes with your time and your labor. You're right. To the government who owns the land, maybe, or maybe a person owns the land, but so you're unpaid, you can't leave the land, and this was like 80 to 90 percent of the population back then. This is like being an intern today, yeah. Right, right. 80 to 90 percent of the population was in this situation in this condition where you're just working to work and not making any money serving these one percenters. Yeah, like I said, they weren't even that rich, but you know, you want to be a nobleman more than you want to be a serf, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

And the noblemen didn't even have flushing toilets or anything. I mean, they're they're still living a rough life.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Probably, yeah. I mean, this was this, you know, this was the 18th century, so yeah, yeah. So when he was seven, his dad died, and he got sent to a gymnasium school in Moscow.

SPEAKER_02 10:13

Okay, yeah, that's a German thing, too. Gin gimna gymnasium.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Yeah, it's really a funny thing. It sounds like you go to school and all you're doing is doing monkey buckles all day.

SPEAKER_02 10:22

Yeah, exactly. You're playing dodgeball all day.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

You remember our uh our uh the weirdest part about our gym class was the parachute.

SPEAKER_02 10:32

Remember, oh, and you all get around. You know, actually, actually, we had one of those at camp too. It was something you could do indoors that was sort of innovative, and everybody would pull it up, get air under it, and then you'd all run under it and hide like a bunch of surfs.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Not super active, though. Like it's always like a day off for the gym teacher. Our gym teacher was always hungover or um or currently like messed up, high or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 11:01

In Michigan or in Michigan, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

He always just didn't want to be bothered with whatever we were doing. So we bust that bitch. Yes, we did just it was co-ed. Yeah, and so they didn't want to do a lot of rough and tumble stuff, right? Um, rope climbing, you know, we'd we'd do the rope where you climb up, burn your hands, you know.

SPEAKER_02 11:25

You obviously went to a really good gymnasium.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Yeah, but a gymnasium school in Moscow in the 18th century was not like this. In fact, it was kind of the opposite of this. It um that's a Greek word um that meant, I think, physical fitness and all that, but it also meant school. But by the time the Russians got to it in the 18th century, it was just about elite classical classical education. So because the Gory was a nobleman, he went to gymnasium. Yeah, so this would be you'd study Latin and Greek and philosophy and history and all that stuff, and useful. Maybe some some rhetoric. Yeah, I mean, this was the the best schools were called gymnasium schools, though. But I think that would have been my dream when I was 10 years old to say, hey, you're going to a gymnasium school, and all I'd do is play floor hockey, you know.

SPEAKER_02 12:17

Right, right. Dodgeball floor hockey in the parachute and occasional square dancing. And I remember actually just one more thing, and this is something that you got to be at age to have, but the square dancing, all they had was a record player. Like the the music was played on a record player. It wasn't, it wasn't, you know, there was no tapes or uh PA system. The guy literally it was like one of those little all-in-one record players, and he'd put on the same square dancing music that he had had for 40 years. Oh, yeah, and we would square dance.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Yeah. Sometimes the records would be um, remember the kind of records that were actually like not even round, they were just square, they were just like from a book, you'd rip it out of a book, right? Right. It would be square, yeah. Like flimsy, super flimsy. Right. Remember that?

SPEAKER_02 13:02

I was like, uh, I have one of those. I actually have one of those from a Bloom County book. And uh Bloom the County. Yeah, a lot of times it came from books and they were like, yeah, like spoken word things. It would no, it's Billy and the Boingers, and it was actually a pretty punk rock uh record. Um from yeah, it was it was uh what was Bill the Cat? I think Bill the Cat was in this band. Um it looked that up sometime. Billy and the Boingers from Bloom County. Uh I think there's a song called I'm a Boinger.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Anyway, back to Russia, back to Russian history, yeah. So he um he he el enlisted in the Russian army when he was 11. Why? Which m because every noble children did this.

SPEAKER_02 13:44

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

Um, everybody was expected to go into the military when they're 11, and I guess by the time you're 18, you're a full officer, you know, in the military. Instead of just taking I mean, I'm not advocating that we do this, but I'm just saying I guess if you have that system, then by the time people, you know, have to go off and and fight, you have a lot of like um people with classical education that know this stuff pretty well, and they're still like 16, 17, 18 years old. Again, not a great system, probably, but I mean that was the way they did it. Well, he was the top student in his university, um, and it was really things were going well for a Potemkin, but then he went to St. Petersburg, and everything kind of went sideways at that point.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

Now now St. Petersburg, I I'm not Florida, right? Um, that became Moscow, right? No, no, those are two different cities. Or okay, sorry, sorry. He went to gymnasium school in Moscow. St. Petersburg became was the capital of Russia, and then Moscow became the capital. Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

And at the time, man, St. Petersburg was the place, like that's where everything was happening. Like by today's standards, it would have been like a combination of DC and Hollywood, because you had it was where the imperial court was, right? So the um the emperor, and um you it would have but also like a big social scene, and so when he was 18, he stopped going to class, he got distracted, he got expelled. Oh, goodness. But he wasn't just flaming out, like he was a smart guy, he wasn't just flaming out, he was figuring out that the real path to power wasn't in the classroom at all, but it was about like influence and who you knew and being seen at the right events and getting noticed by the right events. Being charming and witty, like he was starting to see like oh, these people in power, it's all about like influence and it doesn't matter this if you know Latin and Greek, it's all about it's not about what you know, it's about who you know, right? I knew that was coming today, right? Did you yeah? But this is the stuff that Dale Carnegie figured out, you know, a hundred years later, um, he was kind of processing all this in real time. So he stopped trying to be the best student in the room and started trying to be the most important person in the room, right? And this is why um I compared him to kind of Trump in the 80s, right? I mean, um, even when Trump was like bankrupt and broke and like a failed businessman and uh basically nobody liked him and all that, he was still like worming his way into parties and he was still like being on David Letterman and going out there and like getting himself in the press and he would call on different strokes, dude. He would he would call newspapers under a fake name and say, I've heard this guy is um dating these, you know, these models, and it would all be a lie, but it would just get himself out there, which you know ultimately got him to be the president of the United States. You know what I mean? The idea he figured out a long time ago that wasn't about what you know at all, it was about like um being in the right place and just like showing up and being at events and people think you're important, you know, promotion and self self-promotion and marketing, absolutely, which is probably a lot easier to do in the 1980s than it was in the 1780s, right? True, true. Um so um, and we're talking about like the 1740s, I guess. But um, so he was a mess. I mean, he was drinking heavily. I mean, St. Petersburg was a you know, uh, you know, it was Sin City, probably, right? He was gambling and losing, um, and he didn't have any money to gamble, but so he owed other people money, and he was so they have leverage over him, you know, which you don't want. And he was getting into what let's call romantic entanglements, right? Um, lots of uh lots of conquests. Um, but he you know, he's in the game, he's socially in the game, and pretending you belong is like just adjacent to actually belonging, as we as we've learned from a lot of the people that we talked about. Half the battle is just showing up. I mean, you know who else, you know who else was a little bit like that. Um, and we can't do an episode on him because he's still living, but Kanye West, when he first started out, would just show up at places um that he wasn't invited to, and he would just like worm his way in and like be there, and then when it finally got to the people that could make it happen, he had demos to play, you know.

SPEAKER_02 18:52

Or or there would be a big news story about him worming his way in, which would get him more press. Right, exactly. If he got in, it was a success. If he didn't get in, it was still a success because he'd make a scene and get in the news. Right.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

Have you ever seen that movie Catch Me If You Can?

SPEAKER_02 19:06

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

Right, Frank Abingale. Yeah, um, it was a great movie, uh, Leonardo DiCaprio. And then the difference between that guy and Potemkin was that guy was a stone cold liar and a fraud. I mean, Potemkin wasn't a fraud, like he actually was a smart guy, um, and he was a nobleman, so he did belong in these places, but he was just constantly just the instinct was there that I have to be around all the action, you know, in order to get in order to move up. In other words, he figured out that going to school wasn't gonna it was only gonna get him so far. Um, and he was already a smart guy, but it was all about people and influence, and and that was the way to get to power. So here's a little crazy thing that in 1762 um the uh head of Russia was uh Elizabeth of Russia, okay, and she um didn't have any uh direct descendants, and she died and made her nephew the ruler, I guess before she died. Um he was like next in line, he was the next man in line, I guess. And his he be he was Peter the Third, okay, 1762, Peter III, but he wasn't really Russian, like he was raised in Germany. I think we talked about this before in other episodes that you know sometimes they would bring in royalty from other countries that weren't really. I think we talked about this with Henry VIII, you know, some of those people, some of his wives weren't even really British, Charles III from Spain, exactly right. Yeah, that's a good example. He was he was German too, right? Uh Austrian, I think. Oh, yeah. Well, I should listen to my own episodes. So this guy was raised in Germany, Peter III. He didn't even really speak Russian that well, and he wasn't really a Russian, you know. Um that didn't last long. His reign only lasted six months. Um, there was a palace coup. So palace coup is like where it's not a total revolution, it's just where they change, they kind of keep it in the same family, but they oust the guy that's in there. Sometimes there's even like it's not always bloodless, a palace coup.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

Um the funny part is though, and this one is they ousted him, and his wife became in charge.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

This is how Elizabeth got to be in charge?

SPEAKER_01 21:43

Elizabeth died. Her nephew was Peter the Third, and his wife was Catherine the Second, known later as Catherine the Great.

SPEAKER_02 21:53

Ah, okay, okay. And so so she ended up taking over for Peter the Third.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

Right, even though it was a coup. Was just his wife, but they weren't like in love or anything. Right. Um, he died a week later. It wasn't a it was more of a coup and not a coochie coup. Right. Do you hear me say he died a week later? He died a week later of what broken heart. He died. They technically they say he died of a hemorrhoidal colic, which I think is slang for he got killed by his guards. They they made it they made it the most embarrassing thing you could possibly die from. There's no way he died of hemorrhoids a week after he got uh taken over. I'm sure the guards um give him a shiv in the throat. Can you even die from hemorrhoids? A hemorrhoidal colic? I don't know. That just sounds made up. Yeah, totally. You know, I mean, yeah, or very coincidentally uh bad. So they weren't really uh they didn't really have a love marriage or anything. It was a marriage of convenience, and now Catherine the Great was in charge.

SPEAKER_04 22:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

Now, by the way, when somebody is the great, like Alexander the Great or Ivan the Terrible or anything, these aren't things that they go by at the time. I don't know if you knew that, but um later on, like sometimes hundreds of years later, history ends up calling them the great or whatever. Well, I mean she was Catherine the Second. Charlemagne the god, right? Well, that's true. He that's self-uh coined though. Yeah. Um I don't think at the time, and I think if you spell the T H A, it it's it's or T H E E, like uh Meghan the Stallion.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

I think the stallion, yeah, yeah, or or Muhammad Ali though, he called himself the greatest of all time. Oh, that's true.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

Okay, so when he was alive, when it comes to royalty, okay, yeah. Um, so she wasn't they didn't she didn't go around like saying, Hey, I'm Catherine the Great, nice to meet you. Um, she was just Catherine, Catherine II. Katie. Now, one of the guys in the revolt involved involved in this palace coup was at this point Sergeant Potemkin.

SPEAKER_02 24:01

Ah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

And there was a story about how she was reviewing the troops, and she was her hat was missing like a plume, and he took a plume out of his hat and handed to her. Um and that really endeared her to him.

SPEAKER_02 24:19

Yeah, that's that's a that's a that's a move is this time. Yeah, it really is.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

Well, you know, I mean, she that I think back then, like the plume is like um if you're a queen or an empress without a plume, it's like you know, people aren't gonna know who you are, respect you, and like he recognized that and gave it to her right away. They also they're in the story, and this is probably apocryphal. I mean, who knows if this really happened? They say his horse, his horse wouldn't leave her side after that encounter. Um so um, and that she thought that I mean there's something they were very flirtatious to each other, and so she promoted him, and eventually he got promoted to a position called uh camera junker. I knew you would love that.

SPEAKER_02 25:05

Well, what is that? What do you think a camera junker is?

SPEAKER_01 25:09

Uh I mean that's like an old Nikon or an old Polaroid, maybe not camera, camera K-A-M-M-E-R, J-U-N-K-E-R. Camera Junker. Is that is that a guy that um waits on the queen? I mean, the uh the translation is sounds even dirtier, but um I may camera junker sounds dirtier. I don't know which which sounds dirtier, camera junker or gentleman of the bedchamber? That's a camera junker? Yeah, but neither one of those like have anything like sexual related to them. Um it's just like a junior court rank, it's an entry-level position like in the house.

SPEAKER_02 25:53

So so not like the not like the ladies, the the the maid of the late the lady's maid, you know, the one that dresses her and does all that, or is it no?

SPEAKER_01 26:02

I think he no, I think it's like a junior butler. Okay, junior butler. So this may sound like a demotion because he was a sergeant in the military, right?

SPEAKER_02 26:12

But now he's closer to power.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

Exactly. He's in the orbit, right? He's got his foot in the door. He doesn't have a seat at the table, but he's got his foot in the door, he's got his camera in the junker. And he was a really good mimic. Like that was a thing back then to impress like the royalty. Um you'd be a mimic, and he would go around like and he did impressions of her. So he's walking around like and he would do impressions of her to her, and she loved it.

SPEAKER_02 26:41

And he would do impressions of her to her, and he loved it. She loved it.

SPEAKER_01 26:45

Like, like, yeah, yeah. So that was like he's using all these things that later on would be like part of, you know, we would say he had game, right?

SPEAKER_02 26:54

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:55

200 years later, you'd say he had game. It started with the plume. 250 years, actually. Yeah. Started to get a hat with a plume in it. That that sounds like uh well, you you know, if all you gotta do, Kelly, is be in marching band, and you'll have a hat with a plume in it.

SPEAKER_02 27:13

And and you know, they they're gonna take me at my age. I've had tons of hats with plumes in them in my day. Ah, okay, okay. But did you ever think to make that move? Like visiting dignitaries or anything, like president of the university. It is a very kind of puss in boots move, though, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 27:29

Yeah, it really is. Camera. So he um so part of his job then she sends him, so he's a mimic. I like the word mimic instead of impressionist. I think that's really funny. We should start calling Frank Calliendo a mimic. I just think mimic is funny because it makes it sound like you're doing it to bother somebody. Like it makes you sound like you're doing it to bother somebody. Quit mimicking me. But she loved it.

SPEAKER_02 27:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

So she sends him to Sweden to send the word out about the coup, like let everybody know that she's in large and in charge. Yeah. Well, while he's in Sweden, he starts catting around and getting on his romantic entanglements again. And I don't think that he and Catherine were lovers at this point. Um, they were probably flirtatious and probably real, like he was probably one of her favorites, but um, I don't think he had gone there yet. But when he got to Sweden, he was he was all about, you know, going around um, you know I mean it's Sweden, right? And he's a he's a flirtatious dude. What when in Sweden? And then something happens with his eye, and nobody really knows. There's a lot of some people say he got hit with a tennis ball.

SPEAKER_02 28:44

Some people say he's oldest excuse in the book, by the way. What happened to your eye? Uh, tennis ball.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

Some people say it was like he got in a duel with somebody and messed up his eye. That sounds better. Um, some people say he did it himself, but he fell into like this depression because so he he kind of withdrew from society at that point and became even a hermit, and even at one point got super religious, so he kind of like withdrew from everything. And this, so you know, he kind of um just kind of withdraws um so remember this is kind of in his pattern before, like he was going to a great school and then he went to St. Petersburg and kind of messed it up, and then he gets into the you know to be a camera junker, and then he like goes to Sweden and kind of messes it up.

SPEAKER_02 29:32

So, well he gets into the military and and then he and then he kind of he changes he it sounded like he couldn't stay in one place for very long.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

Well, maybe maybe that's it, or maybe he just keeps retooling himself. I think I think in his history we'll say that he just keeps like reinventing himself. Maybe that's how he hurt his eye was retooling himself. He gets back to the uh I get that, yeah. That's it. That's that's good. It happens. So he goes back to St. Petersburg, and when he gets back, like people he he was a hermit, he hadn't been around in a while, and people started teasing him. They called him Cyclops. Isn't that mean?

SPEAKER_02 30:11

Oh, that is mean. I am camera junker, not Cyclops.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

But he got back in her orbit, you know, he got back in Catherine's orbit and they became lovers.

SPEAKER_02 30:22

Did he get a glass eye or something?

SPEAKER_01 30:24

I don't think so. I don't think if he did, they don't think people would be calling him Cyclops.

SPEAKER_02 30:29

Did they have glass eyes back then? Sure. I think that's all they had back then. I mean, you didn't have glasses, so if you're if your vision was blurry, they just pop one out and put a glass one in for you.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

I think he just had a giant hole where his eye was. Oh, ooh, that's not good. Yeah, well, I mean, tennis balls, you know, you don't mess around with tennis balls. Maybe he had a patch.

SPEAKER_02 30:50

Yeah. More patch. He probably did. He probably did. That was what the nobleman would do. That's probably how you were a surf, you just had a giant hole. But if you were a nobleman, you could afford a patch. A nice, a nice plumey patch. Probably made out of fur, though. Yeah. Furry, furry, plumey patch.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

So he they became lovers 1774, 1775 area. Um, and some say they even might have gotten married secretly. Uh-huh. But he's back in business. He's back in business. I was talking to you about the Ottoman Empire before. Yeah. Where everybody has their feet up. So the Ottoman Empire is basically like Turkey, the Balkans, the Middle East, North Africa. But for this story, the focus, the part of the Ottoman Empire that we care about is the part that's in the news a lot today, Crimea.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

Is in southern Ukraine, right around the Black Sea. And Russia wanted Crimea because it was actually not cold in Crimea. It's actually a warm place. Okay. And all the all the ports that Russia had were in cold parts. And you don't want a port that's going to freeze. It's like a Swiss bank account.

SPEAKER_02 32:16

A port, a bank account in Switzerland, a port in Crimea.

SPEAKER_01 32:20

Yeah, it's just a thing you want, right? Yeah, yeah. And so in 1783, they they there's a war between Russia and Ottoman Empire, and Russia won this war, and by 1783, Russia annexes Crimea. So Crimea becomes a part of Russia. And Potemkin was behind this whole thing. Like it was his idea. Militarily, he was running the show. Um, but then like operationally, like, okay, this is part of Russia now. You're like in charge of Crimea. And by this time, by 1783, they weren't romantic anymore, but in a way, they were somehow even closer because they had trust.

SPEAKER_02 33:01

Yeah, it's kind of like kind of like Henry VIII with his uh German wife, the one that he didn't kill, right? They was right after afterward, they became friends, and she she was like an advisor to him and all this.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

Was that Catherine of Aragon?

SPEAKER_02 33:15

No, that was his first one. I forget this one's name, but yeah. We gotta see six again. That happens in the royals sometimes. She was the one that looked that was ugly and smelled bad. Right. And he called her sister.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

Oh yeah, I don't remember which one that was. We'll have to go re-listen to that. Um so, like I said, in in a way, because they're not romantic anymore, they probably and probably not romantic anymore because he had a hideous, you know, yeah, um hole in his head.

SPEAKER_02 33:46

Tennis hall accident.

SPEAKER_01 33:48

But they trust each other, and which was like almost an even stronger bond, and she would have him run these huge projects like Crimea, right?

SPEAKER_04 33:56

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

So in 1787, she goes to Crimea, she takes a tour of Crimea. And Crimea, I don't think he had done a great job with it, but he wants her to think he did a great job. So he builds these fake villages. Oh, this is the payoff we're getting to here. Okay. He builds these fake villages and has all these peasants like dress up as like, you know, like their life is pretty good, and he sets up people, these peasants on the side of the street, like cheering her on as she, you know, rolls down the road, and you know, we love you, Catherine. And he stages prosperity, right? Stages this like place that's doing doing great to show that Crimea was a smart investment, that it was a good idea to have this place. But the whole thing is kind of fake. Now I think it's been a little overplayed in history about how fake. I mean, they were there's accounts that like he would have these, like basically a movie set, like he would have these houses on wheels, and then they would roll them, and then they would he would just be ahead of her, and then she would pass it, and they would roll it back to another place, painted a different color. She would seem like the same village everywhere she went, and the same people, right? It does kind of remind me of like hiring extras and a movie set, and the whole thing was fake. Like an old lesson. I'm not sure the degree to which he really pulled all that off. History is a little bit mixed, but I love the idea that it was like uh a 20th century movie set. That's awesome. I'm not sure they had all the resources to do that, and it probably back then it probably didn't take much to fake somebody out. No, no, it sure didn't. And peasants are peasants, you know, they're gonna do what you tell them to do. You give them some nice clothes and probably then take them away after eight.

SPEAKER_02 35:52

Oh, of course, of course.

SPEAKER_01 35:55

But by the late 1780s, you know, Potemkin is one of the most powerful people in the Russian Empire, but then war breaks out again with the Ottomans, like that was just an ongoing thing. And even today, like, I mean, you know, the the Ukraine-Russia war has a flavor of the Russian Ottoman Empire type of stuff. And I mean, if you're a Russian scholar, which I am decidedly not, I'm sure that you know the context for all that makes a lot more sense when you know about you know these Ottoman wars. So now he's in charge, but he's kind of lost his step, you know. Um and in 1791, he he is uh he's sick and he pulls over his carriage. Don't he just hemorrhoids? No, he just pulls over his carriage and dies very unceremoniously. Like no, you think about all the stuff this guy was into, you'd think you know, he could have gotten shot, he could have gotten VD, he could have gotten uh a number of different things, but he just kind of like just whimpered out, you know, he just kind of lost his steam. How old was he? Um, so this was 1791. He was born in 1939, so 1739.

SPEAKER_02 37:13

So he was he was pretty old. For the time. For the time. 52? I mean, for the time, that was probably in Russia, that was probably uh at the top end of the age a lot younger than we are now.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

Well, yeah, but we're you know we're general. Yeah, that's true. Um you know, he ran in the same circles as Benjamin Franklin, but they never met. I think Benjamin Franklin did meet Catherine the Great. Okay. Um, but I think Potemkin was out that day. Um they didn't ever there's there's no official record that they ever met, but they did run in those same noble circles, you know?

SPEAKER_04 37:55

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:56

Um so there's a chance they could have crossed paths, and he almost overlapped with Napoleon. Like he was just coming. I think Napoleon was born like the right, or no, I think Napoleon was just coming into power as Potemkin's dying. Okay, you know, so they almost overlapped. Um, he never met any of these other guys. Um, he was a hundred years before Resputin. Yeah, but he never met like Dick Clark or anybody. Um, you know, I'm always trying to figure out who knew who at this point. Right, right. He was never on American Bandstand. No, he was um, but you know, the closest was like the founding fathers. He was around those contemporary of those guys, yeah. Um an ocean away, a couple oceans away. I guess it's still an ocean away, just on the other side. Yeah, yeah. Um but yeah, um, but I think when you hear about people like trying to pull a ruse or or like an elaborate stunt that somebody plays, and you see a lot of a lot of uh based on this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you seen the show called The Jury or Jury Duty? I haven't, but yeah, it's the same kind of idea, right? Yeah. Elaborate ruse, um, a lot of Nathan Fielder stuff is based on this kind of fake, fake, fakeness. But even the idea of having movie sets, right, is is just kind of fakeness. Sure. But all that when when you hear somebody say, Well, this is just a Potemkin village, it doesn't even have to be about like a set or buildings. But if somebody says, um, you know, hey, we got a podcast coming out, you should check it out. And somebody goes, No, that's just a Potemkin village, it might mean that it's just like one episode, but we don't have anything behind that. Like, you know, it's our strongest stuff up front. You know, I've worked for companies before where all we have is a demo. Well, Enron. Enron, right? I didn't work for them, but but but I'm saying that was a Potemkin Village. Absolutely. Like Bernie Madoff. All we have is like our prototype. And if you ask us to make it, we're gonna maybe not figure it out. Bernie Madoff, um, Elizabeth Holmes, right? Yeah, yeah. That was a total Potemkin village.

SPEAKER_02 40:13

Yeah, yeah. Wow. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

So if you ever hear that phrase, I'm gonna be on the lookout.

SPEAKER_02 40:20

I'm gonna use that phrase. I'm gonna use that phrase actually. Uh and then if somebody's somebody says, What's that?

SPEAKER_01 40:26

Give them a link to our uh episode.

SPEAKER_02 40:31

Right on. Well, hey man, thank you. That was interesting. Gregory Potemkin.

SPEAKER_03 40:54

Born by the deeper frost, with a mud on his boot. Sharp I devoy hungry for mo, he learned how to cut through the smoke at the court gates he bowed, but he did not stay small. One hand on the store, one hand on the throne's cold wall. Whisper by whisper, climbed the stone stairs, room powder rooms and candles stairs, Catherine's off fire went out of the store. It's ganger tall, like a bladed artist, but I don't think that's built, build it eye, make the auto, but the steam made them spend the room, that's the best.