Love & Conquest: Personal Correspondence of Catherine the Great and Prince Grigory Potemkin

Rating:
Summary: Love, Conquest, and More
Review: We've all seen the Hollywood melodramas about Catherine the Great with the heaving bosums and the dashing guards. Even the BBC version is mostly fluff. But the real history of Catherine's life, especially the story of her remarkable relationship with Count Potemkin, is much more interesting. This book takes you right into this relationship by offering a vivid sampling of the letters that Catherine and the Count exchanged over more than twenty years.

There's melodrama here, to be sure. The Empress and the Count were ardent lovers for a time. Later, Doug Smith claims, they became secret spouses and eventually life-long friends. But, as the letters make very clear, they were also practical political partners who together ruled the Russian empire, making decisions about war and peace and debating how to manage the vast lands of the Black Sea region that the empire was busily conquering from the Turks and the Crimeans. This book brings out the way romance and power were connected in Catherine's life and, in the process, it shows us something of the political culture of her court. All of this makes it a very valuable contribution.

The book is also simply nicely put together. Smith begins the work with a helpful introduction on Catherine, Potemkin, their relationship, and the business of imperial rule in the late 18th century. The letters that follow are then organized into thematic and chronological sections, each of which is prefaced by a valuable brief survey that places the correspondence in its immediate context. The letters are also annotated, but with only the lightest of touches, giving the reader just enough information to fully understand the gist of things without intruding on the guilty pleasure of eavesdropping on someone else's billets doux.

In all, Smith's book is a great English edition of the letters, and it's accessible too. Any one with an interest in Catherine, Potemkin, the Russian 18th-century, or the broader history of Europe in the Enlightenment Era should definitely get a copy.