Episode 260 - Catherine the Great’s Lovers
Last time, we talked about Prince Andrei Kurbski and the Chosen Council. Today, we will look into the lives of the thirteen lovers of Catherine the Great.
For this episode, I will rely on three books, Catherine the Great by Henri Troyat and a work by the same name by Robert Massie, and Secret Lives of the Tsars by Michael Farquhar. The latter is a rather salacious book that takes a somewhat jaundiced look at the Tsars of Russia.
One prominent person who should be on the list, but isn't for understandable reasons, is her husband, Peter III.
Imagine being a young woman, full of life, sexually inquisitive, and you have a husband who is more interested in playing with toy soldiers. It had to be frustrating, but many men were surrounding her who could see how their careers could be on an upward trajectory if they were able to get into Catherine’s good graces. The first of which would be Sergei Saltykov.
Count Sergei Vasilievich Saltykov was born in 1726 to Vasily Feodorovich Saltykov and Princess Mary Alexievna Golitsynia. The Saltykovs were an ancient Boyar family and rivaled the Romanovs in nobility. He was also of Romanov Blood. His family, the Saltykovs, descended from a sister of the first Romanov tsar Michael, Tatiana Feodorovna Romanova, as well as from several Rurikid branches through female lines.
Catherine had been betrothed to Peter when he was only 14. They would be wed on October 1, 1745. However, it is said that the wedding night was unremarkable, and the marriage was neither consummated nor ever consummated. Instead, Peter would take a mistress, Elizabeth Romanovna Vorontsova. Catherine, for her part, would begin her affair with Saltykov in August 1752.
In December of 1752, the court of Empress Elizabeth was to move from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Catherine and Peter, along with their whole entourage, would follow. During the trip, Catherine began to feel the pangs of pregnancy. Unfortunately, before they made it to the winter capital, she suffered a miscarriage. It is likely that this was from the affair with Sergei Saltykov.
There is some evidence that Peter suffered a painful condition known as phimosis. I won't go into specifics about what this is, but let's just say it would preclude Peter from impregnating his wife. According to Massie, "During an all-male dinner at which the grand duke was the guest of honor, Saltykov steered the conversation around to the pleasures of sex. Peter, thoroughly drunk, admitted that he had never enjoyed these sensations. Whereupon – the story goes – Saltykov, Lev Naryshkin, and others present begged the grand duke to submit, then and there, to corrective surgery."
One of the reasons that Saltykov would push for this is that it would provide cover for him should Catherine ever get pregnant. Peter now knew he could impregnate his wife. If he couldn’t remember having sex with her, they could always claim he was drunk at the time. This also clouds whether Saltykov was actually the father of Paul or not.
Catherine would give birth to a son, the future Paul I, on October 1, 1754. In her diary, Catherine strongly implied that Sergei was the father, not Peter. Many critics have scoffed at this as Paul was very unattractive, much like his father, Peter. Catherine countered this with the suggestion that Sergei's brother Peter was pretty ugly himself. If it is true that Sergei was the true father of Paul, all subsequent Romanovs were not genetically Romanovs. Put that comment in front of any of the current Romanovs, and you will be met with a furious denial.
Empress Elizabeth was aware of the affair, yet she was quiet about it as she had the heir she desired. Still, having someone like Sergei Saltykov hanging around the palace was awkward. He was sent on a diplomatic mission to Sweden, and upon his return, Saltykov was redirected to Hamburg permanently. There is no further mention of Sergei after 1764. Some say he died the following year; others say he perished during the French Revolution. The last rumor is that he survived Paul's reign, dying in 1807.
With the removal of Saltykov from the picture, the young Catherine had to find another lover, as it was clear that Peter and the future Empress had absolutely no feelings of affection for each other. On the contrary, they absolutely hated each other.
In June 1755, Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams, the British ambassador to Russia, introduced Catherine to a young Polish nobleman, Count Stanislaus Poniatowski. The future Empress remembered the meeting, and as she put it in her memoir, Sir Charles "told me that his mother's family, the Czatoryskis, were a pillar of the pro-Russian party in Poland. Hanbury-Williams would become a close friend to Catherine, while Poniatowski would become her lover.
Hanbury-Williams was looking to have Russia join England as an ally against the growing power of Prussia and their king, Fredrick II. Empress Elizabeth turned a deaf ear to the British ambassador's pleas, as did Peter. In Catherine, he found a willing friend. Already in his forties, Sir Charles knew he could not seduce the young woman; instead, he let Poniatowski try his hand. Another weakness of Catherine's was money. She was broke.
Taking money from an ambassador could be considered a bribe, but in the court of Elizabeth, everyone was doing it. Still, Catherine had to be careful not to look like she was going contrary to the wishes of the Empress. Hanbury-Williams had an open checkbook as the king of England at the time, George II, had to protect his other holding, Hanover. While Great Britain was by now a mighty nation, its navy and not its army garnered fear. Hanover was a landlocked duchy, so George II needed an ally with a great army that did not threaten his navy. Russia was an ideal fit.
Poniatowski was no match for the male beauty of Saltykov, but he was far more of an intellectual, something that Catherine adored. What also intrigued the future Empress was that Stanislaus was a virgin. This would be something that Catherine would take advantage of, making him devoted to her for life.
Poniatowski was forced to return to the Saxon-Polish court, where he was based, in July 1756. His return in December of that year thrilled Catherine. He would stay by her side for the next year and a half. During this time, the health of Empress Elizabeth became a significant concern for the court, much more so because of the tensions building in Europe that would precipitate the disastrous Seven Years’ War.
In 1757, Catherine bore Poniatowski’s daughter, who was named Anna after Empress Elizabeth's older sister. Unfortunately, she would not survive long, as she passed away fifteen months after her birth. By 1758, Stanislaus was recalled to Poland permanently. Years later, after Catherine had ascended to the Russian throne, she would remember her lover by making him the King of Poland in 1764. He would reign until 1795, serving as the last king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
In January 1762, Empress Elizabeth died after a long illness. Peter III was now the Tsar of Russia. He would be an unpopular figure, one so disliked that he would be overthrown by Catherine just seven months later. One of the men who would help Catherine ascend the throne would be her next lover, Prince Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov.
Orlov was born on October 6, 1734, in the province of Tver. As Robert Massie puts it, "He came from a family of professional soldiers for whom bravery was a family tradition. His grandfather had been a common soldier in the Streltsy, the corps of bearded pikemen and musketeers founded by Ivan the Terrible that had revolted against the military reforms imposed by the young Tsar Peter the Great. In punishment, Peter had sentenced many of the Streltsy – this Orlov among them – to death. When it came to his turn to lay his head on the block in Red Square, the condemned Orlov strode unhesitantly across a platform covered with gore and, using his foot to push aside the freshly severed head of a comrade, declared, 'I must make room for myself here.'" Peter immediately pardoned the man and added him to his new army in preparation for fighting the Swedes.
This is the family in which Grigory Orlov grew up in. When he met Catherine, he was twenty-four, five years younger than her. Along with his brother Alexis, Grigory helped overthrow Catherine’s husband Peter, putting the young Empress on the throne. In 1761, he would become Catherine’s third lover.
Orlov would also become the father of her child, Alexis Gregorovich. This young boy would become Count Bobrinsky. The Bobrinsky family would continue flourishing, being involved in Russian politics and science well into the late 20th century. Grigory would remain Catherine's lover for many years until he was taken down by his arch-enemy, Nikolay Panin, in 1772. He would be replaced by the young Alexander Semyonovich Vasilchikov.
Vasilchikov was a Russian aristocrat who would only last a couple of years as the Tsarina's latest lover. After that, he would be replaced by the love of Catherine's life, Grigory Potemkin. Catherine wrote to her friend Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm, when she explained why she rid herself of Vasilchikov "Why do you reproach me because I dismiss a well-meaning but extremely boring bourgeois in favor of one of the greatest, the most comical and amusing, characters of this iron century?”
Vasilchikov was Catherine's lover during a challenging time in her reign. The Pugachev Rebellion shook the Russian world, a Russo-Turkish War was being fought, and an ongoing partition of Poland was being negotiated with Fredrick II. It was a tumultuous time, and Vasilchikov was not the brightest bulb on the tree at precisely the time when Catherine needed a brilliant mind.
With the death of Paul and the perception of it being under suspicious circumstances, Catherine would need a lot of support. She was in a somewhat precarious position even though she had the support of the military, many of the people of St. Petersburg, as well as the nobility. In addition, there were doubts about her right to govern, as she was not a native Russian. This was somewhat alleviated by the fact that Peter wasn't either.
Catherine was the first Russian ruler not to be handed the throne via the hereditary manner since Boris Godunov during the Time of Troubles. The rules at the time, created by Peter the Great, allowed females to rule, but the current ruler had to name their successor. Neither Elizabeth nor Peter named her, so by the day's customs, Catherine's seven-year-old son, Paul, should have been named Tsar. As a result, her reign was illegitimate in many of the Russian people's eyes. She was, by all manner of definition, a usurper. This would haunt her for the rest of her time as Empress of All Russia. Catherine would need a strong man by her side to guide her and protect her. Grigory Potemkin would prove to be that man.
Prince Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin-Tauricheski was born October 11, 1739, in a small town outside Smolensk. His father, Alexander Potemkin, was a decorated war veteran and a nobleman with a modest estate. When his father died when he was seven, the family decided to move to Moscow, which proved to be a wise decision. There, Grigory was placed in the élite Horse Guards regiment, eventually putting him in the right place at the right time.
On Catherine's march to Oranienbaum to depose her husband Peter, the now-proclaimed Empress would dress in full military garb. As Massie puts it, "Still, one piece of equipment was missing. A twenty-two-year-old subaltern of the House Guards rode out of the ranks to hand the Empress the sword knot her uniform was lacking. His officers frowned on the impertinence, but his proud, confident bearing pleases this Empress, who accepted the gift with a smile. She asked his name; it was Grigory Potemkin. His face, name, and action would not be forgotten."
Grigory was the perfect replacement for Vasilchikov; bright, speaking Greek, Latin, French, and German, he was the one man to whom the Empress could talk about any and all subjects. Massie describes his relationship like this, "For seventeen years, from 1774 to 1791, he was the most powerful man in Russia. No one else during her life was closer to Catherine; he was her lover, her advisor, her military commander-in-chief, the governor and viceroy of half of her empire, the creator of her new cities, seaports, palaces, armies, and fleets. He was also, perhaps, her husband."
Potemkin would help guide Catherine through the war with Turkey, the Pugachev Rebellion, and the crisis of a nearly bankrupt treasury. She could lean on him through the tough times and enjoy his company through the good.
The honest debate amongst many historians is whether or not Potemkin and Catherine were ever married to each other. Simon Sebag Montefiore is absolute in his position that they did. Others, like biographer Virginia Rounding, have expressed some considerable doubt. Henri Troyat takes a middle road. He writes, "It is thought that Catherine was so carried away by her passion as to marry Potemkin secretly. According to certain reports, the wedding ceremony took place toward the end of 1774, at the church of St. Samson, in St. Petersburg, in the presence of the faithful maid Perekuzikhina, Potemkin’s nephew Count Samilov, and the chamberlain Chertkov. Unfortunately, the documents relating to this clandestine marriage have disappeared.
On the other hand, the terms of twenty-three letters from Catherine to her favorite imply that they were indeed married.” ‘My beloved spouse,’ my dearest husband, the sweetest, the kindest, ‘my dear spouse…’” These are all examples that they were likely husband and wife.
By 1776, the relationship between the two began to cool off. They were still deeply devoted to each other, but the passion was waning. His power over so many parts of Russia was immense, second only to Tsarina Catherine. This would lead to many being jealous and resentful of Grigory. None would be more hateful of him than Catherine's son, Paul. When he became Tsar, his grave barely survived a destruction order issued by Paul, with his body eventually displayed by the Bolsheviks. His remains now appear to lie in his tomb at St. Catherine's Cathedral in Kherson.
In 1776, with Potemkin away on another one of his foreign relation trips, Catherine would begin a brief affair with Pyotr Zavadovsky. This was a relationship that was defined by jealousy and intrigue. Potemkin disliked Zavadovsky, and he was, in turn, jealous of the power of Grigory. Catherine became quite bored by the constant drama, so this relationship would only last for two years.
Zavadovsky was Catherine’s personal secretary starting in 1775 and would become her sexual partner the following year. Pyotr was unsatisfied with this situation. Catherine would quickly end the relationship, but knowing Zavadovsky's competence, she appointed him to the position of privy councilor. In 1781, he became the director of the state bank. Zavadovsky would later become a senator and, at the end of his life, the minister of education under Tsar Alexander I. He would be replaced by the last lover of Catherine’s we will talk about today, Ivan Nikolajevich Rimsky-Korsakov.
Born on July 31, 1731, Ivan was introduced to Catherine by Grigory Potemkin after having been vetted by Praskovja Bruce. In case you wondered, he is related to the noted Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
Ivan was an extremely good-looking man and a talented musician. However, he would only last for two years as Catherine's lover as he was found to be having an affair with Praskovja Bruce. It is rumored that Catherine was directed to the right room where the affair was going on by her friend Aleksandra von Engelhardt on the order of Potemkin, who wanted both Rimsky-Korsakov and Bruce out of the court of the Empress. The affair between Ivan and Catherine would be another short one, lasting from 1778 to 1779.
Ivan would go on to spend the rest of his life in Brattsevo near Moscow in a relationship with the married Countess Stroganova, née Princess Ekaterina Petrovna Trubetskaya. He would have four children with Petrovna. Varvara Ivanovna Ladomirsky, one of Ivan’s daughters, married Ivan Dimitrievich Narishkin and was the great-great-grandmother of Prince Felix Yussupov. Yussupov, as you may remember, was the man at the heart of the assassination of Rasputin, an event that would precipitate the end of the Romanov dynasty.
The next man we meet is quite an impressive person, Semyon Zorich, also known as Semeon Gavrilović Zorić. He was an Imperial Russian lieutenant-general and count of the Holy Roman Empire, born in Serbia, who served Imperial Russia against the Prussians and Turks. Born in 1743, he would follow the calling of the Russians to the Serbs to come to their new land known as New Russia, a land in what is now southern Ukraine, right above Crimea. This area, known as Novorossiya, was to serve as a bulwark against the Ottoman Turks to the south.
Zorich would carve out a remarkable career in the military, beginning his service in 1756 when he was a mere fourteen years of age. Zorich would serve in the Hussar regiment during the opening phases of the Seven Years’ War. His valor and reputation as a brave and distinguished cavalry officer would continue through his teens and into his early twenties.
Even though it was noted that he was an excellent officer through the upcoming Russo-Turkish War, his elevation to higher promotions was exceedingly slow, even with his aristocratic background. It wasn't until his adopted stepfather, the childless Maksim Zorić, introduced him to Grigory Potemkin and then to Catherine the Great, did his star begin to rise.
It was in 1777 that the handsome, brave 34-year-old officer Zorich, who had been a prisoner of war of the Turks for five years, four times wounded, was introduced into the Russian court as a counterpoise against Pyotr Zavadovsky, who deposed Potemkin as Catherine's favorite the previous year. His nickname, given to him by the attending maids of Catherine, was 'The Adonis'.
So thankful for his introduction to Catherine by Potemkin, Zorich offered him one-hundred thousand rubles. As Massie puts it, “To the devil with scruples! Potemkin accepted, and thus the custom became established for the ‘chosen’ to pay a hundred thousand rubles, on the day of their accession, to the man who had acted as their go-between with the Empress.”
Zorich went so far as to challenge Potemkin to a duel. Naturally, this did not sit well with Grigory, as he immediately demanded Zorich be dismissed from the court. However, before you feel too bad for the young man, while he was told to leave, his compensation package was quite generous. Zorich was given a few choice estates, a lifetime annuity, and several thousand serfs to take care of him and his newly acquired lands.
After Catherine died and her son Paul became Tsar, Zorich was called back into service as a Lieutenant General. However, he was dismissed in 1797 as they discovered some irregularities in how he handled his regiment's finances. Zorich would die two years later at the age of 56.
Since we have already covered Ivan Rimsky-Korsakov in the last episode, we need to skip over his to the next lover of Catherine, Alexander Dmitrievich Lanskoy.
The year is 1780, and Catherine, who had been on the throne for almost eighteen years, was now 51. Lanskoy had asked the College of War to transfer him from his current post in the House Guards to a less expensive provincial garrison. This plea was rejected by none other than Grigory Potemkin. So instead, he was made his personal aide-de-camp, placing him in the apartment next to Potemkin's. This 22-year-old man would become Catherine's new boy toy.
While his family would benefit greatly, with his sisters becoming handmaids to the Empress and his brothers were promoted to ensigns in the Preobrazhensky Life-Guards Regiment, they looked down on Alexander due to the age difference of 29 years between Catherine and him.
Lanskoy would be the exact opposite in his demeanor to Zorich, and unlike Rimsky-Korsakov, he would stay devoted to his mistress. Lanskoy would also become the prototype for all future lovers of Catherine's. They were attractive, intelligent, and easy to talk to, and above all, they had to stay faithful to the Empress.
Alexander would be appointed General, Chamberlain, head of his regiment of cuirassiers, and awarded the Order of the North Star. Aside from these highly questionable accolades, Catherine gave him numerous estates, serfs, gifts, and cash, estimated to be worth around seven million rubles, a veritable king's ransom.
As much as this seemed to be gross excess, Lanskoy was actually reasonably competent. Charles Masson, the future Empress Paul's mathematics teacher, would right about Alexander, "H is a model of kindness, humanity, civility, modesty, and beauty… A lover of the arts and a friend to talent, he is humane and benevolent." Catherine would go over reports from her ministers with Lanskoy, to the sometime chagrin of Potemkin. Even though the two would get into bouts of jealousy, especially Grigory, they would often work together to promote their mutual interests.
Around this time, an old lover of Catherine’s would return to St. Petersburg, Grigory Orlov. His young wife had just died in 1782. Grigory was roaming around Europe trying to deal with his intense grief when he decided to return to Russia. The Empress was appalled by what she saw. Orlov was gaunt, a shadow of the vibrant man she once was in love with. The man who helped Catherine ascend the throne was haunted by the ghost of Peter III, the Tsar he likely killed thirty years earlier. Orlov’s mental state had deteriorated so much that he was sent to a house in Moscow. It was there that he died in April of 1783.
About two weeks earlier, Nikita Panin passed away. The two men who would help Catherine gain control of Russia died around the same time. The Empress would write to her friend Friedrich Grimm "There is something curious about the death of Prince Orlov: Count Panin died fourteen or fifteen days before, and neither of the two knew of each other's death. These two men, who were always of opposite opinions and did not like each other in the least, must have been shocked to meet again in the other world.
Lanskoy was the person that Catherine would lean on during this emotionally trying time. Potemkin was busy working on the annexation of the Crimea. Grigory would take care of Russia, and Sasha, Catherine's pet name for Lanskoy, would take good care of her.
By the summer of 1784, Catherine and Sasha were living at Tsarskoye Selo along with the future Tsar Alexander and his brother Constantine. It was to be the last happy time between the two lovers. On June 19, Alexander Lanskoy was diagnosed with diphtheria. Six days later, the young twenty-six-year-old man would die in the arms of Catherine.
Alexander Ermolov would enter the life of the Empress of All Russia and quickly exit it as he made a potent enemy early on, Potemkin. Grigory put it succinctly to Catherine: Either he or I go. But it wasn't a bad dismissal for Alexander; he would receive 150,000 rubles and four thousand peasant serfs for his brief service to the Tsarina.
By the time the next lover in her life was presented to her, Catherine was obese and had trouble getting around. Potemkin, as was usual, would pick the man to become the next companion. His name was Alexander Mamonov, a 26-year-old officer of the guard.
His family traced back to a scion of the Rurikid family descending from the princes of Smolensk. Mamonov would remain Catherine's lover and companion from 1786 to 1789. However, by the end of the last year, he had grown tired of being around Catherine and began to have an affair with a 16-year-old lady-in-waiting to the Empress, Princess Shcherbatova. Mamonov had many enemies in the palace, and as soon as they heard of his infidelity, they presented the evidence to Catherine.
The Empress was taken by surprise, but she knew that as she aged, she was less attractive to young men. After forcing Alexander to beg for forgiveness, Catherine sent him off with 100,000 rubles and 2,300 serfs. His only son, Count Matvey Alexandrovich Dmitriev-Mamonov, was one of the founders of the pre-Decembrist Russian Order of Chivalry. His refusal to take the oath of allegiance to Nicholas I would cause him to be isolated at his mansion on the Sparrow Hills of Moscow for the remainder of his life. He would die insane after years of cruel punishments meted out by the Tsar.
The year 1789 was tumultuous as a war with the Ottoman Empire was going on, the Swedes under their King, Gustavus III, were threatening to invade the area surrounding St. Petersburg, and the French Revolution had begun, sending shockwaves throughout Europe. With Manonov gone, Catherine was in dire need of a new companion. She would select Prince Platon Alexandrovich Zubov, a man who would be her last real lover and a fierce competitor to Grigory Potemkin.
Catherine was now in her sixties. Charles Masson, a professor in the court who had little nice to say about the Empress, thought she had a distinct air of nobility in the way Catherine carried herself. He added the following about her, “But then, the harmony of her face would disintegrate, and for a moment one would forget the great Catherine and see only the old woman; for when she opened her mouth, she showed that she had lost her teeth, and her voice was broken and mumbling. There was something rough and coarse about the lower part of her face, something false about her light grey eyes, and a certain wrinkle at the base of her nose gave her a rather sinister look.”
Catherine’s lovers had cost the Russian treasury an estimated 92,820,000 rubles by this time, so while her beauty was no longer there, being her favorite certainly had its benefits.
While Potemkin had introduced many of the Empress’s lovers, Zubov came via one of Catherine’s confidantes, Anna Naryshkina. She was pushed to present Zubov by enemies of Potemkin, the Chenychevs, the Rumaiantsevs, and the Saltykovs. The twenty-two-year-old was an old favorite of Catherine as she had known him since he was eleven. When she looked at him, she fell in love. As she wrote to Potemkin, "I have come back to life like a fly that has been numbed by the cold."
Zubov, arguably the most handsome man ever to take the arm of the Empress, was, by all accounts, the most ambitious aside from Potemkin. As Count Andrauld de Langeron would write of him, "Every day, starting at eight o'clock in the morning, his antechamber was filled with ministers, courtiers, generals, petitioners, seekers of appointments or favors. Usually, they had to wait four or five hours before being admitted." Charles Masson went further when he described the situation with Zubov, "The old generals, the great men of the Empire, did not blush to ingratiate themselves with the least of his valets. Stretched out in an armchair in the most indecent, careless attire, with his little finger in his nose and his eyes fixed vaguely at the ceiling, this young man with his cold, vain face, scarcely deigned to pay attention to the people around him."
It is now July 24, 1791, and Grigory Potemkin has left Catherine at Tsarskoe Selo. He headed south to conduct negotiations with the Turks to end their latest hostilities. But by now, Grigory was a tired man, having taken care of Russia when Catherine was too busy with her latest lover. Moreover, Zubov was now the favorite of the Empress, and Potemkin was a tired man.
When he reached the town of Jassy, he began showing signs of malaria, which he had contracted in 1783 in Crimea. Potemkin's doctors begged him to stop and get treated using quinine, but he refused. Finally, on October 16, 1791, while riding in a carriage Grigory Potemkin, the most important man in Catherine the Great's life, told his driver, "This will be enough. There is no point in going on. Take me out of the carriage and put me down. I want to die in the field." A Persian rug was placed on the grass, and Potemkin laid down and died. On October 23, Catherine was told of his death. She cried out," Now I have no one left on whom I can rely. How can anybody replace Potemkin? Everything will be different now. He was a true nobleman."
With Potemkin’s death, Platon Zubov was now the most powerful man in Russia. Fyodor Rostopchin wrote to Semyon Vorontsov on August 20, 1795, "Count Zubov is everything here. There is no other will but his. His power is greater than that of Potemkin. He is as reckless and incapable as before, although the Empress keeps repeating that he is the greatest genius the history of Russia has known".
Zubov abused his power, and his secretaries would take bribes from people to gain access to their boss. Catherine was likely aware of the issues surrounding Zubov, but at her advanced age, she didn't care as long as he paid attention to her. When the Empress died on November 17, 1796, Zubov panicked as he knew that the incoming Emperor Paul intensely disliked him as Platon would ignore the prince.
Zubov went into hiding for ten days after Catherine’s death. The newly crowned Emperor Paul found him on day eleven, drank to his health, and wished him "as many years of prosperity as there are drops in this beaker". Paul had his revenge as Zubov was stripped of his estates, relieved of all his posts, and told to leave Russia.
Platon Zubov would travel throughout Europe, eventually marrying Thekla Walentinowicz. After he died in 1882, she would marry into the Shuvalov family, an old noble clan. Zubov's estates in Latvia would be merged into the Shuvalov’s, making them one of the wealthiest families in Russia.
Well, I hope you enjoyed today's extra-long episode. Join me next time when we talk about the historical relationship between Russia and Poland.
So, until next time, Dasvidania eh Spasiba Za Vinyamineya.