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marshal and president of the War Department.
In this capacity he introduced important reforms
of the Russian army and also built the Russian
Black Sea Fleet. He organized Catherine's victo-
rious tour of New Russia and the Crimea in
1787, from which time comes the expression
“Potemkin village,” commonly associated with
him. In anticipation of her visit, Potemkin
ordered the erection of fake villages to make the
newly conquered area appear more populated
than it really was. During the second Russo-
Turkish war of Catherine's reign (1787-1792),
Potemkin acted as commander in chief of the
Russian forces. Potemkin died in October 1791
while traveling to begin peace negotiations with
Ottoman diplomats.
Potemkin Mutiny
(1905)
A naval mutiny that took place during the 1905
Revolution aboard one of the ships of the Black
Sea Fleet, the
Potemkin
Mutiny was later immor-
talized as the subject of Sergei
EISENSTEIN
's
groundbreaking film,
Battleship Potemkin
(1925).
Six months into the revolutionary events of
1905 and at the tail end of the unsuccessful
RUSSO
-
JAPANESE WAR
, radical sailors in the Black
Sea Fleet were planning a mutiny that would
strike across the entire fleet. The plan was to
capture the fleet's battleships with the hope of
sparking a major nationwide insurrection. On
June 14, 1905, the crew of the
Potemkin,
named
after Catherine the Great's favorite, Prince Grig-
orii
POTEMKIN
, protested living conditions aboard
the ship, especially the quality of the meat
served to them. When the officer staff overre-
acted and killed their spokesman, the sailors
mutinied, seized the ship, and sailed toward the
port of
ODESSA
, hoping to link up with workers
who had been on strike for several weeks. On
June 16, sailors went ashore and contributed to
the revolutionary ferment in the city by placing
their dead comrade's body at the foot of the city's
distinctive marble staircase. When thousands of
sympathizers gathered in support of the sailors,
the czarist authorities moved to end the distur-
bances, again overreacting by shooting into the
Prince Grigorii Aleksandrovich Potemkin
(Library of
Congress)
was rewarded with positions of power and, for
several years, the affections of the empress. In
1774 he was appointed viceroy of New Russia,
the steppe area north of the Black Sea and the
Sea of Azov, recently conquered from the
Ottoman Empire. He also became a count and
governor-general of Ukraine. The romance with
the empress lasted until 1776, but unlike her
other favorites, Potemkin continued to wield
power in various capacities. In 1783, he played a
crucial role in convincing the khan of the
Crimea to abdicate in Catherine's favor, thus
opening the way for the Russian annexation of
the Crimea, an object of Russian desire since the
16th century. For these efforts he was made a
prince and the following year promoted to field
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