During the spring of 1774, with the Turkish war continuing and the Pugachev rebellion still unresolved, Potemkin was given additional assignments. Catherine ordered that all papers and correspondence regarding the rebellion be addressed to him. Soon, his days were occupied with drafting documents, writing letters, and helping her think through the decisions she had to make. She consulted him about everything from important state affairs to trivial personal matters. He was now correcting her Russian spelling, grammar, and style, not only in official documents but in personal letters: “If there are no mistakes,” she wrote to him, “please return the letter and I will seal it. If there are some, kindly correct them. If you want to make any changes, write them out.… Either the ukase and the letter are perfectly clear, or else I am stupid today.” Meanwhile, outside the palace, Potemkin was dealing with military, financial, and administrative questions at the College of War. He involved himself in decisions on strategy, establishing recruiting quotas, designing soldiers’ uniforms, purchasing horses for the army, and drawing up lists of candidates for military honors and decorations. He attended meetings of the Imperial Council, where, increasingly, he began to challenge the arguments and decisions of his older colleagues.
Catherine was impressed and pleased by his efforts, but she complained that they were taking too much of his time. She was not seeing him enough. “This is really too much!” she protested. “Even at nine o’clock I cannot find you alone. I came to your apartment and found a crowd of people who were walking about, coughing, and making a lot of noise. Yet I had come solely to tell you that I love you excessively.” Another time, she wrote, “It is a hundred years since I saw you. I do not care what you do, but please arrange that there should be nobody with you when I come. Otherwise, this day will be unbearable; it is sad enough as it is.”
Despite love, war, and rebellion, theology and church matters still absorbed Potemkin. He would leave an important political or military meeting to take part in a theological discussion. Any cleric, eminent or obscure, Russian Orthodox, Old Believer, Catholic priest, or Jewish rabbi, was received. He liked to surround himself with new and interesting people and never missed a chance of talking to men and women who had traveled; he stored away what they told him. His relations with foreign diplomats were less close because he felt that it was important to remain on good terms with Panin. At the same time, he was not completely uninvolved. On the anniversary of Catherine’s accession to the throne, the diplomatic corps was entertained at a lavish supper at Peterhof. Potemkin, not Panin, was the host.
His first opportunity to reveal his talent for grand-scale showmanship came at the beginning of 1775, when Catherine celebrated the end of the Turkish war. It was Potemkin who persuaded her to stage these celebrations in Moscow, Russia’s ancient capital and the heart of the empire, and he became the producer and master of ceremonies of parades, fireworks, illuminations, balls, and banquets. It was in this role that Potemkin had a serious altercation with Nikita Panin. Catherine had given Potemkin instructions regarding honors for the war heroes of the Russian army, and Nikita Panin believed that his brother, General Peter Panin, was to receive insufficient recognition. Potemkin was forced to admit that the empress herself had made the decision and that he was carrying it out. The argument soon moved on to Potemkin’s increasingly frequent incursions into Panin’s traditional domain, foreign affairs. Panin was annoyed that at meetings of the council, Potemkin had questioned, and sometimes contradicted, his opinions. When a report arrived concerning disturbances in Persia, and Potemkin suggested that it might be in Russia’s interest to encourage these disturbances, Panin declared that he would never be a party to such a policy. Potemkin rose and walked out of the room.
There was one foreign policy decision Catherine made at this time in which Potemkin played no part. In the summer of 1775, King George III of England requested the loan—the rental, actually—of Russian troops to fight in America against his rebellious colonial subjects. London’s first instruction on this matter came on June 30, 1775, from the Earl of Suffolk at the Foreign Office to Sir Robert Gunning, the British ambassador:
