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Biography
Rising to great political influence while a lover of Catherine the Great, Potemkin remained one of the most powerful men in the empire long after he and the empress ended their affair. A man of the military, he served as Commander in Chief and Governor General of "New Russia," the southern Ukraine. In these roles he introduced military reforms and was the architect for several attempts to expand the Russian borders, including the conquest of Crimea. But not all of his ventures were successful. Potemkin's plan to colonize the Ukraine was abandoned at the midway point when the costs grew too great. His attempt to hide this fact from the visiting empress by erecting structures that, from a distance, appeared to be villages gave rise to the term "Potemkin village"--any facade constructed to hide the actual shabby condition of something.
He was made a prince of the Holy Roman Empire by Joseph II of Austria, and Catherine the Great made him Prince of Tauris. In 1791, at the close of the Second Turkish War, he died while fulfilling the empress' wish that he act as chief diplomat in peace negotiations.