The wealth of Prince Yusupov and the inheritance of Potemkin's nieces
Prince Nikolay Borisovich Yusupov, favourite of Catherine II and son of a governor of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, was so rich that he could not remember all his estates, which lay in almost every province of Russia. And when he was asked whether he owned land in such-and-such a district, he was obliged to consult a special register in a small notebook.
He was not, however, the most forgetful rich man of his day. His sister-in-law, Countess Branicka, inherited from her uncle and lover Grigory Potemkin a fortune so vast that she could not count it, and could only reckon that it must be somewhat more than 28 million. The Engelhardt sisters by birth, daughters of the Most Serene Prince's sister Marfa Alexandrovna, all of them Potemkin's mistresses, are said to have received on his death 18 million each in cash, to say nothing of real estate, enterprises, jewellery and other valuables. The youngest of these sisters, Tatyana Vasilyevna, became Yusupov's wife by her second marriage.
On the whole, Russia still has no better way of getting rich than to be mayor of Moscow, to inherit from a corrupt official, to be the favourite of a ruler or the mistress of an oligarch, unless it is all of these at once.
