In 1893, he graduated from the Tver gymnasium in 1893 and entered the History and Philology faculty of Imperial Moscow University.

Potemkin eventually graduated from the university in 1898 and obtained his professorship later on and became a teacher at the Moscow School of the Order of St Catherine.

He continued his underground activities by promoting Marxist literature on behalf of the Moscow Committee of Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (b).

[1] After the October Revolution, he worked in the field of public education in the Moscow Provincial Council, participated in the establishment of the first workers' university.

[1] From 1924 to 1929 he was in diplomatic work in Turkey, occupying the post of consul general in Istanbul from 1924 to 1926 and from 1927 to 1929 he was adviser to the Soviet embassy.

While in this position, Potemkin managed to establish friendly relations with Benito Mussolini, for which, according to the memoirs of M.V.

In 1937 he returned to work in Moscow, taking the post of First Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR.