Anna Ivanovna (1693 - 1740)
Anna Ivanovna (7 February 1693 - 28 October 1740) was the daughter of Tsar Ivan V, the mentally disabled half-brother of Peter The Great, and of Praskovia Saltykova. She grew up with her sisters Catherine and Praskovia in the wooden palace of Izmailovo, a dark structure outside Moscow. Besides filling the place with singing birds in cages, Praskovia made the palace into a human zoo with dwarfs and jesters, the monstrously deformed and the weak of mind. By Praskovia's orders Anna was to be raised for the nunnery, thus she grew up confined to a royal cult of domesticity which dulled the wits and suppressed the personality. As the result of Peter I's order to move to St Petersburg, a new element was introduced into the princesses' upbringing. Now tutors were appointed to teach Anna and her sisters French and German and to instruct them in dancing. However, there was constant bickering interspersed with the flaming rows and Anna seems to have developed a spiteful streak, taking after her mother to a sufficient extent to justify the nickname she was given - 'Ivan the Terrible'.
From the age of thirteen, Anna was a minor figure at Tsar Peter's court. She went to the weddings of his friends in Moscow dressed in the German fashion and attended the royal banquets. Praskovia hated the inconvenience of St Petersburg, the wretched functions she had to attend and the contemptible commoners she was expected to consort with. But for Anna it was a great adventure; she enjoyed her status and the respect the society paid her. And she was already trying to attract the admiration of young men. In 1709, Peter found a match for her - Frederick William Kettler, Duke of Courland, a nephew of the king of Prussia. Anna was almost the last to hear about the arrangement, but the news must have pleased her well enough. They met in August 1710; Anna was seventeen and Frederick only a few months older. The marriage took place on 31 October in St Petersburg. Peter came to fetch her in the morning; her mother, her two sisters and a bevy of royal aunts, all dressed in Western fashion, followed them onto the royal barge. The ceremony took place in the grounds of Alexander Menshikov's residence, as yet the grandest in St Petersburg. After the ceremony followed a fireworks display and a splendid ball which ended at three in the morning, whereupon Praskovia conducted Anna to the bridal chamber. After an interval Peter led in the groom and so the couple were brought to bed.
They stayed on in St Petersburg until after the New Year, then took the road to Mitau. But they have covered barely twenty miles when the duke was taken ill and died. The cause of death was uncertain - attributed to a chill or to the effects of alcohol. Anna returned to St Petersburg, to her mother's stifling embrace. After five years of widowhood, in March 1716, in sour and apprehensive mood, Anna arrived in Mitau, where life became inexpressibly dull. Her freedom there was only nominal and she felt her condition to be quite demeaning. She had to turn to Peter Bestuzhev, attached to her court in order to overlook Courland's policies and affairs, for the payment of every debt or apply to him before she purchased any luxury. The tsar vetted every item of her accounts, even counted the barrels of beer in her cellar.
Anna Ivanovna (1693-1740),
daughter of Tsar Ivan V and
Praskovia Saltykova
Anna became convinced that her staff was riddled with spies and informers, ready to report her every move to her mother or Tsar Peter. Of all of them only Bestuzhev seemed genuinely concerned to improve her material welfare. She came to depend on him, to trust him, to see him as a father figure - and for this reason her mother disliked the man. She was allowed back to St Petersburg for the winter of 1717-1718 and tried desperately to avoid returning to Mitau, embarking on a campaign to ingratiate herself with Catherine. She did everything to win her sympathy and took particular care to exaggerate the charms and abilities of the little son she doted on. But it was to no avail and in March 1718 she was sent back to Courland. To add to her troubles, her mother began to suspect that she was having an affair with Bestuzhev. As it turned out later, Praskovia's suspicions seem to have been founded on malicious rumour rather than the fact. But with her life in ruins and her prospect to marry again dim, a despairing Anna did form a liaison with a man of even lower rank than Bestuzhev.
Ernst Johann von Biron (1690-1772)
Maurice de Saxe, Count of Saxony (1696-1750)
Born as Ernst Johann von Biron in Kalnciems, Semigallia, he was the grandson of a groom in the service of Jacob Kettler, Duke of Courland. He received an education at the academy of Konigsberg, from which he was expelled for riotous conduct. In 1714 he set out to seek his fortune in Russia, however unsuccessfully solicited a place at the royal court of Charlotte of Brunswick-Luneburg, the consort of Tsarevich Alexey Petrovich. Returning to Mitau, he succeeded in gaining a footing at the court there through one of his sisters, who was the fancy of the ruling minister, Peter Bestuzhev.
Anna first noticed him when he brought her some papers to sign. The sight of a new face in the court was an event for Anna these days and his was not a displeasing one. At twenty-seven, Ernst Biron was a good deal younger and more personable than Bestuzhev. In the months that followed, his polished manners and his rather coarse good looks were not the only qualities Anna discovered in him. He was charming and an excellent companion. She could not share his interest in cards play, but she was persuaded to share his passion for horses and she allowed him to teach her how to ride. Her interest in life began to increase and in time their friendship began to blossom into love.
Suddenly, at thirty-three, Anna had the prospect of a husband. Though she had fine blue eyes and well-kept hands the bloom of youth had long since disappeared. Her figure had grown thick and her reputation for sullennness and melancholy had made her a laughing stock throughout the minor courts of Europe. She would have been content with any man prepared to marry her and now she had a suitor of the most glittering reputation - Maurice de Saxe, Count of Saxony. He was born at Goslar, an illegitimate son of Augustus II The Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, and Maria Aurora of Konigsmarck. He bore a strong resemblance to his royal father, both physically and in character. His grasp was so powerful that he could bend a horseshoe with his hand and even at the end of his life, his energy and endurance were scarcely affected by the illnesses his excesses had caused. In 1725, Maurice entered the negotiations for election as Duke of Courland, at the insistence of Anna, who also offered him her hand.
They met in the spring of 1726 and Anna was quite overwhelmed. True, she did pretend to a certain reluctance at first but was soon convinced that he was passionately in love with her. However, the Russian government had decided that Maurice would be unacceptable to them and when Anna heard that Alexander Menshikov had arrived to Riga to supervise the defense of the Baltic lands, she immediately set out to see him. Since her uncle Peter died the year before, Menshikov seemed to be the most powerful influence on the Russian policy and she hoped to persuade him to change the official line on Maurice. She could not have known that Menshikov wanted to become Duke of Courland himself. However, soon the Russian government forced him to drop his candidature and, in August 1727, Russian troops marched into Mitau and Maurice himself was persuaded to give up and leave.
In June 1727, Bestuzhev had been recalled by Menshikov and Biron took his place as her chamberlain. He was married now to Anna's lady-in-waiting Benigna Gottlieb von Trotta Treyden - a haughty and bad-tempered woman, marked with smallpox, who spent great amounts of money on clothes and jewelry and also received many gifts from Anna. The marriage was reportedly arranged by Anna in an attempt to conceal her own relationship with Biron. The Birons had three children and Anna indulged them as if they had been her own - indeed there were some who thought they were. What is certain is that Biron's influence over her seemed to increase considerably from about this time.
Anna Ivanovna, Empress of Russia in 1730-1740, was crowned on 28 April 1730
On the death of Emperor Peter II in Janaury 1730, the Supreme Privy Council under Dmitry Golitsyn made Anna an empress. He drew up a Conditions which Anna was forced to sign at Mittau on 18 January 1730, giving substantial power to the Supreme Privy Council, before being permitted to proceed to St Petersburg. The Conditions stated she was to govern according to their counsel and was not permitted to declare war, sign treaties, impose new taxes, appoint officers to high ranks, deprive and grant estates and use of public revenues without their consent. On 10 February, Anna was welcomed to a village four miles outside Moscow, where she was to stay until preparations had been made for her official entry into the city.
Meanwhile, a separate party rose against the families of the Dolgorukys and Golitsyns, petitioning the empress to assume the autocracy of her predecessors. Upon her entry to Mosocw on 20 February 1730, Anna revoked her approval of the Conditions and dissolved the Supreme Privy Council. The council members were removed from government and exiled or repressed, paving the way for Anna to become an absolute monarch. While Dolgorukys and Golitsyns fell, others rose to prominence. Anna's relatives Vasily and Semen Saltykovs received important posts; Alexis Mikhailovich Cherkassky and others who helped Anna remove the restrictions to her power received appropriate rewards and new faces, including that of Ernst Biron, appeared at the court. At Anna's coronation, Biron became Count of the Holy Roman Empire, on which occasion he is said to have adopted the arms of the French ducal house of Biron and was presented with an estate at Wenden. Born in Bochum, Westphalia, Andrey Osterman was also made a count. His unique knowledge of foreign affairs made him indispensable to the empress and her counsellors, and even as to home affairs his advice was almost invariably followed. He could be as servile and ingratiating as any Russian; knew how to avoid commitment in time of crisis, rarely looked another man straight in the eye and could deliver his opinions with such delicate shades of double meaning as always to leave people with the impression that they had got their way. The empress kept the old Gavril Ivanovich Golovkin as her Chancellor - probably at Osterman's own suggestion for he sensed that the growing number of foreigners with whom Anna surrounded herself would rouse popular resentment.
Biron became the most powerful man at the court and Osterman took care to keep on good terms with him. They were reputed not to like each other, but as unpopular foreigners they recognised the value of a certain solidarity. However powerful and influential they might be, they still felt vulnerable and it was this that led them to persuade Anna to move her court from Moscow to St Petersburg in Janaury 1732. The city was less than half the size of Moscow, but more and more stone structures were rising up, government offices were worthily housed now in handsome buildings and Domenico Trezzini's great church of Saints Peter and Paul was almost finished, its graceful spire, awaiting its final sheath of gold. Ignoring the Winter Palace, Empress Anna on her return took up residence at the neighbouring Apraksin Palace. She commissioned Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli to completely rebuild and extend it.
Burkhard Christoph von Munnich (1683-1767)
Anna Ivanovna, Empress of Russia in 1730-1740
Anna Leopoldovna (1718-1746),
daughter of Charles Leopold,
Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and
Catherine Ivanonva
In September 1732, Anna went to see another wonder - the newly finished Ladoga Canal which her uncle Peter The Great had begun fifteen years before. She enjoyed the outing and particularly the company of the man who had supervised the completion of the work - Burkhard Christoph von Munnich. Manly and charming, he was some fifty years of age with a long narrow face, a sensous mouth, an eagle nose and shrewd, determined eyes. In 1727 Munnich was appointed Governor of St Petersburg while the court was temporarily transferred to Moscow by Peter II. He had been steadily promoted and now, with Biron's favour, he had become Field Marshal and Minister of War. It was he who had introduced German uniforms to Anna's army and now he was Prussianizing its drill and discipline.
Started by Peter The Great, Anna continued to fund the Academy of Science. The point of this school was to further the sciences in Russia and to help bring the country that was so far behind up to where the Western countries were. It was also responsible for a lot of the expeditions. The Bering Sea Expedition is one of the more famous ones that was done by the Academy of Science. The Academy was very small, never exceeding a population of twelve students in the university and barely over a hundred in the secondary school. But still it was a huge step forward for general education in Russia. Many of the teachers and professors were imported from Germany and some of the students to learn from these German professors later became advisors or teachers to some of the future leaders.
The years at Mitau had left scars and having been spied on herself, Anna now developed a rather sinister passion for spying on others. She had private correspondance opened every time she suspected that the contents might amuse her. She ordered watches to be kept on anyone connected with the court, whose morals she suspected, and had them banished to monasteries and nunneries when their offences against her code were not serious enough to merit stronger punishment. No small gossip was beneath her attention and she stored it all away for future reference, for use in quite malicious interference in the lives of people for whom she had conceived a dislike. The Secret Office of Investigation was resurrected during Anna's reign to punish those for political crimes mostly, but sometimes they would take cases that were not as political. The punishments that came from the crimes that were committed were often very painful and disgusting: some people that had supposedly been plotting against the government had their noses slit as well as being beaten with the knout. Returning to the coarse and cruel amusements Anna had known in her youth she collected a whole cohort of clowns for her private use, all of them of noble origins. Only one of them, Ivan Balakirev, had any professional experience. He was the son of a poor landowner and a dwarf. He had entertained Peter The Great until he had been drafted into the army for his involvement in the schemes of Willem Mons. Anna had rescued him, though Balakirev was soon to wonder if he had not been happier in the army than at the court.
Anna's concern for her own immediate family, however, was innocent enough. Her only surviving relatives now were her sister Catherine, who had given her full support during the accession crisis, and Catherine's daughter, called Elizabeth Catherine Christine von Mecklenburg-Schwerin. In 1733 she was converted to Russian Orthodox faith and given the name of Anna Leopoldovna, which made her acceptable now as an heir to the Russian throne. She was about fifteen years old when the empress set out to find her a husband. Foreign envoys rushed to offer their suggestions and the choice eventually fell on Austria's candidate, the fourteen years old Anton Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, who arrived in St Petersburg on 6 March 1733. He was short, blond, humble and in all rather unimpressive, however, he was very well received. As for his prospective bride, she was an introspective, serious and rather bashful girl. However, she seemed too young for marriage and Anna, remembering the unhappy marriage arranged for her sister, decided that her niece should not be rushed. There was time, she concluded, for the two to become better acquainted and perhaps in time to form a genuine affection for each other.
On 19 May 1733 the court moved to the Summer Palace. The same day the empress wrote to Governor of Moscow giving him another list of people whose correspondence should be seized or who were to be placed under the house arrest. However within a month her plans were interrupted when her sister Catherine died. Too upset to attend the funeral, Anna left at once for Peterhof. The pain faded slowly, but Peterhof was a very comforting place.
Anna had begun her reign with some sense of her obligations as an empress and had come only gradually to neglect affairs and sink into the morass of luxury. It took five years for the full extent of her corruption to become evident, yet it was not the product of power alone. She had been kept poor and now she spent as none of her predeccessors had spent; she had once been made to crawl before others and now she made others crawl to her. Her own suffering earlier had lessened her sensitivity to the suffering of others and her sadistic streak found a new vent now in a taste for others' degrardations. She had her professional clowns and jesters at the court and she also treated ordinary courtiers as clowns. Nikita Volkonsky was appointed Keeper of Anna's favourite dog, a greyhound, and made to feed it at appointed hours with jugs of cream. Mikhail Golitsyn was stationed outside her door, ready to rush in whenever the empress called with a flagon of kvas. Nor did their wives escape: Volkonsky's spouse was given charge of Anna's white rabbit and a full scale witch hunt was launched against Golitsyn's wife whom he had been forced to leave in Moscow. The unfortunate woman was eventually hounded to an untimely death, but there seemed to be no end to the degradation heaped on her husband and his fellows.
Jesters of Empress Anna by Valery Jacobi (1872)
During Empress Anna's reign, Russia became involved in two major conflicts, the War of the Polish Succession and the Turkish wars. In the former, Russia worked with Austria to support Augustus II's son, Augustus III, against the candidacy of Stanislaw Leszczynski, who was dependent on the French and amiable with Sweden and Turkey. Russia's involvement with the conflict was quickly over, however, and the 1736-1739 Crimean War was much more important. On 20 May 1736, the Russian army under the command of Field Marshal Munnich took by storm the Turkish fortifications at Perekop and occupied Bakhchisaray on 17 June, penetrating into the Crimea peninsula. However, lack of supplies coupled with the outbreak of an epidemic forced Munnich to retreat to Ukraine. On 19 June 1736, the army under the command of Peter von Lacy seized the fortress of Azov. In July 1737, Munnich's army took by storm the Turkish fortress of Ochakov. Lacy's army marched into the Crimea the same month and captured Karasubazar. However, Lacy and his troops had to leave the Crimea due to lack of supplies. On 17 August 1739, Munnich won the Battle of Stavuchany, took Khotyn two days later and established himself firmly in Moldavia. Due to military losses of Austria and worsening of the relationship with Sweden, the Russian Empire had to sign the Treaty of Niš on 3 October 1739.
The Russian-Turkish War was the result of the Russian effort to gain Azov and Crimea as a first step towards dominating the Black Sea. The Habsburgs entered the war in 1737 on the Russian side, but was forced to make peace with Ottoman Empire at the separate Treaty of Belgrade, surrendering Northern Serbia, Northern Bosnia and Oltenia, and allowing the Turks to resist the Russian push toward Constantinople. This peace treaty compelled Russia to accept the peace at Niš, forcing them to give up their claim to Crimea and Moldavia, but allowing them to build a port at Azov, though without fortifications and without the right to have a fleet in the Black Sea.
Ernst Johann von Biron (1690-1772)
Anna Ivanovna, Empress of Russia in 1730-1740
Empress Anna's reign is often referred to as Bironovschina, after her lover Ernst Johann von Biron, who not only had a strong influence on her domestic and foreign policies, but he reigned solely at times. Soon Biron's name became synonymous with cruelty, terror and evil, ensuring Anna's reign with a dark mark. During the last years of Anna's reign, Biron increased enormously in power and riches. Half the bribes intended for the Russian court passed through his coffers and he had landed estates everywhere. The climax of his rule occurred when, on the extinction of the line of Kettler, the estates of Courland, in June 1737, elected Biron their reigning duke. He was almost as unpopular in Courland as in Russia, but the empress' will was the law of the land and large sums of money speedily convinced the electors.
Meanwhile, the arrangements for the marriage of Anna's niece had gone ahead. While her future husband was fighting in the Russian-Turkish wars, Anna Leopoldovna fell in love with Count Carl Moritz zu Lynar, the handsome Saxon ambassador. In 1735, her aunt learnt of their love affair and asked the Saxon government to recall Lynar, who was sent home in 1736 and the empress kept a closer watch on her niece. Distraught at being parted from her lover, Anna Leopoldovna became withdrawn and unsociable, spending all her days reading French and German novels. When Biron attempted to marry her to his own son Peter, a drunken boor, Anna rejected this offer with unconcealed horror. In June 1739, the empress finally came to an agreement with the Austrian ambassador, who formally asked Anna for her niece's hand on behalf of Duke Anton Ulrich. The couple were married in St Petersburg on 3 July 1739, in the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin, on the site of the future Kazan Cathedral. It reported that the groom looked 'like a human sacrifice', while the bride's eyes were red from crying.
On 12 August 1740 Anna Leopoldovna gave birth to a boy; the empress was present at the delivery and as soon as the child was born, she had it taken to her own apartments and entrusted to the care of Duchess of Courland. The new heir to the throne was called Ivan after Anna's father - Tsar Ivan V, and she doted on the child, spent hours cooing over him, watched the nurses feed and swaddle it, smiled at its every gurgle, fretted over every cry. But if Anna was happy, Biron was sunk in gloom: he had been hoping somehow to link his own children with the imperial family and with the birth of a direct male descendant of Tsar Ivan V that prospect became even more remote than it had been before. Biron shut himself up in his apartments for several days and refused to see anyone.
Early in October 1740, Anna had just finished dinner in the Birons' apartments where she suddenly fainted. They put her to her bed and sent for the doctors who diagnosed another attack of gout from which she had been suffering of late. However, the trouble soon seemed to be more serious than that and they decided it must be gallstones or kidney ulcers. There were more fainting fits, then serious vomiting, finally she began to spit blood.
The empress had not yet issued instructions about the succession and the nobles at the court and government made hasty calculations as to which allegiance would bring the best prospects of personal advancement. Biron quickly handed Anna the neccessary papers, she signed it and it was published next day, proclaiming Ivan VI. The question of Regency remained open, but by 11 October Anna felt much better and there seemed to be no urgent need to answer it. However, Biron was letting no chance to slip and set out collecting the signatures to a petition calling for him to be declared Regent. Anna would not admit that she was as dangerously ill as her advisers imagined her to be, so she saw no need for an immediate decision, but on 15 October she suffered a relapse and the terrible truth dawned on her at last. Realizing that she could procrastinate no longer, on 16 October she signed the petition. Next day the final agony began and by late evening she was dead.
Biron, however, had made himself an object of detestation to the Russian people. After he threatened to exile Anna Leopoldovna and her spouse to Germany, she had little difficulty working with Field Marshal Munich and Andrey Osterman to overthrow him. The coup succeeded and Anna Leopoldovna assumed Regency on 8 November 1740, taking the title of Grand Duchess. On 11 April 1741, the special commission appointed to try Biron's case condemned him to death by quartering, but this sentence was commuted to banishment for life at Pelym in Siberia.
Anna returned Carl Moritz zu Lynar to St Petersburg, where he was given a position at the court. Uninterested in affairs of state, she left the government of the country to Andrey Osterman, while she spent her time in bed or playing cards. She knew little of the character of the people with whom she had to deal, knew even less of the conventions and politics of Russian government and speedily quarrelled with her supporters. All this set the scene for another palace coup. Although Anna was warned of a plot against her, she did not attach any importance to the information and she paid the price on the night of 25 November 1741, when Elizabeth Petrovna burst into her bedroom with the officers of the guard and rudely awoke her niece. The new regime first imprisoned the family in the fortress of Dunamunde near Riga and then exiled them to Kholmogory on the Northern Dvina River.
Four months before Elizabeth's coup, Anna had given birth to a daughter called Catherine; she was followed by Elizabeth in 1742, Peter in 1745 and Alexis in 1746. Nine days after, on 19 March 1746, Anna died at the age of twenty-seven in Kholmogory. Her family lived under close guard in Kholmogory, in a house surrounded by a high fence. Although the children were not provided with any tutors, they had learnt to read and write by themselves. They grew up into kind, modest people haunted by a series of misfortunes. During her mother's arrest, Catherine was knocked to the ground, leaving her deaf and with a stutter. Elizabeth, who most closely resembled their mother, fell down a staircase at the age of ten and often suffered from the migraines, particularly during bad weather. A childhood injury left Peter hunchbacked and crooked on one side. Alexis was the luckiest, though he too had to spend most of his life in prison.
Ivan VI with lady-in-waiting Julia Mengden
Ivan VI was murdered in Shlisselburg on 16 July 1764, while Duke Anton Ulrich petitioned Catherine The Great in 1768, asking to be allowed to emigrate with his family. He did not receive any answer and, after spending over thirty years in captivity, he went blind and died on 4 May 1774. The former regent's husband was secretly buried in an unmarked grave in the courtyard of their house in Kholmogory. The remaining four children were released from prison into the custody of their aunt, Queen Dowager of Denmark, Juliana Maria of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, on 30 June 1780 and settled in Jutland, where they lived under the house arrest in Horsens. But the Danish queen did not wish to see her Russian relatives, who were mistreated by their Danish servants. The three youngest children of Anna Leopoldovna died in quick succession - Elizabeth in 1782, Alexis in 1787 and Peter in 1789. They were each given a Russian Orthodox funeral in the local Lutheran chapel. Catherine lived the longest and, when Alexander I inherited the throne in 1801, she wrote to him, asking to be allowed to return to Russia and enter a convent. She received no reply and died in Denmark in 1807.