6 Two Empresses
With the restoration of autocracy, Anna came to the throne as Empress of Russia, and after a time she sent the leaders of the Golitsyn and Dolgorukii clans into exile. The ten years of Anna’s reign in the memory of the Russian nobility was a dark period of rule by Anna’s German favorites – particularly her chamberlain – Ernst-Johann Bühren (Biron to the Russians), who was allegedly all-powerful and indifferent to Russian interests. That memory was a considerable exaggeration. After a brief interlude, Empress Elizabeth, Peter the Great’s daughter and a capable and strong monarch succeeded her (1741–1761). Underneath all the drama at court, Russia’s new culture took shape, and Russia entered the age of the Enlightenment. In these decades we can also get a glimpse of Russian society that goes beyond descriptions of legal status into the web of human relations.
Politically Anna’s court was not a terribly pleasant place, though the story of “German domination” is largely a legend. Anna was personally close to Biron, who had served her well in Courland, where she had lived since the death of her husband the duke in 1711. She entrusted foreign policy to Count Andrei Ostermann and the army to Count Burkhard Christian Münnich, but the three were in no sense a clique. Indeed, they hated one another and made alliances with the more numerous Russian grandees in the court and in the government. The truth was that Anna relied on them and a few others and she did not consult with the elite as a whole. The Senate languished. Not surprisingly, Anna was terrified that there would be plots against her in favor of Elizabeth, Peter’s eldest surviving daughter, or other candidates for the throne, and she used the Secret Chancellery to try to uncover them. The darkest episode of the reign was the trial and execution of her minister Artemii Volynskii in 1740 on the charge of insulting the Empress. This was an excuse: the real reason for his death was Volynskii’s loss of favor with Biron and Ostermann and his own ambitious plans, which frightened Anna and many others in her entourage.
Anna’s reign was by no means a failure. She restored much of Peter’s work that had been rejected by the oligarchy in the time of Peter II. She returned the capital to St. Petersburg and abolished the Supreme Privy Council. She did not restore the Senate to power, ruling with a Cabinet of Ministers dominated by her favorites. Her government tried to reduce the burden on the country of the large military and naval establishment that Peter had created, but found that they could not. Instead, Russia fought a successful war in Poland to keep France from placing a king on the Polish throne who would be hostile to Russia and Austria – and then Russia went to war with Turkey. Münnich proved a highly capable commander, and Russia was able to return the fort at Azov that was lost in 1711.
Since Anna’s husband had died before they could produce children, she remained childless. In accord with Peter’s 1722 succession law she chose her heir, albeit on her deathbed: a two-month-old infant who was given the name Ivan VI. The baby’s connection with the Russian throne was remote. He was the grandson of Anna’s elder sister Catherine, who had married the Duke of Mecklenburg in 1716. Catherine’s daughter, also named Anna, in turn married the Duke of Brunswick-Bevern-Lüneburg, and Ivan was their first son. In other words, the tsar of Russia was actually a minor German prince with only the most tenuous connection to the country he was supposed to rule. The baby tsar obviously had to have a regent to rule for him, a fact that brought the conflicts among the grandees into the open. At first Biron was in charge, but Münnich quickly ousted him, only to fall victim to Ostermann and the infant tsar’s parents. Complicating matters was a Swedish declaration of war during the summer of 1741, an attempt by the Swedes to get revenge for their earlier defeats. Not surprisingly in this situation an elaborate plot came into being with all sorts of international ramifications (the French ambassador was one of the leaders) and in November 1741, the guards overthrew the regency and carried Elizabeth on their shoulders into the Winter Palace. Ivan VI and the Brunswick family were sent into exile in northern Russia, Ivan to perish in the Mirovich affair of 1764 and his family to be released only some twenty years later.
Elizabeth’s reign brought a renewed sense of normalcy to Russia. The remaining Golitsyns, Dolgorukiis, and alleged confederates of Volynskii were returned from exile, their lands and position restored. The Senate was restored to the position that it had under Peter. The Russian army defeated the Swedes, quickly ending the war in 1743. Elizabeth was intelligent and capable, but rather lazy and self-indulgent. The number of her dresses was legendary, and in a modest way she followed her father’s taste for banquets and drink. Secretly she married her lover, originally a Ukrainian choir-boy named Aleksei Razumovskii, who became a major figure at court. He was clever enough to not try to overshadow the others, and for most of the reign affairs were in the hands of the Shuvalovs, the brothers Peter and Alexander, and the chancellor (foreign minister) Aleksei Bestuzhev-Riumin. All of these men, like their rivals the Vorontsovs, came from families of ancient nobility but far from the great aristocracy, who now settled into secondary positions in government and diplomacy. Elizabeth’s grandees were relatively new men who owed their positions to Peter’s promotion of talented young men from outside the small circle of old aristocratic families. Bestuzhev-Riumin was an experienced diplomat, and the Shuvalovs had been part of Elizabeth’s personal entourage in the 1730s. Though they owed their rise to their personal connection with the new empress, they proved energetic and intelligent. They were the first since Peter’s time to systematically turn their attention to the economic development of Russia, primarily toward strengthening its commerce. In 1752 they convinced Elizabeth to abolish all internal tolls and modestly raise the tariff, so that trade would be freer but the state revenue would not suffer. Less happy was their scheme to increase revenue through the state vodka monopoly by raising the price. There were other ideas, the most important to produce a new law code, and the plan to secularize monastery lands, though neither were realized. They also introduced their young cousin Ivan Shuvalov to Elizabeth, and he became a major force in Russian culture.
Elizabeth’s decision to join Austria against Prussia in the Seven Years War (1756–1763) put any reform plans on the shelf. Russia’s army performed well against the supposed military genius of the age, Frederick the Great, and even briefly occupied Berlin in 1760. The death of the Empress on Christmas day 1761 in the Julian calendar, however, put an end to Russia’s participation in the conflict, and simultaneously set the stage for yet another drama.