Terrible Tsarinas strosities. Nothing was funnier to her than the spectacles performed by buffoons and dwarves. The uglier and stupider they were, the more she applauded their jokes and antics. After 19 years of provincial mediocrity and obscurity, she wanted to remove the veneer of propriety and impose on the court a life of unprecedented luxury and chaos. Nothing struck her as too beautiful nor too expensive - when it came to satisfying the whims of the sovereign.
However, this Russia that accident had given her to rule was not, strictly speaking, her fatherland. And she hardly saw the need to make it her own. Certainly, she had some good old Russian families in her pocket including, among the most devoted, old Gabriel Golovkin, the Trubestkoy princes and Ivan Baryatinsky, Paul Yaguzhinsky (that famous hot-head), and the impulsive Alexis Cherkassky, whom she made her chancellor. But the reins were in the hands of the Germans. The empire’s policies were set by a team composed entirely of men of Germanic origin, taking orders from the terrible Buhren.
The old boyars, so proud of their genealogy, were swept from center stage when Her Majesty and her favorite came into power.
Coming from backgrounds in the civil administration as well as the military, the new bigshots of the regime included the Loewenwolde brothers, Baron von Brevern, the Generals Rodolph von Bismarck and Christoph von Manstein, and Field Marshal Burkhard von Munnich. A four-man cabinet replaced the Supreme Privy Council and Ostermann, in spite of his ambiguous past, still served as Prime Minister; but it was Ernst Johann Buhren, the Empress’s favorite, who chaired the meetings and made the final decisions.
Impervious to the concept of pity, never hesitating to send a troublemaker to the dungeon, to Siberia or to the torture chambers for a good thrashing, Buhren did not even need to ask Anna
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The Extravagant Anna Ivanovna’s opinion before dictating these punishments, for he knew in advance that she would approve them. Was if because she actually had the same opinion as her lover, in so many instances, that she left him such a free hand - or was it simply because s he was too lazy to oppose him? The people who had to deal with Buhren unanimously commented on the hardness of his face, which seemed to be carved from stone, and the look in his eye - like a bird of prey. One word from him could make all of Russia happy or desperate. His mistress did nothing more than lend her imprimatur to all that he did. And, like her, he was avid for luxury, and he took full advantage of his almost-kingly position to accept bribes right and left. He expected payment for the least service rendered.
His contemporaries found his cupidity to exceed even that of Menshikov, but it was not this systematic misappropriation that bothered them most. The preceding reigns had accustomed them to greasing the wheels. No, it was the excessive Germanization that Buhren was introducing into their fatherland that irritated them more each day. Admittedly, Anna Ivanovna had always spoken and written German better than Russian, but since Buhren took over the highest level in the hierarchy, it seemed that in fact the entire State apparatus had changed. If someone of Russian stock had been committing these crimes, thefts, and abuses or granting favors the way this arrogant parvenu was doing, Her Majesty’s subjects would have found it easier to swallow. But the fact that these liberties were taken or tolerated by a foreigner made them seem twice as bad to the victims. Boiling with rage over the conduct of this tyrant who was not even one of their own, the Russians invented a word for the regime of terror that he imposed on them - behind his back, they talked about the “Bironovschina”1 as is it were a killer epidemic that was plaguing the country. Records of illicit payments exist that prove this
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Terrible Tsarinas name was justified.
For daring to stand up to the tsarina and her favorite, Prince Ivan Dolgoruky was drawn and quartered; his two uncles, Sergei and Ivan, were decapitated, and another member of the family, Vasily Lukich, a former participant in the Supreme Privy Council, met the same fate, while Catherine Dolgoruky, former fiancee of Peter, was shut away in a convent for life.
While eliminating his former rivals and those who might be tempted to take over where they had left off, Buhren worked to add to his personal titles, which he felt should keep pace with his increasing wealth. When Duke Ferdinand of Courland died on April 23, 1737, he sent Russian regiments under the command of General Bismarck2 to Mitau, “to intimidate” the Courland Diet and encourage it to elect him, disregarding any other candidate that might exist. Over the protests of the Teutonic Order, Ernst Johann Buhren was proclaimed, as he demanded, Duke of Courland. He intended to run this Russian province by remote control, from St. Petersburg. Moreover, Charles VI, emperor of Germany, gave him the title of count of the Holy Empire; and he managed to have himself designated a knight of St. Alexander and St. Alexis.
There was no honor or princely prerogative to which he did not lay claim. Anyone in Russia who wanted to get ahead, in any endeavor whatsoever, had to go through him.
Courtiers have always regarded it as an honor and a privilege to be admitted to the ruler’s private rooms. Now, stepping into the Empress’s bedroom, visitors would find Her Majesty still in her nightgown, with the inevitable Buhren lying at her side. Protocol required that the new arrival, even if he was a high-ranking official, kiss the hand that the sovereign held out to him above the bedcovers. To secure the good graces of her lover, as well, some took the opportunity to kiss his hand with same respectful air.
And there were even some flatterers who extended the standards
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The Extravagant Anna of etiquette to the point of kissing Her Majesty’s bare foot. And it has been alleged that, deep in the recesses of the imperial apartments, one Alexis Miliutin, a simple coal shoveler (istopnik) who, tending the stove in Anna Ivanovna’s room every morning, felt compelled to devoutly brush the tsarina’s and her companion’s feet with his lips. In reward for this daily homage, the istopnik was given a nobleman’s title. However, to preserve a trace of his modest origins, he was constrained use fireplace tools as the blazon on his coat of arms.3 On Sundays, Anna Ivanovna’s six favorite clowns had orders to line up outside the great dining room at the end of the dinner that was attended by all the members of the court. When the Empress and her retinue walked out, on their way back to church, the buffoons would squat side by side, imitating hens laying eggs and making comical noises. To make things even funnier, they had their faces smeared with coal and were ordered to roughhouse, and to scratch and fight until they drew blood. At the sight of these capers, the inspirer of the game and her faithful followers howled with laughter. And Her Majesty’s buffoons were too well paid to complain.
The descendants of the great families, including Alexis Petrovich Apraxin, Nikita Fyodorovich Volkonsky and even Mikhail Alexeyevich Golitsyn joined in. The tone was set by the professional jester, Balakirev, but whenever he was slow to come up with new tricks, the Empress would have him beaten to revive his inspiration. Then there was the violonist Peter Mira Pedrillo, who would scratch at his squeaky fiddle while prancing around like a monkey; and D’Acosta, the Jewish Portuguese polyglot who would egg on his accomplices by whipping them. The poor poet Trediakovsky, having composed an erotic and burlesque poem, was invited to read it before Her Majesty. He describes this literary event in a letter: “I had the pleasure of reading my verses be«81»