Terrible Tsarinas

of Holstein, with his exasperating ambitions, might be ignoring

his wife Anna’s warnings and might be overdoing things, in an

effort to destroy the modus vivendi that the Supreme Privy Council

had managed to impose upon the junior tsar and his close rela-

tives. In order to cut short Charles Frederick’s foolish dreams,

Menshikov took away from him (via an ukase that escaped Peter

II’s vigilance one evening during a drunken binge) the island of

Oesel, in the Gulf of Riga, which the couple had received as a

wedding present, and cut back the duke’s expense account. These

displays of pettiness were accompanied by so many minor vexa-

tions at the hand of Menshikov that the Duke and his wife were

annoyed for good and decided to leave the capital, where they

were treated like poor relations and intruders. Hugging her sister

before embarking with her husband for Kiel, with heart overflow-

ing, Anna was gripped by a disastrous presentiment. She confided

to her friends that she was very much afraid of Menshikov’s in-

trigues, on behalf of Elizabeth as well as Peter. She felt he was an

< 39 >

Terrible Tsarinas

implacable enemy of their family. Because of his giant size and his

broad shoulders, he was called the “proud Goliath,” and Anna be-

seeched Heaven that Peter II, a new David, should bring down the

monster of pride and spite that had such a hold on the empire.

After her sister departed for Holstein, Elizabeth tried at first

to forget her sorrows and her fears in a swirl of romance and in-

trigue. Peter assisted her in this distracting enterprise by invent-

ing new excuses for fooling around and intoxicating themselves

every day. He was only 14 years old, yet he felt the desires of a

man. To secure greater freedom of movement, Elizabeth and he

emigrated to the old imperial palace of Peterhof. For a moment,

they could believe that their secret vows were about to be ful-

filled; for Menshikov, although he enjoyed an iron constitution,

suddenly had a fainting spell and was spitting blood. He had to be

confined to bed. According to the echoes that reached Peterhof,

the doctors considered that the indisposition could be long last-

ing, if not fatal.

During this vacuum of power, the usual advisers met to com-

ment on current matters. In addition to the illness of His Most

Serene, another event of importance occurred meanwhile, and an

embarrassing one, at that. Peter the Great’s first wife, the Tsarina

Eudoxia, whom he had imprisoned in the convent at Suzdal and

then transferred to the fortress at Schlüsselburg, had suddenly

resurfaced. The emperor had repudiated her in order to marry

Catherine. An old woman, weak but still valiant after thirty years

of reclusion, Eudoxia was the mother of the Tsarevich Alexis who

had died under torture and the grandmother of Tsar Peter II who,

by the way, had never met her and did not see any need to do so.

Now that she was out of prison and Menshikov, her sworn enemy,

was tied to his bed, the other members of the Supreme Privy

Council thought that the grandson of this martyr, so worthy in

her effacement, should pay her a visit of homage. They considered

< 40 >

Machinations around the Throne

that to be even more advisable since the people saw Eudoxia as a

saint who had been sacrificed for reasons of State. There was only

one hitch, but it was a sizeable one: wouldn’t Menshikov be furi-

ous if they took such an initiative without consulting him? Spe-

cialists in public issues discussed the matter gravely. Some sug-

gested taking advantage of the young tsar’s upcoming coronation,

scheduled to take place in Moscow early in 1728, to set up a his-

toric meeting between the grandmother (embodying the past)

and the new tsar (embodying the future). Ostermann, Dolgoruky

and other characters of lesser stature were already addressing

messages of devotion to the old tsarina and requesting her sup-

port in future negotiations. But Eudoxia, immured in her prayers,

fasting and memories, ignored the courtiers’ agitation. She had

suffered too much already from the contaminated atmosphere of

the palaces to wish for any other reward than peace in the light of

the Lord.

While the grandmother was aspiring to eternal rest, the

grandson, his head on fire, was spinning out of control. But it was

not the illusion of grandeur that haunted him. Worlds away from

the legendary babushka, Elizabeth was leading him from one party

to another. Hunting meets alternated with impromptu picnics,

with a roll in the hay at some rustic cottage, with reveries in the

moonlight. A light perfume of incest spiced the pleasure Peter

took in caressing his young aunt. There’s nothing like guilt to

save lovemaking from the tedium of habit. If you play by the rules,

relations between a man and a woman quickly become as tire-

some as doing one’s duty. That conviction must have been what

encouraged Peter to throw himself into parallel experiments with

Ivan Dolgoruky. In thanks for the intimate satisfactions that Ivan