Terrible Tsarinas

deliberations. Learning of the decision taken by the supreme ad-

visers, Bishop Feofan Prokopovich timidly recollected the will of

Catherine I according to which, after the death of Peter II, the

crown should revert to his aunt Elizabeth, as a daughter of Peter I

and of the late empress. Never mind that the child was born be-

fore the parents were married: her mother had transmitted to her

the blood of the Romanovs, he said, and nothing else counted

when the future of Holy Russia was concerned! Dmitri Golitsyn,

indignant at such a speech, shouted, “We will not have any bas-

tards!”1

Shocked by this attack, Feofan Prokopovich swallowed his

objections; the discussion moved on to a consideration of the

“practical conditions.” The enumeration of the limits to imperial

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The Surprise Accession of Anna Ivanovna

power ended with an oath to be sworn by the candidate: “If I do

not keep these commitments, I agree to forfeit my crown.” Ac-

cording to the charter envisaged by the supreme council, the new

empress would commit to work to expand the Orthodox faith,

not to marry, not to designate an heir and to work closely with

the Supreme Privy Council — whose assent would be required in

order to declare war, to conclude peace, to raise taxes, to interfere

in the affairs of the nobility, to fill key positions in the administra-

tion of the empire, to distribute lands, villages, and serfs, and to

monitor her personal expenditure of State funds.

This cascade of interdicts astounded the assembly. Wasn’t

the Council going too far? Weren’t they committing a crime of

lese-majesty? Those who feared that the powers of the future em-

press were being reduced without regard for tradition ran afoul of

those who were delighted to see this reinforcement of the role of

the real boyars in the conduct of Russian political affairs. The sec-

ond group very quickly drowned out the first. Even the bishop,

overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of the majority, kept his mouth

shut and ruminated over his fears, alone in a corner. Sure that

they had the entire country behind them, the Supreme Privy

Council charged Prince Vasily Lukich Dolgoruky, Prince Dmitri

Golitsyn and General Leontiev with bearing a message to Anna

Ivanovna, in her retirement at Mitau, specifying the conditions

under which she would accede to the throne.

Meanwhile, however, Elizabeth Petrovna was being kept

abreast of the discussions and the stipulations being bandied

about at the Supreme Council. Her doctor and confidant, Armand

Lestocq, warned her of the machinations going on in Moscow and

begged her “to take action.” But she refused to make the least ef-

fort to exercise her rights to the succession of Peter II. She had no

children and did not wish to have any. In her eyes, her nephew

Charles Peter Ulrich, the son of her sister Anna and Duke Charles

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Terrible Tsarinas

Frederick of Holstein, was the legitimate heir. But little Charles

Peter Ulrich’s mother had died, and the baby was only a few

months old. Drowning in sorrow, Elizabeth hesitated to look be-

yond this mourning. After a number of disappointing adventures,

broken engagements, evaporated hopes, she had taken a dislike to

the Russian court and preferred the isolation and even the bore-

dom of the countryside to the bustling din and superficial glitter

of the palaces.

While she reflected thus, with a melancholy mixed with bit-

terness, on an imperial future that no longer concerned her, the

emissaries of the Council were hastening to bring word to her

cousin Anna Ivanovna. She received them with a mocking be-

nevolence. In truth, her spies and the well-wishers that she still

had at the court had already informed her of the contents of the

letters which the delegation would bring her. Nevertheless, she

did not indicate in any way what her intentions might be; without

batting an eye, she read the list of rights that the guardians of the

regime dictated she should renounce, and said that she would

agree to it all. She did not even seem to mind being required to

break with her lover, Johann Bühren.

Misled by her dignified and docile air, the plenipotentiaries

never suspected that she had already made arrangements to have

her favorite join her, in Moscow or St. Petersburg, as soon as she

signaled to him that the road was clear. This possibility seemed

all the more likely since she was getting word from her partisans

in Russia that she had considerable support among the minor no-

bility. This group was eager to move against the upper aristocracy,

the verkhovniki as they were popularly called, which they accused

of encroaching on the powers of Her Majesty in order to increase

their own. Rumors were even circulating that in the event of any

conflict, the Imperial Guard, which had always defended the sa-

cred rights of the monarchy, would be disposed to intervene in

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The Surprise Accession of Anna Ivanovna

favor of the descendant of Peter the Great and Catherine I.