Terrible Tsarinas

strosities. Nothing was funnier to her than the spectacles per-

formed 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 re-

move the veneer of propriety and impose on the court a life of un-

precedented luxury and chaos. Nothing struck her as too beauti-

ful 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 Rus-

sian 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 Bühren.

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 Loewen-

wolde brothers, Baron von Brevern, the Generals Rodolph von

Bismarck and Christoph von Manstein, and Field Marshal

Burkhard von Münnich. A four-man cabinet replaced the Su-

preme Privy Council and Ostermann, in spite of his ambiguous

past, still served as Prime Minister; but it was Ernst Johann

Bühren, 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 cham-

bers for a good thrashing, Bühren did not even need to ask Anna

< 78 >

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 in-

stances, that she left him such a free hand — or was it simply be-

cause she was too lazy to oppose him? The people who had to

deal with Bühren 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 posi-

tion 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 Bühren was introducing into their fatherland that irritated

them more each day. Admittedly, Anna Ivanovna had always spo-

ken and written German better than Russian, but since Bühren

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

< 79 >

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 fiancée 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, Bühren 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 Bühren was proclaimed, as he demanded, Duke of Cour-

land. He intended to run this Russian province by remote control,

from St. Petersburg. Moreover, Charles VI, emperor of Germany,