The jocular title of this entry refers to Peter’s daughter and Empress of Russia for two decades (1741-1761) Elizaveta Petrovna. While I am omitting from a separate consideration the daughter of Tsar Ivan V Empress Anna Ioannovna (who will surely be discussed here anyway), Empress Elizaveta Petrovna does deserve our "undivided title" attention, and, no matter what, she is an interesting figure in her own right.
The very first question to ask, regarding Elizaveta Petrovna, is why she had to wait fourteen years to become Russia’s Empress, when she was clearly mentioned in the will of her mother Catherine I as her choice of heir to the throne.
In a nutshell, Catherine’s will was forged at the time of her death by the all-powerful Alexander Menshikov for the following reason: He correctly assumed that the country would not support the daughter of Catherine I, a “Shvedka” foreigner, at that time considered illegitimate herself, and her daughters even more so. Peter’s son Peter Alexeevich by his first wife Eudokia Lopukhina, however, had been a legitimate child, even if his treason had been acknowledged and his violent death amply justified, which meant that Alexei’s son Peter’s status as Peter’s grandson was irreproachable. Moreover, Menshikov had a plan to marry Peter II to his own daughter Maria… Well, Menshikov was already a “semi-tsar,” in Pushkin’s words, and the court elite soon rebelled against his further advancement, had him arrested and exiled to Siberia with his family, by Peter II’s next powerful handler Prince Vasili Dolgorukov, who, in his turn, wanted to marry the young tsar to his niece Catherine, and nearly succeeded, when Peter II suddenly died of smallpox at the age of fourteen, in 1730.
His death spelled havoc at the Russian court, as the power struggle for influence raged anew and could only be resolved by a compromise. The compromise happened to be yet another issue of Tsar Ivan V, namely, his daughter Anna Ioannovna, Duchess of Courland. Unlike all other potential contenders to the Russian throne, Anna had no fan club at the Russian court, and having signed off on her German connections, she arrived at Saint Petersburg as a presumed patsy in a domestic free-for-all. But she turned out nothing of the kind.
Utterly incompetent as a ruler, she was however a mean-spirited and capricious woman, who never intended to keep her written promises and broke them all right away. Turning virtually all authentic Russian courtiers into miserable buffoons, or else, personae non gratae, she brought her own foreign crowd with her, and from then on relied exclusively on her German advisers and henchmen. Her reign was Russia’s nightmare, which was to teach the Russians a lesson on how not to choose their monarch.
Fortunately for the Russians, Anna Ioannovna did not last for more than one decade, but shortly before her death she adopted her eight-week-old German grand-nephew “Ivan Antonovich,” yet another descendant of Ivan V, and quickly proclaimed him the next Emperor of Russia Ivan VI, with Count Biron as Regent, with the rest of the German cabal well entrenched. This was, however, far too much for the Russian nobility, and thirteen months later, the baby Ivan VI was overthrown, and everybody of his entourage with him, and only now was Peter’s daughter from the “Shvedka,” Elizaveta Petrovna, allowed to make a comeback, but what a comeback was it, a coup d’état and all!Clever, but incurably lazy, she had no promise in her to make a good and capable Empress, but, sick and tired of the rule of foreigners, the Russians welcomed her with wide-open arms, as she was immediately loved and cherished not for her special talents, but merely for the fact that she was Peter’s daughter, and not a foreigner.
There is a funny discrepancy about the exact years of her two-decade reign. In the West, 1741-1762 are the commonly recognized years, whereas the Russians are more accustomed to the years 1741-1761, which is due to the discrepancy between the Western chronological style (Gregorian Calendar) and the Russian old style (Julian Calendar), which lasted until the Bolshevik Revolution and was updated to the European standards only as late as in 1918.
Among her doubtless accomplishments, aside from wrestling the power from the German clique and giving it back to the Russians, was her patronage of arts and sciences. She was instrumental behind Lomonosov’s establishment of Moscow University in 1755, and the founding by Count Ivan Shuvalov in Saint Petersburg, of the Academy of Arts in 1757. Her greatest accomplishment in the eyes of many, however, is that she had given a pledge to put a stop to executions in Russia, and kept it, by never signing a single death warrant, on her watch.
Dearly beloved that she was, she still could not escape the foreigner curse in Russia’s sovereign power, and, as early as in 1742 already, to eliminate the threat of the imprisoned baby Ivan VI (whom she categorically refused to do harm to, even at the expense of a huge political inconvenience) being brought back to power, she invited to Russia her fourteen-year-old nephew Karl Peter Ulrich of Holstein-Gottorp, son of Peter the Great’s daughter Anna Petrovna, and publicly anointed him as Russia's undisputed future Emperor Peter III.
The very first question to ask, regarding Elizaveta Petrovna, is why she had to wait fourteen years to become Russia’s Empress, when she was clearly mentioned in the will of her mother Catherine I as her choice of heir to the throne.
In a nutshell, Catherine’s will was forged at the time of her death by the all-powerful Alexander Menshikov for the following reason: He correctly assumed that the country would not support the daughter of Catherine I, a “Shvedka” foreigner, at that time considered illegitimate herself, and her daughters even more so. Peter’s son Peter Alexeevich by his first wife Eudokia Lopukhina, however, had been a legitimate child, even if his treason had been acknowledged and his violent death amply justified, which meant that Alexei’s son Peter’s status as Peter’s grandson was irreproachable. Moreover, Menshikov had a plan to marry Peter II to his own daughter Maria… Well, Menshikov was already a “semi-tsar,” in Pushkin’s words, and the court elite soon rebelled against his further advancement, had him arrested and exiled to Siberia with his family, by Peter II’s next powerful handler Prince Vasili Dolgorukov, who, in his turn, wanted to marry the young tsar to his niece Catherine, and nearly succeeded, when Peter II suddenly died of smallpox at the age of fourteen, in 1730.
His death spelled havoc at the Russian court, as the power struggle for influence raged anew and could only be resolved by a compromise. The compromise happened to be yet another issue of Tsar Ivan V, namely, his daughter Anna Ioannovna, Duchess of Courland. Unlike all other potential contenders to the Russian throne, Anna had no fan club at the Russian court, and having signed off on her German connections, she arrived at Saint Petersburg as a presumed patsy in a domestic free-for-all. But she turned out nothing of the kind.
Utterly incompetent as a ruler, she was however a mean-spirited and capricious woman, who never intended to keep her written promises and broke them all right away. Turning virtually all authentic Russian courtiers into miserable buffoons, or else, personae non gratae, she brought her own foreign crowd with her, and from then on relied exclusively on her German advisers and henchmen. Her reign was Russia’s nightmare, which was to teach the Russians a lesson on how not to choose their monarch.
Fortunately for the Russians, Anna Ioannovna did not last for more than one decade, but shortly before her death she adopted her eight-week-old German grand-nephew “Ivan Antonovich,” yet another descendant of Ivan V, and quickly proclaimed him the next Emperor of Russia Ivan VI, with Count Biron as Regent, with the rest of the German cabal well entrenched. This was, however, far too much for the Russian nobility, and thirteen months later, the baby Ivan VI was overthrown, and everybody of his entourage with him, and only now was Peter’s daughter from the “Shvedka,” Elizaveta Petrovna, allowed to make a comeback, but what a comeback was it, a coup d’état and all!Clever, but incurably lazy, she had no promise in her to make a good and capable Empress, but, sick and tired of the rule of foreigners, the Russians welcomed her with wide-open arms, as she was immediately loved and cherished not for her special talents, but merely for the fact that she was Peter’s daughter, and not a foreigner.
There is a funny discrepancy about the exact years of her two-decade reign. In the West, 1741-1762 are the commonly recognized years, whereas the Russians are more accustomed to the years 1741-1761, which is due to the discrepancy between the Western chronological style (Gregorian Calendar) and the Russian old style (Julian Calendar), which lasted until the Bolshevik Revolution and was updated to the European standards only as late as in 1918.
Among her doubtless accomplishments, aside from wrestling the power from the German clique and giving it back to the Russians, was her patronage of arts and sciences. She was instrumental behind Lomonosov’s establishment of Moscow University in 1755, and the founding by Count Ivan Shuvalov in Saint Petersburg, of the Academy of Arts in 1757. Her greatest accomplishment in the eyes of many, however, is that she had given a pledge to put a stop to executions in Russia, and kept it, by never signing a single death warrant, on her watch.
Dearly beloved that she was, she still could not escape the foreigner curse in Russia’s sovereign power, and, as early as in 1742 already, to eliminate the threat of the imprisoned baby Ivan VI (whom she categorically refused to do harm to, even at the expense of a huge political inconvenience) being brought back to power, she invited to Russia her fourteen-year-old nephew Karl Peter Ulrich of Holstein-Gottorp, son of Peter the Great’s daughter Anna Petrovna, and publicly anointed him as Russia's undisputed future Emperor Peter III.
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