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Issues of 2008
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The summer palace of empress Anna Ioannovna
Anna was the daughter of Ivan V of Russia, as well as the niece of Peter the Great. The latter married her to Frederick Willhelm, Duke of Courland in November 1710, but on the return trip from Saint Petersburg in January 1711 her husband died from surfeit. Anna continued ruling as Duchess of Courland (now western Latvia) from 1711 to 1730, with the Russian resident, Peter Bestuzhev, as her adviser. She never remarried after the death of her husband, but was reputed by her enemies to indulge in a love affair with Ernst Johann von Biron for many years.
On the death of Peter II, Emperor of Russia, the Russian Supreme Privy Council under Prince Dmitriy Galitzine made Anna Empress in 1730. They had hoped that she would feel indebted to the nobles for her unexpected fortune and remain a figurehead at best, and malleable at worst. In the hope of establishing a constitutional monarchy in Russia, they convinced her to sign articles that limited her power. However, these proved a minor inconvenience to her, and soon she established herself as an autocratic ruler, using her popularity with the imperial guards and lesser nobility. As one of her first acts to consolidate this power, she restored the security police, which she used to intimidate and terrorize those who opposed her and her policies. Although she did not move the capital back to Moscow, she spent most of her time at that city in the company of her foolish and ignorant maids. Finding delight in humiliating old nobility, she arranged the marriage of old Prince Galitzine, who had incurred her displeasure by marrying a Catholic, with one of her maids, an elderly Kalmyk, dressed them as clowns, and had them spend their wedding night naked in a specially constructed ice palace during the exceptionally harsh winter of 1739–1740. Having a distrust of Russian nobles, Anna kept them from powerful positions, instead giving those to Baltic Germans. She raised to the throne of Courland one Ernst Johann von Biron, who gained her particular favour and had considerable influence over her policies. His archrival, the anti-German cabinet minister Artemy Petrovich Volynsky, was executed several months before Anna’s death. Biren was sufficiently prudent not to meddle with foreign affairs or with the army, and these departments were in the able hands of two other foreigners, who thoroughly identified themselves with Russia, Andrey Osterman and Burkhardt MØnnich. They allied the country with Charles VI, (Holy Roman Emperor from 1711 to 1740), and committed Russia during the War of the Polish Succession (1733–1735). Afterwards, they made Augustus III the king of Poland at the expense of Stanislaw Leszczynski and other candidates. In 1736 Anna declared war on the Ottoman Empire, but Charles made a separate peace with the Porte, forcing Russia to follow suit and to give up all recently captured territories with the exception of Azov. This war marks the beginning of that systematic struggle on the part of Russia to drive to the South which was brought to fruition by Catherine II. Anna’s reign saw the beginnings of Russian territorial expansion into Central Asia.
Anna was famed for her big cheek, «which, as shown in her portraits», Carlyle says, «was comparable to a Westphalian ham». As her health declined, she declared her grand nephew, Ivan VI, should succeed her. This was an attempt to secure the line of her father, Ivan V, and exclude descendants of Peter the Great from inheriting the throne. Anna died at the age of 47 of kidney disease. Ivan VI was only a one-year-old baby at the time and his mother, Anna Leopoldovna, was detested for her German counsellors and relations. As a consequence, shortly after Anna’s death Elizabeth Petrovna, Peter I’s legitimized daughter, managed to gain favor of populace and exiled Anna while locking Ivan VI in a dungeon. Ernest John von Biron, Duke of Courland (3 December 1690 — 28 December 1772), duke of Courland, was the grandson of a groom in the service of Jacob Kettler, Duke of Courland, who bestowed upon him a small estate, which Biren’s father inherited and where Biren himself was born. He received what little education he had at the academy of KÃnigsberg, from which he was expelled for riotous conduct. In 1714 he set out to seek his fortune in Russia, and unsuccessfully solicited a place at the shabby court of the Princess Charlotte of Brunswick-LØneburg, the consort of the Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich. Returning to Mitau, he succeeded in gaining a footing at court there through one of his sisters, who was the fancy of the ruling minister, Peter Bestuzhev, whose established mistress was no less a person than the young duchess Anna Ivanovna. During his patron’s absence, Biren, a handsome, insinuating fellow, succeeded in supplanting him in the favour of Anna, and procuring the disgrace and banishment of Bestuzhev and his family. From henceforth to the end of her life Biren’s influence over the duchess was paramount. On the elevation of Anna to the Russian throne in 1730, Biren, who had in the meantime married a FrÄulein von Treiden, came to Moscow and received many honours and riches. At Anna’s coronation (19 May 1730) he became grand-chamberlain, a count of the Empire, on which occasion he is said to have adopted the arms of the French ducal house of Biron, and was presented with an estate at Wenden with 50,000 crowns a year. He soon made himself cordially detested by Russians of every class. He was not indeed the monster of iniquity he is popularly supposed to have been. His vices were rather of the sordid than of the satanic order. He had insinuating manners and could make himself very agreeable if he chose; but he was mean, treacherous, rapacious, suspicious and horribly vindictive. During the latter years of Anna’s reign, Biren increased enormously in power and riches. His apartments in the palace adjoined those of the empress, and his liveries, furnitures and equipages were scarcely less costly than hers.
Half the bribes intended for the Russian court passed through his coffers. He had landed estates everywhere. A special department of state looked after his brood mares and stallions. The magnificence of his plate astonished the French ambassador, and the diamonds of his duchess were the envy of princes. The climax of this wondrous elevation occurred when, on the extinction of the line of Kettler, the estates of Courland, in June 1737, elected Biren their reigning duke. He was almost as much loathed in Courland as in Russia; but the will of the empress was the law of the land, and large sums of money, smuggled into Courland in the shape of bills payable in Amsterdam to bearer, speedily convinced the electors. On her death-bed Anna, very unwillingly and only at his urgent entreaty, appointed him regent during the minority of the baby emperor, Ivan VI of Russia. Her commonsense told her that the only way she could save the man she loved from the vengeance of his enemies after her death was to facilitate in time his descent from his untenable position. Finally, on 26 October 1740, a so-called «positive declaration» signed by 194 dignitaries, in the name of the Russian nation, conferred the regency on Biren. Biren’s regency lasted exactly three weeks. At midnight on 19 November 1740 he was seized in his bedroom by his ancient rival, Field Marshal MØnnich. The commission appointed to try his case condemned him (11 April 1741) to death by quartering, but this sentence was commuted by the clemency of the new regent, Anna Leopoldovna, the mother of Ivan VI, to banishment for life at Pelym in Siberia. All Biren’s vast property was confiscated, including his diamonds, worth £600,000. For twenty-two years, the ex-regent disappeared from the high places of history. He re-emerged for a brief moment in 1762, when the philo-German Peter III of Russia summoned him to court. He was now too old to be in any one’s way, and that, no doubt, was the reason why Catherine II of Russia re-established him (1763) in his duchy, which he bequeathed to his son Peter. Misfortune had chastened him, and the last years of his rule were just and even benevolent, if somewhat autocratic. He died at Rastrelli’s palace in Mitau, his capital, on 28 December 1772. In 1745, it was ordered to transport the Summer palace of Empress Anna to Ekaterinhof; the building was relocated to the new site in 1748. As it is known, the Ekaterinhof palace went up in flames in 1926. However, according to some documents the wooden parts of the palace had been lost long before that. In 1779 the wings of the building were taken down, while the wooden parts were transported to Peterhof. Thus, most likely, the only interior pieces from the palace that survived up to nowadays are rare Chinese silk wallpapers that are currently kept at the Menshikov Palace and at the Palace of Peter I in the Summer gardens. The wallpapers date back to the early XVIIIth century; according to N.V. Kalyazina they were purchased in 1722 in China by ambassador Captain Izmailov. Researchers N.V. Kalyazina and M.L. Rudova believed that initially the wallpapers were meant for New summer house of Peter I (the Palace of Catherine I in the Summer gardens). However, most likely the researchers were mistaken, as the wallpapers were meant fro the wooden palace of Anna Ioannovna. The wallpapers were passed to the State Hermitage Museum and to the Summer gardens about 1948–1951 from the State Museum of Ethnography of the Soviet Union. In the acceptance certificate they were referred to as «Chinese wallpapers with painting on white silk on paper from the Ekaterinhof palace». There was an inscription in the back side of one of the wallpaper’s pieces: «Inventory of the Winter Palace No 810, from the walls of the hall No 10, the Ekaterinhof palace». Indeed, it is a miracle that unique panels and wallpapers escaped fires in the wooden palace of Empress Anna Ioannovna and returned to the Summer gardens after two centuries of oblivion.
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