the Council for the offer of the crown, she would prove malleable enough to accept restrictions on her power. In a signed document Anna agreed not to make any decisions on war or peace, taxes, promotions, deprivation of titles and property, remarrying, appointment of an heir, or spending of state revenues without approval of the Supreme Privy Council. The Council had in effect executed a coup d’etat. Real power had moved from the autocrat to the oligarchy in the Council.
As word began to spread about these conditions, lesser nobles began to form opposition against the Golitsyn and Dolgoruky conditions. These lesser nobles, dependent on the monarch for their positions, privileges, and material well-being, preferred the absolute power of a monarch, believed to be above petty personal interests, to what they considered to be the despotism of a small clique of aristocratic families.
Anna entered Moscow on February 15, 1730. Taking advantage of the opposition among the nobles and Imperial Guards to the limiting of her power, at an audience she tore up the document she had signed after accepting petitions asking her to reclaim her autocratic power. Some historians regard this as a lost opportunity for Russia to break from its autocratic past. They believe that the granting of legal rights to the nobility as a whole would have led to dramatic changes in the sociopolitical structure, thereby removing many obstacles created by the autocratic system to Russia’s further economic and political development.
In return for their support against the Council, these nobles pressed Anna for concessions and privileges that she eventually granted. She repealed the 1714 Law on Primogeniture, shortened military service, allowed entrance for nobles into the military at officer rank and gave them more control over their serfs. These moves represented the beginning of an upgrading of the Russian nobility’s status.
ANTHONY KHRAPOVITSKY, METROPOLITAN
Anna had little inclination for ruling, preferring gossip, trivia, and matchmaking. Her lover from Courland, Count Ernst-Johann Biron, exercised a decisive influence on her. The great resentment Russians felt towards him and the other foreigners Anna placed in key posts and to whom she granted much patronage became a leitmotiv of her reign. This resentment, which continued after her reign, had other roots as well. As Russian identity among the upper classes began to solidify, the influx of foreigners, whose expertise was regarded as important for modernization, came to be seen as an affront to Russian dignity. The damaged belief in Russian superiority, combined with the frequently bad behaviour of foreigners, added to the complexity of this problem.
Anna took several steps to consolidate her rule. She founded the powerful Izmailovsky Guards, whose head was a former lover. The intelligence service was reestablished, providing an effective mechanism for surveillance and control over society. Finally, in order to bypass the Supreme Privy Council, in 1731 Anna established a Cabinet of Ministers, which in reality governed the Empire. This was not a limitation on the autocratic power, since Anna willingly granted these powers to the Cabinet of Ministers and was able to take them back at will.
Anna’s foreign policy reinforced the general line set by Peter and thereby set the tone for Russian foreign policy for the rest of the century. With Austria she fought the War of Polish Succession (1733-1735) to prevent the resurgence of French influence in Poland and to promote the election of a pro-Russian king, thereby adding to the security of the Empire’s western borders. Continuing Russia’s push southward to the Black Sea, Anna with Austrian support declared war on the Ottoman Empire. The war ended in 1739 with the defeat of the Crimean khanate, Russia’s regaining of Azov, and the understanding that St. Petersburg would deal decisively with rivals on Russia’s Black Sea coast. Anna failed, however, to gain the right to maintain a Russian fleet in the Black Sea, a recurring issue in Imperial Russian history. The policy of working with Austria in regard to Poland and the Ottoman Empire was adopted by Catherine II. Anna died on October 7, 1740. See also: AUTOCRACY; CABINET OF MINISTERS, IMPERIAL; NATIONALISM IN TSARIST EMPIRE; PETER I; RUSSO-TURKISH WARS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dukes, Paul. (1982). The Making of Russian Absolutism 1613-1801. London: Longman. Kamenskii, Aleksandr. (1997). The Russian Empire in the Eighteenth Century, tr. David Griffiths. London: Sharpe. Lincoln, W. Bruce. (1981). The Romanovs: Autocrats of all the Russias. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Longworth, Phillip. (1972). The Three Empresses: Catherine I, Anna, and Elizabeth of Russia. London: Constable. Raleigh, Donald, ed. (1996). The Emperors and Empresses of Russia: Rediscovering the Romanovs. London: Sharpe.
(1863-1936), metropolitan of Kiev, theologian, church reformer, and leader of the Russian Orthodox Church in exile after the Russian revolution.
Through early study of Dostoyevsky and Slavophilism, Anthony became convinced that faith and philosophy were closely intertwined. His Psychological Data in Favor of Free Will and Moral Responsibility (1887) extended this earlier insight, established his reputation as a theologian, and inspired many young men to become monastic missionaries so as to combat the rebellious ideas current in society and to relieve human suffering.
To build the Kingdom of God in society, Anthony believed, the church must be free from dependence on the state (although he always remained a staunch monarchist in politics). In August 1917 he advanced his ideas on church reform at a council (sobor) of the Russian church. He argued that the church should be governed at the top by a patriarch and a council of bishops, a structure favored by many bishops in attendance. For a time it looked as if the council would elect Anthony as patriarch. In the first round of balloting, he was the most popular of the three finalists for the patriarchal office. However, the final selection by drawing lots resulted in the selection of Tikhon (Bellavin).
In the confused political and religious turmoil in Ukraine during the last months of German occupation (World War I), Anthony became metropolitan of Kiev. During the civil war, he supported the losing side and was forced to leave Russia for a life of exile, first in Constantinople, then at SremANTHONY VADKOVSKY, METROPOLITAN ski Karlovci in Yugoslavia. In 1920, as senior among the bishops who had left Russia, he took the lead in creating a Higher Church Administration and a Synod of the Russian Church in Constantinople. The next year, he convened a council in Yugoslavia that declared the new Synod as the central church authority in emigration, expressed its desire to see a restoration of monarchy in Russia, and proclaimed Anthony as “Vice Regent of the All-Russian Patriarch.” The new organization declared unconditional loyalty to Patriarch Tikhon, but came to fear that the patriarch was acting on behalf of the Communist government in Russia. In the two years following Patriarch Tikhon’s death in 1925, Anthony broke off relations with the Moscow patriarchate and declared the Synodal church in Yugoslavia to be the sole heir of the historic Orthodox church in Russia. His followers expected him to be elected patriarch of this fully autonomous church that claimed jurisdiction over the entire Russian diaspora. Such a claim caused a rupture in relations with Metropolitan Evlogy, whom Patriarch Tikhon had placed in charge of the Russian parishes in western Europe. Eventually, in 1931, the ecumenical patriarch Vasilios III intervened and permitted Evlogy to place the exarchate of the Russian church in western Europe under Constantinople’s jurisdiction. Anthony’s influence in the Orthodox emigration diminished thereafter. See also: RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH; TIKHON, PATRIARCH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Antic’, Oxana (1988). “The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad.” In Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twentieth Century, ed. Pedro Ramet. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
(1846-1912), metropolitan of St. Petersburg, moderate church reformer.
Anthony began his career at the Kazan Theological Academy as a scholar and editor of the academy’s widely read journal Orthodox Interlocutor (Pravoslavny sobesednik). His scholarly life ended abruptly with the sudden illness and death of his wife and two children. He became a monk, thereby contributing to the notable revival in the 1880s of the “learned monasticism” that had characterized the church hierarchy in Russia before the Great Reforms of the 1860s.
Anthony soon became rector of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy and bishop of Vyborg, vicar to the metropolitan of St. Petersburg. Some of Anthony’s favorite students at the academy subsequently became prominent churchmen: Sergei Stragorodsky, the future leader of the Russian church during the communist era, and Anthony Khrapovitsky, Sergei’s rival and leader of the Russian church in exile after 1920. While promoting monasticism, Anthony also sought to reform the monasteries, particularly those whose economic activities harmed the material welfare of the parish clergy. The parish clergy, he felt, must be accorded a more secure livelihood if
