grapes which he began to cultivate, will speak to you of Peter the Great.
After dinner you drive out for a visit - this is an
Let us go to the university - the first secular school was founded by Peter the Great.
You receive a rank - according to Peter the Great's Table of Ranks.
The rank gives me gentry status - Peter the Great so arranged it.
I must file a complaint - Peter the Great prescribed its form. It will be received - in front of Peter the Great's mirror of justice. It will be acted upon - on the basis of the General Reglament.
You decide to travel abroad - following the example of Peter the Great; you will be received well - Peter the Great placed Russia among the European states and began to instill respect for her; and so on, and so on, and so on.
XXI
RUSSIAN HISTORY FROM PETER THE GREAT TO CATHERINE THE GREAT: THE REIGNS OF CATHERINE I, 1725-27, PETER II, 1727-30, ANNE, 1730-40, IVAN VI, 1740-41, ELIZABETH, 1741-62, AND PETER III, 1762
The period between the death of Peter the Great and the accession of Catherine the Great, 1725 to 1762, has been considered by some historians as an era of shallowness, confusion, and decay, whereas others attribute to it much of Russia's spiritual growth and political advancement. The truth seems to lie on both sides. Rapid and violent changes, as under Peter, were discontinued, but slowly the process of Westernization went on, gaining in depth and leading to a better proportion between the ambitions and the actual potentialities of the country.
With the second quarter of the eighteenth century a new period of Russian social history begins.
RUSSIAN history from the death of Peter the Great to the accession of Catherine the Great has been comparatively neglected. Moreover, the treatments available turn out not infrequently to be superficial in nature and derisive in tone. Sandwiched between two celebrated reigns, this period - 'when lovers ruled Russia,' to quote one writer - offers little to impress, dazzle, or inspire. Rather it appears to be taken up with a continuous struggle of unfit candidates for the crown, with the constant rise and fall of their equally deplorable favorites, with court intrigues of every sort, with Biren's police terror, Elizabeth's absorption in French fashions, and Peter III's imbecility. Florinsky's description of the age, although verging on caricature, has its points. In the course of thirty-seven years Russia had, sardonic commentators remark, six autocrats: three women, a boy of twelve, an infant, and a mental weakling.
But the tragicomedy at the top should not be allowed to obscure important developments which affected the country at large. Westernization continued to spread to more people and broader areas of Russian life. Foreign relations followed the Petrine pattern, bringing Russia into an ever-closer relationship with other European powers. And the gentry made a successful bid to escape service and increase their advantages.
When the first emperor died without naming his successor, several candidates for the throne emerged. The dominant two were Peter, Alexis's son and Peter the Great's grandson, and Catherine, Peter the Great's second wife. The deceased sovereign's daughters, Anne and Elizabeth, and his nieces, daughters of his half-brother Tsar Ivan V, Catherine and Anne, appeared as more remote possibilities at the time, although before very long two of them were to rule Russia, while descendants of the other two also occupied the throne. Peter was the only direct male heir and thus the logical successor to his grandfather. He had the support of the old nobility, including several of their number prominent in the first emperor's reign, and probably the support of the masses. Catherine, who had been crowned empress in a special ceremony in 1724 - in the opinion of some, a clear indication of Peter the Great's intentions with regard to succession - possessed the backing of 'the new men,' such as Iaguzhinsky and especially Menshikov, who had risen with the reforms and dreaded everything connected with Peter's son Alexis and old Muscovy. The Preobrazhenskii and Semenovskii guard regiments decided the issue by demonstrating in favor of the empress. Opposition to her collapsed, and the dignitaries of the state proclaimed Catherine the sovereign of Russia, 'according to the desire of Peter the Great.' The guards, as we shall see, were subsequently to play a decisive role in determining who ruled Russia on more than one occasion.
Catherine's reign, during which Menshikov played the leading role in the government, lasted only two years and three months. The empress's most important act was probably the creation, in February 1726, of the Supreme Secret Council to deal with 'matters of exceptional significance.' The six members of the council, Menshikov and five others, became in effect constant advisers and in a sense associates of the monarch, a departure from Peter the Great's administrative organization and practice. Catherine I died in 1727, having appointed young Peter to succeed her and nominated as regent the Supreme Secret Council, to which Anne and Elizabeth, her daughters and the new ruler's aunts, were added.
Peter II, not yet twelve when he became emperor, fell into the hands of Menshikov, who even transferred the monarch from the palace to his residence and betrothed him to his daughter. But Peter II did not like Menshikov; he placed his confidence in young Prince Ivan Dolgoruky. The Dolgoruky family used this opportunity to have Menshikov arrested. The once all-powerful favorite and the closest assistant of Peter the Great died some two years later in exile in northern Siberia, and the Dolgorukys
replaced him at the court and in the government. Two members of that family sat in the Supreme Secret Council, and late in 1729 the engagement of Peter II to a princess Dolgorukaia was officially announced. But again the picture changed suddenly and drastically. Early in 1730, before the marriage could take place and when Peter II was not quite fifteen years old, he died of smallpox.
The young emperor had designated no successor. Moreover, with his death the male line of the Romanovs came to an end. In the disturbed and complicated deliberations which ensued, the advice of Prince Dmitrii Golitsyn to offer the throne to Anne, daughter of Ivan V and childless widow of the Duke of Courland, prevailed in the Supreme Secret Council and with other state dignitaries. Anne appeared to be weak and innocuous, and thus likely to leave power in the hands of the aristocratic clique. Moreover, the Supreme Secret Council, acting on its own, invited Anne to reign only under certain rigid and highly restrictive conditions. The would-be empress had to promise not to marry and not to appoint a successor. The Supreme Secret Council was to retain a membership of eight and to control state affairs: the new sovereign could not without its approval declare war or make peace, levy taxes or commit state funds, grant or confiscate estates, or appoint anyone to a rank higher than that of colonel. The guards as well as all other armed forces were to be under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Secret Council, not of the empress. These drastic conditions, which had no precedent in Russian history, stood poles apart from Peter the Great's view of the position and function of the monarch and his translation of this view into practice. But Anne, who had very little to lose, accepted the limitations, thus establishing constitutional rule in Russia.
Russian constitutionalism, however, proved to be extremely short-lived. Because the Supreme Secret Council had acted in its narrow and exclusive interest, tension ran high among the gentry. Some critics spoke and wrote of extending political advantages to the entire gentry, while others simply denounced the proceedings. Anne utilized a demonstration by the guards and other members of the gentry, shortly after her arrival, to tear up the conditions she had accepted, asserting that she had thought them to represent the desires of her subjects, whereas they turned out to be the stratagem of a selfish cabal. And she abolished the Supreme Secret Council. Autocracy came back into its own.
Empress Anne's ten-year reign left a bitter memory. Traditionally, it has been presented as a period of cruel
