Three Empresses of Russia

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33241, 2 June 1973, Page 10

Three Empresses of Russia

The Three Empresses. By Philip Longworth. Constable. 229 pp. Bibliography, Index.

Lord Acton’s aphorism about the corrupting nature of power is fully illustrated in this short study of the three women who successively ruled Russia between 1725 and 1762. They were Catherine I, wife of Peter the Great; Anne, Duchess of Courland. daughter of the Tsar Ivan V; and Elizabeth I, the elder of the two surviving children of Peter and Catherine’s numerous family. In between their reigns two legitimate male claimants to the throne made their brief appearance on the stage of Russian history. These were Peter Alexei, the young grandson (by his first wife) of Peter the Great, who was to die of smallpox at the age of 15, while under the regency of his step-mother, Anne, and the equally ill-fated Ivan VI, grandson of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, who was spirited away at the age of five by the adherents of Elizabeth I and spent the rest of his life under duresse.

Each of the three Empresses owed her elevation to palace intrigues, the instigators of which hoped (with some truth) that the women would be mere figureheads, delegating all significant powers to their male advisers. This indeed came to pass, but not in the manner expected by the plotters, for all three in turn invested the principal power to men of their own choosing, and each in her turn gained her throne by enlisting the help and protection of the army. The most attractive character of this trio of Empresses was the peasant-born servant girl, Catherine I, who in 1703, attracted the notice of the Tsar, being at the time the mistress of one of Peter the Great’s favourities, Alexander Menshikov. It was not long before the Emperor sent for her, and installed her in his palace at Moscow, beginning a 20-year partnership which only ended in his death. Catherine, indeed, became the constant and faithful companion of this eccentric and unpredictable monarch, bearing him several children, soothing his uncontrollable rages, and through her intercession, saving many victims of the Tsar’s displeasure from torture and death. So great became his dependence on her that not long before his death in 1724 he created her his Empress.

A coup organised by Alexander Menshikov and backed by the army placed the peasant girl on the throne of her husband to the exclusion of his eight-year-old heir (who, however, on her death reigned under a regency until four years later). It was only during the two years of life left to her that Catherine evinced a moral deterioration which would inevitably kill her. She kept as much as possible out of politics (the real power being vested in her old friend, Menshikov), but, as the State’s official head suffered in spirit from the constant bickerings of her rival ministers.

Always a prodigious feeder, Catherine now became a glutton, grew enormously fat, took heavily to drink and kept such unpredictable hours, somethimes turning night into day, that

she could only have had a hopelessly confused conception of the progress of time. She died of these excesses in May, 1727, and after the interlude of Peter Il’s reign a powerful caucus of nobles decided in favour of Peter the Great’s half-niece, Anne, Duchess of Courland, to succeed him. Anne very shortly repudiated her sponsors and with the backing of the army installed a regime in which she was not a mere figurehead.

Always a disagreeable woman. Anne as Duchess of Courland had had a frustrated and unhappy life, her husband dying within a few months of her marriage, and her desperate search for a new spouse was frustrated by the fact that she was a very ineligible princess. Accordingly, she had taken for a lover an ambitious German-born adventurer, Ernest Biren (later Biron), who on her accession became the most powerful (and one of the most hated) men in Russia. Always extravagant, and embittered by the sterile years in Courland, Anne embarked upon a spending spree, building vast new palaces and surrounding herself with costlv splendour, an example ouickly followed by the richer of her subjects, to the mounting distress of the only tax-payers—the unfortunate peasantry. Anne’s patronage of the arts was. however, a redeeming feature, for during her reign both opera and ballet began to flourish. A vain, ruthlessly selfish woman, her death in 1736 caused no national grief. After the successful disposal of the young Ivan it now became the turn of Catherine and Peter’s elder daughter. Elizabeth, to occupy the throne of her father. Her claim was fairly well based, for Catherine I had nominated her daughter as her successor, a fact ignored by Anne’s supporters. Elizabeth differed from her two predecessors in that she was beautiful, pleasure loving, and extremely amorous. Her lovers were manv—most of them humbly born, and, luckily for the country, not politically ambitious—and she herself was as compassionate as her mother before her. The death sentences passed on those who plotted against her. were always commuted by the Empress at the last moment, to banishment. Like her two predecessors, she was not interested in affairs of state, preferring to pursue a life of costly amusement which ran down the national exchequer at an alarming rate and caused the first real rumblings of revolt in her longsuffering subjects. Age and unlimited power exaggerated her failings, and on Elizabeth’s death in 1761 the stage was set for her successor—Catherine the Great, who quickly disposed of her husband, the Tsar Peter 111 (Elizabeth’s unattractive nephew) and reigned in his stead. She it was who was to make Russia a force to be reckoned with in European politics though being, herself, a woman of ruthless ambition, unappeasable sexual appetites and abominable cruelty. The author has consulted at least 70 sources for his material, and has brilliantly condensed within the compass of a short book the innumerable ramifications of eighteenth century politics as they applied to Russia. Tha sufferings of the common people offered up to the whims and vagaries of a trio of politically irresponsible women, backed by a self-interested oligarchy, are underlined throughout, and the illustrations give evidence of the reckless extravagance shown by lavish entertainments and enormous buildings which were the status symbols of the leading figures of the era.