Anna of Russia

Anna was born in Moscow as the daughter of Tsar Ivan V by his wife Praskovia Saltykova. Ivan V was co-ruler of Russia along with his younger half-brother Peter the Great, but he was mentally disabled and reportedly had limited capacity of administering the country effectively, and Peter effectively ruled alone. Ivan V died in February 1696, when Anna was only three years old, and her half-uncle became the sole ruler of Russia.

Although Anna was the fourth child of her parents, she had only one surviving elder sister, Catherine, and one younger sister, Praskovia. The three girls were raised in a disciplined and austere manner by their widowed mother, a stern lady of sterling character. Born into a family of relatively modest means, Praskovia Saltykova had been an exemplary wife to a mentally disabled man, and expected her daughters to live up to her own high standards of morality and virtue.[3] Anna grew up within a milieu which cherished womanly virtue and domesticity above all else, and placed strong emphasis on thrift, charity and religious observances.[4] Her education consisted of French, German, religious texts and folklore, leavened with some music and dancing.[5] As she grew older, she developed into an obstinate girl, with a mean streak, earning her the nickname "Iv-anna the Terrible".[6] Anna was famed for her big cheek, "which, as shown in her portraits", says Thomas Carlyle, "was comparable to a Westphalian ham".

In time, her uncle Peter the Great ordered the family to move from Moscow to St. Petersburg. This meant a change of not just location but also society, and this had a significant effect on Anna. She greatly enjoyed the splendour of court and the lavishness of high society, which was very different from the austerity preferred by her mother.[5]

In 1710, Peter the Great arranged for the 17-year-old Anna to marry Frederick William, Duke of Courland, who was about the same age as her.[7] Her wedding was held on a grand scale, as per her own inclinations, on 11 November 1710; and her uncle gave her a fabulous dowry of 200,000 roubles.[7] At the feast which followed the wedding, two dwarfs performed a parody by jumping out of enormous pies and dancing on the tables.[8]

The newly wedded couple spent several weeks in Russia before proceeding to Courland. Only twenty miles out of St. Petersburg, on the road to Courland, on 21 January 1711, Duke Frederick died. The cause of death was uncertain - it has been attributed variously to a chill or to the effects of alcohol.[8]

After her husband died, Anna proceeded to Mitau (now known as Jelgava), the capital of Courland (now western Latvia) and ruled that province for almost twenty years, from 1711 to 1730. During this period, the Russian resident, Count Peter Bestuzhev, was her adviser (and sometimes lover). She never remarried after the death of her husband, but her enemies said she conducted a love affair with Duke Ernst Johann von Biron, a prominent courtier, for many years.

Imperial monogram of Anna

In 1730, Tsar Peter II (grandson of Anna's uncle Peter the Great) died childless at a young age. His death rendered extinct the male line of the Romanov dynasty, which had ruled Russia for over a century, since 1613. There were four possible candidates for the throne: the three surviving daughters of Ivan V, namely Catherine (born 1691), Anna herself (born 1693) and Praskovya (born 1694), and the sole surviving daughter of Peter the Great, Elizabeth (born 1709).

Ivan V had been the older brother of Peter the Great and co-ruler with him, and by that reckoning, his daughters may be considered to have the prior claim. However, if seen from the perspective that the successor should be the nearest kin of the most recent monarch, then the daughters of Peter the Great were nearer to the throne, because they were the aunts of the recently deceased Tsar Peter II. The dilemma was made greater because the daughters of Peter the Great had been born out of wedlock, and had been legitimized later by him, after he formally married their mother Catherine I, who had previously been a maid in his household. On the other hand, Praskovia Saltykova, the wife of Ivan V, had been a nobleman's daughter and a devoted wife and mother; moreover, she had been a lady greatly respected for her many virtues, not least her chastity.

Coinage of Anna of Russia

Empress Anna abrogates the "Conditions"

Finally, the Russian Supreme Privy Council led by Prince Dmitri Golitzyn selected Anna, the second daughter of Ivan V, to be the new Empress of Russia. She was selected in preference to her elder sister Catherine even though Catherine was at that time resident in Russia whereas Anna was not. There were some reasons for this: Anna was a childless widow and there was no immediate danger of an unknown foreigner wielding power in Russia; she also had some experience of government, because she had been administering her late husband's duchy of Courland for almost two decades. Catherine, on the other hand, was married to the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. She was now separated from him and living in Russia, which was in itself disgraceful; and whether her husband was present or absent, his existence could raise problems at her very coronation. His intervention in government affairs at some later point could hardly be prevented, especially since Catherine had a daughter by him. In that event, since he was ruling prince of ancient lineage with years of experience, he would not be as amenable to the council's advice as a Russian princess. Also, the fact that Catherine had a daughter already would provide a certainty of succession which the nobles perhaps preferred not to have.

The Supreme Privy Council preferred the childless and widowed Duchess of Courland. They hoped that she would feel indebted to the nobles and remain a figurehead at best, and malleable at worst. To make sure of that, the Council convinced Anna to sign a declaration of "Conditions" to her accession, modeled after a Swedish precedent, which stated that Anna was to govern according to their counsel and was not permitted to declare war, call for peace, impose new taxes or spend the revenue of the state without their consent.[1] Without the consent of the council, she could not punish nobility without trial, make grants of estates or villages, appoint high officials, or promote anyone (foreign or Russian) to court office.[9]

The deliberations of the council were held even as Peter II lay dying of smallpox during the winter of 1729–30. The document of "Conditions" was presented to Anna in January, and she signed the same on 18 January 1730, which was just around the time of his death. The ceremony of endorsement was held at her capital, Mitau in Courland (now known as Jelgava), and she then proceeded to the Russian capital. On 20 February 1730, shortly after her arrival, Empress Anna exercised her prerogative to do away with her predecessor's Privy Council and dissolved that body. The Supreme Privy Council which had stipulated those onerous "Conditions" had been composed largely of the families of the princes Dolgorouki and Galitzin. Within a matter of days, another faction rose at court which was opposed to the domination of these two families. On 7 March 1730, a group of people belonging to this faction (numbering between 150 and 800 people, depending on the source) arrived at the palace and petitioned the empress to repudiate the "Conditions" and assume the autocracy of her predecessors.[1] Among those who urged Anna to do so was her elder sister Catherine. Anna duly repudiated the document of Conditions, and for good measure sent some of the framers of the document to the scaffold, and many others to Siberia.[1] She then assumed autocratic powers and ruled as an absolute monarch, in the same fashion as her predecessors. On the night that Anna tore up the Conditions, an aurora borealis appeared in the sky, making the horizon "appear in all blood" in the words of one contemporary, which was widely taken to be a dark omen of what Anna's reign would be like.[10]

In this 1878 painting by Valery Jacobi, the scared newlyweds Mikhail Golitsyn and Avdotya Buzheninova sit on the icy bed to the left; the jocular woman in golden dress is Empress Anna.

Strong-willed and eccentric, Anna was known for her cruelty and vulgar sense of humor.[10] She forced Prince Mikhail Alekseevich Golitsyn to become her court jester and had him married off to her unattractive Kalmyk maid Avdotya Buzheninova.[10] To celebrate the wedding, the Empress had an ice palace measuring thirty-three feet high and eighty feet long built together with icy beds, steps, chairs, windows and even logs of ice in a fireplace of ice.[10] Prince Golitsyn and his bride were placed in a cage atop an elephant and paraded through the streets to this structure, to spend their wedding night in the ice palace, despite it being an extremely cold night in the dead of winter. Empress Anna told the couple to make love and keep their bodies close if they did not wish to freeze to death.[10] Eventually, the couple survived when the maid traded a pearl necklace for a sheepskin coat from one of the guards. An enthusiastic hunter, Anna always kept a rifle by her window so she could blast away at birds at all hours of the day whenever she felt the urge to hunt.[11]

Cabinet Ministers of Empress Anna Ivanovna, painting by Valery Jacobi[lower-alpha 1]

Court jesters of Empress Anna Ivanovna; painting by Valery Jacobi

Anna continued to lavish architectural advances in St. Petersburg.[12] She completed a waterway that began construction under Peter the Great and called for seafaring ships to accompany this new canal and continue naval expansion.[13] Anna's lover Ernst Johann von Biron was a Baltic German and due to his influence Baltic Germans were favored with government offices, leading to the resentment of the ethnic Russian nobility, though the American historian Walter Moss cautioned that the popular image of the Bironovschina as one of total Baltic German domination of Russia is exaggerated.[11]

Ernst Johann Biron

After being widowed just weeks following her wedding, Anna never remarried. As empress of Russia, she enjoyed the power she held over all men and may have thought that marriage would undermine her power and position. Nevertheless, Anna's reign is often referred to as "The Age of Biron" (Bironovschina), after her German lover Ernst Johann Biron.[23] Historians concur that Biron not only had a strong influence on Anna's domestic and foreign policies, but also that at times he wielded power solely without reference to the Empress. Anna was attracted to Biron's personal charm and he proved to be a good companion to her, but his name became synonymous with cruelty and terror. In public perception these negative qualities became the hallmark of Anna's reign.[32]

As her health declined Anna declared her grandnephew, Ivan VI, as her successor and appointed Biron as regent. This was an attempt to secure the line of her father, Ivan V, and exclude the descendants of Peter the Great from inheriting the throne.[27] It was recorded that she had an ulcer on her kidneys,[33] and she continued having attacks of gout; as her condition worsened, her health began to fail.

Anna died on 17 October 1740 at the age of 47 from a kidney stone that made for a slow and painful death.[34] The tsaritsa's final words focused on Biron.[35] Ivan VI was only a two-month-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, legitimized daughter of Peter the Great, managed to gain the favor of the populace, locked Ivan VI in a dungeon, and exiled his mother. Anna was buried three months later on 15 January 1741, leaving behind uncertainty for the future of Russia.[36]

In the West, Anna's reign was traditionally viewed as a continuation of the transition from the old Muscovy ways to the European court envisioned by Peter the Great.[1] Her government, on the whole, was prudent, beneficial and even glorious; but it was undoubtedly severe and became at last universally unpopular.[27] Within Russia Anna's reign is often referred to as a "dark era".[2] The issue with her reign derives from her personality flaws. Even considering the need of Russian rulers to avoid displays of weakness, Anna's rule involved questionable actions towards her subjects. She was known to enjoy hunting animals from the palace windows and, on more than a few occasions, humiliated individuals with disabilities. The issues of serfdom, peasant and lower class slavery, taxation, dishonesty, and rule through constant fear persisted in Russia during her rule.[37] Her empire was described by Lefort, the Saxon minister, as being "comparable to a storm-threatened ship, manned by a pilot and crew who are all drunk or asleep. . . with no considerable future".[38] Anna's war with Turkey, economic issues, and conspiracy revolving around her accession all bring to light an ominous glow of the empress' reign.[39] She restored the court in St. Petersburg and brought Russia's political atmosphere back to where Peter the Great had intended,[40] and its grandeur was almost unmatched in Europe or Asia;[41] but such lavish court life was overshadowed by the thousands of men slaughtered in war.

• Bibliography of Russian history (1613–1917)
• Tsars of Russia family tree

• Baynes, T. S., ed. (1878), "Anna Ivanovna" , Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 2 (9th ed.), New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, p. 60
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Bain, Robert Nisbet (1911). "Anne, Empress of Russia". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 2 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 68–69.
• Curtiss, Mini (1974), A Forgotten Empress: Anna Ivanovna and Her Era., New York: Frederick Unga Publishing Company
• Lipski, Alexander (1950), "Some Aspects of Westernization during the Reign of Anna Ioannovna, 1730–1740", American Slavic and East European Review (1): 1–11
• Lipski, Alexander (1956), "A Re-Examination of the "Dark Era" of Anna Ioanovna", American Slavic and East European Review, 15 (4): 488, doi:10.2307/3001306, JSTOR 3001306
• Lipski, Alexander (1959), "Some Aspects of Russia's Westernization during the Reign of Anna Ioannovna, 1703–1740", American Slavic and East European Review, 18 (1): 2–5, doi:10.2307/3001041, JSTOR 3001041
• Longworth, Philip (1972), The Three Empresses: Catherine I, Anna and Elizabeth of Russia, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston
• Moss, Walter (1997), A History of Russia, vol. 1, Boston: McGraw-Hill
• Tucker, Spencer C. (2010), A Global Chronology of Conflict: From the Ancient World to the Modern Middle East, vol. 2, ABC-CLIO, p. 729

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Anna of Russia.

• Romanovs. The fourth film. Anna Ioannovna; Anna Leopoldovna; Elizabeth Petrovna on YouTube – Historical reconstruction "The Romanovs". StarMedia. Babich-Design(Russia, 2013)