Terrible Tsarinas: Five Russian Women in Power (10 page)

However, this Russia that accident had given her to rule was not, strictly speaking, her fatherland. And she hardly saw the need to make it her own. Certainly, she had some good old Russian families in her pocket including, among the most devoted, old Gabriel Golovkin, the Trubestkoy princes and Ivan Baryatinsky, Paul Yaguzhinsky (that famous hot-head), and the impulsive Alexis Cherkassky, whom she made her chancellor. But the reins were in the hands of the Germans. The empire’s policies were set by a team composed entirely of men of Germanic origin, taking orders from the terrible Bühren.

The old boyars, so proud of their genealogy, were swept from center stage when Her Majesty and her favorite came into power. Coming from backgrounds in the civil administration as well as the military, the new bigshots of the regime included the Loewenwolde brothers, Baron von Brevern, the Generals Rodolph von Bismarck and Christoph von Manstein, and Field Marshal Burkhard von Münnich. A four-man cabinet replaced the Supreme Privy Council and Ostermann, in spite of his ambiguous past, still served as Prime Minister; but it was Ernst Johann Bühren, the Empress’s favorite, who chaired the meetings and made the final decisions.

Impervious to the concept of pity, never hesitating to send a troublemaker to the dungeon, to Siberia or to the torture chambers for a good thrashing, Bühren did not even need to ask Anna Ivanovna’s opinion before dictating these punishments, for he knew in advance that she would approve them. Was if because she actually had the same opinion as her lover, in so many instances, that she left him such a free hand - or was it simply because s he was too lazy to oppose him? The people who had to deal with Bühren unanimously commented on the hardness of his face, which seemed to be carved from stone, and the look in his eye - like a bird of prey. One word from him could make all of Russia happy or desperate. His mistress did nothing more than lend her imprimatur to all that he did. And, like her, he was avid for luxury, and he took full advantage of his almost-kingly position to accept bribes right and left. He expected payment for the least service rendered.

His contemporaries found his cupidity to exceed even that of Menshikov, but it was not this systematic misappropriation that bothered them most. The preceding reigns had accustomed them to greasing the wheels. No, it was the excessive Germanization that Bühren was introducing into their fatherland that irritated them more each day. Admittedly, Anna Ivanovna had always spoken and written German better than Russian, but since Bühren took over the highest level in the hierarchy, it seemed that in fact the entire State apparatus had changed. If someone of Russian stock had been committing these crimes, thefts, and abuses or granting favors the way this arrogant parvenu was doing, Her Majesty’s subjects would have found it easier to swallow. But the fact that these liberties were taken or tolerated by a foreigner made them seem twice as bad to the victims. Boiling with rage over the conduct of this tyrant who was not even one of their own, the Russians invented a word for the regime of terror that he imposed on them - behind his back, they talked about the “Bironovschina”1 as is it were a killer epidemic that was plaguing the country. Records of illicit payments exist that prove this name was justified.

For daring to stand up to the tsarina and her favorite, Prince Ivan Dolgoruky was drawn and quartered; his two uncles, Sergei and Ivan, were decapitated, and another member of the family, Vasily Lukich, a former participant in the Supreme Privy Council, met the same fate, while Catherine Dolgoruky, former fiancée of Peter, was shut away in a convent for life.

While eliminating his former rivals and those who might be tempted to take over where they had left off, Bühren worked to add to his personal titles, which he felt should keep pace with his increasing wealth. When Duke Ferdinand of Courland died on April 23, 1737, he sent Russian regiments under the command of General Bismarck2 to Mitau, “to intimidate” the Courland Diet and encourage it to elect him, disregarding any other candidate that might exist. Over the protests of the Teutonic Order, Ernst Johann Bühren was proclaimed, as he demanded, Duke of Courland. He intended to run this Russian province by remote control, from St. Petersburg. Moreover, Charles VI, emperor of Germany, gave him the title of count of the Holy Empire; and he managed to have himself designated a knight of St. Alexander and St. Alexis. There was no honor or princely prerogative to which he did not lay claim. Anyone in Russia who wanted to get ahead, in any endeavor whatsoever, had to go through him.

Courtiers have always regarded it as an honor and a privilege to be admitted to the ruler’s private rooms. Now, stepping into the Empress’s bedroom, visitors would find Her Majesty still in her nightgown, with the inevitable Bühren lying at her side. Protocol required that the new arrival, even if he was a high-ranking official, kiss the hand that the sovereign held out to him above the bedcovers. To secure the good graces of her lover, as well, some took the opportunity to kiss his hand with same respectful air.

And there were even some flatterers who extended the standards of etiquette to the point of kissing Her Majesty’s bare foot. And it has been alleged that, deep in the recesses of the imperial apartments, one Alexis Miliutin, a simple coal shoveler (
istopnik
) who, tending the stove in Anna Ivanovna’s room every morning, felt compelled to devoutly brush the tsarina’s and her companion’s feet with his lips. In reward for this daily homage, the
istopnik
was given a nobleman’s title. However, to preserve a trace of his modest origins, he was constrained use fireplace tools as the blazon on his coat of arms.3 On Sundays, Anna Ivanovna’s six favorite clowns had orders to line up outside the great dining room at the end of the dinner that was attended by all the members of the court. When the Empress and her retinue walked out, on their way back to church, the buffoons would squat side by side, imitating hens laying eggs and making comical noises. To make things even funnier, they had their faces smeared with coal and were ordered to roughhouse, and to scratch and fight until they drew blood. At the sight of these capers, the inspirer of the game and her faithful followers howled with laughter. And Her Majesty’s buffoons were too well paid to complain.

The descendants of the great families, including Alexis Petrovich Apraxin, Nikita Fyodorovich Volkonsky and even Mikhail Alexeyevich Golitsyn joined in. The tone was set by the professional jester, Balakirev, but whenever he was slow to come up with new tricks, the Empress would have him beaten to revive his inspiration. Then there was the violonist Peter Mira Pedrillo, who would scratch at his squeaky fiddle while prancing around like a monkey; and D’Acosta, the Jewish Portuguese polyglot who would egg on his accomplices by whipping them. The poor poet Trediakovsky, having composed an erotic and burlesque poem, was invited to read it before Her Majesty. He describes this literary event in a letter: “I had the pleasure of reading my verses before Her Imperial Majesty and, after the reading, I had the distinguished favor of receiving a gracious slap from Her Imperial Majesty’s own hand.”4 However, the mainstays of the comic troop around Balakirev were the freaks and dwarves of both genders; they were known by their nicknames: Beznozhka (the woman with no legs), Gorbushka (the hunchback). The tsarina’s fascination with physical hideousness and mental aberration was, she maintained, her way of showing interest in the mysteries of nature. Following the example of her grandfather Peter the Great, she claimed that studying the malformations of human beings helped her to understand the structure and the operation of normal bodies and minds. Surrounding herself with monsters was just another way of serving science. Moreover, according to Anna Ivanovna, the spectacle of other people’s misfortunes would reinforce everyone’s desire to look after his health.

Among the gallery of human monstrosities of which the empress was so proud, one of her favorites was a stunted old Kalmyk woman who was so ugly that even the priests were afraid of her. No one could make funnier faces. One day the Kalmyk exclaimed, as a joke, that she would like to marry. In a flash of inspiration, the tsarina thought of a wonderful trick. While all the members of the small troop of court buffoons were experts at clowning around, not all of them were, strictly s peaking, deformed - for instance, the old nobleman, Mikhail Alexeyevich Golitsyn, who held a sinecure as “imperial jester.” He had been a widower for a few years. Suddenly he was informed that Her Majesty had found a new wife for him and that, in her extreme kindness, she was ready to take care of all the arrangements and to cover all the expenses of the wedding. The Empress was famous as an “indefatigable matchmaker,” so that no further explanation was needed. However, the preparations for this union looked to be unusual at the very least. According to the tsarina’s instructions, the Cabinet Minister, Artyom Volynsky, had a vast house hastily built on the Neva embankment between the Winter Palace and the Admiralty, out of blocks of ice that were welded together by dribbling water in between them. The house was 60 feet long, over 20 feet wide, and 30 feet high, and was topped by a gallery with colonnade and statues. A staircase with a balustrade led to a vestibule, behind which the apartment reserved for the couple was located. It held a room furnished with a great white bed, whose curtains, pillows and mattress were carved of ice. To the side was a bathroom, also cut from ice, as evidence of Her Majesty’s concern for the intimate necessities on behalf of her “protégés.” Further on was a dining room, of similarly polar aspect but richly furnished in formal china and tableware, ready to welcome the guests for a superb and shivery and feast. In front of the house stood ice cannons, with a stack of cannonballs of the same material, and an ice elephant that was said to be able to spit a stream of frosty water 24 feet into the air, plus two ice pyramids inside of which were exhibited, to warm up the visitors, some humorous and obscene images. 5

Her Majesty expressly invited representatives of all the races of the empire, dressed in their native costumes, to participate in the great festival given in honor of the marriage of the buffoons. On February 6, 1740, after the unfortunate Mikhail Golitsyn and the counterfeit old Kalmyk woman had their ritual blessing at the church, a carnival procession similar to those that had so amused Peter the Great set forth to the clanging of bells. Ostiak, Kirghiz, Finn, Samoyed, Yakut - they all filed along, proud in their traditional clothes, parading down the street. The crowds who had come running from every part of the city to enjoy this free spectacle were flabbergasted. Some of the participants rode horses of a species never before seen in St. Petersburg, others rode in reindeer-drawn sledges or dog-sleds, on the back of a goat or, more hilarious yet, on the back of a pig. The newlyweds themselves were seated on an elephant. After passing in front of the imperial palace, the procession stopped across from the “Duke of Courland’s Riding School,” where a meal was served for all the participants. The poet Trediakovsky recited a comic poem and couples from the different regions performed folk dances, accompanied by their traditional instruments, for the benefit of the Empress, the court and the “young couple.”

As night was finally falling, they all set out again, in good cheer but still with their wits about them, toward the house of ice which, in the lengthening shadows of twilight, sparkled with the gleam of a thousand torches. Her Majesty Herself took care to escort the newlyweds to their cold bed and withdrew with a ribald smile. Sentries were placed in front of all the exits, at once, to prevent the turtledoves from leaving their icy love nest before daybreak.

That night, while lying with Bühren in her well-heated room, Anna Ivanovna appreciated more than ever her soft bedcovers and warm clothes. Did she even think of the ugly Kalmyk and the docile Golitsyn, whom she had condemned capriciously to this sinister comedy and who might well have been dying of cold in their translucent prison? In any event, if any hint of remorse flitted through her mind, it must have been driven out very quickly by the thought that this was quite an innocent joke and very much in line with the liberties that are allowed any sovereign, by divine right.

By some miracle, the noble buffoon and his hideous partner were, according to a few contemporaries, pulled out of this matrimonial ice cube with nothing worse than a runny nose and some frostbite. According to some, they even managed to go abroad, under the following reign, where the Kalmyk supposedly died after having given birth to two sons. As for Golitsyn, by no means discouraged by this chilling matrimonial test, he was said to have married again and to have lived on to a very advanced age, without any further misadventures. Diehard monarchists thus maintain that even the worst atrocities committed in Russia in the name of the autocracy of that era could only have been beneficial.

In spite of Anna Ivanovna’s obvious indifference to public affairs, Bühren was sometimes constrained to acquaint her with important issues. In order to better insulate her from the annoyances that are inseparable from the exercise of power, he suggested to her that they create a secret chancellery that would be responsible for monitoring Her subjects. Fed by the public treasury, an army of spies was let loose throughout Russia. Denouncements popped up on all sides, like mushrooms after a sweet rainfall.

Informers wishing to express themselves verbally were let into the imperial palace by a hidden door and were received, in the offices of the secret chancellery, by Bühren in person. His innate hatred for the old Russian aristocracy encouraged him to accept without question any accusations against members of that caste. The more highly placed the culprit, the more the “Favorite” enjoyed precipitating his downfall. Under his reign, the torture rooms were seldom vacant and not a week went by in which he did not sign orders exiling someone to Siberia or relegating someone to a remote province, for life. In the specialized administrative department of the
Sylka
(Deportation), the employees, overwhelmed by the burgeoning files, often expedited defendants to the ends of the earth without taking the time to verify their guilt, or even their identity.