Terrible Tsarinas: Five Russian Women in Power (5 page)

Having installed Peter - superbly, it is true - in his own residence, Menshikov kept close watch over the company he kept. The barricades that he placed at the doors of the imperial apartments were insuperable. Only the tsar’s aunts, Anna and Elizabeth, his sister Natalya and a few trusted friends were allowed to visit him. Among the latter were the vice-chancellor Andrei Ivanovich Ostermann, the engineer and general Burkhard Christoph von Münnich (master of so many great works), Count Reinhold Loewenwolde (a former lover of Catherine I and paid agent of the duchess of Courland), the Scottish General Lascy (who was working for Russia and managed to stay out of trouble during the disorder that came on the heels of the empress’s death), and finally and inevitably, the incorrigible Duke Charles Frederick of Holstein, still haunted by the idea of returning Schleswig to the family holdings. Menshikov had indoctrinated them, and bribed them to prepare his future son-in-law to be an emperor only in name and to give up the conduct of affairs to him, definitively.

Entrusting to them the education of this unreasonable and impulsive teenager, all he asked of them was to engender in him a taste for appearances rather than a taste for actions. For Menshikov, the ideal son-in-law would be a paragon of nullity and good manners. What did it matter if he were an ignoramus, if he had no concept of politics, as long as he knew how to conduct himself in the salon? Orders were given to His Majesty’s entourage to keep him informed on matters superficially, but absolutely not in depth. However, while the majority of the mentors chosen by Menshikov acceded to this instruction, the most cunning and most wily among the group had already begun to throw a wrench into the works.

Menshikov thought he had won the day; but meanwhile, the Westphalian Ostermann was gathering around him those who were most aggravated by the new dictator’s vanity and arrogance. For a long time, they had observed Peter’s mute hostility towards his virtual father-in-law, and they secretly supported their sovereign’s cause. They were soon joined in their conspiracy by Peter’s sister Natalya and by the two aunts, Anna and Elizabeth. When the instigators of this little tribal conspiracy urged him to join them, Duke Charles Frederick of Holstein also acknowledged that he would fight for the emancipation of Peter II, especially if that might be accompanied by a recognition of his own rights to Schleswig and - of course - to Sweden. Coincidentally, Elizabeth had just become engaged to another descendant of Holstein, Charles Augustus, first cousin of Charles Frederick, a candidate for the throne of Courland and bishop of Lübeck. This circumstance could only reinforce the Holstein clan’s determination to shake off the yoke of Menshikov and to liberate Peter II from a humiliating guardianship.

Alas! June 1, 1727, the young bishop Charles Augustus was carried off by smallpox. Overnight, Elizabeth found herself with no suitor, no more marital hopes. After Louis XV balked, she now had lost another pretender - less prestigious, certainly, than the King of France, but a very honorable match for a Russian grand duchess. Really, fate seemed dead set against her dreams of marriage. She lost heart, took a strong dislike to the court of St. Petersburg and withdrew, with her putative brother-in-law Charles Frederick and her sister Anna, to the palace of Ekaterinhof, at the edge of St. Petersburg, under the shade trees of an immense park surrounded by canals. In this idyllic setting, she relied very much upon the affection of her close relations to help her ease her disappointment.

The very same day of their departure, Menshikov gave an extravagant feast at his palace in honor of the betrothal of his elder daughter, Maria, to the young Tsar Peter II. The intended, bedecked and bejeweled like a gilded coffer, received on this occasion the title of Her Most Serene Highness and the guarantee of an annual income of 34,000 rubles from the State Treasury. More parsimonious when it came to compensating the Tsarevna2 Elizabeth, Menshikov only allocated 12,000 rubles to her to assuage the rigor of her mourning.3 But Elizabeth wanted to be seen by one and all as an inconsolable fiancée. The fact that she was not yet married (by the age of 18), and that only the most ambitious seemed interested in her - and only out of political considerations - was too cruel a fate to be swallowed anytime soon. Fortunately, her friends immediately set about finding a high-quality substitute for Charles Augustus, in Russia or abroad. The dear departed’s coffin had hardly been laid in the ground in Lübeck when the possible candidature of Charles Adolf of Holstein was suggested - the proper brother of the departed - and also that of Count Maurice of Saxony and several other gentlemen of easily verifiable merits.

While Elizabeth, at Ekaterinhof, was dreaming over these various parties, whose faces she barely recognized, in the heart of St. Petersburg Menshikov, as ever a practical man, was studying the available bachelors’ relative advantages. In his eyes, the half-widowed tsarina represented an excellent bargaining chip in the diplomatic negotiations that were underway. But these matrimonial concerns did not make him lose sight of the education of his imperial pupil. Observing that Peter seemed to have become slightly less extravagant recently, he recommended to Ostermann that he step up his struggle against his pupil’s natural idleness by accustoming him to fixed hours, whether they be spent in study or recreation. The Westphalian was assisted in this task by Prince Alexis Grigorievich Dolgoruky, the “assistant governor”; he often visited the palace with his young son, Prince Ivan, a beautiful, hot-blooded young man of 20 years, elegant and effeminate, who amused His Majesty with his inexhaustible chattering.

Upon her return from Ekaterinhof, where she had spent a few weeks in sentimental retirement, Elizabeth installed herself at the Summer Palace; but not a day went by that she did not pay a visit, with her sister Anna, to her dear nephew in his gilded cage. They would listen to the confidences of the spoiled child, share his passion for Ivan Dolgoruky - that irresistibly handsome young man - and keep them both company in their nightly revels. Despite the remonstrances of their male chaperons, a wind of madness blew through this shameless quartet. In December 1727, Johann Lefort brought the minister at the court of Saxony up to date on young Peter’s escapades. “The master [Peter II] has no other occupation but to run in the streets, day and night, with the princess Elizabeth and her sister, to visit the chamberlain Ivan [Dolgoruky], the pages, the cooks and God knows whom else.”

Hinting that the sovereign under supervision had unnatural tastes and that the delightful Ivan was inciting him in forbidden pleasures instead of curbing his inclinations, Lefort continued: “One could almost believe that these misguided people [the Dolgorukys] are encouraging the various vices by fostering [in the Tsar] the sins of the Russia of the past. I know an apartment contiguous to the billiard parlor where the deputy governor [Prince Alexis Grigorievich Dolgoruky] hosts pleasure parties for him… they don’t go to bed until 7:00AM.”4

That these young people should satiate their appetites in such entertainment suited Menshikov just fine. As long as Peter and his aunts continued to dope themselves in love intrigues and casual affairs, their political influence would be nil. On the other hand, the “Most Serene One” feared that Duke Charles Frederick of Holstein, with his exasperating ambitions, might be ignoring his wife Anna’s warnings and might be overdoing things, in an effort to destroy the modus vivendi that the Supreme Privy Council had managed to impose upon the junior tsar and his close relatives. In order to cut short Charles Frederick’s foolish dreams, Menshikov took away from him (via an ukase that escaped Peter II’s vigilance one evening during a drunken binge) the island of Oesel, in the Gulf of Riga, which the couple had received as a wedding present, and cut back the duke’s expense account. These displays of pettiness were accompanied by so many minor vexations at the hand of Menshikov that the Duke and his wife were annoyed for good and decided to leave the capital, where they were treated like poor relations and intruders. Hugging her sister before embarking with her husband for Kiel, with heart overflowing, Anna was gripped by a disastrous presentiment. She confided to her friends that she was very much afraid of Menshikov’s intrigues, on behalf of Elizabeth as well as Peter. She felt he was an implacable enemy of their family. Because of his giant size and his broad shoulders, he was called the “proud Goliath,” and Anna beseeched Heaven that Peter II, a new David, should bring down the monster of pride and spite that had such a hold on the empire.

After her sister departed for Holstein, Elizabeth tried at first to forget her sorrows and her fears in a swirl of romance and intrigue. Peter assisted her in this distracting enterprise by inventing new excuses for fooling around and intoxicating themselves every day. He was only 14 years old, yet he felt the desires of a man. To secure greater freedom of movement, Elizabeth and he emigrated to the old imperial palace of Peterhof. For a moment, they could believe that their secret vows were about to be fulfilled; for Menshikov, although he enjoyed an iron constitution, suddenly had a fainting spell and was spitting blood. He had to be confined to bed. According to the echoes that reached Peterhof, the doctors considered that the indisposition could be long lasting, if not fatal.

During this vacuum of power, the usual advisers met to comment on current matters. In addition to the illness of His Most Serene, another event of importance occurred meanwhile, and an embarrassing one, at that. Peter the Great’s first wife, the Tsarina Eudoxia, whom he had imprisoned in the convent at Suzdal and then transferred to the fortress at Schlusselburg, had suddenly resurfaced. The emperor had repudiated her in order to marry Catherine. An old woman, weak but still valiant after thirty years of reclusion, Eudoxia was the mother of the Tsarevich Alexis who had died under torture and the grandmother of Tsar Peter II who, by the way, had never met her and did not see any need to do so.

Now that she was out of prison and Menshikov, her sworn enemy, was tied to his bed, the other members of the Supreme Privy Council thought that the grandson of this martyr, so worthy in her effacement, should pay her a visit of homage. They considered that to be even more advisable since the people saw Eudoxia as a saint who had been sacrificed for reasons of State. There was only one hitch, but it was a sizeable one: wouldn’t Menshikov be furious if they took such an initiative without consulting him? Specialists in public issues discussed the matter gravely. Some suggested taking advantage of the young tsar’s upcoming coronation, scheduled to take place in Moscow early in 1728, to set up a historic meeting between the grandmother (embodying the past) and the new tsar (embodying the future). Ostermann, Dolgoruky and other characters of lesser stature were already addressing messages of devotion to the old tsarina and requesting her support in future negotiations. But Eudoxia, immured in her prayers, fasting and memories, ignored the courtiers’ agitation. She had suffered too much already from the contaminated atmosphere of the palaces to wish for any other reward than peace in the light of the Lord.

While the grandmother was aspiring to eternal rest, the grandson, his head on fire, was spinning out of control. But it was not the illusion of grandeur that haunted him. Worlds away from the legendary babushka, Elizabeth was leading him from one party to another. Hunting meets alternated with impromptu picnics, with a roll in the hay at some rustic cottage, with reveries in the moonlight. A light perfume of incest spiced the pleasure Peter took in caressing his young aunt. There’s nothing like guilt to save lovemaking from the tedium of habit. If you play by the rules, relations between a man and a woman quickly become as tiresome as doing one’s duty. That conviction must have been what encouraged Peter to throw himself into parallel experiments with Ivan Dolgoruky. In thanks for the intimate satisfactions that Ivan gave him, Peter - with the approval of Elizabeth - named him chamberlain and awarded him the Order of St. Catherine, which was reserved, theoretically, for ladies.

The people at court were outraged and the foreign diplomats were quick to comment, in their dispatches, on His Majesty’s two-way escapades. They were already prepared to bury His Most Serene. Little did they suspect how great was Menshikov’s physical resistance. Suddenly, he popped up again in the midst of this circus of ambitious and sexual maneuvering. Did he think he could just raise his voice, and the troublemakers would run for shelter? Hardly. By now, Peter II had gotten the upper hand. He would no longer tolerate anyone, including his future father-in-law, thwarting his desires. In front of Menshikov - stunned and close to apoplexy - he howled, “I will show you who is master, here!”5 This outburst reminded Menshikov of the terrible rages of his former mas ter, Peter the Great. Understanding that it would be imprudent to defy a lamb that had gone mad, he pretended to see this fury as nothing but a late childish tantrum, and departed Peterhof, where Peter had received him so badly, to convalesce at his property at Oranienbaum. Before leaving, he took care to invite all the assembled company to a reception that he was planning to host in his country residence in honor of the tsar and to celebrate his own recovery. But Peter II persisted and, under the pretext that His Most Serene did not invite Elizabeth by name, refused to attend. To underscore his displeasure, he openly went out with his aunt to hunt big game in the surroundings.

Throughout this semi-hunting, semi-romantic escapade, he wondered what was going on at the celebrations dreamed up by Menshikov. Wasn’t it strange that none of his friends had followed his example? Was their fear of displeasing Menshikov so strong that they preferred to displease the tsar? In any case, he didn’t worry much about the feelings of Maria Menshikov, who seemed to have gone from intended-bride to back-on-the-shelf.

On the contrary, as soon as Menshikov’s guests were back from Oranienbaum, he questioned them avidly on how the Serene One had seemed during the festivities. Pressed to speak their minds, they told him everything, in detail. They insisted, in particular, on the fact that Menshikov had pushed his insolence to the point of sitting, in their presence, on the throne prepared for Peter II. To hear them tell it, their host, consumed with pride, conducted himself in every way as though he were the master of the empire. Ostermann declared that he was offended as much as if it had been him that the Serene One had slighted. The next day, taking advantage of an absence of Peter II, who had gone out hunting with Elizabeth, Ostermann received Menshikov at Peterhof and reproached him, in a dry tone, in the name of all the sincere friends of the imperial family, for his unseemly conduct towards His Majesty. Piqued by these remonstrances from a subordinate, Menshikov took umbrage and returned to St. Petersburg, contemplating a revenge that would forever remove the desire to plot against him from this scheming band.