1. Russia – History 1689-1801. 2. Russia – Kings and Rulers – Biography. 3. Empresses – Russia – Biography. I. Title: Five Russian women in power. I.: Title.

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THE ROMANOV DYNASTY

I: CATHERINE SHOWS THE WAY

A despondent hush fell upon the Winter Palace. While the stupor that marks the death of a sovereign is usually followed of an outburst of joy when the name of the successor is proclaimed, this time the minutes ticked by and the courtiers’ dejection, their uncertainty, stretched until the verge of alarm. It was as though Peter the Great were still dying. Some people even seemed to think that, without him, Russia had no future. Contemplating the enormous corpse, its hands clasped and eyes shut forever, all the notables who had come running at the news were astonished that this man of monstrous energy and audacity, who had pried the country out of its age-old lethargy and provided it with an administration, a police force, and an army worthy of a modern power, who had sloughed off the weight of Russian traditions and opened the nation to Western culture, and built a capital of endless splendor on a wasteland of mud and water, had not taken the trouble to name a successor.

It is true that, even a few months before, there had been nothing to suggest that he might meet such a sudden demise. As usual, the reformist tsar had fallen victim to his own impetuosity. Diving into the icy waters of the Neva to rescue sailors from a sinking ship, he contracted the pneumonia that was to carry him off. The fever very quickly triggered the after-effects of his venereal disease, with complications including gangrene, gravel in the kidneys, and retention of urine. January 28, 1725, after painful days of delirium, he called for writing materials and, with a trembling hand, traced on the paper the words: “Pass everything on to…” The name of the beneficiary was left blank. The failing fingers were already contracting, and his voice trailed off in a death rattle. He was gone.

Collapsing at his bedside, his wife Catherine sobbed and queried the mute, deaf and inert body - in vain. This instantaneous bereavement left her both desperate and disabled, weighing her down with a grief and an empire that were equally crushing. All around her, every thoughtful person in the realm shared the same anguish. In reality, despotism is an indispensable drug not only to the one who exerts it but to those who are subjected to it, as well. The megalomania of the master is matched by the masochism of the subjects. People who have become accustomed to the injustices of a policy of force are frightened when it is abruptly removed. They feel as though the master (whom they had just been complaining about), in loosening his embrace, has withdrawn at the same time his protection and his love. Those who used to quietly criticize the tsar now did not know which foot to dance on. They even wondered whether this was the time to “dance” at all, and whether they would “dance” again someday, after this long wait in the shadow of the tyrannical innovator.

However, life must go on, whatever the cost. While shedding copious tears, Catherine kept sight of her personal interests. A widow can be sincerely afflicted and at the same time reasonably ambitious. She was quite aware of the times she had wronged the recently departed, but she had always remained devoted to him in spite of her many infidelities. No one had known him and served him better than she throughout the 23 years of their relationship and marriage. In the struggle for power, she had - if not dynastic legitimacy - then at least disinterested love going for her.

Among the dignitaries close to the throne, the bets were already open. Who would win the crown of Monomakh?1 Within a few feet of the corpse laid out on the ceremonial bier, they were whispering, plotting, and proffering one name or another - without daring to declare out loud their own preferences. Some were partisans of young Peter, ten years old, the son of the poor tsarevich Alexis. (Peter the Great had had Alexis tortured to death to punish him for allegedly having plotted against him.) The memory of this legal assassination still hovered like smoke over the Russian court. The coterie loyal to young Peter included the princes Dmitri Golitsyn, Ivan Dolgoruky, Nikita Repnin, and Boris Sheremetiev, all displeased with having been persecuted by the tsar and avid to take their revenge under the new reign. In the other corner were those known as “Peter the Great’s Fledglings.”

His Majesty’s right-hand men, they were always on the alert to preserve their prerogatives. At their head stood Alexander Menshikov, a former pastry-cook’s helper, a childhood friend and favorite of the deceased (who had promoted him to Serene Prince), Ivan Buturlin, a lieutenant-colonel of the Guard, the senator Count Peter Tolstoy, Grand Chancellor Count Gabriel Golovkin, and the Lord High Admiral Fyodor Apraxin. To please Peter the Great, all these high-ranking individuals had signed the High Court’s verdict condemning to torture, and consequently to death, his rebellious son Alexis. For Catherine, these men represented a group of allies of unshakeable fidelity. These “men of progress,” who were outspokenly hostile toward the retrograde ideas of the old aristocracy, had no hesitation: only Peter’s widow had the right and the ability to succeed him.

Of the men who were determined to defend the cause of “the true guardian of the imperial thought” the most devoted was the one who had the most to gain - the dashing Alexander Menshikov. He owed his entire career to the tsar’s friendship, and he counted on the gratitude of the wife to maintain his privileges. His conviction was so strong that he would not even hear of Peter the Great’s grandson’s claims to the crown; certainly, he was the son of the tsarevich Alexis, but nothing, except that coincidence of family, destined him to such a glorious fate. Similarly, he shrugged off the pretensions of the daughters of Peter the Great and Catherine who could, after all, also present their candidatures. The elder of the two daughters, Anna Petrovna, was just seventeen years old; the junior, Elizabeth Petrovna, was barely sixteen. Neither one was particularly dangerous. In any event, according to the order of the succession, they would only come after their mother, the putative empress. For the moment, the priority was to get them married as quickly as possible. Catherine was quite unconcerned about that and relied on Menshikov and his friends to support her in her intrigues. Before the tsar had even heaved his last sigh, they sent emissaries to the principal barracks to prepare the officers of the Guard for a coup d’état in favor of their future “little mother Catherine.”

As the doctors and then the priests recorded the death of Peter the Great, a wan sunrise seeped over the sleeping city. It was snowing, with great soft flakes. Catherine wrung her hands and wept so abundantly in front of the plenipotentiaries assembled around the funeral bed that Captain Villebois, Peter the Great’s aide-de-camp, would note in his memoirs: “One could not conceive that there could be so much water in a woman’s brain. Many people ran to the palace just to see her crying and sighing.”2

The tsar’s death was finally announced by a 100-gun salute fired from the Peter and Paul fortress. The bells tolled on every church. It was time to make a decision. The whole nation was waiting to find out whom it would have to adore - or fear - in the future. At eight o’clock in the morning, conscious of her responsibility before History, Catherine proceeded to a large hall in the palace where the senators were gathered, with the members of Holy Synod and the dignitaries of the first four classes of the hierarchy - a sort of Council of the Wise known as the “Generalité” of the empire.

The discussion was impassioned from the start. To begin with, Peter the Great’s personal secretary Makarov swore on the Gospels that the tsar had not written a will. Seizing the ball on the rebound, Menshikov pleaded eloquently on behalf of His Majesty’s widow. His first argument was that, having married the former maidservant from Livonia (Catherine was born Marta Skawronska) in 1707, Peter the Great had then chosen, one year before his death, to have her crowned empress in the Cathedral of the Archangel, in Moscow. By this solemn and unprecedented act, according to Menshikov, he had shown that there was no need to resort to any written will since, while he was alive, Peter had taken care to bless his wife as sole inheritor of power.

But this explanation struck his adversaries as specious: they objected that in no monarchy in the world did the crowning of the monarch’s wife confer upon her
ipso facto
the right to the succession. Supporting this viewpoint, Prince Dmitri Golitsyn advanced the candidature of the sovereign’s grandson, Peter Alexeyevich, the proper son of Alexis - saying that this child, of the same blood as the deceased, should be considered before all the other applicants. However, given the boy’s tender age, that choice would imply the designation of a regent until he came of majority; and every regency in Russia had been marred by conspiracies and disturbances. The latest, centered around the Grand Duchess Sophia, had nearly compromised the reign of her brother Peter the Great. She had woven against him intrigues so black that she had had to be thrown into a convent to stop her wicked ways. Did the nobles want to go through that kind of experience again, by bringing to power their protégé, with a guardian hovering over him and offering advice? The adversaries in this party suggested that women are not prepared to direct the affairs of an empire as vast as Russia. Their nerves, they said, are too fragile, and they are surrounded by greedy favorites whose extravagances are far too costly to the nation. With that, the supporters of young Peter asserted that Catherine was a woman like Sophia and that it was better to have an imperfect regent than an inexperienced empress. Stung by the affront, Menshikov and Tolstoy reminded the critics that Catherine had demonstrated an almost virile courage in following her husband to every battlefield and had shown a well-trained mind in her covert participation in all his political decisions. When the debate was at its hottest, murmurs of approval rose from the back of the room. Several officers of the Guard had infiltrated the assembly (without being invited), and they delivered their opinion on a question which, in theory, concerned only the members of the Generalité.

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