Death of an Empress

Empress Elizabeth Petrovna breathed her last in December of 1761, in her St. Petersburg palace. Only a shadow of her former self, the once sprightly, frolicsome beauty (so beautiful, in fact, that legend has it she drove one lovesick foreigner utterly out of his mind) had grown quite feeble and incredibly fat. 

By any standard, Peter the Great’s second daughter had lived an unusual life. She was born out of wedlock to the emperor and the “Livonian laundress” Marta Skavronskaya, who had been taken prisoner when Russian forces captured her town. Peter eventually married Marta (who became Catherine – Yekaterina – when she converted to Orthodoxy), had her crowned empress, and recognized all their children. Still, the “stain” of Elizabeth’s illegitimate birth and lowly origins left a strong imprint on her life.

Peter had the brilliant idea of marrying Elizabeth to the French king, Louis XV, when they were both still children. It was a perfect match: the children were the same age, and the marriage would help solidify relations with France. This proposal raised eyebrows at Versailles, but did lead to protracted negotiations, which culminated in a polite refusal by the French. However, as a result of this failed undertaking, Elizabeth became fluent in French, and the subsequent dominance of French language and culture at the Russian court can largely be attributed to her.

After Peter’s death, Elizabeth would have seemed the obvious candidate for the throne, being, after all, his daughter. Yet more acceptable candidates kept being found. She watched as first her mother became ruler and then her nephew, Peter II (son of Peter’s son Alexei, who had died in prison). After the death of Peter II, Elizabeth was Peter’s last remaining direct descendant living in Russia, but again a more “proper” option was chosen, and Elizabeth’s cousin Anna Ioannovna was summoned from Courland (in what is today western Latvia).

In theory, Anna and Elizabeth had equally legitimate rights to the throne. Both were the daughters of tsars: Anna was the daughter of Peter’s half-brother Ivan V, with whom he shared the throne 1682-96. In reality, Tsar Ivan was a weak and sickly co-ruler who enjoyed no authority, while Peter’s renown had continued to grow after his death. But since Anna’s mother was from an ancient boyar family and her children had been legitimately born, the decision was made in Anna’s favor.

Throughout Anna’s ten-year reign (1730-40), Elizabeth was in a somewhat precarious position. The empress no doubt saw her cousin as a rival. Furthermore, as soon as the vivacious and pretty Elizabeth entered the palace, nobody paid any attention to the gloomy, dull, and graceless Anna. In an effort to keep the empress from seeing her as a threat, Elizabeth tried to keep her distance from politics and court life. She passed those ten years in endless idle merrymaking and romantic intrigues.

When Anna died, the little baby Ivan VI, who was only very indirectly in the line of succession, was proclaimed emperor, with his mother, Anna Leopoldovna, serving as regent. The rug seemed to have been pulled out from under Elizabeth. But then, a little over a year later, there was a coup.

Throughout Anna’s reign, Elizabeth had been building ties with the imperial guards, giving them gifts, serving them vodka, and taking on the role of godmother to their children, making her essentially kuma – one of the family. And at this critical juncture this “family” – about 300 imperial guards – came in handy for the young princess. When she arrived at their barracks, she was given an ecstatic reception. They carried her to the palace in their arms, since the streets were buried in deep snow.

So began Elizabeth’s twenty-year reign (1741-62), a reign that nobody seems to take seriously. As A.K. Tolstoy so acerbically put it in his poetic History of the Russian State:

Elizabeth Tsarina
Just loved to laugh and sing.
Rus liked her gay demeanor.
But order? No such thing.

Веселая царица
Была Елисавет.
Поет и веселится,
порядка только нет.

{Translated by Lydia Razran Stone}

These twenty years are often viewed by historians as nothing more than a spinning of wheels, the continuation of a lamentable period disdainfully dubbed “the era of palace coups,” and an uninteresting interlude between “the Greats” (Peter and Catherine) that is unworthy of particular attention.

Elizabeth was no deep thinker, but she was an artful manipulator of public opinion. She immediately issued a manifesto explaining that she was compelled to ascend the throne by three circumstances: 1. This was her mother’s dying wish (not true); 2. She was Peter’s daughter (no argument there); and 3. Russia needed to be saved from looming German dominance (since during Anna Ioannovna’s reign, under the influence of her adviser and lover Ernst Johann von Biron, Baltic Germans had been playing an outsized role at court).

The idea that the period preceding Elizabeth’s reign was one of the bleakest and bloodiest in Russian history and too heavily influenced by Germans is often echoed in historical and literary works, and this characterization gradually became a truism. In contrast, Elizabeth’s reign is often cast as a kinder, gentler time. 

No doubt, Elizabeth was more kindhearted than the dour Anna Ioannovna, but the picture is complicated. Elizabeth is often attributed with abolishing the death penalty. That is not exactly true. The death penalty remained, but Elizabeth did not apply it: she ordered that every death sentence be sent for her approval, and she did not approve a single one. This arguably does not make up for the fact that several ladies at court suspected of involvement in a plot were beaten with a knout and had their tongues ripped out, or that the family of the overthrown baby Tsar Ivan was exiled and Ivan spent his entire life imprisoned in a fortress. I find one detail of his treatment particularly striking: When five-year-old Ivan was taken away from his parents, for a while he was kept in the same house, but steps were taken to ensure that he and his parents never saw one another.

Another interesting detail about Elizabeth is the fact that she went out of her way to defame Anna Ioannovna’s reign. But if you take a close look, Anna’s and Elizabeth’s reigns had a lot in common: they both granted greater freedom to the nobility and placed greater restrictions on the peasantry; they both promoted the development of education and culture; and they both leaned heavily into Russia’s imperial ambitions. However the two cousins felt about one another, they were both products of their era.

Another thing they had in common was that neither of them had children, at least none that we know of for certain. There were rumors that one of the sons of Anna’s favorite, Biron, was actually her son, but proof of this has yet to be found. As for Elizabeth, it is suspected that she was secretly married to Alexei Razumovsky, a young Cossack who at first became a member of the palace choir and then Elizabeth’s favorite, ultimately ascending to the status of count, millionaire, and possibly Elizabeth’s secret husband. Whether or not the couple had children remains a mystery. The con-artist known as Princess Tarakanova who passed herself off as Elizabeth’s daughter was clearly a fake.

And just as the childless Anna named her niece’s infant son as her heir, so too Elizabeth summoned the young son of her late sister from distant Holstein to serve as hers.

In December 1761, the by-then 22-year-old known in Russia as Pyotr Fyodorovich (and by posterity as Peter III) eagerly awaited the death of his benefactor auntie. He had long since been itching to do things his way in Russia, a country for which he never seemed to develop much affection. Little did he know how short his reign would be.

Peter the Great’s frivolous and extravagant daughter Elizabeth ushered out an era when palaces that are now the pride of St. Petersburg were built, when the Russian elite gradually came to terms with Petrine Era reforms, and when Russian culture mastered a new literary language. But perhaps her most significant contribution to Russian history was the match she made for her heir Peter: Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, better remembered today as Catherine the Great.