Nicholas Riasanovsky noted that, "in the course of thirty-seven years Russia had, sardonic commentators remark, six autocrats: three women, a boy of twelve, an infant, and a mental weakling." While lumping women into the same category as mental weaklings and infants is not the most politically correct way to address this period, the fact that six different rulers came to the throne in less than forty years does demonstrate how unstable the government was in comparison to Peter's reign; however, it also demonstrated how well structured Peter's reforms were. The country was able to survive a series of less than able administrators with little damage.

Catherine I and Peter II

As discussed in the previous lecture, Catherine I's reign was, for the most part, a continuation of her husband's. With Menshikov leading the government, things remained the same as they had been with Peter. Menshikov headed up the Supreme Secret Council, and when Catherine died in 1727, she named Peter II as her successor. Catherine had added Peter's two aunts, Anne and Elizabeth (her daughters) to the Council, and named it as regent.

Menshikov immediately took control, going so far as to move the young tsar to his own residence, but Peter did not care for Menshikov. Menshikov was eventually arrested and exiled, where he died in 1729. Peter was engaged to one of the princesses of the Dolgorukii family, but before the marriage could take place, Peter contracted smallpox and died in 1730.

Anne and Ivan VI

Peter had not designated a successor, and he was the last of the male Romanovs. The Council decided to appoint Anne, Ivan V's daughter, as the new tsar: she seemed easily controlled, and the Council determined that it would be easy to make decisions with her in place. The Council also placed multiple restrictions on her rule, including forbidding her to marry or to name a successor. Anne, who had been married to the Duke of Courland but was both widowed and childless, had little to lose and so accepted the conditions. The Council was thrilled, believing that they were going to be essentially ruling Russia, but they were to find themselves sadly mistaken. Anne was no retiring wall flower: she arrived in Russia and almost immediately destroyed the conditions she had been forced to sign. She also disbanded the Council, making her intention to rule solely clear.

Anne's reign has been traditionally viewed as a poor one: she surrounded herself with German advisors, at the expense of Russian ones, and generally was not a particularly good ruler. Most of the favorites were interested in self-promotion and not much else: these were best exemplified by the empress's lover, Ernst-Johann Biron, who received the highest honors and awards (and estates to go with them) and whose out of control self-improvement led to the term Bironovshchina, or Bironism. Those who opposed Anne found themselves sent into exile, stripped of their land and their titles, or executed. While many of those who were executed were Old Believers or criminals, Biron's treatment of prisoners and his self-serving attitude made Anne's reign seem like a particularly harsh one, especially compared with the later rule of Elizabeth.

When Anne died in 1740, she named as her successor her great-nephew, the grandson of her older sister and the great-grandson of Ivan V. This would have been fine had the child, Ivan VI, not been 2 months old at the time of his succession to the throne. Although his parents lived at the Russian court, Anne had named Biron as the regent. Within a month, Biron was overthrow by Ivan's parents, who remained in power for nearly a year before being overthrown by Peter I's daughter Elizabeth, who had the support of the guards units and became Empress Elizabeth. Ivan's parents were exiled, where his mother eventually died in childbirth. Ivan himself was moved to several different prisons, and he would remain a prisoner for the rest of his life.

Elizabeth

Elizabeth's reign has usually been held in direct contrast to Anne's. The new empress was young, handsome, and had her father's energy and personality, all things that appealed to the Russian people. She was also not interested in the Germanic traditions that had been established by Anne; instead, she turned towards the far West, focusing on France in particular. She chose favorites, as Anne had, but they appear to have had far less power than Anne's did.

Elizabeth's reign is most notable for her decision to abolish capital punishment, which was quite enlightened for the time. She also restored the Senate to its previous position, and sponsored numerous building projects, including the Winter Palace. She was also notorious for her shopping (and her advisors were notorious for their refusal to pay her bills, so much so that a French milliner at one point refused to extend her credit). However, other than superficially, she failed to really imprint Russian society. Her death, in 1761, brought about a revival of the German influence on the court, in the person of her nephew, Peter of Holstein-Gottorp, who became Peter III.

The Winter Palace, on the Neva River in St. Petersburg, is now home to the Hermitage: in my opinion, it is one of the most beautiful buildings in the world.

Peter III

Peter III is, like his more famous namesake, a man who really defies description, but in this case it is for negative reasons. The son of a German prince and Anne, Peter I's daughter, he was the grandson of Peter the Great. His parents both died before he reached 10, and he was brought up initially to believe that he would inherit the throne of Sweden. At the age of 14, he was named Elizabeth's heir and moved to St. Petersburg, but he never embraced Russia. He refused to convert to Orthodoxy (standard practice for those who married into the Russian royal family, much less those who were going to inherit the throne). He did not learn the language and instead spoke German.

At the age of 17, he was married to a young German princess, Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst. The marriage was not a successful one; Peter was immature and already beginning to show signs of the behavior which would lead his critics to call him insane (on his wedding night, he court-martialed rats that he had found in his bedroom and had them hanged). His wife, who took the name Catherine upon her conversion to Russian Orthodoxy, was an inquisitive, active young woman who quickly bored of her new husband's immaturity. Their union failed to produce a child, and finally in 1753, after 8 years of marriage, the Empress Elizabeth procured a lover for Catherine; she became pregnant and gave birth to a boy, Paul, who was declared heir to the throne behind Peter.

Peter's behavior became more and more erratic, and when Elizabeth died in December 1761, he became emperor. One of his first acts was to pull Russia out of the Seven Years' War; his admiration for Frederick of Prussia was so great that he could not bring himself to fight his hero, and in fact turned down the peace settlement that Frederick offered and refused to take any land from the Prussian monarch. This, coupled with his increasingly odd imitations of the Prussian way of life (dressing his soldiers in uniforms modeled after the Prussians, refusing to have Russian spoken in his presence, etc), eventually led a group of conspirators, including Nikolai Panin, the tutor of young Paul, to begin to discuss options for getting rid of Peter. The question of who would succeed him was paramount: Paul was only eight, and would require a regent for several years. However, Catherine, now in her early 30s, seemed an ideal choice: erudite, energetic, and emotionally stable, she embraced the idea of becoming the new ruler. When Elizabeth had died in December 1761, there had been talk of Catherine replacing her, but Catherine was pregnant at the time with a child which was clearly not her husbands. Her mourning gowns, coupled with the seclusion demanded by the mourning period for the empress, enabled her to deliver a son (named Aleksei, for his uncle) in April, 1762, without Peter's knowledge. By June, 1762, it had become increasingly clear that something needed to be done: Peter had begun secularizing Church lands, and had succeeded in alienating virtually every group with usually sided with the monarch: the church, the army, and the nobility all wished to be rid of Peter.

The plan to overthrow Peter was forced into action by the arrest of one of the conspirators. On June 28, 1762, with the aid of her lover, Grigory Orlov, and his brothers, coup d'etat took place in St. Petersburg, with the various guards regiments (of which the Orlovs were members) joining Catherine and proclaiming her empress. Peter was arrested at Oranienbaum, one of the imperial summer palaces, and the issue of what to do with him became paramount. A week after the coup, on 5 July 1762, Peter was killed by the Orlov brothers in what was described as a drunken brawl. The public pronouncement was that he had died of colic, and Catherine's control over the throne of Russia seemed, for the moment, secure.