Mediterranean Southwest Europe (832–843 CE): Carolingian Fragmentation, Umayyad Prosperity, and Cultural Dynamism

Peter's wife seizes the throne as Catherine I after his death, but when she dies in 1727, Peter's grandson, Peter II, is crowned tsar.

In 1730 Peter II succumbs to smallpox, and Anna, a daughter of Ivan V, who had been co-ruler with Peter, ascends the throne.

The clique of nobles that put Anna on the throne attempts to impose various conditions on her.

In her struggle against those restrictions, Anna has the support of other nobles who fear oligarchic rule more than autocracy.

Thus the principle of autocracy continues to receive strong support despite chaotic struggles for the throne.

Menshikov’s power has been practically absolute during the short reign of Catherine, who dies just two years after Peter at the age of forty-three, .

He has promoted himself to the unprecedented rank of Generalissimo, and is the only Russian to bear a ducal title.

Upon finishing the construction of a sumptuous palace on the Neva Embankment in St. Petersburg (now assigned to the Hermitage Museum), Menshikov intends to make Oranienbaum a capital of his ephemeral duchy.

Pushkin in one of his poems alludes to Menshikov as "half-tsar".

On the whole he has ruled well, his difficult position serving as some restraint upon his natural inclinations.

He contrives to prolong his power after Catherine's death by means of a forged will and a coup d'etat.

While his colleague Peter Tolstoi would have raised Elizabeth Petrovna to the throne, Menshikov sets up the youthful Peter II, son of the tsarevich Alexius, with himself as dictator during the prince's minority.

During the reign of Catherine, Peter had been quite ignored; but just before her death it had become clear to those in power that the grandson of Peter the Great could not be kept out of his inheritance much longer.

The majority of the nation and three-quarters of the nobility are on his side, while his uncle, Emperor Charles VI, through the imperial ambassador at St. Petersburg, has persistently urged his claims.

The matter is arranged between Menshikov and Count Andrei Osterman; and on May 18, 1727, Peter II, according to the terms of the forged last will of Catherine I, is proclaimed sovereign autocrat.

Menshikov, lodging him in his own palace on the Vasilievsky Island, now aims at establishing himself definitely by marrying his daughter Mary to Peter, but the old nobility, represented by the Dolgorukovs and the Galitzines, unite to overthrow him, and on September 9, 1727, he is deprived of all his dignities and offices and expelled from the capital.

Subsequently he is deprived of his enormous wealth, stripped of the titles, and he and his whole family are banished to Berezov in Siberia, where he will die at fifty-six on November 12, 1729.

The twelve-year-old Peter II of Russia now falls into the hands of the equally unscrupulous Prince Vasily Lukich Dolgorukov, who carries him away from Petersburg to Moscow, where Peter's coronation is celebrated on February 25, 1728.

As the conservative influences prevail among its members, the Council—although nominally a consultative body—monopolizes supreme power and has the imperial capital moved back to Moscow.

The collegiums (i.e., ministries) and the Senate, instituted by Peter I as supreme governing bodies, are no longer called "governing" and are held accountable before the Council rather than the Emperor.

Tsar Peter is betrothed to his new mentor's niece, Princess Yekaterina Dolgorukova, and the wedding is actually fixed for January 30, 1730, but the emperor dies of smallpox on this very day.

While he lay dying, his new wife had been pushed into his deathbed in a desperate attempt to make her pregnant.

With Peter's death, the direct male line of the Romanov Dynasty ends.

The Supreme Privy Council under Prince Dmitry Galitzine elevates to the imperial throne an improbable successor: Anna Ivanovna, Duchess of Courland, and daughter of Peter the Great's half-brother and co-ruler, Ivan V. The council members, deeming her to be easily amenable to manipulation and too conservative to restore Peter I's reforms, hope that she will feel indebted to the nobles for her unexpected fortune and remain a figurehead at best, and malleable at worst.

In the hope of establishing a constitutional monarchy in Russia, they persuade her to sign articles that limit her power, which confer on the Council the powers of war and peace and of taxation.

According to the conditions, Anna cannot promote officers to ranks higher than colonel and interfere into military affairs.

She promises not to marry and not to choose herself a successor.

The conditions are modeled on the form of government recently instituted in Great Britain.

In case Anna violates the conditions, she is to be dethroned.

On the elevation of Anna to the Russian throne, her former lover, the handsome, insinuating adventurer Ernst Johann von Biron, who had in the meantime married a Fräulein von Treiden, had come to Moscow and received many honors and riches.

A month after signing the document, Anna, on the advice of Biron, wins the sympathies of the Leib Guard and on February 25 tears up the terms of her accession, which, if implemented, would have led to Russia's transformation into a constitutional monarchy.

Within days, the Council is abolished and many of its members exiled to Siberia.

Dolgoruky's involvement in intrigues concerning the succession—including the manufacture of a letter purporting to be the tsar's last will, in which he had appointed Yekaterina his successor—resulted in his banishment, first to Siberia and then to the Solovetsky monastery.

As one of her first acts to consolidate this power, she restores the security police, which she uses to intimidate and terrorize those who oppose her and her policies.

Although she does not move the capital back to Moscow, she spends most of her time at this city in the company of her foolish and ignorant maids.

At Anna's coronation on May 19, Biron becomes grand-chamberlain, a count of the Empire, on which occasion he is said to have adopted the arms of the French ducal house of Biron, and is presented with an estate at Wenden with fifty thousand crowns a year.