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Dolgorukie and dm golitsyn. Golitsyn, dmitry mikhailovich and son. View of the Neva embankment in the 18th century

Wikipedia has articles about other people with the last name Golitsyn.
Not to be confused with Golitsyn, Dmitry Mikhailovich (1721-1793).
Dmitry Mikhailovich Golitsyn
Dmitry Mikhailovich Golitsyn
From a portrait of the late 18th century
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Member of the Supreme Privy Council
1726 - 1730
President of the Commerce Collegium
1727 - 1730
President of the Chamber Collegium
1718 - 1722
Preceded: position established
Successor: Gerasim I. Koshelev

Born: July 3, 1665
Moscow
Death: April 14, 1737 (age 71)
Shlisselburg, St. Petersburg province
Father: Mikhail Andreevich Golitsyn
Mother: Praskovya Nikitichna Kaftyreva
Wife: Anna Yakovlevna Odoevskaya
Children: Sergei Dmitrievich Golitsyn
Alexey Dmitrievich Golitsyn

Awards:

Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Golitsyn (July 3, 1665, Moscow - April 14, 1737, Shlisselburg) - Russian statesman, associate of Peter I, active privy councilor, member of the Supreme Privy Council. After the death of Emperor Peter II, he became one of the leaders of the Supreme Privy Council and the inspirer of the first attempt to establish a constitutional monarchy in Russia. Compiler of "Konditsiy", designed to limit the autocratic power of Empress Anna Ioannovna.

Biography

The son of the steward Mikhail Andreevich Golitsyn and Praskovya Nikitichna, nee Kaftyreva. The elder brother of Mikhail the Elder, Peter and Mikhail the Younger Golitsyn.
Marko Martinovic teaches Russian nobles

In 1686 he became a room attendant of Tsar Peter Alekseevich. In 1694-1697 he served in the Preobrazhensky regiment as a captain, participated in the Azov campaigns, then studied military sciences in Italy with Mark Martinovich. In 1701-1704 he was ambassador to Constantinople and was imprisoned in the Seven Towers Fortress, later he took part in the events of the Northern War.

In 1707 he was the Belgorod governor (it was ordered to write him as Kiev), and from 1711 - the governor of Kiev; was, according to contemporaries, honest and incorruptible. From 1718 he was the head of the Chamber Collegium and a member of the Senate, in charge of financial affairs. He enjoyed the great confidence of Peter I, who often turned to him with various requests (for example, about the translation of certain books). Nevertheless, in 1723 Golitsyn was arrested in the Shafirov case, but pardoned at the request of the Empress.

After the death of Peter I, Golitsyn supported the party of supporters of the rule of his grandson Peter II Alekseevich, but agreed to the accession of Catherine I in exchange for a seat in the Supreme Privy Council. In 1726 he took part in the negotiations on the conclusion of the Russian-Austrian union. On January 1, 1727 he received the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called.

Under Peter II, he was appointed head of the Commerce Collegium, abolished a number of state monopolies and lowered customs tariffs. Then he introduced his brother Mikhail, who became the head of the Military Collegium, to the Supreme Privy Council.

In 1730, he proposed to invite the Duchess of Courland, Anna Ioannovna, to the throne, limiting her power to "conditions" (which actually reduced her role to representative functions). Later, the prince developed a draft constitutional draft, according to which the absolute monarchy as such in Russia was limited forever, and the power of the monarch was limited by an aristocratic Privy Council of ten or twelve persons of the most noble families. The Senate received executive and supreme judicial power. The project also provided for the convocation of two representative chambers: the chamber of the gentry (200 members) and the chamber of city representatives (2 elected people from each city). Prince Golitsyn's project can be considered quite constitutional for its time. The possessing estates were allowed to govern the country, but at the same time the dominant position in the project is occupied by a limited ruling group, which was supposed to solve all the most important cases without the knowledge of the rest of the country's population. In addition, these ideas were not fully voiced among the noble deputies who gathered in Moscow in January 1730 for the wedding of Peter II and for the compilation of a new Legislative Commission, which aroused rejection and suspicion that the Supreme Privy Council wants to usurp power in the country. The proposed separation of powers with the Senate and the Chambers did not like the members of the Supreme Privy Council themselves, which was eventually dissolved after Anna tore off the "condition."

Despite the fact that Golitsyn headed the "constitutional" party, after the abolition of the Supreme Privy Council, he, unlike the Dolgoruks, was not exiled. Perhaps the fact that the initiative to call Anna Ioannovna to the throne came from him played a role. Retaining the title of senator, he lived in the Arkhangelskoye estate near Moscow, where he collected a rich collection (about 6 thousand volumes) of European literature.

Soon, however, reprisals affected his son-in-law, for whose support the seventy-year-old prince was arrested in 1736, accused of preparing a conspiracy and thrown into the Shlisselburg fortress, where he soon died (possibly a violent death).
Marriage and children

Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Golitsyn was married from 1684 to Princess Anna Yakovlevna (d. 1750), daughter of Prince Yakov Nikitich Odoevsky.

Born in marriage:

Sergey (1696-1738) - Governor of Kazan, diplomat;
Alexey (1697-1768) - senator, suffered along with his father in the case of the division of the Kantemir inheritance;
Anastasia (1698-1747) - since 1724 the wife of St. book Constantin Cantemir (1703-47), son of the Moldavian ruler Dmitry Cantemir. Childless marriage.

Ancestors
Golitsyn, Dmitry Mikhailovich (1665) - ancestors
Notes (edit)

; Golitsyns, Russian generals and statesmen // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb., 1890-1907.
; Peter I. March 6, 1711. On the naming of some persons as governors and vice-governor // Papers of Emperor Peter I / Published by Academician A. Bychkov. - SPb .: Printing house of the II department of His Imperial Majesty's own chancellery, 1873. - P. 185.

Biography on the CHRONOS website

DMITRY MIKHAILOVICH GOLITSYN - 07/03/1665; 04/14/1737

Maria Kryuchkova "Patrimony of Prince Dmitry, Prince Mikhailov's son Golitsyn" "Our Heritage" № 92 2009
Golitsyn, Alexey Dmitrievich
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alexey Dmitrievich Golitsyn
Alexey Dmitrievich Golitsyn
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Active Privy Councilor, Senator

Born: August 16, 1697
Death: January 29, 1768 (age 70)
Moscow
Burial place: Epiphany monastery
Genus: Golitsyn

Awards:
Band to Order St Andr.png Band to Order St Alexander Nevsky.png
Wikipedia has articles about other people named Golitsyn, Alexey.

Prince Alexei Dmitrievich Golitsyn (August 16, 1697 - January 29, 1768, Moscow) - Senator, actual privy councilor from the Golitsyn-Mikhailovich family.

Biography

Born in 1697 in the family of Dmitry Mikhailovich Golitsyn (future member of the Supreme Privy Council) and Princess Anna Yakovlevna Odoevskaya.

In 1727 he was appointed chamberlain to the staff of the bride of Peter II, Princess M.A.Menshikova.

On April 28, 1730, during the reign of Anna Ioannovna, he received the rank of actual state councilor, and on June 5 of the same year he was appointed chief judge of the Moscow court order.

In 1736-37. became involved in a litigation between his son-in-law Konstantin Kantemir (married to Golitsyn's sister A.D.) with his stepmother, Princess A.N. Trubetskoy for the inheritance of his father, Prince Dmitry Kantemir. According to the law, the estates of Dmitry Cantemir could not be divided, but had to be given to the eldest son of Cantemir from his first marriage. The eldest son was Constantine. During the division, the Senate decided the case (about a certain share of the inheritance) in favor of Konstantin's stepmother Anastasia Ivanovna. Constantine appealed to the Supreme Privy Council.

On December 4, 1736, the high court discovered the participation of A.D. Golitsyn in this case, then his father D.M. Golitsyn was interrogated in Moscow by S.A. Saltykov on January 2, 1737, and on January 28, he was arrested. Golitsyn was stripped of the rank of actual state councilor and “was written by a warrant officer in the Kizlyar garrison,” and his estates were confiscated. The wife's property was saved at the request of her father, and she was offered the choice of either following her husband or staying in Moscow. She followed her husband.

On January 22, 1741, he was returned from exile by the ruler Anna Leopoldovna with the order to live in his villages without a break, and on September 17 of the same year he was appointed a senator and returned the title of a valid state councilor. In the same year, the confiscated estates were returned to him.

On April 24, 1743 he was granted a privy councilor. On July 15, 1744, he was awarded the Order of St. Alexander Nevsky. In 1745 he took part in the work of the commission to investigate the disorders and abuses in the management of the Bashkirs. On August 30, 1757 he was promoted to acting privy councilor. He was among the senators who accompanied Catherine II to Moscow for her coronation, and on April 27, 1763 he received the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called.

After the coronation celebrations, he retired and settled in Moscow. He devoted his last years to the upbringing of his long-awaited son Nikolai. He died on January 29, 1768 in Moscow. He was buried in the Epiphany Monastery near the Golitsyn-Mikhailovich. After the destruction of the necropolis, the tombstone was exhibited in the Donskoy Monastery.
A family

Was married twice:

The wife of Princess Irina Andreevna Khilkova, daughter of the Peter's resident at the court of Charles XII
wife since 1726 Agrafena Vasilievna Saltykova (1709-1762), daughter of General-in-Chief V.F.Saltykov, sister of S.V. Saltykov, favorite of Catherine II.
Varvara Alekseevna (1747-1777), since 1766 married to the chamberlain Ivan Grigorievich Naumov.
Anna Alekseevna (1748-1780), since 1773 married to the foreman Andrey Yakovlevich Maslov.
Nikolai Alekseevich (1751-1809), equestrian, later envoy to the Swedish court; the builder of the estate ensemble in the village of Arkhangelskoye near Moscow. Since 1777 she was married to her mother's cousin Maria Adamovna Olsufyeva (1757-1821), daughter of A. V. Olsufiev. This marriage was one of the first allowed in Russia, marriages between relatives. Of the numerous offspring of the Golitsyns (16 children), only three sons and one daughter survived, the rest all died at an early age.

GOLITSYN Dmitry Mikhailovich (1665-1737)

GOLITSYN Dmitry Mikhailovich (1665 - April 14 (25), 1737, Shlisselburg (cm. SHLISSELBURG)) - Prince, Russian statesman and politician, one of the leaders of the Supreme Privy Council, compiler of "Konditsiy" in 1730; the eldest son of the founder of the Mikhailovich line of the Golitsyn family, the boyar Mikhail Andreevich Golitsyn (1640-1687), the elder brother of Mikhail Mikhailovich Golitsyn Sr. and Mikhail Mikhailovich Golitsyn Jr.
Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Golitsyn studied in Italy since 1697 (cm. ITALY (state)) navigation, in 1701 he was sent as ambassador extraordinary to Constantinople in order to achieve the consent of the Ottoman Turkey to the free navigation of Russian ships in the Black Sea. Since 1704, he commanded an auxiliary detachment of Russian troops operating in the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1707, Dmitry Mikhailovich was appointed governor of Kiev, and in 1711-1718 he served as governor of Kiev. With the help of students of the Kiev-Mohyla Academy D.M. Golitsyn organized the translation of a number of political and historical works. In 1718, Peter I summoned him to Petersburg and appointed him a senator. In 1718-1722 D.M. Golitsyn headed the Chamber Collegium. Since 1726 he was a member of the Supreme Privy Council, under Peter II Alekseevich he was president of the Commerce Collegium. During this period, Dmitry Mikhailovich showed himself as a defender of the privileges of aristocratic families, in particular, he headed a party that did not recognize the second marriage of Peter I. After the death of Peter II (1730), D.M. Golitsyn advocated the limitation of autocracy, became the head of the supreme leaders. At his suggestion, Anna Ivanovna was invited to the throne, and under his leadership, conditions were drawn up that limited the autocracy. After the failure of the idea of the supreme leaders, he lived in the Arkhangelskoye estate near Moscow, almost did not participate in state affairs. In Arkhangelsk, he collected a library of Russian chronicles, chronographs, synopsis, translations of works by N. Machiavelli, G. Grotius, J. Locke, S. Pufendorf, books on foreign languages- up to 6 thousand in total. Anna Ivanovna did not forgive D.M. Golitsyn of participation in the activities of the leaders. In 1736, he was brought to trial on charges of abuse of office, and sentenced to death, commuted to imprisonment in the Shlisselburg fortress, where he soon died. His library was confiscated and his books were distributed among private individuals. Dmitry Mikhailovich was married to Anna Yakovlevna Odoevskaya (d. 1750), had children from her, Anastasia (1698-1746), Sergei (1696-1738), who became a diplomat and privy councilor, Alexei (1697-1768), who became a real privy councilor and a senator.

encyclopedic Dictionary. 2009 .

GOLITSYN Vasily Vasilievich (died 1619)
GOLITSYN Dmitry Mikhailovich (1721-1793)

See what "GOLITSYN Dmitry Mikhailovich (1665-1737)" is in other dictionaries:

GOLITSYN Dmitry Mikhailovich- (1665 1737) Prince, one of the leaders of the Supreme Privy Council, compiler of the Condition 1730. Brother of MM Golitsyn. Collected in the village. Arkhangelsk rare library. In 1736 he was convicted on charges of conspiracy ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Dmitry Golitsyn- (1665 1737), prince, member of the Supreme Privy Council, one of the compilers of "Konditsiy" 1730, which determined the conditions for the accession to the throne of Empress Anna Ivanovna. Brother of M. M. Golitsyn. Collected in the village. Arkhangelsk rare library. In 1736 he was convicted of ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

Dmitry Golitsyn- Golitsyn, Dmitry Mikhailovich, the famous supreme leader (1665 1737), the eldest son of the steward (after the boyar) Prince Mikhail Andreevich; from 1686 a steward, from 1694 captain of the Preobrazhensky regiment. In 1697 he was sent abroad for the science of military affairs and ... ... Biographical Dictionary

Golitsyn, Dmitry Mikhailovich- Wikipedia has articles about other people with this surname, see Golitsyn. Not to be confused with Golitsyn, Dmitry Mikhailovich (1721 1793). Dmitry Mikhailovich Golitsyn ... Wikipedia

Golitsyn, Dmitry- Golitsyn, Dmitry: Golitsyn, Dmitry Alekseevich (1734 1803), colonel, ambassador, chemist, mineralogist Golitsyn, Dmitry Vladimirovich (1771 1844), military leader Golitsyn, Dmitry Dmitrievich (1770 1840), priest Golitsyn, Dmitry Mikhailovich (1665 1737), ... ... Wikipedia

Dmitry Mikhailovich Golitsyn- (1665, Moscow 1737, Shlisselburg) prince, Russian statesman Contents 1 Military career 2 Administrative work 3 Struggle for power ... Wikipedia

Prince DMITRY MIKHAILOVICH GOLITSYN, 1721-1793, son of Field Marshal Prince Mikhail Mikhailovich Sr. (1674-1730) from his second marriage with Princess Tatyana Borisovna Kurakina (1697-1757), was born in Abo on May 15, 1721; before the rank of captain he served in the guard, in the Izmailovsky regiment, in 1751, on September 5, he was granted to the chamber-cadet, after on January 28, 1751 he married the chamber-maid of honor Princess Ekaterina-Smaragda Cantemir (b. November 4, 1720 , died on November 2, 1761), in 1755 he was granted a chamberlain, then promoted to major general and in 1759 received the Alexander Star. After the death of Count M.P. Bestuzhev-Ryumin (died on February 26, 1760), he headed the embassy in Paris until the arrival of Count P.G. Chernyshev, then on May 28, 1761 he was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary to Vienna, where he remained for 30 years ... In 1762 he was granted the rank of lieutenant general, in 1772 he became the actual privy councilor and received the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called. In the middle of 1790, the 70-year-old decrepit prince was appointed as an assistant to a young, brilliant intriguer, Count Andrei Razumovsky. The old diplomat was deeply grieved and soon left the service. Having lived shortly after that, Golitsyn died in Vienna on September 19, 1793 and was buried in his villa Predigstuhl, near Vienna. He had no children.

In Vienna, Prince Golitsyn gained universal love with his broad charity. A lover of education, he patronized scientists and artists, to whom he provided ways to sell their works, and he himself collected a whole museum of rare bronze, sculpture and a large art gallery. "Friend of mankind", he bequeathed 850 / t for the arrangement and maintenance of a hospital in Moscow. rubles, income from 2 estates in 2 / t. shower and my art gallery. His will was perfectly carried out by his brother, Prince A. M. Golitsyn, by the opening of the Golitsyn hospital in 1801, and then violated by subsequent heirs - the sale of his gallery, from which only a few excellent portraits survived in the hospital.

The body of Prince D. M. Golitsyn, from the Highest assent, was transported to Moscow in 1802, where he was buried in a crypt under the church of the Golitsyn hospital; the following Latin inscription on the tomb: "Demetrius Mich. Iil. Princeps a Galitzin Cath. II Russ. Imp. apud aul. Caes.-Reg. olim orator. Nat. Aboae 1721, mort. Vindob. 1793 ibique in villa propria Predigtstuhl dicta sepult Inde ex voto suorum et clementi jussu Alexandri Imp. Moscoviam translat. Cal. Feb. 1802, ut in aedibus paupertati aegrotae ab ipsius erga patriam amore dicatis ossa pii digne requiescant. "

(From a portrait painted by Drouet the Younger in 1762; Golitsyn Hospital, in Moscow.)

Orders of the Russian Empire(1)

Military career

Administrative work

Power struggle

Retired

Marriage and children

(1665, Moscow - April 14 (25), 1737, Shlisselburg, St. Petersburg province) - prince, Russian statesman.

Biography

Military career

The son of the steward Mikhail Andreevich Golitsyn and Praskovya Nikitichna, nee Kaftyreva, the elder brother of Mikhail the Elder, Peter and Mikhail the Younger Golitsyn.

In 1686 he became a room attendant of Tsar Peter Alekseevich. In 1694-1697 he served in the Preobrazhensky regiment as a captain, then studied military science in Italy, in 1701-1704 he was ambassador to Constantinople and was imprisoned in the Seven-Tower Fortress, later took part in the hostilities of the Northern War.

Administrative work

In 1707-18 he was a voivode (then a governor) in Kiev, where, according to his contemporaries, he was distinguished by his honesty and incorruptibility. From 1718 he was the head of the Chamber Collegium and a member of the Senate, in charge of financial affairs. He enjoyed the great confidence of Peter I, who often turned to him with various requests (for example, about the translation of certain books). Nevertheless, in 1723 Golitsyn was arrested in the Shafirov case, but pardoned at the request of the Empress.

Power struggle

After the death of Peter I, Golitsyn supported the party of supporters of the reign of his grandson Peter II Alekseevich, but agreed to the accession of Catherine I in exchange for a seat in the Supreme Privy Council. Under Peter II, he was appointed head of the Commerce Collegium, abolished a number of state monopolies and lowered customs tariffs. Then he introduced his brother Mikhail, who became the head of the Military Collegium, to the Supreme Privy Council.

Retired

Soon, however, repression affected his son-in-law, for whose intercession the seventy-year-old prince was arrested in 1736, accused of preparing a conspiracy and thrown into the Shlisselburg fortress, where he soon died (or was killed).

Marriage and children

Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Golitsyn was married from 1684 to Princess Anna Yakovlevna (? -1750), daughter of Prince Yakov Nikitich Odoevsky. Born in marriage:

Sergei (1696-1738) - governor of Kazan, diplomat;
Alexey (1697-1768) - senator;
Anastasia (1698-1747) - since 1724 the wife of St. book Constantin Cantemir (1703-1747), son of the Moldavian ruler Dmitry Cantemir. Childless marriage.

Awards

He was awarded the Orders of St. Andrew the First-Called Apostle and St. Alexander Nevsky (1727).

Dmitry Mikhailovich Golitsyn

In Prince D. M. Golitsyn the clan nobility had a staunch and well-trained leader. In 1697, already over 30 years old, he was sent to study abroad with a crowd of Russian noble youth, visited Italy and other countries. From the West, he brought a keen interest in the structure of local states and in European political literature, while retaining a love for Russian antiquity. The rich library, which he collected in his village of Arkhangelskoye near Moscow and plundered after his exile in 1737, combined up to 6 thousand books in different languages and in Russian translation on history, politics and philosophy along with valuable monuments of Russian law and everyday life. Here were collected all the somewhat remarkable works of European political thinkers of the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries, starting from Machiavelli, and between them more than a dozen special works on the aristocracy and as much on the English constitution. This shows in which direction the collector's thought was turned and what form of government occupied him most.

Governor in Kiev, Golitsyn ordered the translation of some of these books into Russian at the local academy. From the political teachings of that time, Golitsyn was especially attracted by the moralistic school of rationalists with its head Puffendorf, whom Peter also valued, who ordered to translate and publish his Introduction to the history of European states and a treatise on the duties of man and citizen. For Golitsyn, other works of the same publicist were translated, together with the treatise of Hugo Grotius "On the Law of War and Peace"; but the works of Hobbes, the head of the materialist school of publicists, as well as Locke's On Government, are not found in these translations. Golitsyn, like Peter, was more understandable and seemed more edifying the theory of the origin of the state developed by moralists not from a war of all against all, as Hobbes taught, but out of the need of everyone in everyone and everyone in each other - a theory that believed that the basis of state order is not law, but duties of a citizen to the state and fellow citizens. Likewise, Locke, with his democratic teaching on the participation of the people in legislation, did not meet the boyar views of Prince Golitsyn.

Golitsyn was one of the most educated Russian people of the 18th century. The matter of his intensified mental work was to fuse into a single look the love of Russian antiquity and the Moscow boyar claims with the results of Western European political thought. But, undoubtedly, he succeeded in something that so rarely did the Russian educated people of his century - to develop political convictions based on the idea of political freedom. As an admirer of the science and political order of Western Europe, he could not be a principled opponent of Peter's reform, which also borrowed state ideas and institutions from there. But he did not put up with the methods and conditions of the reform, with the way the reformer would act, with the mores of his closest collaborators, and did not stand in their ranks.

Peter honored, but disliked Golitsyn for his stubborn and tough character, and under him an honest, businesslike and zealous Kiev governor hardly reached the senatorship, but did not enjoy significant influence. At the events that took place in Russia under Peter and after him, Golitsyn looked with the darkest gaze; everything here insulted him as a violation of antiquity, order, even decency. He was not the only one who was burdened by two political illnesses, from which, especially recently, everyone suffered: this is the power acting outside the law, and the favor, wielding weak, but arbitrary power. His thoughts were focused on healing the fatherland from these ailments. He studied European government institutions in order to choose the most suitable for Russia, talked a lot about this with Fick, whom we know. Proceeding from the idea, subjectively or genealogically, that only a noble nobility is able to maintain lawful order in the country, he settled on the Swedish aristocracy and the Supreme Privy Council decided to make the main point of his plan.

Supreme leaders 1730 On the night of January 19, 1730 in Moscow, in the Lefortovo Palace, the 15-year-old Emperor Peter II, the grandson of the reformer, died of smallpox, without appointing a successor. Together with him, the dynasty was extinguished, the male line of the Romanov dynasty was suppressed. At the same time, the succession to the throne was left without strong legislative norms and legal heirs. The law of Peter I, unclear, arbitrarily interpreted and left without action by the legislator himself, lost its normalizing force, and Catherine's testament did not have it as a controversial document.

To replace the throne, they sorted out the entire available royal house, called the queen-nun, the first wife of Peter, his youngest daughter Elizabeth, the two-year-old son of the eldest deceased daughter Anna, the Duke of Holstein, the three daughters of Tsar Ivan. But they could not stop at anyone, they could not find an indisputable right to the throne from anyone. The law of Peter I confused all dynastic concepts and relationships. Candidates were valued for political reasons, personal or family sympathy, and not for legal reasons. In the midst of this confusion of opinions and interests, the Supreme Privy Council, as the head of the administration, took the initiative in the replacement of the throne.

On the same night, immediately after the death of Peter II, he conferred on this matter, having appointed a meeting of all the highest officials of the state for the coming morning in order to jointly solve such an important issue with them. At the same time, the Council replenished itself: in its five-member structure there were already three aristocrats, Prince D. M. Golitsyn and two princes Dolgoruky; now another Golitsyn, brother of Dimitri, and two more Dolgoruky were invited. The presence of six persons from only two of the noblest boyar families gave the sixth-member Council not only an aristocratic, but also a downright oligarchic character. At the meeting they talked a lot and for a long time, "with considerable publicity," as Feofan Prokopovich put it.

The statement of Prince Dolgoruky, father of the second bride Peter II, about the right of his daughter to the throne, as if bequeathed to her by the late groom, and someone's proposal for a queen-grandmother were rejected as "obscene." Then Prince D. Golitsyn, raising his voice, said that God, punishing Russia for her immeasurable sins, especially for the assimilation of foreign vices, took away from her the sovereign, on whom all her hope rested. And since his death cut off the male knee of the royal house, it must go to the older female line, the daughters of Tsar Ivan. Moreover, the daughters of Peter I themselves do not have the right to the throne, as illegitimate, born before their father entered into marriage with their mother. Catherine's will is of no significance, since this woman, being of low birth, herself had no right to the throne and could not dispose of it; but also the eldest of the daughters of Tsar Ivan, Catherine of Mecklenburg, is uncomfortable, like the wife of a foreign prince, moreover, an extravagant man; The most convenient is the second princess, the Dowager Duchess of Courland Anna, the daughter of a Russian mother from an old kind family, a woman endowed with all the qualities of mind and heart necessary for the throne.

Meanwhile, in another hall of the palace, senators and senior generals were waiting for what the supreme leaders would decide on. Yaguzhinsky, the former Prosecutor General of the Senate, already known to us, took one of the Dolgorukys crowded here and expressed to him a purely Golitsyn way of thinking: “How long do we have to endure that our heads are flogged! Now is the time for the autocracy not to exist. " When the leaders came out and announced the election of Anna, no one objected, and Yaguzhinsky ran up to one of them and yelled, as if having overheard Golitsyn's words: “My dears! Give us as much will as possible! " But this was a game of innocence: Yaguzhinsky, like most of the dignitaries, having agreed with the choice of the leaders, dispersed, embittered that they had not been invited to the meeting.

On the morning of January 19, the Synod, the Senate, the generals and other high officials gathered in the Kremlin, the Supreme Privy Council announced the assignment of the Russian throne to Princess Anna, adding that the consent of the entire fatherland in the person of the assembled ranks was required. All expressed their full agreement. Nothing more was announced to the meeting. Meanwhile, on the same day, points, or "conditions" limiting her power, were hastily drawn up and, under the cover of the strictest secrecy, were sent to Mitava when writing to Anna. The Empress promises, upon accepting the Russian crown, not to marry for the rest of her life and not to appoint a successor either by herself or by herself. And also to rule together with the Supreme Privy Council "in eight persons" and without its consent: 1) not to start a war; 2) not to make peace; 3) do not burden subjects with new taxes; 4) do not favor the ranks above the colonel and “do not appoint anyone to noble affairs”, and the guard and other troops should be under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Privy Council; 5) not to take away life, property and honor from the gentry without trial; 6) do not favor estates and villages; 7) in court ranks neither Russians nor foreigners "do not produce without the advice of the Supreme Privy Council" and 8) state revenues should not be used for expenditure (without the consent of the Council). These obligations ended with words on behalf of the Empress: "But if I do not fulfill and hold on to this promise, I will be deprived of the Russian crown."

Meanwhile, the zealous Yaguzhinsky, who was so hot against the autocracy on the night of January 19, got angry when he saw that he would not be allowed into the Supreme Privy Council, and secretly sent him to Anna in Mitava with a warning that she did not believe in everything to the deputies of the Council until she herself arrived in Moscow, where he learns the whole truth. Anna without hesitation agreed to the terms and signed them: “Therefore, I promise to keep everything without any exception. Anna". Two or three days later, she decided to leave for Moscow, demanding from the envoys of the Council 10 thousand rubles for the rise.

S.P. Yaguzhinsky

Ferment among the nobility ... The election of Duchess Anna to the Supreme Privy Council, soon becoming famous, caused an extraordinary movement in Moscow. An accidental circumstance gave it not local, only Moscow, but also general Russian significance. On the same day, January 19, when the emperor died, his wedding with Princess Dolgoruka was scheduled. Following the regiments with their generals and officers to Moscow, in anticipation of the court festivities, many provincial nobility rushed over. Gathering for a wedding and attending a funeral, the nobles found themselves in a whirlpool of political struggle. The plan of the leaders was first greeted in society with a dull murmur. A contemporary, vigilantly following the events of that time and taking an active part in them against the leaders, Archbishop of Novgorod Feofan Prokopovich vividly draws the course of the movement in his note: “A pitiful vision and hearing everywhere in the city; wherever you come, no matter what meeting you come to, nothing else was heard, only woeful reprimands against these osmilichnyh entertainers; all of them severely condemned, all cursed their unusual daring, unsatisfied delicacy and lust for power. " The nobles who had arrived in Moscow broke up into circles, gathered at night and carried on lively rumors against the leaders; Theophanes numbered up to 500 people, captured by the agitation fever. The leaders, the "noblest of the gentry", formed an opposition alliance in which two opinions fought: supporters of one, "daring" one, thought to suddenly attack the leaders with weapons in their hands and kill them all if they did not want to lag behind their intentions; adherents of a different opinion, "meek", wanted to appear in the Supreme Privy Council and declare that it is not the business of a few state structures to remake and conduct such a business secretly from others, even from government officials: "it smells unpleasant and smelly." But Theophanes found out that the energy of the opposition was "notably cold" every day from internal discord: the weakest part of it, the conservative, wanted to preserve the old ancestral autocracy at all costs; the strongest and most liberal sympathized with the enterprise of the leaders, but was personally annoyed against them for the fact that they "did not call them into their friendship." However, even in this liberal part, the foreign ambassadors did not notice unanimity. “Here,” wrote the secretary of the French embassy Magnan from Moscow, “on the streets and in houses you can only hear speeches about the English constitution and the rights of the English parliament.” The Prussian ambassador Mardefeld wrote to his court that in general all Russians, that is, nobles, want freedom, only they cannot agree on its measure and the degree of limitation of absolutism. "There are countless parties," the Spanish ambassador de Liria wrote in January from Moscow, "and although everything is calm so far, perhaps some kind of outbreak may occur."

Prince V.L. Dolgoruky

First of all, of course, they turned to the West - how is it there? Eyes scattered about the constitutions there, like about beautiful things in a jewelry store - one is better than the other - and wondered which one to choose. “Everyone is now busy with the thought of a new form of government, - we read in the dispatches of foreign ambassadors, - the plans of the nobles and the petty nobility are infinitely varied. Everyone is indecisive about what kind of government to choose for Russia. Some want to limit the power of the sovereign to the rights of parliament, as in England, others - as in Sweden, still others want to arrange an electoral government, as in Poland; finally, the fourth want an aristocratic republic without a monarch. "

In the absence of a political eye, in the habit of measuring political distances, it seemed so far from the torture chamber to the English parliament. But with such a disagreement of opinions, a scarecrow stood in front of everyone's eyes, forcing those who disagree to huddle closer to each other: this is a favor, a disease of a loose and untidy government. “Having experienced the rise of the Dolgoruks,” the ambassadors wrote, “the Russians are afraid of the power of the temporary workers and think that under the absolute tsar there will always be a favorite who will control them with a rod, and a speck, and a fireball,” as Dolgoruky did under the late Peter II. This means that the nobility was not against the idea of limiting power as a means of protecting against temporary workers. But he was outraged by the plan of the supreme leaders, as an oligarchic venture that threatened to replace the power of one person with the arbitrariness of as many tyrants as there are members in the Supreme Privy Council. According to the historian and publicist of Catherine's time, Prince Shcherbatov, the leaders of themselves "instead of one, composed a crowd of sovereigns." The case was viewed in the same way in 1730.

In one note, which was then passed from hand to hand in the form of a letter to someone in Moscow on behalf of the middle gentry, we read: “You can hear here what is being done in your country or has already been done in order to be in our republic; I am extremely self-conscious about that: God forbid, so that instead of one autocratic sovereign, ten autocratic and powerful surnames do not become! And so we, the gentry, will completely disappear and will be forced to worship idolatry more bitterly than before and seek mercy from everyone, and it will be difficult to find it ”. Fermentation reached an extreme degree when, at the solemn meeting of the Supreme Privy Council on February 2, the Senate, Synod, generals, presidents of collegia and other civilian officials were read the "conditions" signed by Anna and allegedly her letter, of course, prepared in advance on her behalf in Moscow. In it, agreeing to her election, she stated that “for the benefit of the Russian state and for the satisfaction of loyal subjects” she wrote and signed in what ways she wants to lead that government.

The obligations set by Anna as an indispensable condition for her election now turned out to be her voluntary sacrifice for the good of the state. This deceit, sewn with white thread, astounded the assembly. According to the pictorial description of Feofan Prokopovich, everyone lowered their ears like poor donkeys, whispering, but no one dared to respond with indignation. The supreme gentlemen themselves were also quietly whispering to each other and, looking sharply with their eyes, pretended that they too were surprised by such a surprise. One prince, DM Golitsyn, would often cough and shout, “to the point of satiety,” repeating in different ways: how gracious the empress is; God moved her to this scripture; From now on, Russia will be happy and flourishing. But as everyone was stubbornly silent, he spoke up reproachfully: “Why won't anyone say a word? Let me tell you who thinks what, although, however, there is nothing to say, but only to thank the Empress. " Finally, someone from the heap, in a low voice and with a great hesitation, said: "I do not know and am very surprised why it came to the idea of the Empress to write like that."

But this timid voice did not find an echo. They prepared and offered to sign the minutes of the meeting, which read: after listening to the letter and points sent by the empress, everyone declared in agreement, “that we are very pleased with her majesty's mercy and we will sign with our own hands.” At this point, the poor donkeys lost their patience and refused to sign, saying that they would do it in a day. Everyone seemed to have suddenly grown old, "decrepit and thoughtful," says Feofan. They hit too hard on the servile feeling; no one expected the empress to be twisted so hard. Verkhovnikov was asked how that government can continue to be. Instead of declaring that the answer to this question has already been given by Anna herself in the letter and paragraphs and that her will is not subject to revision, Golitsyn allowed those present to write a draft about this on their own and submit it the next day. With this, he revealed badly hidden cards.

Until now, the case seemed to be correct. The Supreme Privy Council, in fact remaining the only body of supreme government, elected Princess Anna to the inherited throne; all the higher ranks up to the brigadier, who were considered official representatives of the people, “showing the face of the whole fatherland,” as Prokopovich put it, unanimously approved the Council's choice. The unexpected, but desirable chosen one by right of magnanimity, brought to the good of the fatherland the rags of the ancestral autocracy that survived after Peter I and in the points signed with her own hand indicated in what ways she wanted to lead her reign. A gracious gift is not viewed as a purchase, but is simply accepted with due thanksgiving. And Golitsyn threw this gift to the discussion of the highest ranks up to "the brigadier" and thus discovered that the conditions were not a generous gift of the Empress to the people, but her backstage deal with the leaders.

The play was staged on a shaky stage: in an atmosphere of fake legality, a simple, genuine court trick was played out. Moreover, the matter of regulating personal supreme power became entangled, blurring into a general revision of state institutions. Forced or careless, Golitsyn's proposal caused a stormy response: a fever of opinions, notes, oral statements about a new form of government began, with which all ranks up to the colonel and even the nobility besieged the Soviet. The supreme leaders had to listen and read a bunch of griefs. The confusion reached the point that it was possible to fear an uprising. The Supreme Council wanted to intimidate the dispersed politicians, reminding them that it had commanders, detectives, torture for the rebels. Then the opposition turned into a conspiracy: weak people, "weak", in the words of Prokopovich, without position and connections, gathered in secret, were afraid to spend the night at home, ran from one friend to another, and then at night, in disguise.

Gentry projects... The call of officials to participate in the discussion of the case gave the oligarchic intrigue the appearance of a broader political movement. Until now, the question revolved in the government circle: the Supreme Privy Council dealt with higher institutions- Senate, Synod, generals, presidents of colleges. From the moment the projects were submitted, the society, the gentry of noble families in ranks and even without ranks, entered the business. Government institutions are scattered into circles, dignitaries interfere with the ranks of their estate brethren; opinions are given not from public places, not from colleagues, but from groups of like-minded people.

New interests are entering the movement. Up to 13 opinions, notes, projects submitted or prepared for submission to the Supreme Privy Council from various gentry circles are known; we see over a thousand signatures under them. Only the draft drawn up by Tatishchev and submitted from the Senate and the generals was developed into an integral historical and political treatise. The rest were compiled hastily, thoughts evolved somehow; it means that here you can look for an unadorned, frank expression of the political mood of the nobility. The projects do not directly relate to either the points or the election of Anna with limited power, as if they admit a tacitly accomplished fact. Only Tatishchev, as a publicist historian, shook his acquaintance with Russian history and Western political literature, as a follower of the moralistic school of Puffendorf and Wolf. He puts the matter on the general foundations of state law and proves that autocratic rule is most useful for Russia in its position and that, after the suppression of the dynasty, the election of the sovereign "by natural law must be the consent of all subjects, some personally, others through attorneys." Tatishchev knew the bicameral system of representation in the West, and perhaps he remembered the composition of the Russian Zemsky Sobor of the 17th century. Therefore, he is outraged not so much by the restriction of Anna's power as by the fact that few did it arbitrarily, secretly, trampling on the right of the entire gentry and other ranks. He encourages like-minded people to defend this right to the extreme.

Other projects are more vile: they are not up to the theory and structure of the supreme power; they focus on two subjects — top government and desirable privileges for the nobility. Incomplete and unclear features of the projects draw such a management plan. The "supreme government" either remains the Supreme Privy Council, or the Senate becomes. Most of all the projects are concerned with the size and family composition of this government. It should not constitute such a tight circle as the existing, empowered Supreme Privy Council. It should have from 11 to 30 people; most of all, it is necessary not to admit more than two members from the same surname into it: the quadruplets of the Dolgoruky princes in the Supreme Council on January 19, obviously, stuck out an annoying knitting needle in the eyes of the entire gentry.

All top management should be elective and noble. The nobility is not an integral, homogeneous class: it distinguishes between "family people", clan nobility, "military and civilian generals", bureaucratic nobility and gentry. From these ranks, members of the Supreme Privy Council, the Senate, presidents of colleges and even governors are elected. The generals and gentry are elected to these positions, according to some projects - only "noble" and together with the Supreme Privy Council and the Senate. This electoral meeting in projects is called a society. He also assimilated legislative and even constituent power; the clergy and merchants participate in the development of a plan for state reforms only on special issues related to them.

In some projects, a desire is expressed to alleviate the tax burden of the peasants, that is, the payment responsibility of the nobles themselves; but there was not a single nobleman who would have uttered a word not about the emancipation of the serfs - whether before that - but at least about the legal determination of the lord's fees and duties. A significant part of the projects are benefits for the nobility in service and land tenure: the appointment of a term of service, the right to enter the service directly as officers, the abolition of the inheritance, etc. These benefits involved the ordinary gentry in the movement. The case was led by noble or bureaucratic nobility. The petty nobility, indifferent to rumors about different forms of government, did not act independently, did not constitute special political circles, but huddled around important "persons" who promised them tempting privileges. It echoed its leaders all the more obediently because most of it were guards and army officers, accustomed to obey the same leaders, their colonels and generals in the ranks: out of 1100 signatures under various projects, more than 600 were officers.

All projects are based on the idea that the nobility is the only legal estate with civil and political rights, a real people in the legal sense of the word, a kind of pays legal; through him the power and governs the state. The rest of the population is only a controlled and laboring mass, paying for both, and for its management, and for the right to work; it is a living state inventory. The people in our sense of the word in the circles that wrote the projects did not understand or did not recognize.

Empress Anna Ioannovna in coronation dress

New plan... While the gentry in their projects was in a hurry to declare their class desires, Prince D. Golitsyn worked out and discussed with the Supreme Privy Council a plan for the present constitution. According to this plan, the Empress controls only her court. The supreme power belongs to the Supreme Privy Council, composed of 10 or 12 members from the most distinguished families. In this Council, the Empress is given only two votes. The Council rules over all the troops: all following the example of the Swedish Council of State during its struggle against the Diet nobility in 1719–1720. Golitsyn has three other institutions operating under the Council: 1) the 36-member Senate, which preliminarily discusses all matters decided by the Council; 2) A noble chamber (chamber) of 200 members at the discretion of the gentry protects the rights of the estate from encroachments by the Supreme Privy Council and 3) The House of City Representatives manages trade and industrial affairs and protects the interests of the common people.

So, the noble families rule, and the gentry representatives, along with the merchants, defend themselves and defend the people from this rule. This plan did not extinguish the fire, but only added boyar oil to the noble fire. The old Don Quixote of the inveterate Moscow boyars, in view of his chosen one approaching from Mitava, finally made concessions, decided to slightly open the doors of the jealously closed supreme government and even allow something similar to the representation of popular interests, the idea of which was so difficult for the consciousness of the ruling classes. He captures the interests of social classes even more broadly in the form of an oath to the empress that he compiled. Here, too, he stubbornly stands on the aristocratic composition and on the monopoly of the legislative power of the Supreme Privy Council. But he squanders important benefits and advantages to the clergy, merchants, especially the noble gentry, and promises all the nobility what they did not dare to ask for in their projects: complete freedom from compulsory service with the right to voluntarily enter the navy, army and even the guards directly as officers. This kind of charter of estate liberties of the gentry was crowned with a promise, especially desirable for him, - not to allow courtyards and peasants to any business. The Petrovsky peasant Pososhkov and a number of administrative and financial businessmen, brought out by Peter the Great from the boyar household, were pronounced political excommunication.

B. Chorikov.Empress Anna Ivanovna receives Chinese envoys

Crash... The political drama of Prince Golitsyn, poorly rehearsed and even worse played out, quickly reached the epilogue. The discord in government circles and the mood of the guards encouraged the opponents of restriction, who had hitherto hidden or feigned adherence to the opposition. A special party was formed, or "another company", as Feofan put it, of the same deal composition as the others: it included the relatives of the empress and their friends, offended dignitaries, like the princes Cherkassky, Trubetskoy, whom the Supreme Privy Council did not admit to its membership ... They were joined by people who are indecisive or indifferent. Osterman also came to life. All the time he sat at home sick, was about to die, received the Holy Communion and almost collected unction, but now he became the inspirer of a new company. Relationships, interests and faces were clarified, and it was no wonder that the companions agreed, assuring them that they would rather get what they wanted from the autocratic empress than from the autocratic Supreme Council, he consoled the senators with the restoration of the Senate in the meaning of supreme rule, the generals and guardsmen - getting rid of the command of the supreme leaders, all - the abolition of the Supreme Privy Council. The party bell was Feofan Prokopovich. He was exhausted, calling all over Moscow about the tyranny endured by the sovereigns from the supreme rulers, whom the dragon guarding her, VL Dolgoruky, had brought to the point that she was "breathing forcibly." Vladyka himself was frightened by the success of his pastoral sermon, noting that many, inflamed by it, "are plotting something very terrible."

Approaching Moscow, Anna immediately felt firm ground under her, prepared by the conspiratorial agitation of a German who was reputed to be an atheist and the first Russian bishop present in the Holy Synod, and boldly became the head of a conspiracy against herself, against her honest Mitava word. In Vsesvyatskoe near Moscow, contrary to the points, she declared herself lieutenant colonel of the Preobrazhensky regiment and captain of the cavalry guards, personally treating them with vodka, which was received with the greatest enthusiasm. Even before Anna's arrival, the guards officers openly said that they would rather agree to be the slaves of one tyrant monarch than many.

Anna solemnly entered Moscow on February 15, and on the same day high officials in the Assumption Cathedral swore allegiance to the empress, not to the autocrat, but to the "fatherland" - and that was all. Not noticing the intrigue that had arisen around Anna, the supporters of the Supreme Privy Council rejoiced, saying that at last a direct decent rule had come. The Empress is assigned 100 thousand rubles a year and not a penny, not the last snuffbox from the treasury without the permission of the Council, and even then on receipt; just a little, although in small ways it will violate the position given to her, - now back to his Courland. And that she was made by the Empress, and then only for the first time - a shaving brush on the lips. But the leaders no longer believed in the success of their cause and, according to rumors, they themselves offered Anna autocracy.

And so, on February 25, one hundred and eight senators, generals and nobles in the Great Palace Hall petitioned Anna to form a commission to review the projects submitted to the Supreme Privy Council in order to establish a form of government acceptable to the entire people. The Empress was called upon to mediate in her own business between the rulers and their opponents. One of the leaders suggested that Anna, according to the conditions, first discuss the petition with the Supreme Privy Council; but Anna, once again breaking her word, immediately signed the paper.

The leaders were dumbfounded. But suddenly an unimaginable noise arose: these were the officers of the Guards, already in a proper mood, with other nobles began to shout, “We don’t want the empress to prescribe laws. She should be an autocrat, like all the former sovereigns were. " Anna tried to calm the screamers, and they kneeled in front of her with a frenzied rebuke about their loyal service and with the final exclamation: "Order, and we will bring the heads of your villains to your feet." On the same day, after the Empress's dinner table, to which the supreme leaders were also invited, the nobility submitted to Anna another request, with 150 signatures, in which the "most humble rabbis" most humbly brought and all humbly asked to all-mercifully accept the autocracy of their glorious and praiseworthy ancestors. from the Supreme Privy Council and her signed clauses to destroy. "How? Anna asked with feigned surprise of innocent ignorance. "Weren't these points drawn up at the request of the entire people?" - "No!" Was the answer. - "So you deceived me, Prince Vasily Lukich!" - Anna said to Dolgoruky. She ordered to bring the points signed by her in Mitava and immediately tore them up in front of everyone. All the time, the leaders, in the words of one foreign ambassador, “didn’t make a sound,” otherwise the officers of the guard would have thrown them out the windows. And on March 1, in all cathedrals and churches, the "paki" swore allegiance to the autocratic empress: they pushed their loyal conscience both left and right with the blessing of the clergy. Thus ended the ten-day constitutional-aristocratic Russian monarchy of the 18th century, built by a 4-week temporary reign of the Supreme Privy Council.

But, restoring the autocracy, the nobility did not refuse to participate in government. In the same afternoon petition on February 25, it asked, having abolished the Supreme Privy Council, to return the previous meaning to the 21-member Senate, to allow the gentry to elect senators, collegiate presidents and even governors by running for office, and, according to the pre-lunch petition, establish a form of government for the coming time. If this petition were respected, the central and provincial administration would be made up of elected agents of the nobility like Catherine's captain-police officers. The Russian Empire did not become the "sister of Poland and Sweden," as Fick had hoped; on the other hand, alongside republican-gentry Poland, autocratic-gentry Russia became.

Causes... The case of 1730 seemed to modern observers as a struggle that arose due to the restriction of autocracy among the ruling class, between the clan aristocracy and the nobility: other classes of the people did not take any part in this movement: one cannot attach class significance to the fussy running of Archbishop Feofan Prokopovich through the Moscow gentry houses. But initially the Supreme Privy Council gave a very narrow setting to the undertaking it had undertaken. This was, in fact, not a restriction of the autocracy to estate or popular representation, but only the joint exercise of the prerogatives of the supreme power by the person called to it, and the institution that called this person to power.

The supreme power changed its composition or form, ceased to be individual, but retained the same attitude towards society. The restrictive clauses gave only one right to civil liberty, and even then only to one estate: "You cannot take away the belly and property and honor from the gentry without a trial." But the clauses of the supreme leaders do not say a word about political freedom, participation of society in government. The state is ruled unrestrictedly by the Empress and the Supreme Privy Council, and the Supreme Privy Council did not represent anyone but itself: some of its members were appointed by the supreme power even before its limitation, others were co-opted and invited by the Council itself at a night session on January 19–20. That is how the Council thought to conduct business in the future; only the opposition made him promise to convene all officials for a conference, and only for a conference, about the best structure of state administration. The leaders of the Russian nobility were the least represented.

Most of the then ancient nobility, the Sheremetevs, Buturlins, princes Cherkassky, Trubetskoy, Kurakin, Odoevsky, Baryatinsky, were no worse than the Dolgoruky princes in Moscow ancestry, and the members of these families stood against the Supreme Privy Council. The supreme leaders could not unite around themselves even their own relatives: the names of the Golitsyn and Dolgoruky appear in the signatures of the opposition projects. This opposition nobility was the soul of the movement, worried about the small gentry, promising him tempting benefits in service and land tenure, led the gentry circles, dictating to them notes for submission to the Supreme Privy Council. The rank-and-file nobility acted not as an agent in business, but as an extra, brought to the stage in order to give the impression of a quantitative force. The table of ranks has not yet had time to reshuffle the pedigrees of the suit and free the rank from the oppression of the breed. In this nobility, dark and impoverished, in need of high-ranking merciful, the habitual servant worship of the family was still amicably coexisting with the incipient servant worship. "The nobility of the family slavishly serves and their will is carried out in every way, and by this service they receive commandantry and other important royal interests from other important tsarist interests," - this is how the Petrine proponent Ivan Filippov portrays the attitude of the rank-and-file nobility to the nobility, which did not manage to change soon after Peter. But the leaders of the gentry were also high-ranking officials, members of government institutions, ahead of all - senators and generals, who were not just a bunch of generals, but a special institution, the main council of the General Staff with certain staffs and salaries. The first draft, submitted to the Supreme Privy Council and the most oppositional, came from the Senate and the generals.

Senate and Synod in St. Petersburg

This means that in the case of 1730 it was not individuals and not social classes that fought, but the highest government institutions, not to know the old, well-born, with the new, bureaucratic, or both with the ordinary gentry, but the Senate, Synod and generals with the Supreme Privy Council, who has arrogated to himself the monopoly of the supreme government. In a word, it was not the government and society that fought for power, but government bodies among themselves for the distribution of power. But institutions are just the wheels of the government machine, set in motion by government or public power. The leaders wanted such a force to be noble families, or family people; but their opponents also wanted the same: the family was competing with the family.

Since the time of the oprichnina, the ruling class has become so complicated and confused that it has become difficult to make out who and to what extent are familial or non-familial. The social force, such as this mixed class was, now clung to ready-made government institutions, because there were no social institutions to cling to. The old military genealogical organization of the service class was destroyed by the abolition of parochialism and the regular army, and Peter's attempt to involve local noble societies in government failed. It was only institutions that united the uncoordinated interests and unclear views of individuals and classes; the leaders themselves, divided by family accounts and personal feuds, acted, if not unanimously, then at least compactly, not out of a sense of aristocratic solidarity, but in camaraderie in the Supreme Privy Council. All that remained was to transform the highest government institutions into public, elective, that is, representative ones. This thought and wandered in the minds of that time. But the leaders, except perhaps D. Golitsyn, and their opponents lacked neither an understanding of the essence of representation, nor agreement on the details of its structure; under the elective from the gentry they meant recruited from the nobles that happened in the capital.

View of the Neva embankment in the 18th century

Thus, neither the established social relations, nor the dominant political concepts provided the means to untie the knot in which the conflicting interests and misunderstandings were drawn. The issue was resolved by force, by a mechanical blow from the Guards. The noble guard understood the matter in their own way, in a barrack-like way: they were pushed against the autocracy of a few in the name of the right of all, and they attacked everyone in the name of the autocracy of one person - they turned the wheel in the wrong direction: to ask for elective government, having restored autocracy, meant to hide their heads behind wood. The next day after the oath, the autocratic Anna, fulfilling part of the gentry's request, made up the Senate of 21 members, but appointed them herself, without any elections. This is how the main reasons for his failure are clarified in the course of business. First of all, the very idea of Prince D. Golitsyn had neither internal strength nor external support. He limited the supreme power not by a permanent law, but by an institution with an unstable composition and random meaning; in order to give it stability, Golitsyn wanted to make it the organ and stronghold of the clan aristocracy - a class that no longer existed: only a few noble families remained, scattered and even hostile to each other. Golitsyn was building a monarchy limited by a ghost.

Further, the Supreme Privy Council, with its random and unpopular composition, stubbornly retaining the monopoly of the supreme government, alienated the majority of the government class and provoked opposition with the participation of the guards and gentry, turning the matter over, turning the question of limiting the autocracy into a protest against its own usurpation. Finally, the opposition and individual members of the Supreme Privy Council itself looked in different directions: the Council wanted to limit the autocracy, without touching the highest government; the opposition demanded a restructuring of this administration, without touching upon the autocracy or keeping silent about it; The guards and noble masses sought class benefits, being hostile or indifferent to both the limitation of the supreme power and the restructuring of government.

With such discord and political unpreparedness, the opposition circles could not work out an integral and acceptable plan of state structure. By this they justified the opinion of the Prussian ambassador Mardefeld that the Russians did not understand freedom and would not be able to cope with it, although they talk a lot about it. Golitsyn himself explained the failure of his enterprise by the fact that it was beyond the power of the people to whom he appealed to become his employees. In this sense, one must understand his words, with which he himself buried his work. When the autocracy was restored, he said: “The feast was ready, but those who were invited were not worthy of it. I know I will fall victim to the failure of this case; so be it, I will suffer for the fatherland. I already have a little to live without. But those who make me cry will cry longer than mine. " In these words, Golitsyn's verdict is against himself. Why, having undertaken to be the owner of the business, named such guests, or why did he start a feast when there was no one to invite?

Link with the past... In the enterprise of Prince Golitsyn, two features arouse bewilderment: the choice of a person not standing in the hereditary line, and the forgery of the electoral act, which turned the conditions of election into a voluntary gift of the chosen one. The first feature suggests some involvement of Swedish influence. Anna's accession to the throne is somewhat reminiscent of the accession to the Swedish throne of Charles XII's sister Ulrika-Eleanor in 1719. The same election of a woman besides the direct heir (Duke of Holstein) with the restriction of the power of the chosen one; the same solicitation of the aristocratic council of state to become sovereign and the same opposition from the nobility. Finally, Russian researchers of the events of 1730, with the help of Swedish historians, indicated obvious traces of the influence of Swedish constitutional acts in restrictive clauses, in the plan and draft of the oath drawn up by Golitsyn. But given the similarity of circumstances, the conditions were far from the same.

When Anna was elected, Golitsyn remembered and could take into consideration what happened to Ulrika-Eleanor: it was successful there - why not here? Swedish events provided only an encouraging example, Swedish acts and institutions - ready-made patterns and formulas. But the motives, interests and tactics coordinated with them were their own, not borrowed. This was especially evident in another line of business. Why did Golitsyn need to falsify the electoral act? Here it is necessary to turn to the Russian past. The behind-the-scenes intrigue in the change of government had a long and nondescript history with us. In 1730, it was not the first time that the old and fundamental question of the Russian state order was raised - the question of the logical formulation of the supreme power. It was caused by the suppression of the Rurik dynasty, as a historical necessity, and not as a political need.

Until 1598, the Moscow sovereign was viewed as the owner of the land, not the people. There was no place in the people's legal consciousness for thinking about the people as a state union; there could be no room for the idea of people's freedom. The Church taught that all power is from God, and since the will of God is not subject to any legal definition, her earthly embodiment became outside the law, the law, was thought of as pure anomie. Since 1598, Russian political thinking has become in great difficulty. The ecclesiastical concept of power could still somehow be attached to the hereditary sovereign - the owner of the land; but the elective tsar, made, though by zemstvo, but still earthly hands, was difficult to fit under the idea of a god-appointed power. The political mood was split. Poorly understanding that the tsars had gone from Boris Godunov, the masses of the people retained a purely abstract biblical idea of tsarist power; but, already enslaved and previously only able to flee from the oppression of the authorities, she in the XVII century. she also learned to rebel against the boyars and the orderly people.

In turn, the boyars, under the influence of bitter experiments and observations of neighboring orders, got used to the idea of a treaty king. But, proceeding from the ruling class, and not from the popular masses, which deservedly did not trust him, this idea has always sought to be molded and twice molded into the same form of a behind-the-scenes deal that came out in the form of a voluntary gift of power or manifested itself in weakened reins of government. This form was a way out of the situation between two fires, into which people fell, by instinct or deliberately trying to heal the country from the painful growth of the supreme power. The case of 1730 was the seventh attempt at a more or less disguised bargaining extortion of freedom by the government circle and the fourth attempt at an open, formal restriction of power. The covert extortion of freedom was caused by moral distrust of badly educated political power and fear of a people distrustful of the ruling class; formal restriction failed due to discord among the ruling classes themselves.