strosities. Nothing was funnier to her than the spectacles per-
formed by buffoons and dwarves. The uglier and stupider they
were, the more she applauded their jokes and antics. After 19
years of provincial mediocrity and obscurity, she wanted to re-
move the veneer of propriety and impose on the court a life of un-
precedented luxury and chaos. Nothing struck her as too beauti-
ful nor too expensive — when it came to satisfying the whims of
the sovereign.
However, this Russia that accident had given her to rule was
not, strictly speaking, her fatherland. And she hardly saw the
need to make it her own. Certainly, she had some good old Rus-
sian families in her pocket including, among the most devoted, old
Gabriel Golovkin, the Trubestkoy princes and Ivan Baryatinsky,
Paul Yaguzhinsky (that famous hot-head), and the impulsive
Alexis Cherkassky, whom she made her chancellor. But the reins
were in the hands of the Germans. The empire’s policies were set
by a team composed entirely of men of Germanic origin, taking
orders from the terrible Bühren.
The old boyars, so proud of their genealogy, were swept from
center stage when Her Majesty and her favorite came into power.
Coming from backgrounds in the civil administration as well as
the military, the new bigshots of the regime included the Loewen-
wolde brothers, Baron von Brevern, the Generals Rodolph von
Bismarck and Christoph von Manstein, and Field Marshal
Burkhard von Münnich. A four-man cabinet replaced the Su-
preme Privy Council and Ostermann, in spite of his ambiguous
past, still served as Prime Minister; but it was Ernst Johann
Bühren, the Empress’s favorite, who chaired the meetings and
made the final decisions.
Impervious to the concept of pity, never hesitating to send a
troublemaker to the dungeon, to Siberia or to the torture cham-
bers for a good thrashing, Bühren did not even need to ask Anna
< 78 >
Ivanovna’s opinion before dictating these punishments, for he
knew in advance that she would approve them. Was if because
she actually had the same opinion as her lover, in so many in-
stances, that she left him such a free hand — or was it simply be-
cause she was too lazy to oppose him? The people who had to
deal with Bühren unanimously commented on the hardness of his
face, which seemed to be carved from stone, and the look in his
eye — like a bird of prey. One word from him could make all of
Russia happy or desperate. His mistress did nothing more than
lend her imprimatur to all that he did. And, like her, he was avid
for luxury, and he took full advantage of his almost-kingly posi-
tion to accept bribes right and left. He expected payment for the
least service rendered.
His contemporaries found his cupidity to exceed even that of
Menshikov, but it was not this systematic misappropriation that
bothered them most. The preceding reigns had accustomed them
to greasing the wheels. No, it was the excessive Germanization
that Bühren was introducing into their fatherland that irritated
them more each day. Admittedly, Anna Ivanovna had always spo-
ken and written German better than Russian, but since Bühren
took over the highest level in the hierarchy, it seemed that in fact
the entire State apparatus had changed. If someone of Russian
stock had been committing these crimes, thefts, and abuses or
granting favors the way this arrogant parvenu was doing, Her
Majesty’s subjects would have found it easier to swallow. But the
fact that these liberties were taken or tolerated by a foreigner
made them seem twice as bad to the victims. Boiling with rage
over the conduct of this tyrant who was not even one of their
own, the Russians invented a word for the regime of terror that he
imposed on them — behind his back, they talked about the
“Bironovschina”1 as is it were a killer epidemic that was plaguing
the country. Records of illicit payments exist that prove this
< 79 >
name was justified.
For daring to stand up to the tsarina and her favorite, Prince
Ivan Dolgoruky was drawn and quartered; his two uncles, Sergei
and Ivan, were decapitated, and another member of the family,
Vasily Lukich, a former participant in the Supreme Privy Council,
met the same fate, while Catherine Dolgoruky, former fiancée of
Peter, was shut away in a convent for life.
While eliminating his former rivals and those who might be
tempted to take over where they had left off, Bühren worked to
add to his personal titles, which he felt should keep pace with his
increasing wealth. When Duke Ferdinand of Courland died on
April 23, 1737, he sent Russian regiments under the command of
General Bismarck2 to Mitau, “to intimidate” the Courland Diet
and encourage it to elect him, disregarding any other candidate
that might exist. Over the protests of the Teutonic Order, Ernst
Johann Bühren was proclaimed, as he demanded, Duke of Cour-
land. He intended to run this Russian province by remote control,
from St. Petersburg. Moreover, Charles VI, emperor of Germany,
