Terrible Tsarinas: Five Russian Women in Power (21 page)

For Bestuzhev, and the execution of this program would be ensured by “two people of distinction”: a master and a mistress of the court, to be named by Her Majesty. The master of the court would be charged with instructing Peter in propriety, correct language and the healthy ideas that were appropriate to his station; the mistress of the court would encourage Catherine to adhere to the dogmas of the Orthodox religion under every circumstance; she would keep her from making the least intrusion in the field of politics, would keep away from her any young men liable to distract her from her marital commitment, and would teach her certain feminine wiles that might enable her to awaken the desire of her husband, so that, as one reads in the document, “by this means our very high house may produce offspring.”1 Pursuant to these draconian directives, Catherine was forbidden to write directly to anyone. All her correspondence, including letters to her parents, would be subjected to review by the College of Foreign Affairs. At the same time, the few gentlemen whose company sometimes distracted her in her loneliness and sorrow were removed from the court. Thus, by order of Her Majesty, three Chernyshevs (two brothers and a cousin, all goodlooking and pleasant of address) were sent to serve as lieutenants in regiments cantoned in Orenburg. The mistress of the court, responsible for keeping Catherine in line, was a German cousin of the empress, Maria Choglokov, and the master of the court was none other than her husband, an influential man currently on a mission in Vienna. This model household was intended to serve as an example to the ducal couple. Maria Choglokov was a paragon of virtue, since she was devoted to her husband, appeared to be pious, viewed every issue from the same perspective as Bestuzhev - and at the age of 24 already had four children! If need be, the Choglokovs might be backed up by an additional mentor, Prince Repnin, who would also be charged with imbuing Their Highnesses with wisdom and a preference for all things Russian, including the Orthodox faith.

With such assets working in her favor, Elizabeth was sure she would breach the divide in this household; but she very soon saw that it is as difficult to engender reciprocal love in a disparate couple as it is to institute peace between two countries with opposing interests. In the world at large as in her own house, misunderstanding, rivalry, demands, confrontations and rifts were the rule.

From threats of war to local skirmishes, from broken treaties to troop concentrations at the borders, it happened that, after the French armies enjoyed a few victories in the United Provinces, that Elizabeth agreed to send expeditionary forces to the borders of Alsace. Without actually engaging in hostilities with France, she wanted to encourage it to show a little more flexibility in negotiating with its adversaries. On October 30, 1748, through the peace treaty of Aachen, Louis XV gave up the conquest of the Netherlands and Frederick II retained Silesia. The tsarina left the field, having gained nothing and lost nothing, but having disappointed everyone. The only sovereign who was pleased with this result was the king of Prussia.

By now, Elizabeth was convinced that Frederick II was entertaining in St. Petersburg, within the very walls of the palace, one of his most effective and most dangerous partisans: the Grand Duke Peter. Her nephew, whom she never could stand, was becoming more foreign and more odious by the day. To cleanse the atmosphere of Germanophilia in which the grand duke was submerged, she set out to eliminate from his retinue all the gentlemen from Holstein, and to remove the others who might try to replace them. Even Peter’s manservant, a certain Rombach, was thrown into prison on a trumped up pretext.

Peter comforted himself after these affronts by indulging in extravagant whims. He began playing his violin ceaselessly, scraping away for hours, tormenting his wife. His rhetoric became so bizarre that sometimes Catherine thought he’d gone mad; she wanted to flee. Whenever he saw her reading, he would rip the book from her hands and order her to join him in playing with his collection of wooden soldiers. Having recently developed a passion for dogs, he moved ten barbet spaniels into the marital bedroom, over Catherine’s protests. When she complained about their barking and their odor, he insulted her and refused to sacrifice his pack for her.

Isolated, Catherine sought in vain for a friend or, at least, a confidant. She finally turned Lestocq, the empress’s doctor, secure in his tenure, who showed some interest and even sympathy for Catherine. She hoped to make him an ally against the “Prussian clique” as well as against Her Majesty, who was still reproaching her for the sterility that was beyond her control. Unable to correspond freely with her mother, she asked the doctor to see her letters on their way, more privately. However Bestuzhev, who hated Lestocq and saw him as a potential rival, was delighted to hear from his spies that the “quack” was flouting the imperial instructions and rendering services to the grand duchess. Backed by these revelations, he contacted Razumovsky and accused Lestocq of being an agent in the pay of foreign chancelleries; and he said that Lestocq was trying to take the shine off the favorite’s reputation with Her Majesty. This denouncement agreed with denunciations made by a secretary to the doctor, a certain Chapuzot who, under torture, acknowledged everything that he was asked. Confronted with this sheaf of more or less convincing evidence, Elizabeth was put on her guard. For several months already, she had avoided being under Lestocq’s care; if he was no longer reliable, he would have to pay.

On the night of November 11, 1748, Lestocq was yanked from his bed and thrown into a cell in the Peter and Paul Fortress. A special commission, chaired by Bestuzhev in person, with General Apraxin and Count Alexander Shuvalov as assessors, accused Lestocq of having sold out to Sweden and Prussia, of corresponding clandestinely with Johanna of Anhalt-Zerbst, mother of the Grand Duchess Catherine, and of conspiring against the empress of Russia. After being tortured, and despite his oaths of innocence, he was shipped off to Uglich, and stripped of all his possessions.

However, in a reflex of tolerance, Elizabeth granted that the condemned man’s wife could join him in his cell and, later, in exile. Perhaps she felt sorry for the fate of this man whom she had to punish, on royal principle, even though she had such positive memories of the eagerness with which he had always offered his services. Elizabeth may not have been good, but she was sensitive, and even sentimental. Incapable of granting clemency, she nonetheless had always been willing to shed tears for the victims of an epidemic in some remote country or for the poor soldiers who were risking their lives at the borders of the realm. Since she was usually presented to her subjects in a familiar and smiling guise, they, forgetting the torments, spoliations, and executions ordered under her reign, called her “The Lenient.” Even her ladies of honor, whom she sometimes thanked with a good hard slap or an insult harsh enough to make a soldier blush, would melt when, having wrongfully punished them, she would admit her fault. But it was with her morganatic husband, Razumovsky, that she showed her most affectionate and most attentive side. When the weather was cold, she would button his fur-lined coat, taking care that this gesture of marital solicitude was seen by all their entourage. Whenever he was confined to his armchair by a bout of gout - as often happened-she would sacrifice important appointments to bear him company, and life at the palace would return to normal only after the patient had recovered.

However, she did allow herself to deceive him with vigorous young men like the counts Nikita Panin and Sergei Saltykov. But, of all her secondary lovers, her favorite was Shuvalov’s nephew, Ivan Ivanovich. She was attracted by this new recruit’s alluring youth and good looks, but also by his education and his knowledge of France. She, who never spent a minute reading, was filled with wonder to see him so impatient to receive the latest books that were being sent to him from Paris. At the age of 23, he was corresponding with Voltaire! With him, one could abandon oneself to love and culture, both at the same time - and without even tiring the eyes and taxing the brain! Certainly, being introduced to the splendors of art, literature, and science in the arms of a man who was a living encyclopedia must be one of the pleasantest methods of education. Elizabeth seemed to be so happy with this arrangement that Razumovsky did not even think of reproaching her for this betrayal. He even considered Ivan Shuvalov worthy of esteem and encouraged Her Majesty to pursue her pleasure and her studies with him.

With Ivan Shuvalov’s encouragement, Elizabeth founded the University of Moscow and the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg. Aware of her own ignorance, she must have enjoyed the irony and felt proud to preside over the awakening of the intellectual movement in Russia, and to know that the writers and the artists of tomorrow would be so much in her debt, despite her lack of learning.

However, while Razumovsky wisely allowed himself to be supplanted by Ivan Shuvalov in Her Majesty’s good graces, Chancellor Bestuzhev guessed that his own preeminence was threatened by this rising scion of a large and ambitious clan. He tried hard to distract the tsarina with the charming Nikita Beketov; but, after having dazzled Her Majesty during a show put on by the students in the Cadet Academy, this Adonis was called up to serve in the army. He was brought back to St. Petersburg, where he could again be placed before Her Majesty, but it was no use.

The Shuvalov clan made short work of him. Out of pure friendship, they recommended a certain face cream to him; and, when Beketov tried it, red spots broke out on his face and he was smitten with a high fever. In his delusion, he made indecent comments about Her Majesty. He was driven out the palace and never managed to set foot there again, leaving the way clear for Ivan Shuvalov and Alexis Razumovsky, who both accepted and respected each other.

Under their combined influence, the tsarina gave way to her passion for building, seeking to prove herself a worthy heir to Peter the Great by embellishing his city, St. Petersburg. She spared no expense in renovating the Winter Palace, and in three years she had a summer palace built at Tsarskoye Selo, which would become her favorite residence. The chief architect of all these enormous projects, the Italian Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli, also erected a church at Peterhof and designed the park surrounding the palace, as well as the gardens of Tsarskoye Selo. To compete with Louis XV (whom she took as her model in the art of royal ostentation), Elizabeth turned to the highly regarded European painters of the day, commissioning them to bequeath to the curiosity of the future generations the portraits of Her Majesty and her close friends. After the court painter Caravaque, she invited the very famous Jean-Marc Nattier to come from France.

But he changed his mind at the last minute, and she had to settle for his son-in-law, Louis Tocqué, who was won over by an offer of 26,000 rubles from Ivan Shuvalov. In two years, Tocqué painted ten canvases and, at the end of his contract, passed the brush to Louis-Joseph Le Lorraine and to Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée.2 All these artists were chosen, advised and appointed by Ivan Shuvalov - he performed his best services for the glory of his imperial mistress by attracting to St. Petersburg such talented foreign painters and architects.

Elizabeth felt it was her duty to enrich the capital with beautiful buildings and to embellish the royal apartments with paintings worthy of the galleries of Versailles; at the same time, she had the ambition (although she seldom opened a book) to initiate her compatriots to the delights of the mind. She spoke French rather well and even tried to write verse in that language (as was the rage in all the European courts), but it soon became clear that that pastime was beyond her abilities. On the other hand, she encouraged a proliferation of ballet performances, on the premise that such shows are, at least, an amusing way to participate in the general culture. Most of the ballets were directed by her dance master, Landet. Even more than these theatrical evenings, the innumerable balls served as an occasion for the women to exhibit their most elegant ensembles. But, at these gatherings, they hardly spoke - neither among themselves nor with the male guests. Social mores were still exceedingly conservative; indeed, mixed-gender events were still something of a novelty in this God-fearing world. The ladies, mute and stiff, would line up along one side of the room, their eyes lowered, not looking at the gentlemen aligned on the other side. Later on, the swirling couples also displayed a numbing decency and slowness. “The repetitious and always uniform attendance of these pleasures quickly becomes tiresome,” would write the sharp-tongued Chevalier d’Eon. Similarly, the Marquis de l’Hôpital told his minister, the duke of Choiseul: “I won’t even mention the boredom; it is inexpressible!”

Elizabeth tried to shake some life into these events by encouraging the first theater performances in the history of Russia. She authorized the installation of a company of French actors in St. Petersburg, while the Senate granted the Hilferding Germans the privilege of staging comedies and operas in both capitals. Moreover, Russian popular shows began to be offered to the public on feast days in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Among others,
The Mystery of the Nativity
was staged; however, out of respect for Orthodox dogmas, Elizabeth prohibited anyone from impersonating the Blessed Virgin; thus, instead of having an actress play that role, an icon would be brought on stage whenever the play called for the mother of God to speak. Moreover, a law enforced by the police prevented any plays (even those of religious inspiration) from being produced in private residences.

At around this time a young author, Alexander Sumarokov, created a hit with a tragedy written in the Russian language:
Khorev
. And a 1000-seat theater, considered an incredible innovation, was built in Yaroslavl, in the provinces. It was founded by a certain Fyodor Grigorievich Volkov, who put on plays that he had composed, in prose and in verse. Often, he acted in them himself. Astonished by the Russian elite’s sudden passion for the theater, Elizabeth took her benevolence as far as authorizing actors to bear swords, an honor previously reserved for the nobility.