ANNA IVANOVNA (1740)

Empress of Russia from 1730 to 1740. Daughter of Ivan V (ruled 1682-96) and niece of Peter I the Great (ruled 1682-1725), Anna was married to Frederick William, duke of Courland, on Nov. 11(Oct. 31, O.S.), 1710. Although her husband died onn the journey to Courland after their wedding in St. Petersburg, Anna remained at Mitau (Jelgava), the capital of Courland, until 1730, when Peter II died and the Supreme Privy Council, the actual ruling body in Russia (1726-30), offered her the Russian throne.

Having accepted the council´s proposal as well as its stipulation that she agree to certain "conditions" placing the real power of the state in the council´s hands and effectively creating an oligarchy in Russia, Anna proceeded to Moscow (February 1730, O.S.). But when she arrived and found widespread opposition to the council´s conditions among the gentry and officers of the guard, she tore up the conditions (Feb. 25, 1730, O.S.), abolished the Supreme Privy Council, and re-established the Russian autocracy.

Anna had little interest in government affairs and relied heavily on her lover, Ernst Johann Biron, and a small group of German advisers, including the head of Russia´s foreign affairs, Andrey Osterman, and the chief of the army, Burkhard Münnich, to manage the state.

While the Empress concerned herself primarily with extravagant entertainments and crude amusements in the court at St. Petersburg, her favourites engaged Russia in the War of the Polish Succession (1733-35), which placed a pro-Russian king on the Polish throne, and in the Russo-Turkish War of 1736-39, in which the Russian Army won brilliant victories but lost many lives and much money and acquired only some steppe territory and the unfortified city of Azov with its surrounding region for Russia (Treaty of Belgrade; 1739).

In addition, Anna´s ruling clique, which employed excessively brutal and repressive practices against its oponents, alienated both the gentry, which resented domination by German officials, and the peasantry, which was forced to pay increasingly high taxes and was systematically excluded from participating in a variety of trades and businesses.

Shortly before her death Anna named as her successor Iva, the son of her niece Anna Leopoldovna, and Biron as the infant´s regent (August 1740).