Terrible Tsarinas: Five Russian Women in Power by Henri Troyat

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 spoken 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 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 Courland. He intended to run this Russian province by remote control, from St. Petersburg. Moreover, Charles VI, emperor of Germany, gave him the title of count of the Holy Empire; and he managed to have himself designated a knight of St. Alexander and St. Alexis. There was no honor or princely prerogative to which he did not lay claim. Anyone in Russia who wanted to get ahead, in any endeavor whatsoever, had to go through him.
    Courtiers have always regarded it as an honor and a privilege to be admitted to the ruler’s private rooms. Now, stepping into the Empress’s bedroom, visitors would find Her Majesty still in her nightgown, with the inevitable Bühren lying at her side. Protocol required that the new arrival, even if he was a high-ranking official, kiss the hand that the sovereign held out to him above the bedcovers. To secure the good graces of her lover, as well, some took the opportunity to kiss his hand with same respectful air.
    And there were even some flatterers who extended the standards of etiquette to the point of kissing Her Majesty’s bare foot. And it has been alleged that, deep in the recesses of the imperial apartments, one Alexis Miliutin, a simple coal shoveler ( istopnik ) who, tending the stove in Anna Ivanovna’s room every morning, felt compelled to devoutly brush the tsarina’s and her companion’s feet with his lips. In reward for this daily homage, the istopnik was given a nobleman’s title. However, to preserve a trace of his modest origins, he was constrained use fireplace tools as the blazon on his coat of arms.3 On Sundays, Anna Ivanovna’s six favorite clowns had orders to line up outside the great dining room at the end of the dinner that was attended by all the members of the court. When the Empress and her retinue walked out, on their way back to church, the buffoons would squat side by side, imitating hens laying eggs and