ANNA (RUSSIA) (1693–1740, ruled 1730–1740)

ANNA (RUSSIA) (1693–1740, ruled 1730–1740), empress of Russia. Anna Ivanovna (or Ioannovna) was the second crowned female ruler of Russia, after Catherine I. The daughter of Peter the Great's half brother and co-tsar for seven years, Ivan V, she spent her adult life residing alternately in St. Petersburg and in the duchy of Courland. Married to the duke of Courland, Friedrich Wilhelm, in 1710, she was soon widowed when he died in the following year. She returned to St. Petersburg for the next six years, after which Peter the Great sent her back to Courland in 1717. Although bereft of any formal authority, Anna maintained a court in Mitau (Jelgava), subsidized by the Russian court and by contributions from local magnates. Her presence provided an anchor for the growing Russian presence in the eastern Baltic, and her retainers doubled as agents of the Russian court.

Anna ascended the Russian throne largely by accident, when the reigning emperor, the fourteen-year-old Peter II, died unexpectedly on 29 January 1730 (18 January O.S.), on the eve of his wedding and less than three years into his rule. Because the law at that time stipulated that the sitting monarch named his or her successor, the unexpected or premature death of a ruler invariably led to a succession crisis, typically resolved by parties at court backed by the powerful guards' regiments. The 1730 succession crisis is particularly noteworthy, because it took place at a time when much of Russia's political elite had assembled in Moscow awaiting Peter II's wedding. His unexpected death left the throne without a designated heir and with relatively few good candidates. Under the guidance of the Supreme Privy Council, a largely aristocratic body established a few years earlier to advise Catherine I, the assembled elite quickly agreed to offer the throne to Anna.

Over the next several weeks, however, a crisis arose over the terms under which she would reign. The Privy Council had prevailed upon her to accept significant restrictions on her authority, in essence obliging her to seek its approval before issuing decrees. These conditions, as they were termed, provoked a storm of protest among the resident nobility at large (the generalitet or shliakhetstvo as it was officially called), and this larger group prevailed upon the Privy Council to assemble groups to discuss the terms of Anna's rule, as well as to air grievances left over from the Petrine and immediate post-Petrine era. Had the "conditions" remained in place, they would have constituted the first quasi-constitutional limitations on the sovereignty of a Russian ruler. However, competition among the powerful clan networks at court, through which access to position and influence had flowed for generations, quickly overwhelmed the Supreme Privy Council's position. Fearful that the clans represented in the council would gain a permanent advantage, the nobility demanded that there be no conditions, a demand to which Anna readily acceded.

Anna's reign is often seen as unpopular and defined by a vulgarity and arrogance at court, marked by the presence of a large number of Baltic German advisers, most notoriously Count Ernst Johann Bühren (Biron in Russian), after whom the entire experience is named ("bironovshchina"). Although the unpopularity and tactlessness of this German clique is undeniable, some scholars have argued that Anna's reign was hardly an era of darkness, as the nationalist tradition would have it. She abolished the unpopular Privy Council and severely punished most of its members. More to the point, her closest advisers included several Russians such as Prince Aleksei Mikhailovich Cherkasskii and Gavriil Ivanovich Golovkin. It was during her reign that the Imperial Academy of Sciences established its visibility within Russian society, both through its Russian-language press and through its classes, and within international science through the publication of its scientific monographs. Her reign saw the beginnings of the Corps of Cadets, the elite military academies, as well as the legislation that ultimately led to the establishment of a network of Latin-based religious seminaries. In foreign affairs, Russian interests prevailed over French ones in the war of Polish Succession in 1733–1735, and Russia made noteworthy, if temporary, gains in Moldova at the expense of Austria and the Ottoman Empire in 1739.

Endeavoring to make her line of the Romanov clan preeminent, and without any offspring of her own, Anna named her infant grand nephew (her deceased sister Catherine's grandson) Ivan Antonovich as heir, with Bühren as regent. The strategy failed, however, as Ivan VI remained on the throne less than two years and was replaced in a coup by Peter the Great's daughter, Elizabeth. Bühren—and the entire German party—fell even sooner, replaced as regent after several months by Ivan's mother, Anna Leopoldovna.

See also Elizabeth (Russia) ; Peter I (Russia) ; Queens and Empresses ; Russia.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lipski, Alexander. "A Re-examination of the 'Dark Era' of Anna Ioannovna." American Slavic and East European Review 15, no. 4 (December 1956): 477–488.

Meehan-Waters, Brenda. Autocracy and Aristocracy: The Russian Service Elite of 1730. New Brunswick, N.J., 1982.

Ransel, David L. "The Constitutional Crisis of 1730." In Reform in Russia and the USSR. Edited by Robert O. Crummey. Urbana, Ill., 1989.

"The Succession Crisis of 1730." In Plans for Political Reform in Imperial Russia, 1730–1915. Edited by Marc Raeff. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1966.

Gary Marker

Golubkina, Anna (1864–1927). Russian sculptor, one of her country's outstanding artists in the early 20th century. She was born in Zaraysk, the daughter of a market gardener, and studied in Moscow and St Petersburg before making two visits to Paris (1895–6 and 1897). During the first of these she studied at the Académie Colarossi and during the second she met Rodin, whose vigorous surfaces and Symbolist leanings strongly influenced her work (she later wrote to him: ‘While I live I shall always venerate you as a great artist and the person who gave me the possibility of life'). After her return to Russia she settled in Moscow. Golubkina was principally renowned as a portraitist, and one of her most famous works is the first sculptural portrait of Karl Marx (Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, 1905). Typically, she donated her fee for this to a fund for homeless workers, for she had passionate humanistic convictions and took an active part in the Russian Revolution of 1905; two years later she was imprisoned for distributing literature urging peasants to ‘overthrow the Tsar and the government', but she was soon released because of ill-health. In 1914–15 she organized an exhibition of her work at the Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow ‘in aid of the war-wounded'. From 1918 to 1921 she taught at Svomas and then Vkhutemas. She worked mainly in bronze, but also in marble and wood. Following serious illness in 1924, she concentrated on smaller works, including cameos. M. N. Yablonskaya (Women Artists of Russia's New Age, 1990) writes that ‘Golubkina was one of the new generation of artists who searched for fresh expressive possibilities with which to convey contemporary life’ and that she ‘almost single-handedly introduced a renaissance into the medium of sculpture'.

Anna (Anna Ivanovna) , 1693–1740, czarina of Russia (1730–40), daughter of Ivan V and niece of Peter I (Peter the Great). On the death of her distant cousin, Peter II , she was chosen czarina by the supreme privy council, which thus hoped to gain power for itself. Anna signed articles limiting her power, but she soon restored autocratic rule, with support from the lesser nobility and the imperial guards. She made minor concessions to the nobles but restored the security police and terrorized opponents. Distrusting the nobility, she excluded Russians from high positions and surrounded herself with Baltic Germans. Her favorite, Ernst Johann von Biron , had the greatest influence. Allied with Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI , Anna intervened in the War of the Polish Succession (1733–35), installed Augustus III as king of Poland, and attacked Turkey in 1736. Charles's separate peace with the Turks at Belgrade forced Russia to make peace in turn, at the price of all recent conquests except Azov. During Anna's reign began the great Russian push into central Asia. She was succeeded by her grandnephew, Ivan VI .