Alexei Petrovich Bestushev-Ryumin

Alexei Petrovich Count Bestuzhev-Ryumin, anonymous painting ( Hermitage (Saint Petersburg) )

Alexei Petrovich Count Bestuschew-Ryumin, painting by Louis Tocqué

Alexei Petrovich Graf Bestuschew-Ryumin ( Russian : Алексе́й Петро́вич Бесту́жев-Рю́мин, born June 2, 1693 in Moscow ; †  April 21, 1766 in Saint Petersburg ) was a field marshal of the Russian army and Russian chancellor under Tsarina Elizabeth . For 20 years he had a decisive influence on Russia's foreign policy and its relationship with its allies and opponents, in particular Prussia and France .

Training and first diplomatic successes

Bestuschew-Ryumin was born on June 2, 1693 in Moscow, the son of the later Russian ambassador to the Duchy of Courland and Zemgale, Pyotr Bestuschew, into a noble Novograd family. The linguistically gifted and interested in research, Bestuschew-Ryumin was educated and trained together with his brother Mikhail in Copenhagen and Berlin . In 1712 Peter the Great placed him in the service of his brother-in-law Boris Kurakin during the Utrecht Congress . He was to learn the art of diplomacy there and in 1713 in the service of the Elector of Hanover . The elector and later King of Great Britain George I took Bestuzhev-Ryumin with him to London in 1714 and appointed him his envoy and sent him back to Saint Petersburg for accreditation at short notice. Bestushev-Ryumin remained in the king's service for four years, a period that laid the foundation for his successful career as a diplomat.

Anna of Russia, 1730

After his return to Russia in 1718, he was appointed supreme chamberlain of the future Tsarina Anna in an unpaid position . He was then appointed Russian envoy in Copenhagen in 1721, where he was supposed to prevent George I of Great Britain from uniting the states of northern Europe against Peter the Great of Russia in a war against Russia. During the Peace of Nystad , which ended the 21-year conflict between Sweden and Russia, the tsar's attention was drawn to a medallion that Bestuzhev-Ryumin had minted and designed. He liked this so much that he sent Bestuzhev-Ryumin a handwritten thank-you note and a portrait of himself set in diamonds. It was also at this time that Bestuschew-Ryumin, who was interested in many things , discovered an iron preparation, tinctura toniconervina Bestuscheffi , which became known as Elixir d'Or at the French court.

Return to Russia

The death of Tsar Peter on February 8, 1725 jeopardized Bestushev-Ryumin's bright future prospects and he stayed in Copenhagen for another 10 years, although he would have liked to return to Russia. This was prevented by his rivals and enemies at the Russian court until 1739. Only the Tsarina Anna appointed him privy councilor and he got the opportunity at the intercession of Ernst von Biron . After the fall of Artemi Petrovich Wolynski, he was able to follow this to his post as cabinet minister . He assisted Biron in trying to maintain Anna's rule, but when that failed his position was again severely endangered. After Biron's fall, he was arrested as his supporter in 1740.

Vice Chancellor of Russia

Immediately after her inauguration on December 6, 1741, Empress Elisabeth gave Bestuzhev-Ryumin another chance to prove herself as a diplomat; she released him, brought him back to the court, raised him to the rank of count and appointed him Vice Chancellor . During his entire tenure as Vice Chancellor and later Grand Chancellor, a deep aversion to France determined Bestushev-Ryumin's foreign policy actions. As part of an anti-Habsburg strategy, the Bourbons had long had close ties to Sweden , Poland and the Ottoman Empire . However, these powers, in turn, were traditional enemies of Russia. As a logical consequence, Russia avoided alliance with France and instead favored an alliance with its natural opponents, Great Britain and Austria . True to the formula: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. With this, however, the Prussia of Frederick II became an enemy, as it had been enemies with the Habsburgs since the War of the Austrian Succession . As a result, Bestuzhev-Ryumin advocated an alliance of Russia, Austria, Great Britain and Saxony as a counterweight to a Franco-Prussian alliance.

Tsarina Elizabeth I of Russia

Tsarina Elisabeth, however, harbored an aversion to Austria and Great Britain, because both powers had opposed their enthronement. At the same time, several of her personal friends came from France and Prussia. They took part in various intrigues to overthrow Bestuzhev-Ryumin. Despite this hostility, Bestushev-Ryumin was able to gradually implement his political ideas with the help of his brother Mikhail.

In 1741 Sweden started a war with Russia to make up for territorial losses from the Great Northern War . On December 11, 1742, Bestuzhev-Ryumin responded by entering into a defensive alliance with Great Britain. He had previously vehemently rejected France's proposal to mediate in the Swedish-Russian conflict. At the end of the very aggressively waged war, Sweden was completely helpless inferior to the Tsarina. Bestushev-Ryumin insisted in the negotiations for the Peace of Åbo in 1743 that Sweden should completely cede Finland to Russia in order to complete the expansion efforts of Peter the Great. The French delegates intervened and addressed a petition to Elisabeth aimed at her relations with the Holstein family . The Swedes then accepted Elisabeth's proposal, Adolf Friedrich , the administrator in the Duchy of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf , to recognize them as the future king and, in return, to cede a narrow strip of land on the Kymijoki to the Russians.

Bestuzhev-Ryumin was also unable to prevent the signing of a Russian-Prussian alliance in March 1743, although he succeeded in politically invalidating the treaty by exempting him from the proposed participation in Frederick's conquests in Silesia . In addition, the reputation of the Prussian king at the Russian court fell, not least because of Bestuschew-Ryumin's efforts, and he used the opportunity to prepare an alliance with Austria by agreeing to the preliminary peace of Breslau .

Imperial Chancellor of Russia

The conspirators around Natalja Fjodorovna Lopuchina , supported by the Holsteiners, French and Prussians, convinced Elisabeth that the Austrian ambassador and, for a time, his empress were involved in an intrigue whose aim was the reinstatement of Ivan VI. when tsar should be. As a result, the case of Bestushev-Ryumin seemed unstoppable, partly due to the intervention of the French Jacques-Joachim Trotti, Marquis de la Chétardie. Only with the support of Michael Larionowitsch Voronzow , a close confidante of the Tsarina, who harbored similar political convictions as Bestushev-Ryumin, could his overthrow be prevented. After he could prove a French involvement in an intrigue, he succeeded again in the favor of the Tsarina and she appointed him on July 15, 1744 as Russian Grand Chancellor. Before the end of the year, Elisabeth von Holstein was expelled, and this and the fall of Count Jean Armand de Lestocq consolidated his position.

In the run-up to the Seven Years' War, he favored reactivating the old alliance with Austria and Great Britain against Prussia and France. In 1755, with the Treaty of Saint Petersburg , he agreed to an anti-Prussian alliance with Great Britain, but then saw himself duped after the conclusion of the Anglo-Prussian Convention of Westminster . This played into the cards of his pro-French opponents at the Tsar's court, especially since in the course of the Renversement des alliances Austria had signed an alliance treaty with the previous arch enemy France in May 1756 . Bestuzhev-Ryumin, who had already entered into an alliance with Austria in 1746, did not want to get involved with France. It was not until December 31, 1756, that Saint Petersburg's declaration of accession was made, in which the tsarist empire joined the signatories of the First Versailles Treaty. Despite the bribes given by France's agent Mackenzie-Douglas, Bestushev-Ryumin had repeatedly endangered the negotiations by calling on the Bourbons - in vain - not to invade Hanover and to sever ties with the Ottoman Empire.

At the end of August 1757, the Russian army under Apraxin inflicted a serious defeat on the Prussians in the battle of Groß-Jägersdorf . However, Apraxin did not take advantage of the victory, but went behind the Russian borders - allegedly due to a lack of supplies. It was said that his approach had been coordinated with Bestuzhev-Ryumin, who was in contact with the Prussian-friendly heir to the throne Peter and his wife, Grand Duchess Katharina . When the tsarina recovered from a long and serious illness, she had Bestuzhev-Ryumin arrested on February 14, 1758 . He was - primarily because of his correspondence with Elisabeth's opponent Katharina - found guilty of high treason and treason , stripped of all of his dignity and banished to the village of Gorelowo near Moscow, which belonged to him.

After her accession to the throne, Katharina brought Bestuschew-Ryumin back to court in 1762 and appointed him field marshal. However, he no longer played a decisive political role. He died on April 21, 1766 in Saint Petersburg.

literature

• Alexander Brückner: Katharina the Second. 1st edition. TP Verone Publishinhg House, Nicosia 2016 (Reprint of 1883 original).
• Detlef Jena, Rainer Lindner: The Russian tsars in life pictures. Styria, 1996, ISBN 3-222-12375-6 .
• William R. Nester : The French and Indian War and the Conquest of New France. 1st edition. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman 2014, ISBN 978-0-8061-4435-1 .
• Stewart P. Oakley: War and Peace in the Baltic, 1560-1790. Routledge, 1992, ISBN 0-415-02472-2 .
• Virginia Rounding: Catherine the Great: Love, Sex and Power. Macmillan, 2007, ISBN 978-0-312-32887-0 .
• Georg Schreiber : The crown shine and burden. Ueberreuter, Vienna / Heidelberg 1978, ISBN 3-8000-2179-X .

predecessor	Office	successor
Vasily Lukitsch Dolgorukov	Russian envoy to Denmark 1721–1731	Casimir Christoph von Brackel
Johann-Friedrich Bettiger	Russian envoy to the Hanseatic cities 1731–1740	Johann Albrecht von Korff
Mikhail Golovkin	Russian Vice Chancellor 1741–1744	Michael Larionowitsch Vorontsov
Alexei Cherkassky	Russian chancellor 1744–1758	Michael Larionowitsch Vorontsov