German rule
The term German rule is a historical and scientific term translated from Russian for the period from 1730 to 1741 of Russian history . So it describes the decade of reign of Empress Anna and the ephemeral nominal empire of Ivan VI. , in the sense of a reactionary regime of foreigners characterized by corruption, violence and terror.
Historical background
During the reign of Empress Anna (1730 to 1740), the number of foreigners, especially Germans, in high government positions and in the army increased sharply. The Empress's favorite, Ernst Johann von Biron, reigned unreservedly. Most of his Russian contemporaries, especially the officers and soldiers of the guards regiments stationed in Petersburg, saw in Biron the arbitrarily and cruelly ruling stranger. The clique battles at the imperial court were hardly known to "the common people"; but they saw how ostentatious and arrogant the foreigners appeared, and this aroused increasing xenophobia.
Concept history
The term is the translation of the Russian historiography of the 19th century, largely nationalistically motivated and more narrowly fixed term "Bironovschtschina" ( Russian Бироновщина , time of the rule of the Birons).
With this name, Russian historiography refers to the resentment of Russian contemporaries in Russia against the role that individual Germans played in Russia. The fact that a one-sided negative judgment of the influential German advisors Annas Ernst Johann von Biron , Heinrich Johann Friedrich Ostermann , Burkhard Christoph von Münnich and a blanket devaluation of their reign as a dark period lack an empirically tenable basis has already been emphatically emphasized by the pre-revolutionary Russian historiography . More recent Western research has refuted the view that the government of the years 1730–1741 pursued an anti-national policy, and countered the thesis of the predominance of foreigners with the assertion that under Anna no more Germans held higher government positions than under Peter the Great . It also denies a fundamental front position between Germans and Russians and sees the nobility opposition to the government not as a fight against foreign rule, but as a pragmatic attempt at state reform. As a signature of the period 1730–1741, the term German rule is therefore misleading.
literature
- Yevgeny Karnovich: Snačenie bironovŝčiny v russkoj istorii . In: Otečestvennyja zapiski. Učëno-literaturnyj i političeskij žurnal , 3rd episode, vol. 35 (1873), no. 10 (October), pp. 541-582 (translation of the Russian title: The Meaning of the Biron Age in Russian History ).
- Wassili Nikolajewitsch Stroew: Bironovŝčina i kabinet ministrov. Očerk vnutrennej politiki imperatricy Anny . 2 volumes. Typographical Institute of the Imperial University, Moscow 1909 (vol. 1.) and 1910 (vol. 2); (Translation of the Russian title: Biron and the Cabinet of Ministers. A sketch of the domestic policy of Empress Anna ).
- Alexander Lipski: A Re-examination of the "Dark Era" of Anna Ioannovna . In: American Slavic and East European Review , Vol. 15 (1956), pp. 477-488.
- Hans-Joachim Torke: Lexicon of the history of Russia . CH Beck, Munich 1986.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kopelew (Ed.): Germans and Germany from a Russian Perspective, Volume 2, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich 1992, p. 29