HISTORICAL DICTIONARY A–Z - Russia: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 141

of the reign of Nicholas I. The accession of her
nephew, ALEXANDER II , to the throne and Russia's
defeat in the CRIMEAN WAR opened an era where
reform was discussed openly in government and
public circles. Because she was the senior mem-
ber of the imperial family, Elena Pavlovna's
influence grew through her connections with a
new coterie of reformists bureaucrats. Poor
health forced her to leave Russia in 1856 for
treatment at European spas, but she continued
her involvement in reformist politics. She con-
vened the Wildbad Conference (1857), where
she responded to the call of influential politicians
that a testing ground for emancipation of the
serfs was needed by offering her Karlovka estate
with more than 15,000 serfs. After she returned
to St. Petersburg in 1858, reform discussions
were far less tentative, and Elena Pavlovna's
salon became the vehicle for broadening the
contact between St. Petersburg bureaucrats and
members of the intelligentsia. It also provided
the means for informal unofficial contact
between the emperor and reformist officials in
the bureaucracy. As the drafting of the emanci-
pation decrees increasingly became its raison
d'etre, Elena Pavlovna's salon declined after the
publication of the EMANCIPATION ACT in March
1861. Her own interests changed and she became
an active supporter of the arts and charity,
founding the Russian Musical Society in St.
Petersburg and its Conservatory. Just before her
death, she helped establish the Eleninskii Clini-
cal Institute to assist provincial doctors in bring-
ing medical innovations to the peasantry.

played a dominant role in Russian politics until it
was abolished by Empress ANNA in 1731. Eliza-
beth became empress in November 1741 as a
result of a palace revolution carried out by the
Imperial Guards that removed the infant
emperor IVAN VI and the regent, his mother
Anna Leopoldovna. The change in government
has been portrayed, with some exaggeration, as
the end of the era of the “German party,” first
installed by Empress Anna. Charming and easy-
going, Elizabeth was more interested in enjoying
the privileges of power, leaving the running of
the state to a series of favorites, some of whom,
like Count Ivan Shuvalov, were extremely able,
while others, like Count Peter Shuvalov, were
corrupt. She was rumored to have secretly mar-
ried a Ukrainian Cossack, Aleksei Razumovsky,
to whom she remained romantically attached
throughout her life. Childless, early in her reign
she named her nephew Peter, son of the duke of
Holstein and her sister Anna, as her successor.
On the surface Elizabeth tried to restore the
spirit of her father's reign, bringing back the Sen-
ate, but in practice the main trends of her reign
were more in line with those that had come after
Peter's death. Elizabeth continued the Western-
izing cultural policies of her predecessors, but
because of her own French sympathies, her
reign witnessed the emergence of French culture
over German culture as the culture of the court.
Other important achievements of her reign
include the abolition of the death penalty and
the founding of Moscow University in 1755 and
of the Academy of Arts in 1757. Important St.
Petersburg architectural landmarks, such as the
Winter Palace, designed by Bartolomeo RAS -
TRELLI , were built during her reign, too. Her
frivolous, lavish lifestyle, including a collection
of 15,000 dresses, made a dent in the finances of
the empire. More substantially, perhaps, her
reign saw the nobility gain important privileges
at the expense of their serfs, whose living condi-
tions and legal status continued to deteriorate. In
1746, nonnobles were no longer allowed to pur-
chase serfs, while in 1760 landowners received
the right to banish their serfs to Siberia for a
number of offenses.

Elizabeth (1709-1762)
(Elizaveta Petrovna)
empress
The youngest daughter of PETER I T he Great and
his second wife, Marfa Skavronskaia, who
reigned as CATHERINE I after Peter's death. Eliza-
beth was born in Kolomenskoe, near Moscow.
In the decades that followed her father's death,
she was passed over for the throne several times.
In 1726, at her mother's insistence she became a
member of the Supreme Privy Council, which