The Russian people were silent but angry when they heard about the death of the empress and the accession of Ivan VI. They felt that Anna had humiliated and shown disrespect for the nation during her reign. Arrogant, contemptuous of everything Russian, and greedy for wealth and power, the Germans in her court had abused the people and the country. There was now hostility toward all foreigners, but especially against the Germans in the imperial service. But the Russian people did not rebel. Anna had been the daughter of a tsar and had a legitimate title to the throne. The guard regiments initially had supported her, ensuring that she wielded absolute power as an autocrat. Soon they regretted their action but hesitated to rebel against the legitimate empress.

However, the two-month-old infant, proclaimed as Emperor Ivan VI, had only a weak claim of descent from the tsar. He was the great-nephew of the deceased empress. His father, Prince Anthony Ulrich of Brunswick, was a German; his mother, Anna Leopoldovna, was the daughter of another German, the Duke of Mecklenburg, but her mother had been Russian and daughter of a tsar. But most Russians felt that Anna Leopoldovna was German and the Brunswicks were a German family. Moreover, since she and her husband quarreled and lived apart from each other, Anna had appointed Biron to act as regent until the emperor came of age.

The Russians could not endure the prospect of Biron exercising autocratic power. The general public hated him. His behavior was so offensive that even his fellow countrymen detested him, and they feared that he might provoke a popular uprising that would sweep them aside. But Biron’s greatest mistake was to antagonize the guards. Fearing that the Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky, the proud regiments raised by Peter the Great, would rebel, he ordered other army units to the capital as a counterbalance and made preparations to send guard detachments to distant parts of the country, probably far to the South where they could defend the frontiers against Tatar invasions. He also had a longer-term plan to recruit guardsmen from lower classes, a change so fundamental that it would disband the regiments.

Their existence threatened, the guards were ready to rebel. Led by Munnich, a detachment of the Preobrazhensky entered the palace in the early hours of November 9, 1740, and arrested Biron, who was in bed. They carried him away wrapped in a blanket. A proclamation, made in the name of the Senate, the Holy Synod, and the Generalitet, appointed Anna Leopoldovna as regent in his place. Biron’s regency had lasted just twenty-two days.

But the new regime was hardly more acceptable. Anna Leopoldovna did not have any understanding or capacity for ruling a vast empire. She would stay for days in her bedchamber with her lady-in-waiting, Julie Mengden. She also had a lover, Count Lynar, the Saxon Minister in St. Petersburg; for some perverse reason, she wanted him to marry Julie Mengden. Consumed with her desire for sensual pleasures, she left all affairs of state to Field Marshal Munnich, who had become chief minister. But he was no match for his rival, Ostermann, who gained the regent’s confidence. On January 28, 1741, a decree restored Ostermann to the position of first minister and limited Munnich’s authority to the army and the Ladoga Canal. Incensed by this treatment, Munnich at once resigned.

Ostermann now had no direct rival, but he ruled in the midst of plots and conspiracies initiated by Austria, France, and Prussia. The War of the Austrian Succession had broken out in 1740. Russia was still a formidable power, despite popular discontent and economic decline due to misgovernment and gross extravagance since the death of Peter the Great. Austria and France competed for Russian support, and their ministers were active in St. Petersburg. Munnich’s hostility toward Austria and his support for France and Frederick II of Prussia had contributed to his displacement. Ostermann, the author of the Austro-Russian treaty of 1726, pursued an alliance with Austria. In St. Petersburg the French ambassador, Marquis de la Chetardie, and the Swedish minister, Count Nolcken, conspired to reverse this policy. He tried to take advantage of popular discontent to promote a coup that would place Tsarevna Elizabeth on the throne. They were mistaken in their belief that she was pro-French. But they were correct about her bitter hostility toward Ostermann himself, whom she regarded as having treacherously betrayed her father’s family.

In return for Swedish support, Nolcken demanded the return of the Baltic territories gained by Russia in the Northern War, but Elizabeth firmly rejected such terms. Sweden, encouraged by France, then went so far as to declare war. The pretext was to relieve Russia of the rule of foreign ministers, but the Swedes were in fact taking advantage of the apparent disarray of the government. At Vilmanstrand in August 1741, however, the Russian army under the command of Field Marshal Lacy soundly defeated them. De la Chetardie continued to scheme. Armand Lestocq, Elizabeth’s French physician, served as the intermediary between them. But beyond lending her 2,000 ducats instead of the 15,000 that she requested, he took no part in her coup and didn’t learn until later that it had taken place.

The Preobrazhensky and her close companions were responsible for trying to get Elizabeth to seize the throne. The revolution itself was an expression of Russian exasperation and hostility toward the German adventurers who ruled the country. The banishment of Biron had removed the most offensive member of this group, but the fact that Germans still held the most important offices and commands remained a national humiliation. The assumption that the Russians would prove incapable of governing the country if they banished the foreigners caused further damage to Russian pride.

The conspiracy would not have developed so quickly if Ostermann had not provoked a crisis. On November 23, 1741, Anna Leopoldovna, the regent, summoned Elizabeth to reveal that she and Ostermann knew of the plot and had decided to arrest Lestocq. On the following day, the guards received orders to prepare immediately to move to the Swedish front. The regent did not order Elizabeth to be arrested or sent under guard to a nunnery, nor did she immediately order the arrest of Lestocq. It was clear to Elizabeth that this was her last opportunity to act, if she was to avoid life in a nunnery and if Russians were to be able to get rid of Anna Leopoldovna.

After months of hesitation, Elizabeth now took the initiative and acted decisively. After midnight on November 24-25, she traveled swiftly by sled to the Preobrazhensky barracks. With her were Lestocq; Mikhail Vorontsov, her chamberlain; Herr Schwarz, her old music master; Alexei Razumovsky, her lover; and Alexander and Peter Shuvalov, two gentlemen of her household. When she appeared in the barracks, holding a silver cross in front of her, the guards welcomed her with enthusiastic oaths of support and loyalty. Elizabeth then traveled with them to the Winter Palace where they arrested the regent, her consort, and the infant, Ivan VI. Detachments of guards took Ostermann, Munnich, and others into custody. There was no resistance or bloodshed.

Elizabeth had intended to send Ivan VI and the Brunswick family back to their duchy, but a revolt in their support by certain guardsmen and others made her realize that they would always be a threat to her security on the throne if they were free. She then banished Anna Leopoldovna and her consort to Kholmogory on the Northern Dvina River, not far south of Archangel.

The guards imprisoned Ivan VI in the fortress of Schlusselburg, where for eighteen years he grew up in solitary confinement except for contact with his guards. Separated as a small child from his family, Ivan did not know love or companionship. He was dressed in rags and often hungry, and his guards sometimes abused him.

If Elizabeth had known of this abuse, she would not have allowed it. Ivan’s plight had saddened her. She had cried on the one occasion when she had guards bring him to St. Petersburg so that she could see and talk to him. But she still felt that he could not be free because he would be a threat to the throne.

Peter III was sadistic and had no capacity for sympathy or kindness. If Ivan misbehaved by calling himself a prince or angered his guards, Peter ordered them to put him in chains and beat him. He also told them that if anyone should try to release him, they should kill Ivan.

After seizing the throne, Catherine II intended to imprison Peter III in Schlusselburg and ordered that Ivan should be moved to Kexholm. The death of Peter III made this unnecessary, and they took Ivan back to his old prison.

In August 1762, Catherine went to see Ivan. She found that “apart from his painful and almost unintelligible stammering, he was bereft of understanding and human intelligence.”

In July 1764, guards murdered Ivan VI, apparently as a result of an attempt to release him. Surrounding circumstances suggest that someone in St. Petersburg might have been behind his death.

The tragic story of Ivan VI began with the arrival of Elizabeth at the Winter Palace. On the morning following his arrest, Elizabeth made a ceremonial entry into the palace. St. Petersburg rang with cheers, for this was a popular and bloodless revolution. The Senate, the Holy Synod, the Generalitet, and other senior representatives of the nobility, the gentry, and the army then fervently took the oath of allegiance to Elizabeth, as empress and autocrat.