Elizabeth I of Russia
(Elizabeth Petrovna Romanova; Kolomenskoie, 1709-Saint Petersburg, 1762) Empress of Russia (1741-1762) of the Romanov dynasty, daughter of Peter the Great and Catherine I He occupied the throne after the fall of Ana Leopoldovna, regent of Ivan VI, with the support of the military.He carried out some important reforms: restoration of the Senate, creation of a supreme political council and abolition of internal customs; he also founded the University of Moscow (1755).It favored the nobility, whose power grew remarkably; the lower classes, on the contrary, saw their situation aggravated.His foreign policy was characterized by the confrontation with Prussia and a rapprochement with England and Austria.
Elizabeth I of Russia
Before governing, Elizabeth I of Russia had to contemplate, after the death of his father, the reign of his mother Catherine I (1725-1727); of his nephew Pedro II, son of his stepbrother Alejo (1727-1730); of his cousin Ana Ivanovna (1730-1740), and of Ivan VI (1740-1741).He had lived in retirement, oblivious to politics, on the outskirts of Moscow, practicing various sports and hunting.
Pretty, blonde, blue-eyed, polyglot, easy to make friends, she soon became the candidate of the anti-German party (several characters of this origin held the main government positions).Thus, when Tsarina Ana died and named Ivan VI, the son of her niece Ana Leopoldovna, a baby of a few months, as her successor, she was pressured by the Russian nobility and also by the French and Swedish ambassadors.
Reluctant at first to star in a coup, finally, in December 1741 he led a company of soldiers who captured the family of Ivan VI and sent it to the Arctic, while the The very young Tsar was imprisoned first in Siberia and then in the fortress of Schüsselburg, where he would be assassinated many years later, in 1764.
Elizabeth, the new Tsarina, was then thirty-two years old: neither as such would she pay much attention to politics, dedicating himself to increasing his wardrobe, to entertainment and to his lover Alejo Razumovski, a Cossack shepherd with whom he would contract secretly in 1750 and whom he would name count; He would also have other lovers, and he enriched all of them.
The uncles of one of them, Peter and Alexander Shuvalov, were able to take over the leadership of Russian politics, which on the other hand they performed efficiently.It would be at this time when the economy and commerce were reactivated, and Isabel founded with the help of Mikhail Lomonosov the University of Moscow (1755) and the Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg (1757) and reorganized the Academy of Sciences.In 1754 he commissioned the Italian architect Carlo Bartolomeo Rastrelli to build a new Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg.
On the other hand, he summoned Peter (Peter III), his sister's only son, to the court Ana and Carlos Federico, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, and appointed him successor.A few years later he married a German princess, Sophia Augusta Federica de Anhalt-Zerbst (later Catherine II the Great), who soon gained favor with Elizabeth.When in 1754 Pedro and Catalina had a son, Pablo, and both husbands ignored him, it was Isabel who took care of his education.
One of the few state affairs he attended was the Seven Years War against Prussia, which threatened to spread across the Baltic Sea; Elizabeth almost totally defeated the Prussian King Frederick II the Great, but before being able to complete the victory he died in January 1762, a victim of a hemorrhage.
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