A good monarch

“May I be loved by you, oh, Lord, as I love these friendly and kind people,” declared Elizabeth Petrovna during her visit in 1744 to Kyiv, where she was welcomed by a number of Cossack officers and townspeople, who greeted her with great respect. The empress’s statement is a clear expression of her loyal, and often friendly attitude to the Ukrainian people, and to Kyivites in particular. Let’s briefly review the milestones in the life of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, which may explain her tolerant attitude to Ukraine.

When Peter I died in January 1725 and his daughter Elizabeth was 16 years old, his wife Catherine became empress of Russia, not without the assistance of the famous and influential Prince Aleksandr Menshikov. Peter I was very particular about his successor to the throne. Hoping to live a long life, he had dreamed of watching his only grandson Peter II, the son of the executed heir Aleksei Petrovich, grow up and mature. But a certain member of Tsar Peter’s retinue informed the Austrian ambassador that the tsar wanted his daughter Anna to marry Aleksandr Naryshkin and proclaim him as his heir. Aleksandr’s father, Petr Lvovych Naryshkin, Peter’s cousin, had spent 13 years abroad “getting educated” and upon his return had become one of Russia’s outstanding statesmen.

At the same time Peter dreamed of his younger daughter Elizabeth marrying the Duke of Holstein (a small duchy in northern Germany between the North and the Baltic seas). But on May 17, 1725, when Catherine, who wanted Elizabeth to marry the king of France, was already the empress, Kurakin, Russia’s ambassador to France, informed his monarch about the impossibility of such a marriage. King Louis XV had already married Princess Marie Leszczynska.

The manner of selecting a future husband for Elizabeth drove her to make her own choice. After five years of waiting, she ignored all her father’s dreams and her mother’s advice. As her future husband she chose the young Ukrainian Cossack Oleksii Rozum. These unexpected but happy events were preceded by the following circumstances.

In 1731 Colonel Vyshnevsky was ordered to select some talented and handsome young men for the Royal Court Choir in St. Petersburg. During his mission he visited the village of Lemeshi, near Kozelsk in the Chernihiv region, where he heard a handsome 23-year-old young man singing marvelously in a church choir. The colonel brought him to the capital. His name was Oleksii Rozum, a former family and community shepherd, the son of the Cossack Hryhorii Rozum. After hearing him singing and enamored of his handsome appearance, Princess Elizabeth, who was 22 years old, fell in love with the Cossack’s son.

This was the beginning of Rozum’s career. After he lost his voice, he was appointed court banduryst because of his wonderful skill on this instrument, and later a steward of one of the princess’s estates. Later he was put in charge of all her estates and eventually appointed gentleman of the princess’s bedchamber.

On Nov. 28, 1740, the Russian empress Anna Ioannovna died after appointing her niece, Princess of Mecklenburg Anna Leopoldovna, regent and her grandson Ivan VI, who was just one year old, heir to the throne. Anna’s testament displeased the court party consisting of Rozumovsky, who had changed his original surname of Rozum; Armand Lestocq, the empress’s physician; Marquis Chetardi, the French ambassador; and others. All of them supported the idea of placing on the throne Peter’s daughter Elizabeth, whose right to rule was considered to be the most legitimate. Aided by the Preobrazhensky Regiment of Foot Guards, Anna Leopoldovna and her family were arrested and imprisoned in the fortress of Shlisselburg.

Elizabeth, who was 32 years old, was proclaimed empress in 1741. Her coronation was held on May 25, 1742, and the same day the 34-year old Rozumovsky was appointed ober-jagermeister (royal huntsman). He was awarded the Order of Saint Andrew, and he received a number of large estates in Moscow gubernia and Ukraine. In the fall of 1742 Empress Elizabeth Petrovna secretly married Rozumovsky. They had a modest ceremony in the village church of Perovo near Moscow. To Rozumovsky’s credit, he behaved extremely tactfully and reasonably and did not try to interfere in politics, despite his high position in the royal hierarchy, all the while remaining a true Ukrainian patriot.

In 1744 Rozumovsky and Elizabeth Petrovna visited Ukraine together. During her visit to the village of Kozeltse near Chernihiv, where Oleksii’s mother lived, Elizabeth Petrovna became acquainted with all the relatives of the elder Rozum and enjoyed her stay in Kozeltse. Then the empress went to Kyiv, where the Ukrainians greeted her with sincere respect. After inspecting the city, she pronounced the famous words mentioned at the beginning of this article.

Kyiv played a vital, strategic role in the Russian Empire. Regular troops were quartered there, and the mighty Pechersk fortress was being constructed. Thus, Elizabeth Petrovna’s interest in Kyiv stemmed from general state and “patriotic” considerations. After the empress’s visit to Kyiv, the royal Mariinsky Palace, state park, and the aristocratic St. George’s Church were built. By the spring of 1753 the interior of the magnificent Church of St. Andrew was prepared for painting. The church was founded by Elizabeth Petrovna in 1744, designed by her favorite court architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli, and completed in 1747.

Capitalizing on the empress’s presence in Kyiv, Ukrainian Cossack officers sent her a petition to elect a new hetman for Ukraine. Their petition was accepted, but the empress suggested that Kyrylo, Oleksii’s younger brother, be elected to this post. At the time Kyrylo was studying in Germany and France.

Most historians think that Elizabeth Petrovna began her reign resolutely and effectively. One of her first actions was to bar the German party headed by Duke Biron from court affairs and surround the throne with patriotically-minded individuals. In 1743 she concluded the war with Sweden with the advantageous Treaty of Abo, which gave Russia a considerable part of Finland’s territory.

The year 1744 marked the rise in the activities of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy, which had been suppressed by Peter I. While in the late 1730s the number of students did not exceed 400 — 500, in 1744 there were more than 1,000. That same year the empress canceled Peter I’s reform of 1722, which had forced 86,000 poor Cossacks to pay financial support to 22,000 elect Cossacks. Elizabeth Petrovna released the Cossack helpers from that duty and restored their status as ordinary Cossacks.

In 1746, one year after Kyrylo Rozumovsky returned to St. Petersburg from abroad, Elizabeth Petrovna appointed him president of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, “taking into consideration his erudition.” Kyrylo was only 18 at the time. In 1745 the Kyiv Metropolitanate was restored, and Archbishop Rafail Zaborovskiy received the title of metropolitan. In 1746, when Bibikov, the head of Ukraine’s Hetman government, died, Elizabeth Petrovna decided not to appoint a new officer. Ukraine was governed by the Little Russian Collegium. In 1747 an imperial act on the election of a hetman for Ukraine was issued. It was an idea that appealed to many Ukrainians, who condemned the activities of the collegium.

In 1748 another imperial act transferring all Cossacks to particular regiments without the right to be transferred to another unit strengthened the Cossacks’ military and civic discipline. In 1750 the empress’s wish “to have Kyrylo Rozumovsky the hetman in Ukraine” was realized in the town of Hlukhiv, where Cossack officers elected the 22 year old young man as hetman.Complying with his requests, Elizabeth Petrovna transferred all Ukrainian affairs from the senate to the foreign affairs office, and Kyiv and Zaporizhia were submitted directly to the hetman’s rule. However, financial control remained in the hands of the Russian government, and the hetman was not able to cancel the Ukrainian Cossacks’ participation in Russia’s wars outside Ukraine. During Hetman Rozumovsky’s rule the Cossack officers became highly influential in Ukraine, and their assemblies in Hlukhiv were gradually turning into a permanent conference of Ukrainian nobility.

The empress introduced certain important changes in Ukrainian society. She founded buildings for the disabled and alms houses for the elderly, issued an act on the delimitation of land, and created two credit banks — one for nobles and another for merchants. Loans could be obtained at six per cent yearly interest. To enhance trade, internal customhouses were abolished, and customs duties for foreign-made products were raised. These banks were created with the help of funds originating from revenues of the state liquor monopoly. In 1753 Elizabeth Petrovna abolished capital punishment in the empire and introduced a single imperial tax in Ukraine.

In 1760, a year before Elizabeth’s death, Hetman Rozumovsky issued a Universal (decree) allowing peasants to move from one place to another, if they had permission from their previous masters. All their belongings, however, remained the property of their former masters.

With the empress’s consent the hetman instituted an extensive court reform in 1760. The entire territory of Ukraine was divided into 20 judicial districts. Two types of courts were created in every district — zemsky (communal) courts to judge civil cases, and pidkomonny courts to deal with land debates. For trying criminal cases 10 municipal courts were created in every regimental town. The General Court, resembling the Polish tribunal court, became the highest judicial body in the land. It consisted of a council of two judges-general and ten elected regimental deputies. The reform played a very positive role, as it strictly separated judicial power from administrative, and reduced the number of appeals. All the judges, their assistants, and secretaries were chosen from among the local regiment’s nobles and freely elected. Thus, the empress helped the hetman of Ukraine maintain peace and order in the country by restoring some of the Hetmanate’s time-honored privileges.