Anna Ioannovna / Анна Иоанновна

We are now going to work through a rough patch in our list. Our project, it will be recalled, is to discuss the individual women writers treated in N. N. Golicyn in chronological order, which is to say according to the order of their birth dates as indicated on the NEWW Women Writers VRE. But what to do when the dates don't match the name? NEWW's number 4 woman bears the dates 1693-1740, for example, but these don't correspond to the name listed with them, that of "Anna Ivanovna Vel'jaševa-Volynceva", a woman writer from the second half of the 1700s. Why the error? Well, there would seem to be some confusion between Vel'jaševa-Volynceva and another "Anna Ivanovna", namely the Empress Anna Ivanovna, better known as Anna Ioannovna (her father, Tsar Ivan V, who co-ruled with Peter the Great, was known as "Ioann", an older form of "Ivan"), who was indeed born in 1693 and died in 1740.

Anna Ioannovna (reigned from 1730 to 1740) was the niece of Natal'ja Alekseevna, the subject of our last post, and she, too, was an enthusiast of theater – and of spectacle in general. Her story is fascinating, as is the evolution of her (generally negative) reputation. It should also be remembered that Anna Ioannovna played a key role in the history of Russian theater and ballet.[1] Moreover, she deserves our attention as one of four female empresses in 18th-century Russia, in which function she contributed both directly and indirectly to the legitimization of women's public activity and authorship. But was she also a writer?

Probably not. Golicyn does not mention Anna Ioannovna, nor does she appear in other dictionaries of Russian writers or women writers. As sovereign of Russia, she obviously wrote some documents, of course, but she is still more famous for having torn one up, namely the "Conditions" (Кондиции) that imposed multiple limits upon her powers as sovereign. Anna had been selected as successor to the childless Peter II by the Supreme Privy Council – a select group of "advisors" to the ruler that had come into being during the reign of Russia's first empress, Catherine I (1725-1727), widow of Peter the Great. While Peter had autocratically reduced the influence of the boyars that surrounded him, some of these were able to assert their influence anew during the reign of his successor Catherine. Indeed, Anna was chosen by them for the throne because she, too, was widowed, as well as childless, and "appeared to be weak and innocuous" (Riasanovsky 244), in short, easy to manipulate. And the Supreme Privy Council demanded that she sign the Conditions before acceding to the throne, which she did. A month later, however, Anna arrived in Petersburg, rent the document in two, dissolved the Privy Council, and assumed full autocratic control of the state. Her seizing of power symbolized and facilitated women's emergence outside the domestic sphere and in the world of ideas.

FURTHER READING:

O'Malley, Lurana Donnels. "Signs from Empresses and Actresses: Women and Theater in the Eighteenth Century". In Women in Russian Culture and Society, 1700-1825. Edited by Wendy Rosslyn and Alessandra Tosi. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 9-23.

Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. A History of Russia. 4th Ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1984.

NOTES:

[1] On Anna's role in Russian theater and ballet, see, for example, O'Malley 11-12.


ILLUSTRATIONS:

1. Portrait of Anna Ioannovna from 1730 by Louis Caravaque (image available on the English language Wikipedia page dedicated to her). 

2. Anna Ioannovna lazily observing hijinks in her chambers, as imagined by painter V. I. Jacobi 140 years later (in 1874). This image is available on the Russian Wikipedia page dedicated to Anna, together with the names of the depicted figures; the man bowing among the parrots is the poet V. K. Trediakovskij. 

3. Anna Ioannovna refutes the "Conditions" (artist unknown, courtesy of www.runivers.ru).

4. A copy of the torn document (courtesy of www.runivers.ru).