A Contemporary on the First Weeks of Elizaveta Petrovna’s Reign: A Letter from Voltaire’s Collection of Manuscripts

This article analyses a note written shortly after the palace coup of 25 November 1741, which brought Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, to power. The document is an extract from a letter sent from St Petersburg on 19/30 December 1741 to the Mazovian voivode Stanisław Poniatowski in Poland. Several indirect indications suggest that the author of the message was most likely Johann Sigismund von Pezold, secretary of the Saxon embassy. The author of the note, published as an appendix to the article, showed remarkable knowledge of all the political, court and diplomatic events that took place in the Russian capital in the first weeks after the change of power. This source, which has not yet attracted the attention of historians, contains interesting details that characterise the transitional period during which the political principles, ideology and practice of Elizabethan rule were developed and the new governing body was formed. The document makes it possible to feel the restless atmosphere of the victorious palace coup. The author draws attention to the fate of the family of the deposed sovereign, Anna Leopoldovna, and gives secret information about the trial of the main political figures of the previous reigns: A. I. Ostermann, B. Ch. Münnich and others. In order to please the new government, the writer-diplomat tried to present Elizaveta Petrovna’s accession to power as the prevention of a ripening conspiracy and the restoration of justice. The author’s knowledge of Russian realities, the opportunity to be present at the court of the new empress and his connections with members of the upper echelons of metropolitan society enabled him to capture characteristic and even hidden details of political life at the beginning of Elizaveta Petrovna’s reign. The document, made apparently especially for Voltaire, has been preserved in the collection of materials gathered by him for his work on the History of the Russian Empire under Peter the Great (1757–1762).