Anna Ivanovna was the daughter of Peter’s brother Ivan V., who was associated with him upon the throne.  She had the force to defeat an oligarchic attempt to tie her hands.  The plan had originated with the Galitsuins and Dolgorukis, and was really calculated to benefit the state in a period of incompetent or vicious rulers by having the authority of the Crown limited by a council of eight ministers.  But it was reactionary.  It was introducing a principle which had been condemned, and was a veiled attempt to undo the work of the Ivans and the Romanoffs, and to place the real power as of old in the hands of ruling families.  The plan fell, and the leaders fell with it, and a host of their followers.  The executioners were busy at St. Petersburg, and the aristocratic colony in Siberia grew larger.

Anna’s reign was the period of a preponderating German influence in politics and at court.  Germans held high positions; one of them, Gustav Biron, the highest and most influential of all.  Anna’s infatuation for this man made him the ruling spirit in her reign and the Regent in the next, until he had his turn in disgrace and exile.  Added to the dissatisfaction on account of German ascendency was a growing feeling that the succession should come through Peter, instead of through Ivan, his insignificant associate upon the throne.  Such was the prevailing sentiment at the time of Anna’s death (1740).  The Tsaritsa named Ivan, a grand-nephew, the infant son of her niece Anna, her successor under the Regency of Biron, the man who had controlled the policy of the administration during her reign.

This was only a brief and tragic episode.  Biron was swiftly swept out of power and into exile, and succeeded in the Regency by Anna, the mother of the infant Emperor; then, following quickly upon that, was a carefully matured conspiracy formed in the interest of Elizabeth Petrovna, the beautiful daughter whose marriage with the young Louis XV. had been an object of the great Peter’s hopes.

In this connection it is well to mention that the terminations vich and vna, so constantly met in Russian names, have an important significance—­vich meaning son of, and vna daughter of. Elizabeth Petrovna is Elizabeth the daughter of Peter, and Peter Alexievich is Peter the son of Alexis.  In like manner Tsarevich and Tsarevna are respectively the son and daughter of the Tsar; Czar, Czarevich, and Czarevna being the modern form, and Czarina instead of Tsaritsa.  The historian may for convenience omit the surname thus created, but in Russia it would be a great breach of decorum to do so.

By a sudden coup d’etat, Elizabeth Petrovna took her rightful place upon the throne of her father (1741).  In the dead of night the unfortunate Anna and her husband were awakened, carried into exile, and their infant son Ivan VI. was immured in a prison, where he was to grow up to manhood,—­shattered in mind by his horrible existence of twenty years,—­and then to be mercifully put out of the way as a possible menace to the ambitious plans of a woman.