As you know, before his death, Peter I left no clear instructions regarding the successor to the throne. After a series of palace intrigues and coups, the niece of the deceased Tsar Anna Ioannovna was on the throne. The Dowager Duchess did not expect to receive the crown of the Russian Empire. But after the happiness that suddenly fell on her, the woman, first of all, took up not the affairs of the state, but the organization of countless entertainment events. Some of these fun turned out to be very cruel.
Russian Empress Anna Ioannovna. Photo: otdelka-tam.ru.
Few people speak flatteringly about Anna Ioannovna's 10-year stay on the Russian throne. She went down in history not as a prudent politician, but as a crazy empress. The Empress loved to surround herself with numerous dwarfs, hunchbacks. It was believed that Anna Ioannovna did not shine with beauty at all, but against the background of freaks she looked very advantageous. Most of all, she sympathized with the Kalmyk dwarf Avdotya Ivanovna. The bow-legged, ugly jester had a sharp mind and cheered the empress heartily.
One day the dwarf was sad. When the empress asked what was the matter, Avdotya replied that she was not young already and wanted to get married. Anna Ioannovna caught fire with the idea of the dwarf's marriage, so much so that she was no longer happy.
Wedding of the dwarfs. Photo: kleinburd.ru.
Jesters at the court of Empress Anna Ioannovna. V. Jacobi, 1872. Photo: runivers.com.
Mikhail Alekseevich Golitsyn became a well-born groom. At that time, the prince was in the empress's jester staff. He got there due to a large disgrace. While abroad, Golitsyn married and converted to Catholicism. By changing his faith, he incurred the wrath of Anna Ioannovna. In the palace he had his own basket, where a man "incubated" eggs. At the feasts, the duties of the prince were to pour kvass for everyone, for which they called him Kvasnik.
The French historian Gazot described his observations about Golitsyn as follows: “He amused the empress with his impenetrable stupidity. All the courtiers, as it were, considered it their duty to laugh at the unfortunate man; he did not dare to offend anyone, did not dare even say any impolite word to those who mocked him …"
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The morally destroyed prince, naturally, could not object to the empress and began to meekly prepare for the wedding with the dwarf.
Ice House Plan (Part 1). Photo: modniskeletmodi.files.wordpress.com.
Anna Ioannovna herself was so imbued with new fun that she ordered to build an Ice House on the Neva for the wedding. The winter that year was very harsh, the temperature did not rise above minus 30 degrees. The building was 16 meters long, 5 meters wide, and 6 meters high. The facade was decorated with ice sculptures. The house itself contained a living room, a pantry, a bedroom and a toilet. At the gate stood ice dolphins with open mouths, from which burning oil was thrown out.
Ice House Plan (Part 2). Photo: modniskeletmodi.files.wordpress.com.
The ice house was adorned with ice figures of birds and animals along the perimeter. The most impressive creation is a life-size ice elephant. During the day, jets of water were released from the trunk, and at night - burning oil.
For the construction of the Ice House, the best engineers of that time were involved - the architect Pyotr Mikhailovich Eropkin and the academician Georg Wolfgang Kraft. To carry out all of the empress's undertakings, they had to find many unique solutions.
The plan of Anna Ioannovna's Ice House. Photo: litmir.me.
For the holiday, Anna Ioannovna ordered to deliver a pair of representatives of all nationalities of the Russian Empire in national costumes. On February 6, 1740, 300 people arrived from different parts of the country for a clownish wedding.
The wedding cortege was a powerful sight. The newlyweds were locked in a cage, which was placed on an elephant. The others followed them on camels, deer, dogs. After the wedding, a feast followed, and in the evening Kvasnik and Avdotya were sent to their palace on an icy wedding bed. At the exit, guards were assigned so that the young could not get out. As if in mockery in the icy prison, icy wood poured with oil "burned".
As planned, the newly-made spouses were supposed to freeze at minus forty degrees, but they managed to survive. According to legend, the dwarf bribed the guards and brought warm clothes in advance, but still in the morning they were almost frozen.
Anna Ioannovna Ice Palace.
Anna Ioannovna's cruel fun caused the strongest outrage in Russian society and abroad. Mockery of jesters was called low, and the waste of colossal funds on their whims was called petty tyranny. However, the empress herself did not care much about the opinions of others.
Wedding at the Ice House. V. Jacobi, 1878. Photo: itd3.mycdn.me.
It so happened that the buffoon's wedding became the last entertainment of Anna Ioannovna. Six months later, she was gone. As for the heroes of the "celebration", the dwarf Avdotya gave birth to two children for Kvasnik. But two years after the wedding, the woman died, the consequences of hypothermia affected.
And Mikhail Golitsyn was abolished the humiliating position and returned part of the land and property. After the death of the dwarf, he married again, fully recovering from the humiliation he had experienced.
Ice house. Photo: mir.radosthrist.ru.
