John the Sixth is the son of Anna Leopoldovna, niece of Empress Anna Ioannovna, and a German from the noble family of Welfs - Anton Ulrich of Braunschweig. He became emperor in two months, but his mother actually ruled. A little over a year later, the young ruler was overthrown by Elizaveta Petrovna. He was considered too dangerous and was transported to the Shlisselburg fortress in St. Petersburg. having put him in solitary confinement, and since then until the end of his life he has not seen a single human face …
Drama on the island
This island at the very source of the cold and dark Neva from Lake Ladoga was the first piece of enemy Swedish land that Peter I set foot on at the very beginning of the Northern War. It was not for nothing that he renamed the Noteburg fortress, which had been conquered from the Swedes in 1702, into Shlisselburg - "Key City".
With this key, he then opened the whole Baltic. And almost immediately the fortress became a political prison. This secluded island was very convenient for a prison. It was possible to get here only through one gate, while it was necessary to go around the water in front of the guards almost the entire island. And it was impossible to escape from here.
Throughout history, there have been no escapes from the Shlisselburg prison. And only once was a daring attempt made to free one of the Shlisselburg prisoners.
Shlisselburg Fortress.
The event took place on a white night from July 5 to 6, 1764. This attempt was made by one of the security officers of the fortress, second lieutenant of the Smolensk infantry regiment Vasily Yakovlevich Mirovich.
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With a detachment of soldiers, whom he had incited to revolt, Mirovich tried to seize a special prison in which the most secret prisoner was kept. Bursting into the barracks where the prisoner lived, Mirovich saw him motionless, lying in a pool of blood. There were traces of a fierce struggle around.
During the battle, which unfolded between the rebel detachment and the guard of the secret prisoner, several soldiers died, the security officers Vlasyev and Chekin killed the prisoner. Mirovich, having learned about the death of the prisoner, surrendered at the mercy of the authorities and was immediately arrested. All the soldiers he knocked out for the riot were also captured. The investigation of a terrible crime has begun …
Dynastic combinations
But who was this prisoner? It was a terrible state secret, but everyone in Russia knew that the secret prisoner was the Russian Emperor Ivan Antonovich, who spent almost a quarter of a century in captivity.
In the early 1730s, the Romanov dynasty experienced a serious crisis - there was no one to inherit the throne. On the throne was the Empress Anna Ioannovna, a childless widow. Her sister Ekaterina Ivanovna lived with her with her young daughter Anna Leopoldovna. These are all the relatives of the Empress.
True, the crown princess Elizaveta Petrovna, who was not even thirty years old, was still alive. Elizabeth's nephew, the son of her late elder sister Anna Petrovna Karl-Peter-Ulrich (future Emperor Peter III), also lived in Kiel. However, Anna Ioannovna did not want the offspring of Peter I and the "port of Livonia" - Catherine I - to ascend the throne of the Russian Empire.
Portrait of Anna Ioannovna. Unknown artist. XVIII century.
That is why, when the imperial decree was announced in 1731, the subjects did not believe their ears: according to it, they had to swear allegiance to Anna Ioannovna's bizarre will. She declared her heir the boy who would be born from the future marriage of the empress's niece Anna Leopoldovna with an unknown foreign prince.
Surprisingly, as the empress conceived, and it happened: Anna Leopoldovna was married to the German prince Anton-Ulrich and in August 1740 gave birth to a boy named Ivan. When Anna Ioannovna died in October of the same year, she bequeathed the throne to her two-month-old grand-nephew. So the emperor Ivan Antonovich appeared on the Russian throne.
Baby Emperor's Gold and Iron Chains
Well, what can I say about the boy who became an autocrat at the age of two months and five days and was dethroned when he was one year, three months and thirteen days old? Neither wordy decrees, "signed" by him, nor military victories won by his army, can say anything about him. A baby - he is a baby, lies in a cradle, sleeps or cries, sucks milk and stains diapers.
An engraving has survived on which we see the cradle of Emperor Ivan VI Antonovich, surrounded by allegorical figures of Justice, Prosperity and Science. Covered by a fluffy blanket, a chubby baby looks at us sternly. Around his neck is entwined a gold chain of the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called, heavy, like chains, - as soon as he was born, the emperor became a knight of the highest order of Russia.
In official lifetime sources, it is referred to as John III, that is, the account is from the first Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible; in late historiography, a tradition was established to call him Ivan (John) VI, counting from Ivan I Kalita.
Such was the fate of Ivan Antonovich: all his life, from the first breath to the last, he spent in chains. But in gold chains it did not last long.
On November 25, 1741, Tsarevna Elizaveta Petrovna made a coup d'etat. She broke into the Winter Palace with the rebels in the middle of the night and arrested the mother and father of the emperor. The soldiers were given strict orders not to make a fuss in the imperial bedchamber and to take the child-emperor only when he woke up.
So for about an hour they stood in silence at the cradle, until the boy opened his eyes and cried out in fear at the sight of the fierce grenadier faces. Emperor Ivan was dragged out of the cradle and carried to Elizabeth. “Ah, child! You are not guilty of anything! - cried the usurper and firmly grabbed the child so that - God forbid - he would not get to others.
Don't kill, let him die himself
And then the path of the cross of the family of Ivan Antonovich began in prisons. At first, the prisoners were kept near Riga, then in the Voronezh province, in Oranienburg. Here the parents were separated from their four-year-old son.
He, under the name of Grigory, was taken to Solovki, but due to the autumn weather they only reached Kholmogory, where Ivan Antonovich was placed in the former house of the local bishop. I must say that the name Grigory is not the most successful in Russian history - you involuntarily remember Grigory Otrepiev and Grigory Rasputin.
Here, in Kholmogory, the child was put in solitary confinement, and from now on he saw only servants and guards. A lively and cheerful boy was continuously kept in a tightly closed room without windows - all his childhood, all his youth. He had no toys, he never saw flowers, birds, animals, trees. He didn't know what daylight was.
Ivan VI Antonovich.
Once a week, under cover of the darkness at night, he was taken to the bathhouse in the courtyard of the bishop's house, and he probably thought that it was always night outside. And outside the walls of Ivan's cell, in another part of the house, they settled his parents, brothers and sisters, who were born after him and whom he also never saw.
Elizabeth never gave the order to kill Ivan, but did everything to make him die. The Empress forbade teaching him to read, forbade him to walk. When he, eight years old, fell ill with smallpox and measles, the guards asked Petersburg: is it possible to invite a doctor to a seriously ill patient? A decree followed: the doctor should not be allowed to the prisoner! But Ivan recovered for his misfortune …
In 1756, a sixteen-year-old prisoner was suddenly transported from Kholmogory to Shlisselburg and settled in a separate, strictly guarded barracks. The guards were given the strictest instructions not to allow strangers to the prisoner Gregory.
The windows of the room, so as not to let in daylight, were thickly smeared with paint, candles were constantly burning in the cell, the officer on duty was constantly watching the prisoner. When the servants came to clean the room, Gregory was led behind the screen. It was complete isolation from the world …
The secret of the secrets of the Russian court, which everyone knew about
The very fact of Ivan Antonovich's existence was a state secret. In the struggle with her young predecessor on the throne, Empress Elizaveta Petrovna resorted to an amazing, but, however, familiar way of fighting the memory of him.
His name was forbidden to be mentioned in official papers and in private conversations. The one who pronounced the name Ivanushki (as he was called among the people) was expected to be arrested, tortured in the Secret Chancellery, and exiled to Siberia.
The highest decree ordered to destroy all portraits of Ivan VI, to withdraw from circulation all coins with his image. Each time, an investigation began if, among the thousands of coins brought to the treasury in barrels, a ruble with the image of the disgraced emperor was found.
It was ordered to tear out the title pages from the books dedicated to the infant emperor, to collect all the decrees, minutes and memorandums published under him to the last, mentioning the name of Ivan VI Antonovich. These papers were carefully sealed and hidden in the Secret Chancery.
So in Russian history a huge "hole" was formed from October 19, 1740, when he took the throne, and until November 25, 1741. According to all the papers, it turned out that after the end of the reign of Empress Anna Ioannovna, the glorious reign of Elizabeth Petrovna immediately began.
Well, if it was impossible to do without mentioning the time of the reign of Ivan VI, then they resorted to the euphemism: "During the reign of a famous person." Only more than a century later, in 1888, two huge volumes of papers from the reign of Ivan Antonovich were published. So, finally, the secret became clear …
But, as often happened in Russia, the biggest state secret was known to everyone. And those who did not know should only visit the Kholmogorsk or Shlisselburg bazaars. There or in the nearest tavern over a half-bottle of vodka, the curious would be immediately told who was being so carefully guarded in prison and for what.
After all, everyone had known for a long time that Ivanushka was imprisoned for loyalty to the “old faith” and, naturally, he was suffering for the people. It is a well-known fact, otherwise why torture a person like that?
The dynastic sin of the Romanovs
It must be said that this dynastic sin haunted neither Elizaveta Petrovna, nor Peter III, who ascended the throne in December 1761, nor Catherine II, who seized power in June 1762. And all these autocrats certainly wanted to see the mysterious prisoner.
It so happened that in his life Ivan Antonovich saw only three women: his mother - the ruler Anna Leopoldovna and two empresses! And even then, when Elizabeth met him in 1757 (Ivan was brought in a closed wagon to Petersburg), she was dressed in a man's dress.
In March 1762, Emperor Peter III himself went to Shlisselburg, under the guise of an inspector, entered the prisoner's cell and even talked to him. From this conversation it became clear that the prisoner remembers that he is not Gregory at all, but a prince or emperor. This unpleasantly struck Peter III - he thought that the prisoner was a crazy, forgetful, sick person.
Peter III visits Ioan Antonovich in his Shlisselburg chamber. Illustration from a German history magazine of the early 20th century.
Catherine II inherited Ivan's problem from her unlucky husband. And she, too, driven by curiosity, went to Shlisselburg in August 1762 to look at the secret prisoner and, possibly, talk to him.
There is no doubt that Ivan Antonovich, with his wild appearance, made a heavy impression on visitors. Twenty years of solitary confinement crippled him, and the youth's life experience was deformed and defective. A child is not a kitten that grows up as a cat even in an empty room.
Ivan was isolated as a four-year-old. Nobody was involved in raising him. He did not know affection, kindness, he lived like an animal in a cage. The security officers, ignorant and rude people, out of spite and boredom, teased Ivanushka like a dog, beat him and put him on a chain "for disobedience".
As M. A. Korf, the author of the book about Ivan Antonovich, rightly wrote, "until the very end his life represented one endless chain of torments and sufferings of all kinds." And yet, in the depths of his consciousness, the memory of his early childhood and the terrible, dreamlike story of his abduction and renaming was preserved.
In 1759, one of the guards reported in his report: "The prisoner, who he was, asked why [he] had previously said that he was a great man, and one vile officer took it away from him and changed his name." It is clear that Ivan was talking about Captain Miller, who took a four-year-old boy from his parents in 1744. And the child remembered it!
New instruction
Later, Catherine II wrote that she came to Shlisselburg to see the prince and, "having recognized his spiritual qualities, and his life, according to his natural qualities and upbringing, determine calm." But she allegedly suffered a complete failure, because “with our sensitivity they saw in him, in addition to his very painful and almost unintelligible tongue-tied language (Ivan stuttered terribly and, to speak clearly, supported his chin with his hand), deprivation of reason and human meaning”. Therefore, the empress concluded, it is impossible to provide any help to the unfortunate man, and there will be nothing better for him than to remain in the dungeon.
The conclusion about Ivanushka's madness was made not on the basis of a medical examination, but on the reports of the guards. We know well what kind of psychiatrists guards are from Soviet history. Professional doctors were never allowed to see Ivan Antonovich.
John Antonovich.
In a word, the humane empress left the prisoner to rot in the damp, dark barracks. Soon after the Empress left Shlisselburg, on August 3, 1762, the guards of the secret prisoner, officers Vlasyev and Chekin, received new instructions.
In it (in clear contradiction with the statement about the prisoner's madness) it was said that with Gregory it was necessary to conduct conversations such as “in order to arouse in him a tendency towards spiritual rite, that is, to monasticism … that his whole life was going on in such a way that he had to hurry up and ask for tonsure”.
It is unlikely that with a madman, "devoid of human reason and meaning", one can conduct lofty conversations about God and the tonsure of a monk.
It is extremely important that in this instruction, unlike the previous ones, the following item was also included: “4. If, contrary to expectations, it happens that someone comes with a command, or even one, at least an officer … and wants to take the prisoner from you, then it will not be given to anyone … If this hand is strong that it is impossible to escape, then the prisoner will be killed, but the living not to give it to anyone”.
… Then an officer appeared with a team
The attempt to free Ivan Antonovich, undertaken exactly two years later, seemed to have been guessed by the authors of the instructions of 1762. As according to the script, an unknown officer with a team appeared, he did not show any papers to the guards, a battle ensued, the attackers intensified the onslaught and, seeing that “this hand would be strong,” Vlasyev and Chekin rushed into the cell.
They, as a contemporary reported, “attacked the unfortunate prince with drawn swords, who by this time had woken up from the noise and jumped out of bed. He defended himself from their blows and, although he was wounded in the arm, he broke the sword of one of them; then, having no weapons and almost completely naked, he continued to strongly resist, until finally they overpowered him and wounded him in many places. Then, finally, he was finally killed by one of the officers, who pierced him through and through from behind."
Lieutenant Mirovich at the corpse of John Antonovich on July 5, 1764 in the Shlisselburg Fortress, 1884, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
In general, a dark and unclean thing has happened. There is reason to suspect Catherine II and her entourage of trying to destroy Ivan Antonovich, who, for all his defenselessness, remained a dangerous rival for the reigning empress, for he was the legitimate sovereign, overthrown by Elizabeth in 1741.
There were favorable rumors in society about Ivan Antonovich. In 1763, a conspiracy was uncovered, the participants in which were supposed to kill Grigory Orlov, the favorite of the empress, and marry Ivan Antonovich and Catherine II, in order to thereby close a long dynastic dispute. Neither Orlov nor the empress herself liked such plans of the conspirators. In general, there was a man - and there was a problem …
It was then that Second Lieutenant Vasily Mirovich appeared - a poor, nervous, offended, ambitious young man. Once his ancestor, an associate of Mazepa, was exiled to Siberia, and he wanted to restore justice, return the family's former wealth.
When Mirovich turned to his influential compatriot, Hetman Kirill Razumovsky, for help, he received not money from him, but advice: make your own way, try to grab Fortune by the forelock - and you will become a master like the others! After that, Mirovich decided to free Ivan Antonovich, take him to Petersburg and raise a mutiny.
However, the case fell through, which seems quite natural to some historians, since they believe that Mirovich was the victim of a provocation, as a result of which a dangerous rival for Catherine died.
Divine Truth and State Truth
During the trial of Mirovich, a dispute suddenly broke out among the judges: how could the security officers raise their hand against the royal prisoner, shed the royal blood? The fact is that the instruction of August 3, 1762, given to Vlasyev and Chekin, was concealed from the judges and ordered to kill the prisoner when trying to release him.
However, the judges, unaware of the instructions, were convinced that the guards had acted so brutally on their own initiative, rather than following orders. The question is, why did the authorities need to conceal this instruction from the court?
The story of the murder of Ivan Antonovich again poses the eternal problem of the correspondence of morality and politics. Two truths - Divine and State - collide here in an insoluble, terrible conflict. It turns out that the mortal sin of killing an innocent person can be justified if this is provided for by the instruction, if this sin is committed in the name of state security.
But, in fairness, we cannot ignore the words of Catherine, who wrote that Vlasyev and Chekin were able to "suppress by suppressing the life of one, unfortunately born" the inevitable countless victims that would undoubtedly follow if Mirovich's rebellion was successful.
Indeed, it is difficult to imagine what rivers of blood would flow through the streets of St. Petersburg if Mirovich had brought Ivan Antonovich (as he assumed) to Liteinaya Sloboda, seized the cannons there, raised soldiers and artisans to mutiny … And this is in the center of a huge, densely populated city.
God's wonderful leadership
The death of Ivanushka did not upset Catherine and her entourage. Nikita Panin wrote to the Empress, who was in Livonia at that time:
"The case was carried out with a desperate grip, which was suppressed by the unspeakably meritorious resolution of Captain Vlasyev and Lieutenant Chekin."
Catherine replied: "With great amazement I read your reports and all the divas that happened in Shlisselburg: God's guidance is wonderful and untried!"
It turns out that the empress was pleased and even delighted. Knowing Catherine as a humane and liberal person, even believing that she was not involved in the drama on the island, we nevertheless agree that objectively Ivan's death was beneficial to her: no man - no problem!
Indeed, quite recently, in the summer of 1762, in St. Petersburg they passed on to each other the joke of Field Marshal Minich, who said that he had never lived under three emperors at the same time: one sits in Shlisselburg, the other in Ropsha, and the third in Winter. Now, after the death of Peter III "from hemorrhoidal colic" and the death of Ivanushka, nobody will joke like that.
The investigation into Mirovich's case was short-lived, and most importantly - unusually humane, which seems strange for cases of this kind. Catherine forbade torturing Mirovich, did not allow interrogation of many of his acquaintances and even the prisoner's brother, having got off with a joke: "My brother, but my mind."
Usually, during the investigation in the political police, relatives became the first suspects of aiding the criminal. Mirovich behaved calmly and further cheerfully. One got the impression that he received some kind of assurance about his safety.
He was calm when he was taken to the scaffold erected on Obzhorka, a dirty square near the present Sytny market. The countless crowds of people who had gathered for the execution were convinced that the criminal would be pardoned, since no one had been executed in Russia for more than twenty years. The executioner raised the ax, the crowd froze …
Usually at this moment the secretary on the scaffold stopped the execution and announced the decree on pardon, favoring, as they said in the 17th century, “instead of death, the belly”. But this did not happen, the secretary was silent, the ax fell on Mirovich's neck, and his head was immediately lifted by the hair by the executioner …
The people, as G. R. Derzhavin wrote, who was an eyewitness to the execution, "who for some reason waited for the empress's mercy, when they saw the head in the hands of the executioner, gasped unanimously and shuddered so that the bridge shook from the strong movement and the railing collapsed." People ended up in the Kronverksky fortress ditch. Verily, the ends were buried in the water … and also in the ground. Indeed, even before the execution of Mirovich, Catherine ordered to bury Ivanushka's body secretly somewhere in the fortress.
Centuries have passed, tourists walk around the fortress, around it is quiet and peaceful. But, walking along the paths among the ruins on the thick, flowering grass of the vast and empty courtyard of the Shlisselburg fortress, you involuntarily think that somewhere here, under our feet, lie the remains of a real martyr who spent his entire life in a cage and, dying, never understood, did not know, in the name of what this most unfortunate of unhappy lives was given to him by God.
E. Anisimov
