Latest / The Romanov Dynasty: Rise, Power, and Bloody End — Fexingo History / Tsarina Elizabeth Petrovna: The Romanov Who Electrified the Court
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, the tragic end of the dynasty. But there's a figure right in the middle — a woman who ruled for twenty years, kept Russia stable, and basically invented the idea of the imperial court as a stage for spectacle. I mean Elizabeth Petrovna, Peter's daughter. Luna: She's the one who seized the throne in a coup, right? With the guards regiment? Lucas: Exactly. In 1741, when she was thirty-one, she marched into the Winter Palace at the head of the Preobrazhensky Regiment — the same elite unit her father had founded. The reigning emperor was Ivan VI, a baby. His regent, Anna Leopoldovna, was incompetent. Elizabeth just walked in, woke everyone up, and declared herself tsarina. No bloodshed. It was almost theatrical. Lucas: And that theatrical instinct never left her. Elizabeth understood that power in the eighteenth century was as much about perception as policy. She built the most opulent court Europe had ever seen — and kept Russia out of major wars for most of her reign. Luna: Wait — she kept Russia out of war? That's not the reputation I remember. Lucas: No, it's true. She did fight one war — the Seven Years' War, from 1756 to 1763. But she entered reluctantly, and at the moment of victory, when Russian troops were in Berlin, she died. Her successor, Peter III, immediately pulled out and handed everything back to Frederick the Great. So her war legacy is mostly that she almost crushed Prussia but her death saved it. Lucas: But the real story is the court she built. Elizabeth banned men from having beards — not as a reform like her father, but because she thought they looked ugly. She owned fifteen thousand dresses, and she would wear a different gown to every ball and never repeat one. She also suffered from crippling shyness and often hid behind fans or avoided public appearances. Luna: Fifteen thousand dresses? That's more than some museums. Lucas: It's insane. And she had a law that no other woman at court could wear the same hairstyle or outfit twice in the same week. So everyone lived in constant anxiety about what the tsarina might wear, because if you showed up in something similar, you could be banished from court for weeks. Lucas: But here's the contradiction: she was deeply superstitious and pious. She made a vow when she took the throne that she would never sign a death sentence during her reign — and she kept it. Not one execution for political crimes in twenty years. That's almost unprecedented in Russian history. Luna: How did that work? Surely there were conspiracies. Lucas: Oh, there were. She just exiled people or sent them to monasteries. The most famous case was her own nephew, Peter — the one who would succeed her. He was a fervent admirer of Frederick the Great, openly mocked Russian Orthodoxy, and paraded around with Holstein guards instead of Russians. Elizabeth could have had him killed. Instead she just kept him under house arrest, more or less. Lucas: And that decision would haunt the dynasty, because Peter III was inept, alienated everyone, and was overthrown by his own wife, Catherine, after just six months. But Elizabeth didn't live to see that. Luna: So the woman who threw the best parties also accidentally set the stage for Catherine the Great. Lucas: Exactly. But let's talk about what she actually built. She commissioned the architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli — an Italian who worked in Russia — to create the Winter Palace we know today. That massive green and white baroque building with the endless rows of windows? That's Elizabeth's palace. She also founded Moscow University in 1755, which became the intellectual heart of Russia. Lucas: And she established the first public theatre, brought in French and Italian opera companies, and sponsored the first Russian-language theater troupe. She was genuinely interested in culture, not just as decoration. Luna: What about her personal life? I've heard she had a secret husband. Lucas: Yes — Alexei Razumovsky. He was a Ukrainian Cossack with a beautiful voice, discovered singing in a church choir. Elizabeth fell in love with him, and she almost certainly married him in a secret ceremony around 1742. They lived together at court for years, though she never formally made him tsar. Razumovsky was reportedly a kind, unambitious man who refused to get involved in politics. Lucas: She also had dozens of other lovers, but Razumovsky was the constant. When she died, Catherine the Great — who was then Empress — actually approached Razumovsky and asked if he had any documents proving the marriage. He burned them all in the fireplace and said there was nothing. He spent his last years in his palace in St. Petersburg, quietly collecting art. Luna: That's almost romantic, in a strange way. Lucas: It is. And it's a side of the Romanovs we don't often see — a ruler who was genuinely loved by her subjects, who kept her promises, and who understood that power could be exercised through charm and spectacle as much as through force. Lucas: She died in 1762, at fifty-two, after a long illness. Her last act was to insist that her body be dressed in her finest gown, with her face painted and rouged, so that she would look beautiful even in death. That's so perfectly Elizabeth. Luna: And then Catherine took over and changed everything. Lucas: Right. But Elizabeth's legacy mattered. She stabilized Russia after a chaotic succession, avoided bloody purges, and built the cultural infrastructure that Catherine would later expand. If you look at the Winter Palace today, or Moscow University, or the Russian love of opera and theater — you're looking at Elizabeth's Russia. Lucas: And I think there's a lesson there. The flashy, extravagant rulers often get dismissed as frivolous, but sometimes they're the ones who actually create the lasting institutions. Luna: That's a good point. I'd never thought about her that way. Lucas: If you've been coming with us through these conversations about the Romanovs — from Peter's reforms to the Decembrists to the end at Yekaterinburg — you know that we try to bring you stories that aren't just the greatest hits. And keeping this show going ad-free and independent means a lot to us. A couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these going — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if you've gotten something out of them. Luna: Yeah, it really does make a difference. And we love digging into these corners. Lucas: So back to Elizabeth — there's one more thing I love. She was obsessed with animals. She had a menagerie at the Winter Palace with monkeys, parrots, and even a tame bear. And she once threw a masquerade where everyone had to come dressed as the opposite gender. The women wore men's court dress, the men wore women's gowns. She thought it was hilarious. Luna: That sounds like a disaster of fashion etiquette. Lucas: It probably was. But that's Elizabeth — completely unserious about everything except the business of ruling. And she ruled very seriously indeed.