77 that the Russians “are engaged solely here, both in the Senate and in the Colleges, with drawing up the Budget . . . following therein the Swedish formentirely.’’ However, the Swedish minister never mentioned Heinrich Pick in connection with the restructuring of the Russian state apparatus. Pick’s success in Russian service was not, however, to last forever. At the beginning of 1730, the fifteen-year-old Tsar Peter II suddenly died without an heir. The Supreme Privy Council {Verkhovnyi tainyi sovet), the highest executive organ of the realm, dominated at the time by two of Russia’s most prominent aristocratic families, the Golitsyns and the Dolgorukiis, immediately convened to appoint a successor. The choice fell on Peter the Great’s niece, Anna Ivanovna, the widow of Duke Priedrich Wilhelm of Courland. Before Anna could ascend the throne, however, she had to accept certain conditions (konditsii) drawn up by Prince D. M. Golitsyn and requiring that all Important governmental decisions be made by the council. In practice, therefore, the Russian autocracy was to be dismantled and replaced by an aristocratic-oligarchic council government. According to one interpretation, based, among other things, on the Swedish diplomatic reports, Golitsyn had drawn up the conditions on the basis of Swedish models—the Porm of Government of 1720 and Predrik I’s accession charter of that same year —provided him by Heinrich Pick. When the council’s plans became known in Moscow they set off feverish activity among the nobility, which feared that the council would establish an oligarchic regime In the interest of a few aristocratic families. Therefore, a counterproject was drawn up by the nobility, demanding, among other things, that the Supreme Privy Council be disbanded. Before anything further could happen in the controversy between the aristocratic council and the nobility, Anna’s reply arrived. The duchess Herman Ccdercreutz to Kungl.Maj:t, December 18, 1724, RA, Muscovitica 146. However, Cedercreutz did know that Pick had been in Stockholm. In his “Berättelse om Ryssland,” Cedercreutz wrote of Prince D. M. Golitsyn, who came to play an important role in domestic developments after Peter IPs death, that “Prince Dmitri Gallizin is a gentleman devoted to the old Russian system, coarse and hard, but understanding and just, and the one who understands domestic affairs best of all. He has had several Latin, German, and French books translated, in which he has studied assiduously, and even had translated into Russian several Swedish statutes, instructions, and such things, which the present Vice President and State Councillor Pick collected here in Sweden and brought over some years ago.” See RA, Muscovitica 155. See the textual comparisons in Pavel Miliukov, Iz istorii russkoi intelligentsii (St. Petersburg, 1902), 8—11. Concerning the contacts between D. M. Golitsyn and Heinrich Pick, sec D. A. Korsakov, Votsarenie imperatritsy Anny loannovny (Kazan’, 1880), 38—39, and Haralu Hjärne, “Ryska konstitutionsprojekt år 1730 efter svenska förebilder,” Historisk tidskrift, 4 (1884), 209. ir>9 161 ir»8 159 160 161
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