79 into disgrace. At the beginning of April, the Swedish commission secretary Morian reported the following about Pick’s misfortune: as for Vice President Pick’s banishment from Moscow, it is thought that he has brought Her Majesty’s disfavor upon himself through a secret negotiation with some of the twenty-eight gentlemen who were inclined to freedom and laid the first plan for the abolition of absolutism, for which State Councilor Pick is not only thought to have indicated what has been done and determined in other realms on such occasions, but also to have added some points and conditions within which Her Majesty should be constrained. Morian also reported that Pick had enemies who were now observing his fall with some satisfaction. It is clear that Pick was in some way privy to the council’s plans, but exactly what role he played in the events of 1730 remains unknown. Pick was imprisoned in March 1731 and sentenced in January 1732 to lifetime exile in Siberia and to the loss of his estate in Estonia. The points of accusation were that he had openly spoken about the changes the council had planned, and that he had expressed joy over the fact that Russia was to have a constitution. In addition. Pick supposedly stated that he himself had played a certain role in these events. He was portrayed as an ally of Prince D. M. Golitsyn, the leading council spokesman for the abolition of the autocracy. According to testimony provided by an assessor in the kommerts-kollegiia, Rudakovskii, Pick had read the conditions aloud in that college and had explained that “the Russian Empire has become a sister to Sweden and Poland.” Paradoxically, however. Pick’s earlier efforts in the Petrine administrative reforms were to be continued by others during Anna’s regime. Among the measures the empress took at the beginning of her reign to satisfy the nobility, to whom she owed her position as autocrat, one finds a plan to restore the Petrine administrative apparatus, largely abandoned during the time of the Supreme Privy Council. The memoranda and other papers about the Swedish administration drawn up by Pick were therefore once again put to use. Thus, a restoration of Peter’s colleges and provinces was projected on the basis of the material Pick had brought with him from Stockholm.*®® Poliowing Anna’s death. Pick was pardoned in 1741 and allowed to return from his place of exile. Three years later, in 1744, Empress Elizabeth restored to him his estate of Oberpahlen, where he resided until his death in 1750.*®^ 164 Morian to the Chancellery President, April 3, 1730, RA, Muscovitica 186. Pekarskii, 201—207. SIRIO, CIV, 242; TsGADA, f. 248 delo 661. Concerning Pick’s exile in Siberia, see Cederberg, 87—90. 165 166
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