Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm fair Dowdy, and I am
Speaker 1: one of those people who really really loves babies. Molly
Speaker 1: of stuff. Mom never told you said that. Whenever we
Speaker 1: go out to lunch or dinner and I get really
Speaker 1: distracted and start smiling at someone behind her, she knows
Speaker 1: it's a baby and not a guy. So of course
Speaker 1: I would love a baby king. And we're not talking
Speaker 1: about the kind do you find in your kingcake either,
Speaker 1: And our topic is sandwich somewhere in between Peter the
Speaker 1: Great and Catherine the Great, and we have this infant
Speaker 1: who has been chosen to rule Russia. But if you
Speaker 1: are starting to get a growing sense of unease here
Speaker 1: because our royal children so often have terrible faith, you
Speaker 1: are right on track. So who is this ab He
Speaker 1: is Ivan the sixth, also known as Ivan Antonovich, born
Speaker 1: in August seventeen forty. His parents are Prince anton Ulrich,
Speaker 1: who's a nephew of Holy Roman Emperor Charles the sixth,
Speaker 1: and Anna Leopoldovna. So he has rather illustrious beginnings and
Speaker 1: that's because Anna, his mother, is also the niece of
Speaker 1: Empress Anna Ivanovna, who is one of four very important
Speaker 1: women in our story, and that is Anna Leopoldovna, Anna Ivanovna,
Speaker 1: and Elizabeth Petrovna by Katherine the second, the one who
Speaker 1: everybody knows, I'm sure, And so this is just our
Speaker 1: major group of Russian political women in this story, and
Speaker 1: try to keep track of all of their very similar names.
Speaker 1: He's born into Anna's court, and she was Ivan the
Speaker 1: fifth daughter and Peter the great niece. And as a
Speaker 1: side note, Ivan the fifth is an interesting man in
Speaker 1: his own right. He was ruler only in name because
Speaker 1: he was plagued by several illnesses, and his sister Sophia
Speaker 1: was the real power behind the throne. But in our story,
Speaker 1: Anna had become ruler in seventeen thirty. She was elected
Speaker 1: by the Supreme Privy Council, but the council tried to
Speaker 1: limit her power and take more of it for their own.
Speaker 1: But there were three entities opposing this Anna herself, of course,
Speaker 1: the Imperial guards and the lesser nobility, because changing power
Speaker 1: from an autocracy to an oligarchy disadvantage them. If you
Speaker 1: know the power is spread out. That means there are
Speaker 1: more obstacles to the ruler, more people who you have
Speaker 1: to bribe and court their favor. You can't just go
Speaker 1: to the queen's main folks, and that means you may
Speaker 1: have trouble ascending to the position of power you so
Speaker 1: dearly desire. So Anna gets rid of the Privy Council altogether.
Speaker 1: That's one way to do away with that problem. And
Speaker 1: she banishes and executes a few of them, I don't
Speaker 1: a few of her detractors. So she gives most of
Speaker 1: the power of her court to Earnst Johann Burne, who
Speaker 1: is her favorite guy, and restores the secret police under
Speaker 1: his command. So he's her her number two. Essentially. He
Speaker 1: may have been Anna's favorite, but he was not a
Speaker 1: favorite with anyone else. He was Baltic German instead of
Speaker 1: Russian Russian, and he has a reputation for being very
Speaker 1: cruel and corrupt. Enemies of the administration were banished, beheaded,
Speaker 1: and tortured, and the general impression was that his police
Speaker 1: force watched out for the Germans and punished the Russians,
Speaker 1: which did not endear him to the Russian And most
Speaker 1: of Anna's favorites are Baltic Germans anyway, so it's doubly
Speaker 1: bad almost because you have so many of these people
Speaker 1: in positions of power. It serves as an obstacle for
Speaker 1: anyone else to get access to the empress too, and
Speaker 1: her rule was not particularly popular for some other reasons.
Speaker 1: She levied very heavy taxes, she liked humiliating nobles in
Speaker 1: front of the court, and she was rather an extravagant
Speaker 1: spender on as far as clothes and gambling goes, which
Speaker 1: again they the poorer people don't enjoy if you remember
Speaker 1: the story of Marie and well, aside for her for
Speaker 1: clothes and humiliating nobles to she does get involved in
Speaker 1: the War of Polish succession and she attacks Turkey, so
Speaker 1: other less endearing quality. So in short, people are very disgruntled.
Speaker 1: They don't much like their empress, and some of course
Speaker 1: blame the fact that she's a woman on the country's problem.
Speaker 1: So there's a sense of growing troubles for our empress here.
Speaker 1: So she must decide on a successor, and she didn't
Speaker 1: have children, But what about her great nephew, Ivan Antonovich
Speaker 1: Baron or Ivan's mother could serve as regent And it's
Speaker 1: a good thing that she picks him when she does
Speaker 1: because she dies in October seventeen forty, Ivan the sixth
Speaker 1: is two months old and he has the throne. So
Speaker 1: Burren is initially a pointed regent, but he's very quickly
Speaker 1: overthrown by other members of the German clique and sent
Speaker 1: off to Siberia, as so often happens. And the men
Speaker 1: who overthrow him aren't that much better though. They're just
Speaker 1: as unpopular with everybody else, and they don't even stick together.
Speaker 1: Their German click is not very much a click because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of infighting and it here have we
Speaker 1: learned about in fighting it weakens your government, Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: So Anna Leopoldovna takes the reins and she's Evan's mother again. Yes,
Speaker 1: So to keep all these gandas straight, she takes the power,
Speaker 1: the power of the regent. But she's actually pretty out
Speaker 1: of touch with her people as well, and her foreign
Speaker 1: policies are unpopular. She too favors the Baltic Germans, so
Speaker 1: it just seems like more of the same. So we
Speaker 1: have an unhappy people, a baby ruler, his mother, the
Speaker 1: unpopular regent, and in infighting type of government. It's time
Speaker 1: for an uprising, So how about Elizabeth petrovnaw So, Elizabeth
Speaker 1: has an even more illustrious background than our young Ivan.
Speaker 1: Here she's Peter the Great's daughter with Catherine the First,
Speaker 1: and people like her so much. She's really smart, she's lovely,
Speaker 1: she's very Russian, as Katie would say, she's Russian Russian,
Speaker 1: and she's Peter the Great's daughter, So I mean, what
Speaker 1: more can you ask for? And she wasn't very politically
Speaker 1: involved until this rule of Annelia Puldovna and then her
Speaker 1: eyes on the prize. This is her chance, if she's
Speaker 1: ever to have one. The high officials support her, as
Speaker 1: do the guards and plenty of foreign diplomats. So we
Speaker 1: begin a palace conspiracy and there is a coupdita in
Speaker 1: seventeen forty one in which she overthrows Ivan the sixth
Speaker 1: and Annaliah Puldovna with the help of the guards after
Speaker 1: less than a year of rule, waking them up in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night and arresting them. Elizabeth is
Speaker 1: now the empress. So after the coup, the family and
Speaker 1: their advisors are arrested and the family is imprisoned at
Speaker 1: the fortress of Riga. They're actually exiled to Koma Gory.
Speaker 1: But just because they're far away, it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: they've been forgotten. And in December set one, the new
Speaker 1: government demands the return of coins minted with Ivan the
Speaker 1: Six is the figurehead, promising new coins in return. But
Speaker 1: what would you do if your government told you, maybe
Speaker 1: sending all of your coins, and sure, we'll give you
Speaker 1: new ones once we get yours. Understandably, a lot of
Speaker 1: people hold on to their money, about two thousand roubles
Speaker 1: worth of coins according to historians. Well and and they
Speaker 1: a lot of them liked Ivan the Six. They liked
Speaker 1: the idea, the promise of who he was supposed to be,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to hold on to that. They continue
Speaker 1: to hold on to this idea that perhaps he will
Speaker 1: come back and he will take over this throne. As
Speaker 1: as popular as Elizabeth grew to be, he was still
Speaker 1: in the hearts as many Russians right in the heat
Speaker 1: of things too. Of course, so life goes on for
Speaker 1: the exiled royal family too, and Anna actually has more
Speaker 1: children in exile before she dies in March of seventeen
Speaker 1: forty six, and these kids are eventually released because of
Speaker 1: course they're not so closely tied to the throne as
Speaker 1: Ivan is. Although they always stayed not secluded, but in
Speaker 1: their own kind of private a bit reclusive court. Because
Speaker 1: they grew up in exile, he's never quite had that
Speaker 1: uh socialization that they should have when they were little.
Speaker 1: Life doesn't exactly go on for Ivan. He's taken from
Speaker 1: his family at four years old and he never saw
Speaker 1: them again. For most of his life, he was entirely
Speaker 1: isolated in solitary confinement under very strict guard. He was
Speaker 1: sent to Schlisselburg Fortress in seventeen fifty six and there
Speaker 1: he would remain for the rest of his life. His
Speaker 1: jailers weren't even allowed to talk to him. It was
Speaker 1: said he only saw sunlight twice in his time there.
Speaker 1: Although it maybe a bit of a dramatic flourish to
Speaker 1: our story. So imagine what he must have been like,
Speaker 1: raised for twentysomething years in prison, from the time he
Speaker 1: was a little boy, without his family, without communication, without
Speaker 1: anything to do. I imagine him being a bit of
Speaker 1: a of a shell of a human being. He never
Speaker 1: got to that development. Yeah, well, we have a kind
Speaker 1: of a historical idea of what it could be like
Speaker 1: from our Katherine de Medici podcast and her husband. At
Speaker 1: least he has his brother, though, but the two of
Speaker 1: them emerged from prison totally shattered, really sullen boys, and
Speaker 1: they don't even spend their whole lives growing up in
Speaker 1: prison like Ivan. And in the meantime, Elizabeth has died,
Speaker 1: Peter the Third has taken over and then was mysteriously killed,
Speaker 1: and then Catherine the Great has become the ruler, and
Speaker 1: Elizabeth kept him in prison so long because of course
Speaker 1: he was this this symbol, a possibility of a return
Speaker 1: to something else, an idea that people held onto, and
Speaker 1: Catherine the Great feels the same way. He's He's always
Speaker 1: been a threat, even when he's locked up. In July
Speaker 1: seventeen sixty four, Ivan is killed by his guards with
Speaker 1: sabers and bannets, something we probably could have seen coming
Speaker 1: this whole podcast, and they had been ordered to slay
Speaker 1: him if there was ever an escape attempt at the prison,
Speaker 1: and someone, a lieutenant Mirovich, tries to free him, and
Speaker 1: so this plan goes into action, and there are two
Speaker 1: theories about Mirovich's attempt, though. One is he thought that
Speaker 1: if he could get Ivan out, they could unseat Katherine
Speaker 1: the second, who had gotten the throne in seventeen sixty two,
Speaker 1: so it would be starting a mutiny, starting a a
Speaker 1: second coup. The second theory, though, is that Ivan was
Speaker 1: murdered on Katherine the Great's orders. She knew full well
Speaker 1: the orders of the prison that if anyone tried to
Speaker 1: free the young prince, anything like that happened when she
Speaker 1: reinforced them. She made it sure that again, if there
Speaker 1: was any sort of escape attempt any kind, you're supposed
Speaker 1: to kill him. So in that case, this would be
Speaker 1: a politically motivated assassination. With Mirovich under Katherine's control. People
Speaker 1: had already thought that perhaps Catherine had had Peter the
Speaker 1: Third killed, and there were many who thought she was
Speaker 1: also responsible for Ivan's death. It made her very unpopular
Speaker 1: in parts of Europe, and she was even called the
Speaker 1: devil in a diadem by a prime minister. Ivan the
Speaker 1: sixth was buried in a secret place and then his
Speaker 1: grave destroyed, but his legend lived on because the story
Speaker 1: of the sad little ruler locked away for life on
Speaker 1: the orders of two powerful women, And how could that
Speaker 1: not mean something? It sounds like a really scary fairy tale,
Speaker 1: And of course people persist in believing that he's really
Speaker 1: alive and would return sometime. Again reminds us of our
Speaker 1: Romanov's episode This This podcast keeps on throwing back to
Speaker 1: earlier ones, but the Romanov keep on people keep on
Speaker 1: believing in them. And of course i'vean the sixth was
Speaker 1: just this political pawn again with our theme of how
Speaker 1: unfortunate it is to be born a royal child. He
Speaker 1: spends his infancy in a crown and the rest of
Speaker 1: his whole short life in a prison, and all because
Speaker 1: of what he symbolized and how many times we explore
Speaker 1: this idea in the podcast. And while we were researching
Speaker 1: this podcast, we did get much more intrigued by the
Speaker 1: story of our possibly murderous Catherine the Great, so get
Speaker 1: ready for a podcast on her. If you have any
Speaker 1: great ideas like Lawrence that you would like to send
Speaker 1: to us, our email is History Podcast at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. You can also follow us on Twitter
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