Terrible tsarinas

«78»

The Extravagant Anna Ivanovna’s opinion before dictating these punishments, for he knew in advance that she would approve them. Was if because she actually had the same opinion as her lover, in so many instances, that she left him such a free hand - or was it simply because s he was too lazy to oppose him? The people who had to deal with Buhren unanimously commented on the hardness of his face, which seemed to be carved from stone, and the look in his eye - like a bird of prey. One word from him could make all of Russia happy or desperate. His mistress did nothing more than lend her imprimatur to all that he did. And, like her, he was avid for luxury, and he took full advantage of his almost-kingly position to accept bribes right and left. He expected payment for the least service rendered.

His contemporaries found his cupidity to exceed even that of Menshikov, but it was not this systematic misappropriation that bothered them most. The preceding reigns had accustomed them to greasing the wheels. No, it was the excessive Germanization that Buhren was introducing into their fatherland that irritated them more each day. Admittedly, Anna Ivanovna had always spoken and written German better than Russian, but since Buhren took over the highest level in the hierarchy, it seemed that in fact the entire State apparatus had changed. If someone of Russian stock had been committing these crimes, thefts, and abuses or granting favors the way this arrogant parvenu was doing, Her Majesty’s subjects would have found it easier to swallow. But the fact that these liberties were taken or tolerated by a foreigner made them seem twice as bad to the victims. Boiling with rage over the conduct of this tyrant who was not even one of their own, the Russians invented a word for the regime of terror that he imposed on them - behind his back, they talked about the “Bironovschina”1 as is it were a killer epidemic that was plaguing the country. Records of illicit payments exist that prove this