Alexey Bestuzhev-Ryumin

Count Alexey Petrovich Bestuzhev-Ryumin (Russian: Алексей Петрович Бестужев-Рюмин; 1 June 1693 – 21 April 1766) was a Russian diplomat and chancellor. He was one of the most influential and successful diplomats in 18th-century Europe. As the chancellor of the Russian Empire, was chiefly responsible for Russian foreign policy during the reign of Empress Elizaveta Petrovna.

Alexey was born at Moscow to an old noble family of Novgorod descent. His father, Pyotr Bestuzhev-Ryumin, was Novgorod governor and a confidant of Empress Anna Ioannova. Later, he became the Russian ambassador to the duchy of Courland. Educated abroad with his elder brother, Mikhail, at Copenhagen and Berlin, Alexey especially distinguished himself in languages and the applied sciences.

In 1712, Peter the Great attached Bestuzhev to Prince Kurakin at the Utrecht Congress, that he might learn diplomacy and, for the same reason, permitted him in 1713 to enter the service of the elector of Hanover. The elector, who became King George I of Great Britain, took him to London in 1714 and sent him to Saint Petersburg as his accredited minister with a notification of his accession. Bestuzhev then returned to England, where he remained four years. That period laid the necessary groundwork for his brilliant diplomatic career.

Bestuzhev curiously illustrated his passion for intrigue in a letter to Tsarevich Alexey Petrovich at Vienna, assuring his "future sovereign" of his devotion and representing his sojourn in England as the deliberate seclusion of a zealous but powerless well wisher. That extraordinary indiscretion might well have cost him his life, but the tsarevich destroyed the letter. (A copy of the letter, taken by way of precaution beforehand by the Austrian ministers, survived in the Vienna archives.)

On his return to Russia, Bestuzhev served for two years without any salary as chief gentleman of the Bedchamber at the court of Anne of Courland. In 1721, he succeeded Vasily Dolgorukov as Russian minister at Copenhagen. The city then formed a nexus of diplomatic intrigue, as George I of Great Britain had the aim of arming the northern powers against Peter the Great, and Bestuzhev received the commission to counteract that.

On the occasion of the Treaty of Nystad (1721), which terminated the Great Northern War's 21 years of struggle between Russia and Sweden, Bestuzhev designed and had minted a commemorative medal with a panegyrical Latin inscription, which so delighted Peter, then at Derbent, that he sent a letter of thanks written in his own hand along with his portrait.

The sudden death of Peter the Great (8 February 1725) seriously injured Bestuzhev's prospects. For more than ten years, he remained at Copenhagen, looking vainly towards Russia as a sort of promised land from which he was excluded by enemies or rivals. He rendered some important services, however, to Empress Anne (reigned 1730–1740), who decorated him and made him a privy councillor. He also won the favour of Ernst von Biren, and on the tragic fall of Artemy Petrovich Volynsky in 1739, Bestuzhev returned to Russia to take Volynsky's place in the council. He assisted Biren to obtain the regency in the last days of Anne, but when his patron fell three weeks later (November 1740), his own position became precarious.

Bestuzhev's chance came when Empress Elizabeth, immediately after her accession (6 December 1741), summoned him back to court and appointed him vice-chancellor. For the next 20 years, during a period of exceptional difficulty, Bestuzhev practically controlled the foreign policy of Russia.