Ivan Shuvalov

Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov (Russian: Иван Иванович Шувалов; 1 November 1727 – 26 November 1797) was called the Maecenas (patron) of the Russian Enlightenment, the first Russian Minister of Education and Active Privy Councillor (1773). Russia's first theatre, university, and academy of arts were instituted with his active participation. A favorite of Elizaveta Petrovna of Russia and a friend of the scientist M.V. Lomonosov.

He was born in Moscow, the only son of Ivan Menshoi Shuvalov, an army captain who died when the boy was ten, and Tatiana Rodionovna. The Shuvalov family fortunes changed drastically in 1741, when Empress Elizabeth Petrovna ascended to the Russian throne with help from Ivan's powerful cousins – Peter Shuvalov and Alexander Shuvalov. The following year, they had the fourteen-year-old Ivan attached to the imperial court as a page.

In July 1749, when Ivan was visiting his brother-in-law Prince Galitzine at his country estate near Moscow, the Shuvalov brothers arranged his meeting with the Empress, who was making a pilgrimage to the Monastery of St. Sabbas. The Shuvalovs were not disappointed in their calculations: the 40-year-old Empress took notice of the handsome page, who was 18 years her junior, and bid him accompany her in the upcoming pilgrimage to the New Jerusalem Monastery.

Three months later, Shuvalov was appointed a gentleman-in-waiting, and his liaison with the Empress began. Although the cousins planned to use him as a pawn in their court intrigues, Shuvalov refused to get enmeshed in their machinations. As his biographers like to point out, Shuvalov was "mild and generous to all" and "had no enemies whatsoever".

His position at court grew stronger during Elizabeth's declining years, when he served as a virtual master of petitions to her, eclipsing her previous favourite and rumoured husband, Aleksey Razumovsky. Promoted general in 1760, Shuvalov refused most other honours that the Empress wished to bestow upon him, including the title of count.

Unlike the self-seeking favourites of Catherine the Great, Shuvalov determined to put his good fortune to constructive use for the advancement of education and the promotion of fine arts in his country. A model of the enlightened courtier, he maintained correspondence with the leading French thinkers – Helvetius, d'Alembert, Diderot, and Voltaire. He supplied the latter with materials necessary for his Histoire de l'empire de Russie sous Pierre le Grand and was later instrumental in publishing it in Russia.

Shuvalov's activity brought him in touch with Mikhail Lomonosov, a Russian scholar who aspired to establish a university in Russia. Lomonosov found a loyal patron in Shuvalov and paid tribute to his accomplishments in his dedication of a couple of odes and "meditations" to him. On 23 January 1755 – the name-day of Shuvalov's mother Tatiana Rodionovna – the Empress endorsed their project to set up the Imperial Moscow University "for all sorts and conditions of people". Tatiana Day is still celebrated in Russia as "Students Day" (now falling on 25 January because of the increased difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars).

Shuvalov became the university's first curator and attracted the finest scholars to teach there. He came up with the idea of establishing The Moscow News (Московские ведомости), a newspaper published by the university press, which was also founded at Shuvalov's instigation. Apart from two colleges affiliated with Moscow University, he also helped establish the first Russian college outside Moscow – in Kazan. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1758.