Catherine the Great

Ivan had been eighteen months old in 1740 when Elizabeth removed him from the throne. When he was four, he was separated from his parents. He had received no formal education but in childhood had been taught the Russian alphabet by a priest. Now twenty-four, he had spent eighteen years in solitary confinement in an isolated cell in the Schlüsselburg Fortress, fifty miles up the Neva River from St. Petersburg. Here, designated Prisoner No. 1, he was allowed to see no one except his immediate jailers. There were reports that he was aware of his identity; that once, goaded to anger by his guards, he had shouted, “Take care! I am a prince of this empire. I am your sovereign.” A report of this outburst brought a harsh response from Alexander Shuvalov, head of Elizabeth’s Secret Chancellery. “If the prisoner is insubordinate or makes improper statements,” Shuvalov instructed, “you shall put him in irons until he obeys, and if he still resists, he must be beaten with a stick or a whip.” Eventually, the guards reported, “The prisoner is somewhat quieter than before. He no longer tells lies about his identity.” Elizabeth continued to worry and, on the empress’s command, Shuvalov issued a further instruction: if any attempt to free Prisoner No. 1 seemed likely to succeed, Ivan’s jailers were to kill him.

In the turmoil following her own accession, Catherine paid a visit to Ivan in order to judge the prisoner for herself. She found a tall, slender young man with fair hair and a red beard, his skin pale from years hidden from sunlight. His expression was innocent, but his intelligence was stunted by years of solitude. Catherine wrote, “Apart from his painful and almost unintelligible stammering, he was bereft of reasoning and human understanding.”

Nevertheless, he, like Peter III, was a Romanov, a direct descendant of Peter the Great’s elder brother and co-tsar, Ivan V, and his right to the crown was dynastically impeccable. Had Catherine found him an idiot or insane, she might have had nothing to fear. Citing his obvious unfitness to rule, she could have proclaimed his incapacity, shown mercy, released him and provided him with a quiet, comfortable existence. But if this level of disability were not true, it was possible that Ivan might somehow be rehabilitated, physically and intellectually. Even if obviously unfit to rule, he remained dangerous as a symbol. To protect herself, she ordered a continuation of the severe conditions in which he had previously been held. Nikita Panin was assigned to oversee Ivan’s imprisonment.

There was a point at which Catherine hoped the young man might be persuaded to choose a cloistered, monastic life that would disqualify him from returning to the throne. If he accepted tonsure as a monk, it would mean a permanent withdrawal from the political world, and the officers who guarded him were instructed to attempt to guide him along this path. Another possible solution was that Ivan die in prison of genuine natural causes. To enhance this possibility, Panin ordered that medical treatment be denied him; if he became gravely ill, a priest was to be admitted, but not a doctor. Meanwhile, Panin also signed a specific order renewing the previous instructions for guarding the prisoner: if anyone, no matter who, sought to take the prisoner away without an express written order personally signed in the empress’s handwriting, Ivan was not to be handed over. Instead, if efforts to liberate him seemed likely to succeed, his guards were commanded to put their prisoner to death. The command reiterated Shuvalov’s earlier instruction: “The prisoner shall not be allowed to fall alive into the hands of any rescuers.”

Two officers, Captain Danilo Vlasev and Lieutenant Luka Chekin, were assigned to guard Ivan. Only they and the fortress governor had access to the prisoner. As the two guardian officers themselves were never permitted to leave Schlüsselburg, they were, in effect, locked in with the nameless prisoner. The situation, therefore, was that Ivan remained in the hands of two men who were authorized to kill him in certain circumstances and whose own goal was to be free of him so that they could resume living normal lives.

The guards reported bimonthly to Panin. With the passage of time, these reports reflected their growing boredom, frustration, and longing for their own freedom. With every letter, their pleas grew stronger. In August 1763, Panin replied, counseling them to be patient, promising that their duties would end soon. In November, growing more desperate, they addressed an urgent petition to Panin: “Release us for we have come to the end of our strength.” Panin’s response, on December 28, 1763, was to send each of them one thousand rubles—an enormous sum for them—and the promise that they would not have to wait much longer. “Compliance with your request will not be postponed later than the early months of the summer.”