Yushkov, Vasily Alekseevich

Vasily Yushkov was born in 1677 in the old Moscow Yushkov family, which was close to Tsar Ivan Alekseevich , and already in the 13th year he was granted “to the room” of this monarch. After the death of the crowned patron, the Yushkovs were recorded as a sergeant in the Semenovsky regiment in 1698 and took part in campaigns near Azov and Kerch, and in 1700 fought near Narva .

In the next 1701, by a personal decree of Tsar Yushkov, “to the room of Her Majesty the Grand Sovereign, the Righteous Tsarina and Grand Duchess Praskovya Fedorovna and to the children of Her Majesty” was determined and from that time for 22 years, almost until the death of the widow of John V , remained her closest confidant.

The Dowager Queen was strongly attached to her favorite; she showered him with generous mercies and gifts, always kept him with her, consulted with him in her most intimate affairs and, using her great influence at court, helped her in every way in his personal affairs and difficulties. So, in 1711, when Yushkov’s father, who had previously ceded to his son almost all of his estates, began to bother about their “turn”, Tsarina Praskovya stood up for her pet and, appeasing his father with a rank of deceit, forced the old man to stop the work that had begun. This was one of the last awards of this rank in Russian history ^[2] .

Under the leadership of Yushkov, the economy in the estates of the queen went badly. Payments were made inaccurately, the clerks stole, the peasants annoyed the queen with complaints. Yushkov was extremely rude and dismissive of his colleagues. Because of this, he constantly quarreled with other clerks of the Queen. One of them, Vasily Derevnin, tried to blackmail Yushkov with a tsarina’s letter to him, which was written in a code and supposedly contained important secrets of the “ sovereign case ” ^[3] .

Having learned through his scouts, in whose hands is the note lost by him, Yushkov ordered the arrest of Derevnin. He was locked up in a "special breech", interrogated, tortured, but could not find out anything. When “from the cruel holding” Derevnin “became insulted and barely alive,” Yushkov, fearing too much publicity of the case during his stay in Tsar Peter Alekseevich , hastened to release his enemy.

Two weeks after the departure of Tsar Yushkov, he began to search through the Moscow Chief Police Officer to search for Derevnyn, who had been hiding in the meantime, as a thief who had allegedly plundered the tsaritsin’s treasury. Since the accused could not be detained for a long time, they began to interrogate his relatives. The father-in-law of Derevnyn, the provincial fiscal of Tersky, also mentioned the ill-fated letter during interrogation, and when his testimony became known to the head of the secret chancellery, the latter demanded that the whole case of Derevnin be sent to him.

When Derevnin was finally detained, both Yushkov and his patroness vainly bothered to hand over to them the clerk who was stealing and slandering them; Having not obtained permission, the angry queen finally personally went to the "treasury" of the secret office and, having penetrated the village under the pretext of giving alms, ordered her people to inflict cruel reprisal on the prisoner.

Finally, it came to Peter the Great. The letter of Tsarina Praskovya, in all likelihood, which contained only intimate details regarding the relationship of the old woman to her favorite, was not given a further course, and it was withdrawn from the case, but the investigation discovered many dark affairs of Yushkov, which because of this Despite the ardent intercession of the tsarina, he was exiled (in April 1723) to Nizhny Novgorod . In October of that year, Tsarina Praskovya Fedorovna also died.

In 1725, after the death of Peter, Yushkov returned from exile and settled in the village of Pyatnitsa-Berendeev Zvenigorod district , where he lived another year and a half. He died on November 1, 1726, leaving no masculine offspring on his own, and was buried in the neighboring Voskresensky monastery . His daughter and heiress, named after Queen Praskovia, became the wife of Colonel Ivan Samarin .

• A. G. Yushkov, Vasily Alekseevich // Russian Biographical Dictionary : in 25 volumes. - SPb. - M. , 1896-1918.