Bestuzhev-Ryumin, Mikhail Petrovich

He was born on September 7, 1688 in the family of Pyotr Mikhailovich Bestuzhev-Ryumin , who was later Ober-Hofmeister of the Duchess of Courland Anna Ioannovna .

In 1708, Mikhail Bestuzhev and his brother went abroad, where he studied at the Copenhagen Academy, being simultaneously seconded as the “nobleman at the embassy” to the Russian ambassador in Denmark, Prince Dolgoruky . Then he studied in Berlin.

He began his service at the court of Peter I. During the Prut campaign, Bestuzhev served as a volunteer in the army, and at the end of hostilities as a “nobleman at the embassy” traveled with Baron Shafirov to Constantinople , from where he was sent by courier to Peter. From 1712, he was with his father in Mitau and in the same year was appointed [[cam junker to the Crown Princess Sophia-Charlotte , at whose court he remained head of the stable until the death of the princess in 1715.

In 1720 he was appointed a resident in London . Already on November 23, 1720, he was expelled from London because, trying to point out to the British government the contradictions between the alliance concluded by England with Sweden in 1720 and the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1715, he submitted a note to the British ministers in the absence of the king.

Having left for The Hague , he was there until the spring of 1721. At the conclusion of the Nishtad peace, in 1721 he was appointed minister (ambassador) to Stockholm , where he actively acted in favor of Sweden recognizing the imperial title of Peter I, and also signed the Russian-Swedish defensive alliance for a period of twelve years in 1724.

In 1725, recalled from Sweden and the following year sent to Poland as an emergency envoy . In 1730 he was already in Berlin , and in 1732 he was again transferred to Sweden. There, in 1735, he succeeded in prolonging the Russo-Swedish union treaty for another twelve years.

In 1739, in Silesia, two Russian officers committed the assassination of the Swedish Major Malcolm Sinclair , who was returning from Constantinople to Sweden with the promissory notes issued to him by Charles XII . Residents of Stockholm, outraged by this crime, smashed the house of the Russian envoy, having broken all the windows in it.

In July 1741, the Swedish minister (ambassador) Nolken left St. Petersburg on the pretext of organizing his own affairs. Bestuzhev was also ordered to leave Stockholm. However, he did not have time to leave the Swedish capital, since on July 24 Sweden declared war on Russia , and a guard was assigned to the Russian envoy.

With the arrival of Stockholm Nolken Bestuzhev again received freedom. Having destroyed his diplomatic papers, he went first to Hamburg , and then to Hanover . Here he had a meeting with the English king, whom he tried to convince of the need to include in the English-Russian treaty of 1741 a new article on the expulsion of the English squadron to the Baltic Sea if France rendered assistance to Sweden.

With the accession to the throne of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, negotiations were interrupted, and Bestuzhev went to Warsaw, where he was appointed as plenipotentiary minister (ambassador). In December, he was recalled to St. Petersburg, where on the day of the coronation of Elizabeth received the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called .

In 1743, Bestuzhev married the Countess Anna Gavrilovna Yaguzhinsky , daughter of the Grand Chancellor G. Golovkin . However, in July of the same year, she was arrested in the Lopukhins' case and on August 29 she was sentenced to punishment with a whip, cutting her tongue and exile. Bestuzhev himself was kept under guard during the investigation.

In 1744, his younger brother Alexei officially headed the Foreign Ministry, becoming the State Chancellor. Michael was appointed envoy to Berlin, from where he was again relocated as plenipotentiary minister, first to the court of Augustus III (September 1744), and then ambassador extraordinary to the court of Vienna (1748).

In November 1747, Bestuzhev expressed a desire to marry Johannes-Henriette-Louise von Karlovitz, widow of Ober-puppy Gaugvits. The empress did not deign his appeal with an answer, since Bestuzhev's legal wife was in Siberian exile. Brother did not want to help either. Without waiting for an answer from St. Petersburg, Bestuzhev, before leaving Saxony, married on March 16, 1749, a widow of Gaugwitz, which infuriated the Empress:

St. Petersburg wanted M.P. Bestuzhev not to be honored in Vienna and refused an audience. The messenger was helped by the favorite of the Empress gr. A. G. Razumovsky and vice chancellor gr. M.I. Vorontsov . Elizaveta Petrovna even wished to see a woman who was not afraid to marry a man who was not divorced from his first wife. But the envoy was in no hurry to arrive in Petersburg. Arrival due to illness of the spouse was impossible. The empress was angry, but time passed, and gradually the situation lost its severity, although the marriage was still not recognized ^[6] .

In 1752, Bestuzhev was recalled to Petersburg, but on the way he became ill and came to Russia only after three years, which he spent in Dresden . In 1756, he was appointed ambassador extraordinary to France. By this time, his relationship with his younger brother had fallen to such an extent that, having learned of his arrest, Mikhail Petrovich told Vorontsov that “ there is not the slightest alteration in matters at all, an obstacle below our particular friendship; it is known that I suffered from him; so my late last wife took consumption from grief, and died of that. I have foreseen this for a long time, that to be with him a bad end ” ^[7] .

Mikhail Bestuzhev died on February 26, 1760 in France. At the request of the deceased, his body was transported to Russia. Since he had no children, the inheritance of the deceased was taken up by his nephew M.N. Volkonsky .

• Bestuzhev-Ryumin M.P. Letters from Count Mikhail Petrovich Bestuzhev-Ryumin to Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov (1745-1759) // Russian Archive, 1863. - Issue. 10/11. - Stb. 776-784.