Kurakin, Alexander Borisovich

Alexander was the firstborn of Prince Boris Alexandrovich and his wife Elena Stepanovna , daughter of Field Marshal S.F. Apraksin . Shortly before the untimely death of his father, he was taken up by his grandmother’s brother Nikita Ivanovich Panin and brought from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

Panin had no children of his own and, being the tutor of Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich , encouraged his communication and games with his nephew. Since that time, Prince Kurakin became one of the closest friends of the future emperor, whom in private letters he called Pavlushka. Once he even mortgaged his estate in order to deliver the necessary amount to the prince, who was in need of money at that time.

In 1766, Prince Kurakin was sent to study in Kiel , at the Albertina College, where he attended lectures for about a year, being at the same time at the Russian Embassy in Copenhagen and even receiving the Danish Order in 1766. He completed his education at Leiden University in the company of such brilliant young people as N. P. Sheremetev , N. P. Rumyantsev , N. B. Yusupov , S. S. Apraksin .

The stay of a nephew in the Netherlands was arranged by Count Panin as a punishment for some pranks, in the surviving letters to his uncle, the young prince promises to reform and expresses remorse for his actions. During his grand tour, "Monsieur Borisov" (the pseudonym of a Russian traveler) also visited England and the south of France; a brief description of this trip was published by him in 1815 in St. Petersburg at Plyushar. All overseas stay cost Kurakin 13,000 rubles.

In 1772, Kurakin, who was a child in the service of the guard since childhood, was granted chamber junkers , and in 1775 he was appointed to the Senate. In 1778, Kurakin was made a real chamberlain , and after the reform of the noble self-government was elected St. Petersburg leader of the nobility . This burdensome service did not stop Prince Kurakin from accompanying Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich on his trip abroad , and before that he went to Berlin to meet his bride, Sofia Württemberg , who had learned to appreciate Kurakin’s friendship with his crowned spouse and had corresponded with him for many years.

After Berlin, he was sent to notify the Swedish king of the prince's second marriage to Stockholm , from where he sent interesting reports to Panin. During this trip, Kurakin was dedicated to the highest degrees of Freemasonry with the order to take over the grand mastery of the Russian provincial lodge, subordinating it to the main Swedish chapter. The handsome, clever and witty handsome prince captivated the heart of the young Countess Fersen , later the best friend of Karl XIII 's wife.

Upon returning to Russia, Prince Kurakin again becomes the person closest to the Tsarevich and almost more often than not visits him in Gatchina . The heir was very attached to him, calling him his "soul." Emperor Joseph II wrote about this:

This friendship did not meet with approval from the then reigning Catherine II , as she became aware that during the visit to St. Petersburg of the Swedish king Gustav III , who was also a prominent freemason, he attended the meeting of the freemasons in Kurakin’s house, where he also dedicated Pavel Petrovich to freemasonry ^[4] . The immediate occasion was the illustrated correspondence of Kurakin with the young P. A. Bibikov . At the insistence of the empress, who was suspicious of the Freemasons, Kurakin was expelled from St. Petersburg to the Saratov village - the village of Borisoglebskoe ^[5] .

Alexander Borisovich renamed the village Nadezhdino (the name is associated with his inner state of mind - the hope of returning to St. Petersburg). He arranged a magnificent residence there, where he lived for eight years as a rich Russian master. Even in solitude, he maintained correspondence with his royal friend, wrote books from abroad, and compiled an excellent library. He lived openly, hospitablely; special rules were drawn up for the guests, which were aimed at giving everyone complete freedom and not hamper the owner; one of the points read as follows:

With magnificence in line with such a way of life, sometimes Prince Kurakin undertook trips to his estates; one of them is described in a book of 1793, which is a bibliographic rarity: “Description of the journey in 1786 of His Grace ... pr. A. B. Kurakina, down the Sura from Krasnoyarsk to Chirkovskaya wharf ... ". A similar lifestyle involved him in rather considerable debts. However, Emperor Paul, having barely reigned, immediately rewarded Kurakin for his constant loyalty to him, reimbursed him all his expenses and poured a rain of mercy on him.

In 1804, Kurakin granted freedom to his peasants from 22 farms (settlements of Belokurakinskaya and Pavlovka in the Starobelsk district of Kharkov province), numbering up to 3,000 souls. He translated them forever and hereditarily into free cultivators , and ceded them to 60,000 acres of land. For their part, the peasants pledged to contribute one million rubles over the course of twenty-five years with banknotes to the St. Petersburg Board of Trustees in favor of the pupils of Prince Baron Serdobins . This amount was insignificant compared to the real value.

After the death of Catherine II, Kurakin was allowed to return to the capital and continue his career. During November 1796, Kurakin was granted secret advisers , was appointed a member of the council under the emperor, vice chancellor , promoted to full secret adviser , and received the Order of St. Vladimir 1st art. and Andrew the First-Called . In addition, he was granted a house in St. Petersburg, and on the day of coronation, more than 4 thousand souls and rich fishing in the Astrakhan province , with the income from which lived the population of a large region ^[6] .

State affairs, apparently, occupied the new vice chancellor less than court intrigues; at least Grech calls him a man "empty and moronic." Vigel left a similar review:

The party of the empress, to which Kurakin joined, was constantly at odds with the party of Rostopchin . When in 1798 the Empress Maria Feodorovna and the maid of honor Nelidov lost their influence, Prince Kurakin, as their most faithful ally, was relieved of his diplomatic post and sent to Moscow. Around the same time (1798) he was elected a member of the Russian Academy .

The new opal, however, did not last long. Already on February 1, 1801, Kurakin was present at the consecration of the building of the new Mikhailovsky Castle , and another 20 days later Count Rostopchin was dismissed from all affairs and on the same date, Prince Kurakin was ordered to assume the previous position of vice chancellor. He again began to often visit the palace, in the immediate circle of the emperor, and was present, among other things, at the last evening table of Pavel Petrovich on the eve of his murder.

It was Kurakin who was instructed to seal and disassemble the papers of the late sovereign. At the opening of the will of Emperor Paul, it turned out that he "bequeathed to his" faithful friend "the star of the Order of the Black Eagle , which had previously been worn by Frederick II , who himself passed it to the Russian prince, and the sword that formerly belonged to Count d'Artois .

The new emperor Alexander left Kurakin to manage the College of Foreign Affairs until September 5, 1802, then granted him chancellor of Russian orders. During the formation of the State Council, Kurakin was appointed a member of it and constantly maintained his place among the first dignitaries of the state, fulfilling certain diplomatic missions of the emperor, but in Petersburg society already began to cause ridicule by that time, as shown by the following review by Vigel:

From a young age, Prince Kurakin was very handsome and received a strong, even athletic build from nature. But luxury and voluptuousness softened his bodily and spiritual energy, and his epicureism was visible in all his movements, and his radiant stillness captivated and respected him for a long time, but in the new reign, with new ideas, it gave reason to compare him with a peacock .

- F. Vigel ^[7]

After the defeat of Austerlitz, he submitted to the sovereign a memorandum in which he spoke of the need to prepare significant military forces in order to defend the borders of Russia, but at the same time seek rapprochement with France . In the summer of 1806 he was sent to Vienna with a delicate order to dissuade Emperor Franz II from marriage with his sister Alexander Pavlovich. With the mediation of Prince Kurakin, the Tilsit peace was signed in 1807, on which his signature is placed. During the Tilsit negotiations, Napoleon and Talleyrand repeatedly expressed the desire that Prince Kurakin be appointed ambassador to Paris, which was fulfilled.

During the tense period from October 1808 to November 1812, Kurakin headed the Russian embassy in Paris , striking the French with his wastefulness. At one of the balls that accompanied the marriage of Napoleon and Maria Louise , a fire broke out, panic broke out, Prince Kurakin was knocked down, rolled down the stairs in a turmoil and received severe burns; from this incident, his health was badly damaged and until his death he could no longer recover completely.

In 1810, he wrote numerous reports to Tsar Alexander, warning him about the inevitability of a war with France ^[8] : “The best system of this war, in my opinion, is to avoid a general battle and as much as possible to follow the example of a small war used against the French in Spain ; and try to make it difficult for them to deliver supplies to upset the huge masses with which they are coming against us. ” In December 1811, he called in the report of Chancellor N. P. Rumyantsev : “It’s not the time to beckon us with empty hope, but the time is already coming for us to defend the wealth and integrity of Russia's real borders with courage and unshakable firmness.” After the last unsuccessful attempt to regulate Russian-French relations at his meeting with Napoleon in Saint-Cloud on April 15, 1812 and the subsequent invasion of Russia, Kurakin left France.

In recent years, he retired, for he suffered severely from gout , which “entered the right arm and occupied both legs” ^[3] . Nevertheless, he continued to give brilliant balls in his spacious house on the corner of Bolshaya Morskaya and Nevsky Prospekt ^[9] . In Moscow, he occupied a mansion on Staraya Basmannaya , 21 (later the Konstantinovsky Institute of Land Surveying ) ^[10] , but most often spent time in Pavlovsk, in the company of the empress mother.

Emperor Alexander I, by his order of March 15 ( 27 ), 1817 , allowed Kurakin to “go away to other countries, wherever he would like, because of his health problems, while preserving all his salaries, pensions and table money now” ^[11] .

He died on June 24, 1818 in Weimar ^[8] , where he went to the waters, and was buried in the Mary Pauline Church of Mary Magdalene . “Kurakin’s funeral was magnificent; the whole court was also a grand duke; the bishop sent the service ” ^[12] . On the monument, erected at the entrance to the temple by Maria Fedorovna, the inscription: "To my spouse's friend."

During his life in Paris, Kurakin became famous as a “diamond prince” because of the magnificence and richness of his costumes; he rode in a huge golden carriage in a train, with footmen and walkers. In Paris, he had a large palace, in Nadezhdin - the clan of the court, like the sovereign prince. Small nobles entered his nobleman, and this flattered his vanity; guests and various “amateurs” filled his house, lived for a long time, according to a special instruction, without restricting themselves or worrying the owner in anything ^[3] .

According to M. I. Pylyaev , “Kurakin was a big pedant in clothes: every morning when he woke up, the valet handed him a book, like an album, containing samples of matter from which his magnificent costumes and dress samples were sewn; each dress had a special sword, buckles, ring, snuff box, etc. ” ^[13] He usually wore an“ eye-shaped or velvet French caftan, on which, like on the camisole, all buttons were diamond, stars, like crosses on neck - from large tapeworms. He wore a diamond or pearl epaulette on his right shoulder, buckles and a sword had diamond, even a loop on his hat made of diamonds; I wore lace on my chest and sleeves ” ^[13] .

It was said that one of these costumes saved his life during a fire that happened during a ball given in Paris by the Austrian ambassador Schwarzenberg on July 1, 1810 . When the fire started, Alexander Kurakin was knocked down by the crowd, but his richly decorated camisole protected his owner from high temperature. Nevertheless, he received serious burns and was bedridden for several months; in this form it is captured on a Paris engraving.

It is also believed that Kurakin introduced into fashion (in Europe) the familiar way of serving dishes, later called “ service à la russe ” (Russian serving), which consists in the gradual serving of dishes in the order they are placed on the menu. This new method has gradually replaced the serving according to the “all at once” method, previously used and called “ service à la française ” (French serving, “French system”).

Living in Paris in 1772, he took dance lessons from the famous choreographer Westris . While dancing at the court, he was the constant knight of Empress Maria Fyodorovna .

Like the ballas of the Order of Malta (whose members made a vow of celibacy) Kurakin was not married, but had a great weakness for women, had various connections in different sections of society, the consequence of which were up to 70 out -of-date children ^[14] ; от него, между прочим, ведут своё происхождение бароны Вревские и Сердобины .

В 1773 году 22-летний Куракин впервые решил жениться. Его выбор пал на графиню Варвару Петровну Шереметеву (1750—1824), внучку фельдмаршала Шереметева ; первую невесту в Москве, как по родству, так и по богатству. Но из-за молодости жениха и его нерешительности свадьба не состоялась. В феврале 1774 года, к большому сожалению Куракина, графиня Шереметева вышла замуж за А. К. Разумовского .

Следующей именитой невестой Куракина была княжна Анастасия Михайловна Дашкова (1760—1831), дочь Е. Р. Дашковой , но это партия не вызвала одобрения у Аграфены Александровны Куракиной, имевшей огромное влияние на племянника. Другая невеста, графиня Елизавета Гавриловна Головкина (1752—1820), правнучка канцлера Г. И. Головкина и внучка А. И. Шувалова , не имея желания выходить замуж, отказала Куракину. Она умерла незамужней.

В 1776 году в Стокгольме Куракин познакомился с состоятельной и привлекательной шведской графиней Евой Софией фон Ферзен (1757—1816). Почему князь Куракин не женился на ней, остаётся загадкой. Их любовный роман нашёл выражение в 39 письмах, написанных графиней к Куракину. Они были впервые опубликованы в « Архиве князя Ф. А. Куракина » ^[15] .

Последнею попыткою Куракина было сватовство в 1803 году к графине Анне Алексеевне Орловой-Чесменской (1785—1848). На этом браке настаивал граф Орлов , и Анне Алексеевне князь Куракин нравился, но опять из-за нерешительности жениха свадьба не состоялась. Впоследствии их роман перешёл в дружбу и задушевную переписку.

• Order of the Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called (December 5, 1796)
• Order of St. Vladimir 1st degree (November 14, 1796)
• Order of St. Alexander Nevsky (November 14, 1796)
• Order of St. Anne (April 9, 1781)
• Order of St. John of Jerusalem , commander (November 29, 1798)
• Legion of Honor , Grand Cross (France, 1808)
• Order of the Black Eagle (Prussia)
• Order of St. Hubert (Bavaria)
• Order of the Elephant (Denmark, February 9, 1808)
• Order of Danebrog , Cavalier (Denmark, 1766)

• Nikolai Mikhailovich . Russian portraits of the XVIII and XIX centuries . - Vol. 1. No. 48.
• Kurakin, Alexander Borisovich (Chancellor of Russian Orders) // Russian Biographical Dictionary : in 25 volumes. - SPb. - M. , 1896-1918.

• Kurakin A. B. 1807. Letters from the road from Prince A. B. Kurakin to the Empress Empress Maria Feodorovna // Russian Archive, 1868. - Ed. 2nd. - M., 1869. - St. 23-86, 161-240.
• Kurakin A. B. Reports from France to Prince A. B. Kurakin to Emperor Alexander Pavlovich / Communication. A.N. Shenigom // Russian Archive, 1870. - Ed. 2nd. - M., 1871. - St. 1-136.
• Kurakin A. B. Note submitted by Prince A. B. Kurakin to Emperor Alexander Pavlovich after the Battle of Austerlitz / Communication. N. S. Obolensky // Russian Archive, 1869. - Issue. 7. - Stb. 1125-1138.
• Kurakin A. B. Letters from Vienna from Prince A. B. Kurakin to the Empress Empress Maria Feodorovna. 1807 // Russian archive, 1869. - Issue. 3. - St. 385-517.
• Kurakin A. B. Letter from Prince A. B. Kurakin to Chancellor Count Rumyantsev on August 3, 1811 / Communication. A.N. Shenigom // Russian Archive, 1870. - Ed. 2nd. - M., 1871. - St. 135-162.