Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov - Supremacy and Disgrace

Supremacy and Disgrace

During Catherine's short reign (February 1725 – May 1727), Menshikov was practically the absolute ruler of Russia. He promoted himself to the unprecedented rank of Generalissimus, and was the only Russian to bear a ducal title. Upon finishing the construction of the Menshikov Palace on the Neva Embankment in St Petersburg (now assigned to the Hermitage Museum), Menshikov intended to make Oranienbaum a capital of his ephemeral duchy. Pushkin in one of his poems alluded to Menshikov as "half-tsar".

On the whole he ruled well, his difficult position serving as some restraint upon his natural inclinations. He contrived to prolong his power after Catherine's death by means of a forged will and a coup d'état. While his colleague Peter Tolstoi would have raised Elizabeth Petrovna to the throne, Menshikov set up the youthful Peter II, son of the tsarevich Alexei, with himself as dictator during the prince's minority.

He now aimed at establishing himself definitely by marrying his daughter Mary to Peter II. But the old nobility, represented by the Dolgorukovs and the Galitzines, united to overthrow him, and he was deprived of all his dignities and offices and expelled from the capital (20 September 1727). Subsequently he was deprived of his enormous wealth, stripped of the titles, and he and his whole family were banished to Berezov in Siberia, where he died on 23 November 1729.

In Beryozovo Menshikov (with his own hands!) built a wooden church. He buried his daughter who died in exile there.