Petrus II Imperator totius Russiae

Title

Petrus II Imperator totius Russiae

Description

Portrait of the Russian Emperor Peter II Peter II Alexeyevich (1715 - 1730) in Saint Petersburg.

dated 1729

Artist

Wortmann/Tannauer (1680-1760)

Historical Description

He was Emperor of Russia from 1727 to 1730. After the death of Tsarina Catherine I, Peter I's widow, Peter II ascended the throne in 1727 at the age of twelve. In her will, Catherine had named Alexander Menshikov and her two daughters, Anna and Elizabeth, as the boy's guardians. Elisabeth had no political ambitions; Under Menshikov's pressure, Anna left Russia and went with her husband to Kiel, where their son Peter Ulrich was born in February 1728, later Peter III. Menshikov, one of the richest men in Russia, tried to further strengthen his power with the help of the young tsar. He arranged for his daughter to be betrothed to Peter II. But the influential Dolgoruky princely family despised the upstart and worked to oust him. In 1727 he was arrested and banished together with his family to Berezow in what was then the Tobolsk governorate. In 1729 he became engaged to Yekaterina Dolgorukova (1712–1745). The marriage was to take place on February 2, 1730. At the end of January, however, the tsar returned home sick from a hunt and died shortly thereafter of smallpox. He had only sat on the Russian throne for two years and nine months. Peter II was the only tsar not buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral, but in Moscow. With his death, the lineage of male Romanovs came to an end.