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B. Aug. 12 (Aug. 23, N.S.) 1740, St. Petersburg. D. July 5 (July 16) 1764, Shlüsselburg Fortress, near St. Petersburg. Infant emperor of Russia in 1740-41.
The son of Prince Anton Ulrich of Braunschweig-Bevern-Lüneburg and Anna Leopoldovna, the niece of Empress Anna (reigned in Russia 1730-40), Ivan was named heir to the throne by the empress on Oct. 16 (Oct. 27), 1740, and proclaimed emperor the next day. The empress' favourite, Ernst Johann Biron, the Duke of Courland, became regent for him. Although Biron was overthrown by the vice-chancellor, Andrei Osterman, and Field Marshal Burkhard Christoph, Count von Münnich, three weeks later, Ivan remained the nominal ruler of Russia, and his mother was installed as regent.
On Nov. 25 (Dec. 6), 1741, however, Elizabeth, the daughter of Emperor Peter I the Great, organised a group that opposed Anna Leopoldovna's foreign policy and her German advisers and deposed the regent, the ruling German clique, and Ivan VI. For the next 20 years Ivan remained in solitary confinement in various prisons. Although his mental and emotional development were thereby retarded, a second lieutenant of the Shlüsselburg garrison, Vasili Jakovlevich Mirovich, tried in 1764 to free Ivan in order to remove Catherine II the Great, who had recently seized the throne (1762), and to restore him to power. In the course of Mirovich's mutiny, however, Ivan was assassinated by his jailers.
B. Dec. 7 (Dec. 18, N.S.) 1718, Rostock, Germany. D. March 7 (March 18, N.S.) 1746, Holmogory, Russia. Regent of Russia (November 1740-November 1741) for her son, the emperor Ivan VI.
A niece of Empress Anna, Anna Leopoldovna married a nephew
of the Holy Roman emperor Charles VI in 1739 and gave birth to
a son, Ivan (Aug. 2, 1740), who was named heir to the Russian
throne by Empress Anna in 1740, shortly before she died. A few
weeks later, however, the Empress's appointed regent, Ernst Johann
Biron, was arrested by certain members of the ruling German clique
in Russia, led by Burkhard Münnich and Andrei Osterman. Münnich
and Osterman appointed Anna Leopoldovna regent and assumed dominant
positions in her government. But they were unpopular among the
Russians, and, when they weakened the administration by quarrelling
with each other, Anna's major rival, Elizabeth, staged a palace
revolution (Nov. 25, 1741). Elizabeth imprisoned Anna and her
family in 1742 and in 1744 exiled them to Holmogory, where Anna
died.
