Artemy Petrovich Volynsky - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Artemy Petrovich Volynsky (Russian

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

: Арте́мий Петро́вич Волы́нский) (1689–1740) was a Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n statesman

Statesman

A statesman is usually a politician or other notable public figure who has had a long and respected career in politics or government at the national and international level. As a term of respect, it is usually left to supporters or commentators to use the term...

and diplomat

Diplomat

A diplomat is a person appointed by a state to conduct diplomacy with another state or international organization. The main functions of diplomats revolve around the representation and protection of the interests and nationals of the sending state, as well as the promotion of information and...

. His career started as a soldier but was rapidly upgraded to minister under Peter the Great and governor of Astrakhan

Astrakhan

Astrakhan is a major city in southern European Russia and the administrative center of Astrakhan Oblast. The city lies on the left bank of the Volga River, close to where it discharges into the Caspian Sea at an altitude of below the sea level. Population:...

. Peter stripped him of nearly all his powers until Catherine I appointed him governor of Kazan

Kazan

Kazan is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia. With a population of 1,143,546 , it is the eighth most populous city in Russia. Kazan lies at the confluence of the Volga and Kazanka Rivers in European Russia. In April 2009, the Russian Patent Office granted Kazan the...

.

Conspiracy under Anna of Russia

Anna of Russia

Anna of Russia or Anna Ivanovna reigned as Duchess of Courland from 1711 to 1730 and as Empress of Russia from 1730 to 1740.-Accession to the throne:Anna was the daughter of Ivan V of Russia, as well as the niece of Peter the Great...

earned him a trial with Biren

Ernst Johann von Biron

Ernst Johann von Biron was a Duke of Courland and Semigallia and regent of the Russian Empire .-Biography:Born as Ernst Johann Biren in Kalnciems, Courland, he was the grandson of a groom in the service of Jacob Kettler, Duke of Courland, who bestowed upon him a small estate, which Biron's...

's men; he was executed on June 27, 1740.

Military youth

Artemy Volynsky was a son of Peter Volynsky who came of an ancient Gediminids

Gediminids

The Gediminids were a dynasty of monarchs of Grand Duchy of Lithuania that reigned from the 14th to the 16th century. One branch of this dynasty, known as the Jagiellons, reigned also in Kingdom of Poland, Kingdom of Hungary and Kingdom of Bohemia...

family. Artemy's father was one of the dignitaries at the court of Feodor III

Feodor III of Russia

Feodor III Alexeevich of Russia was the Tsar of all Russia between 1676 and 1682....

, and also a voivod in Kazan. He entered a dragoon

Dragoon

The word dragoon originally meant mounted infantry, who were trained in horse riding as well as infantry fighting skills. However, usage altered over time and during the 18th century, dragoons evolved into conventional light cavalry units and personnel...

regiment

Regiment

A regiment is a major tactical military unit, composed of variable numbers of batteries, squadrons or battalions, commanded by a colonel or lieutenant colonel...

in 1704 and rose to the rank of captain, by 1711; then, exchanging the military service

Armed forces

The armed forces of a country are its government-sponsored defense, fighting forces, and organizations. They exist to further the foreign and domestic policies of their governing body, and to defend that body and the nation it represents from external aggressors. In some countries paramilitary...

for diplomacy

Diplomacy

Diplomacy is the art and practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of groups or states...

, he was attached to the suite of Vice-Chancellor

Chancellor

Chancellor is the title of various official positions in the governments of many nations. The original chancellors were the Cancellarii of Roman courts of justice—ushers who sat at the cancelli or lattice work screens of a basilica or law court, which separated the judge and counsel from the...

Peter Shafirov

Baron Peter Pavlovich Shafirov , Russian statesman, one of the ablest coadjutors of Peter the Great.Shafirov was born into the family if Pavel Shafirov, a translator in the Russian Foreign Office, of Polish Jewish extraction...

. He was present during the Pruth Campaign, shared Shafirov's captivity in the Seven Towers in Constantinople

Constantinople

Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...

Minister for Peter the Great

In 1715, by orders of Peter the Great

Peter I of Russia

Peter the Great, Peter I or Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov Dates indicated by the letters "O.S." are Old Style. All other dates in this article are New Style. ruled the Tsardom of Russia and later the Russian Empire from until his death, jointly ruling before 1696 with his half-brother, Ivan V...

he was sent to Ispahan

Isfahan (city)

Isfahan , historically also rendered in English as Ispahan, Sepahan or Hispahan, is the capital of Isfahan Province in Iran, located about 340 km south of Tehran. It has a population of 1,583,609, Iran's third largest city after Tehran and Mashhad...

, Persia (which he reached in March 1717) as a Russian minister to explore the area and find a way by sea to India. During his travelling he was supposed to redirect the silk trade route in Persia to Russia with the Armenians' help. During his stay in Ispahan, Volynsky signed a treaty with the Shah Husayn

Husayn (Safavid)

Sultan Husayn was a Safavid king of Iran . He ruled from 1694 until he was overthrown in 1722 by Shah Mahmud Hotaki, an Afghan warrior of Pashtun ethnic background...

giving commercial advantages over a country torn by revolts.

In 1718 Peter made him one of his six adjutant general

Adjutant general

An Adjutant General is a military chief administrative officer.-Imperial Russia:In Imperial Russia, the General-Adjutant was a Court officer, who was usually an army general. He served as a personal aide to the Tsar and hence was a member of the H. I. M. Retinue...

s, and governor

Governor

A governor is a governing official, usually the executive of a non-sovereign level of government, ranking under the head of state...

of Astrakhan

Astrakhan

. In this post Volynsky displayed distinguished administrative and financial talents. In 1722 he married Alexandra Naryshkina, Peter's cousin. The same year he was accused of peculation and other offences to the emperor

Emperor

An emperor is a monarch, usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife or a woman who rules in her own right...

, who caned him severely and deprived him of his plenipotentiary powers, despite his undeniable services in Persia, but for which Peter could never have emerged so triumphantly from the difficult Persian war of 1722-1723.

Governor of Kazan

Catherine I

Catherine I of Russia

Catherine I , the second wife of Peter the Great, reigned as Empress of Russia from 1725 until her death.-Life as a peasant woman:The life of Catherine I was said by Voltaire to be nearly as extraordinary as that of Peter the Great himself. There are no documents that confirm her origins. Born on...

made Volynsky governor of Kazan

Kazan

for a short time, and he held the same post for two years (1728–1730) under Peter II

Peter II of Russia

Pyotr II Alekseyevich was Emperor of Russia from 1727 until his death. He was the only son of Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich, son of Peter I of Russia by his first wife Eudoxia Lopukhina, and Princess Charlotte, daughter of Duke Louis Rudolph of Brunswick-Lüneburg and sister-in-law of Charles VI,...

. But his incurable corruption and unbridled temper so discredited the government that he was deprived of the post shortly after the accession of Anne

Anna of Russia

. From 1730 to 1736 Volynsky served in the army under Munnich

Burkhard Christoph von Munnich

Count Burkhard Christoph von Münnich was a Danish-born German soldier-engineer who became a field marshal and political figure in the Russian Empire. He was the major Russian Army reformer and founder of several elite military formations during the reign of Anna of Russia. As a statesman, he is...

. In 1737 he was appointed the second Russian plenipotentiary

Plenipotentiary

The word plenipotentiary has two meanings. As a noun, it refers to a person who has "full powers." In particular, the term commonly refers to a diplomat fully authorized to represent his government as a prerogative...

at the abortive congress of Nemirov held for the conclusion of peace with the Porte.

Condemned under Anne

In 1738 he was introduced into the Russian cabinet by Biron

Ernst Johann von Biron

as a counterpoise against Andrei Osterman

Andrei Osterman

Count Andrey Ivanovich Osterman was a German-born Russian statesman who came to prominence under Tsar Peter I of Russia and served until the accession of the Tsesarevna Elizabeth. His foreign policy was based upon the Austrian alliance...

. Volynsky, however, now thought himself strong enough to attempt to supersede Biron himself, and openly opposed the favorite in the State Council

State Council of Imperial Russia

The State Council was the supreme state advisory body to the Tsar in Imperial Russia.-18th century:Early Tsars' Councils were small and dealt primarily with the external politics....

in the debates as to the indemnity due to Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

for the violations of her territory during the War of the Polish Succession

War of the Polish Succession

The War of the Polish Succession was a major European war for princes' possessions sparked by a Polish civil war over the succession to Augustus II, King of Poland that other European powers widened in pursuit of their own national interests...

, Biron advising that a liberal indemnity should be given, whereas Volynsky objected to any indemnity at all.

Biron thereupon forced Anne to order an inquiry into Volynsky's past career, with the result that he was tried before a tribunal

Tribunal

A tribunal in the general sense is any person or institution with the authority to judge, adjudicate on, or determine claims or disputes—whether or not it is called a tribunal in its title....

of Biron's men. The charges faced were that he, as a minister, and Andrei Fedorovich Khrushchev (1691—1740), as an assistant minister, tried to dethrone Queen Anna for Peter the Great's daughter, Elizabeth. He was arrested on June 23, 1740 and thus condemned to be broken on the wheel and then beheaded. On the scaffold, by the clemency of the empress, his punishment was mitigated to the severing of his right hand followed by decapitation

Decapitation

Decapitation is the separation of the head from the body. Beheading typically refers to the act of intentional decapitation, e.g., as a means of murder or execution; it may be accomplished, for example, with an axe, sword, knife, wire, or by other more sophisticated means such as a guillotine...

on June 27, 1740. The sentence was executed exactly 31 years after the Battle of Poltava

Battle of Poltava

The Battle of Poltava on 27 June 1709 was the decisive victory of Peter I of Russia over the Swedish forces under Field Marshal Carl Gustav Rehnskiöld in one of the battles of the Great Northern War. It is widely believed to have been the beginning of Sweden's decline as a Great Power; the...

. Volynsky had by his side architect Pyotr Mikhailovich Eropkin & A. F. Khruschov.

A tombstone in their honour was erected in 1741 by order of Elizabeth of Russia over their burial place beside St. Sampson Cathedral. That was the only thing that was visible over their grave until 1885 when a monument was placed as they were seen as national heroes because they opposed to German ideas, that of Biron. Although Britannica stated in 1911 that The whole business seems to have been purely a piece of vindictiveness on the part of Biron., since the erection of the monument, there was controversy over their plans since Volynsky's work General Project of Internal Affairs of the State state that they were conspirators in a plan to overturn the Empress.

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