Early Life and Career
Alexey was born at Moscow to an old noble family of Novgorod descent. His father, Pyotr Bestuzhev, was later to become the Russian ambassador to the duchy of Courland. Educated abroad with his elder brother Mikhail at Copenhagen and Berlin, Aleksey especially distinguished himself in languages and the applied sciences.
In 1712, Peter the Great attached Bestuzhev to Prince Kurakin at the Utrecht Congress, that he might learn diplomacy; and for the same reason permitted him in 1713 to enter the service of the elector of Hanover. The elector, who became King George I of Great Britain, took him to London in 1714, and sent him to Saint Petersburg as his accredited minister with a notification of his accession. Bestuzhev then returned to England, where he remained four years. This period laid the necessary groundwork for his brilliant diplomatic career.
Bestuzhev curiously illustrated his passion for intrigue in a letter to the tsarevich Alexey Petrovich at Vienna, assuring his "future sovereign" of his devotion, and representing his sojourn in England as the deliberate seclusion of a zealous but powerless well-wisher. This extraordinary indiscretion might well have cost him his life, but the tsarevich destroyed the letter. (A copy of the letter taken by way of precaution, beforehand, by the Austrian ministers, survived in the Vienna archives.)
On his return to Russia, Bestuzhev served for two years without any salary as chief gentleman of the Bedchamber at the court of Anne of Courland. In 1721, he succeeded Vasily Dolgorukov as Russian minister at Copenhagen. Copenhagen at that time formed a nexus of diplomatic intrigue, for George I of Great Britain had the aim of arming the northern powers against Peter the Great, and Bestuzhev received the commission to counteract this.
On the occasion of the peace of Nystad (1721), which terminated the Great Northern War's 21 years of struggle between Russia and Sweden, Bestuzhev designed and had minted a commemorative medal with a panegyrical Latin inscription, which so delighted Peter (then at Derbent) that he sent a letter of thanks written with his own hand and his portrait set in brilliants. It was at this time that the many-sided Bestuzhev invented his famous "drops", or tincture toniconervina Bestuscheffi. (The French brigadier Lamotte stole the recipe and made his fortune by introducing it at the French court, where it was known as Elixir d'Or).
The sudden death of Peter the Great (8 February 1725) seriously injured Bestuzhev's prospects. For more than ten years he remained at Copenhagen, looking vainly towards Russia as a sort of promised land from which he was excluded by enemies or rivals. He rendered some important services, however, to the empress Anne (reigned 1730–1740), who decorated him and made him a privy councillor. He also won the favour of Ernst von Biren, and on the tragic fall of Artemy Petrovich Volynsky in 1739, Bestuzhev returned to Russia to take Volynsky's place in the council. He assisted Biren to obtain the regency in the last days of the empress Anne, but when his patron fell three weeks later (November 1740), his own position became extremely precarious.
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