The African Who Assassinated the Emperor of Russia

 The African Who Assassinated 

The Emperor of Russia


Left: Portrait of a young Gannibal;
Right: Catherine II on the balcony of the Winter Palace, greeted by the guards and people on the day of her coup on June 28, 1762 by Joachim Kestner, 1760s, collection of the State Hermitage, St. Petersburg
(Source: Wikipedia Commons)


Is it possible that a Black man was involved in the conspiracy by Catherine the Great to remove her husband from the throne and to take his place as the ruler of Russia?


Portrait of the Grand Duke Peter Fyodorovich
and the Grand Duchess Catherine Alexeyevna
before marriage and 17 years before the coup 
circa 1745
Georg Christoph Grooth
(Source: The Russian Museum)

In the course of my research on the Afro-Russian general, Abraham Gannibal (1696-1781), I came across this gem, written by British journalist Hugh Barnes for The Telegraph:

It is often said that the African took part in the overthrow of Peter III, but a letter I discovered in the local archives at Pskov, near Mikhailovskoye, suggests that he may have been directly involved in the tsar's murder. 

In the edgy aftermath of revolution, Gannibal wrote to Catherine requesting a promotion to the rank of field marshal and a financial reward for his "actions". 

Significantly, the letter exploits the fact that Catherine - a minor German princess by birth - understandably feared a challenge to her new status as empress, particularly as her son and heir Paul had no Romanov blood, being almost certainly the child of her lover Sergei Saltykov . 

"All gracious Tsarina," Gannibal writes, "I beg your Imperial Majesty to judge this petition in my favor. Your entreating general and knight, Abram Gannibal."



This interesting snippet of history is something I first encountered on a blog about Abraham Gannibal.


The Empress directing the Palace Revolution


Tsar Peter III reigned only 6 months. Catherine II reigned for 34 years, making her the country's longest-ruling female leader. Under her reign, Russia was revitalized; it grew larger and stronger, and was recognized as one of the great powers of Europe and Asia.

Pushkin himself wrote of 18th century Russia:

The reign of Catherine II had a new and strong influence on the political and moral condition of Russia. She was elevated to the throne by a conspiracy of several rebels, she enriched them at the expense of the people and humiliated our restless nobility. 
If reigning means knowing the weakness of the human soul and using it, then in this respect Catherine deserves the surprise of posterity. Her splendor was blinding.

Did he suspect his own relative might have been part of this conspiracy?

What was Gannibal's actual role, if any, in the revolution?

It is often said that Gannibal served as a spy. Did he ever put some of those sleuthing skills to use for his future boss?

We may never know the answer to these questions. 

But we know that after Catherine's rise to power, Gannibal rose as well.

As 'the empire's finest practitioner' of engineering, Gannibal became, as a 1970 article in the Chicago Daily emphasized, 'one of the richest men in all Russia' with plenty of land and hundreds of "slaves" to serve him. As Barnes put it:

The African slave had become a Russian slave owner.

Pushkin, a regular opponent of despotism, would have been against the maintenance of such a lavish lifestyle for the elite class while the masses suffered a menial existence. If he had finished his book on the life of Gannibal, chances are that we would have a better idea about his thoughts on this stupendous state of affairs.



- Omri C.

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