Conditions

The Conditions (, Konditsii) were an 18th-century constitutional project in Russia, signed by Empress Anna of Russia in Mitau on 18 January 1730, giving substantial power to the Supreme Privy Council. When the Empress returned to Russia, she revoked her approval of the Conditions and dissolved the Supreme Privy Council on the 20 February. The members of the council were removed from government and exiled or repressed paving the way for Anna to become an absolute monarch in the model of her uncle Peter the Great. Background In the period January 18 (29) to January 20 (31), 1730 the members of the Supreme Privy Council compiled the conditions immediately after the death of Peter II and before they were sent to the capital of Courland, Mitava, to be presented to Anna of Russia, who had been elected the inheritress of the Russian throne. A curious feature is that the document remained unpublished by the high officials (“verhovniki). The majority of the nobility had to guess about its content when the conditions have been presented at the meeting of the officials held on February 2 (13), 1730. Only then was there I the Russian nobility an obvious split - which led, in particular, to the appearance of programs of noble opposition. The Conditions, according to contemporaries, were only a preliminary document, as a squeeze of the more extensive radical plan developed by the Prince Golitsyn was not approved by the Secret Council. Not having come to an internal agreement, the 'verhovnik did not propose their own draft of the future state structure but suggested to the nobility to develop it by themselves when the nobility were gathered in Moscow to draw up the next Ulozhenanaya Commission and to the failed wedding ceremony of the Peter II.