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The correspondence of Catherine II with Count Burkhard-Christoph Münnich

The correspondence of Catherine II with Count Münnich, despite its publication in the 18th century by Anton Büsching, is relatively rarely used by researchers. It is enough to point out that this publication is not mentioned in the monograph by Kelsev Rubin-Detlev. My interest in the correspondence is connected with recent discovery in the Münnich family archive, which is stored in the Oldenburg archive, I was able to find a second volume, including letters from Münnich and the Empress, which remained unknown to Büsching and was not published by him.

The correspondence between Münnich and the Empress allows to understand not only the goals that Münnich pursued, but also to to find out why the Empress was interested in him. Firstly, Münnich was the only one of her statesmen who had actually served Peter the Great, thus he turned out to be an important element in legitimizing her power and in establishing continuity with the reformer tsar. Secondly, among the many statesmen who were exiled to Siberia in the 18th century, almost none managed to return to their previous status. But only this experience of exile made it possible, having once managed state affairs at the top, not only to see how its lowest floor functions, but also to return to tell about it. Having been aware for twenty years of all the corruption and illiteracy of the local administration in Siberia, Münnich turned out to be an important adviser at the time when Catherine began to think through the reform of the local administration.

As for Münnich himself, he tried to consolidate and preserve those power functions that he managed to obtain during the short-term reign of Peter III (which was not at all included in the plans for the empress’s entourage). Hence the empress’s wish, clearly expressed in correspondence, that the field marshal would take up his memoirs (thereby the empress turns out to be the main initiator of Münnich’s latest memoir projects),