Elizabeth Petrovna, with all her shortcomings (documents…

Elizabeth Petrovna, with all her shortcomings (documents often wait months for her signature), has inherited some of her father's genius for government, fortunately for herself and for Russia.

Her usually keen judgment and her diplomatic tact again and again recall Peter the Great.

What sometimes appears as irresolution and procrastination, is most often a wise suspension of judgment under exceptionally difficult circumstances.

The substantial changes made by Elizabeth's father, Peter the Great, have not exercised a really formative influence on the intellectual attitudes of the ruling classes as a whole.

Elizabeth makes considerable impact and lays the groundwork for its completion by her eventual successor, Catherine II.

After abolishing the cabinet council system that had been in favor during the rule of Anna, and reconstituting the senate as it had been under Peter the Great, with the chiefs of the departments of state (none of them Germans as was the case previously), the first task undertaken by the new empress had been to address her quarrel with Sweden.

Direct negotiations between the two powers had been opened on January 23, 1743, at Åbo (Turku).

Sweden ion August 7, 1743 in the Treaty of Åbo  cedes to Russia all the southern part of Finland east of the river Kymmene, which subsequently becomes the boundary between the two states.

Provisions of the treaty include the fortresses of Villmanstrand and Fredricshamn.

This triumphant issue can be credited to the diplomatic ability of the new vice chancellor, Aleksey Petrovich Bestuzhev-Ryumin.

His policies would have been impossible without her support.

Elizabeth had wisely placed Bestuzhev at the head of foreign affairs immediately after her accession.

He represents the anti-Franco-Prussian portion of her council, and his object is to bring about an Anglo-Austro-Russian alliance which, at this time, was undoubtedly Russia's proper system.

Hence, the bogus Lopukhina Conspiracy and other attempts of Frederick the Great and Louis XV to get rid of Bestuzhev (making the Russian court the center of a tangle of intrigue during the earlier years of Elizabeth's reign.)