The travel journal kept by Algarotti in the summer of 1739, during his voyage to St. Petersburg, offers an interesting point of observation on Anna’s ten years of government, which - following the reforms of Peter the Great - have been defined by many scholars as the real testing ground for the Russian Empire. The aim of this essay is to reconstruct the vicissitudes of the autocracy and to examine the way it affects the Russian State’s balance of power, the way it reconfigures its relations with an -aristocracy- and, consequently, with a -nobility- which, after the dramatic events of the succession crisis between January and February 1730, was forced to abandon all its plans to defend its field of political intervention. By analyzing the Journal this contribution also proposes a reflection on the methods and the limits of despotism, caught in the act of altering the traditional structures of the State, while intervening on the balance of power and on the relations between classes and institutions.
Keywords: Russia, Despotism, Centralization, Nobility, Institutions.