- Aleksey Mikhailovich Tcherkassky
Prince Aleksey Mikhailovich Tcherkassky ("Алексей Михайлович Черкасский" in Russian) (1680 - 1742) was aRussia nchancellor .In 1702, Aleksey Mikhailovich Tcherkassky held a post of senior
stolnik (tsar's personal assistant) and was soon assigned to assist his fatherMikhail Yakovlevich Tcherkassky , who had been a voivod inTobolsk at that time. Tcherkassky served under his father for 10 years and in 1714 was summoned toSaint Petersburg . There, he was appointed member of the Urban Construction Commission. In 1719, Aleksey was sent toSiberia asgovernor . In 1726, he became asenator . During the election of Anna Ivanovna for the Russian throne in 1730, Tcherkassky, the richest man in Russia in terms of the amount ofserf s he owned at that time, was in charge of thegentry party, which had been in opposition to the so-called "verkhovniki" (members of theSupreme Privy Council ). For this, he was appointed one of the threecabinet minister s and promoted to the rank of grand chancellor in 1740. As a cabinet minister, Tcherkassky signed a trade agreement with theGreat Britain in 1734. As a chancellor, he signed a treaty withPrussia in 1740 and Great Britain in 1741.Tcherkassky's only daughter from his second marriage to Princess
Maria Yurievna Trubetskaya -Varvara Alekseyevna - was afräulein at theempress 's bed chamber. She was considered one of the richestfiancee s in Russia and was proposed to PrinceAntiokh Kantemir as a wife. The latter, however, turned down the proposal. She was then proposed toCount Pyotr Borisovich Sheremetev with thedowry of 70,000 serfs. This was exactly why Sheremetev would come to have such enormous fortune.
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