Peter Obolyaninov

In 1796, Peter Khrisanfovich, already in the rank of major general, was appointed provisionmaster-general, awarded the Order of Saint Anna and the Order of Saint Alexander Nevsky. After the accession of Paul, he became one of the closest confidants of the emperor; the royal favors followed one after another: in 1797 he was granted an estate in the Saratov province with 2 thousand souls, the next year he was promoted, became a lieutenant general, in 1799 he was appointed senator. The French king Louis XVIII granted him the commander's cross of the Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem.

Prosecutor General Peter Obolyaninov

In February 1800, he took the post of procurator-general; in this position he did not stay long, until the coup of March 11, 1801. For this year of service he was generously rewarded: granted a large cross of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, the Order of St. Andrew, a large house in the capital, an imperial snuffbox with diamonds, porcelain and silver sets for 120 thousand rubles; was promoted to General of the Infantry. Pavel considered Obolyaninov "his". The competence of the procurator-general, which at the time was exceptionally broad, Obolyaninov tried to further expand, demanding, for example, from the Senate Chief Prosecutors, preliminary reports to him; at the same time, Pavel expanded it, ordering everyone to deliver his reports to Obolyaninov in general. Without mental and moral culture, deprived of at least practical service experience, Obolyaninov could hold in his post only with unquestioning obedience and precise performance. He never objected to the emperor, blindly following the commands; in affairs the arbitrariness was established.

The heavy orders of the Pavlovian regime Obolyaninov aggravated by rudeness and aroused general hostility. The lack of upbringing and education affected the work at the highest post: he often scolded his subordinates, not being embarrassed in expressions; wrote with errors, distorting the name. However, he had the talent for staffing intelligent people in key positions. In the words of Dmitry Mertvago, Obolyaninov's colleague, Peter Khrisanfovich "became like a great Vizier" under the sovereign. The emperor Paul instructed him to take the oath of his sons Alexander and Konstantin on the memorable day of March 11, 1801. On the night of the same day, during the coup, Obolyaninov was arrested, and although he was immediately released, his career ended; a few days later he went to Moscow. Here, at first, he was forbidden even to visit a noble assembly, where Field Marshal Kamensky publicly called him "a state thief, a bribe taker, a fool stuffed".

Before the invasion of the French, the Obolyaninovs lived openly in Moscow, receiving many guests. Obolyaninov managed to attract Moscow society with dinners and more than once he was elected the Marshal of Nobility. In this post, he even showed civil courage in 1826, raising his voice for the mitigation of punishment to Muscovite Decembrist Prince Yevgeny Obolensky, who was originally sentenced to the death penalty, then replaced by hard labor.

In the fire of 1812, Obolyaninov's Moscow house on the corner of Tverskaya and Sadovaya streets, with a large garden and two outbuildings, burned down and was never really renewed. The couple moved to Obolyaninovo, situated near Moscow, where an elderly general engaged in the cultivation of flowers, and his wife became interested in dog breeding. According to the testimony of the mistress of the neighboring estate:[1]

Obolyaninov's face was very ugly: thin, big onion nose, sunken eyes with a stern look, hair very sparse on the whole head and cut out so tightly that it was impossible to catch it. He would have been rather tall if he had not kept himself bent; I think it was from habit, and in his old age, when he could not walk, and he was carried around the rooms in the armchairs, his head bent down so that he was almost on his knees.

The death of his wife had such a strong effect on Obolyaninov that he "slept on her bed until his death, on her pillows and was covered with the blanket under which she died".[1] He himself died in the ninetieth year on September 22, 1841, in Moscow, in his house on Tverskaya. He was buried next to his wife in the Tver estate, in the parish church of the village of Tolozhnya, Novotorzhsky district.