COUNT (1688-176o), Russian diplomatist, was educated at Ber lin, and was sent by Peter the Great to represent Russia at Copen hagen in 1705. In 172o he was appointed resident at London at a time when the English court was greatly inflamed against Peter, who was regarded as a dangerous rival in the Baltic; and Bestuz hev was summarily dismissed for protesting against the lately formed Anglo-Swedish alliance. On the conclusion of the peace of Nystad in 172I he was sent as ambassador to the court of Stockholm. His first official act was the signing of a defensive alliance between Russia and Sweden for 12 years in 17 24. He was successively transferred to Warsaw (1726) and to Berlin (173o), but returned to Stockholm in 1732. How far Bestuzhev was con cerned in the murder (June 28, 1739) of the Swedish diplomatic agent Sinclair in Silesia on his journey home from Constantinople, it is difficult to say. It is certain that Bestuzhev sent information to his court of Sinclair's mission, which was supposed to be hostile to Russia, and even supplied the portrait of the envoy for recog nition. The Swedish authorities are unanimous in describing Bestuzhev as the arch-plotter in this miserable affair; yet, while the active agents were banished to Siberia, Bestuzhev was not even censured. The Sinclair murder led ultimately to the Swedish Russian War of 1741, when Bestuzhev was transferred first to Hamburg and subsequently to Hanover, where he endeavoured to conclude an alliance between Great Britain and Russia. On his return to Russia in 1743, he was made grand marshal, and married Anna, the widow of Paul Yaguzhinsky, Peter the Great's famous pupil. A few months later his wife was implicated in a false conspiracy got up by the French ambassador, the marquis de La Chetardie, to ruin the Bestuzhevs (see BESTUZHEV-RYUMIN, ALEXIUS), and after a public whipping, had her tongue cut out and was banished to Siberia. Thither Bestuzhev had not the man hood to follow her, but went abroad, and subsequently resumed his diplomatic career. His last and most brilliant mission was to Versailles, shortly after the conclusion of the coalition against Frederick the Great. He died in Paris on Feb. 26, 1760.
See Robert Nisbet Bain, The Daughter of Peter the Great (1899) ; Mikhail Sergyievich, History of Russia (Rus.), vols. xv.-xxii. (end ed., 1897) . (R. N. B.)