Anna of Russia Anna of Russia Anna Ioannovna (; – ), also spelled Anna Ivanovna and sometimes anglicized as Anne, was regent of the duchy of Courland from 1711 until 1730 and then ruled as Empress of Russia from 1730 to 1740. Anna was born in Moscow as the daughter of Tsar Ivan V by his wife Praskovia Saltykova. Ivan V was co-ruler of Russia along with his younger half-brother Peter the Great, but he was mentally disabled and incapable of administering the country, and Peter effectively ruled alone. Ivan V died in February 1696, when Anna was only three years old, and
Ivan V of Russia supreme ruler and Tsar of all of Russia. The struggle for power within the family had finally ended, and Peter was left to bring Russia into a new age of westernization. In 1730, more than 30 years after Ivan's death, his second surviving daughter Anna, Duchess of Courland was invited to the throne of Russia by the country's privy council. She ruled for more than 10 years, and was succeeded by Ivan's infant great-grandson Ivan VI, but a palace coup engineered in 1741, by Ivan's niece Elizabeth, resulted in the throne passing finally to the progeny of Peter the Great.