Ivan Betskoi

Ivan Ivanovich Betskoi or Betskoy (Russian: Ива́н Ива́нович Бе́цкой; 14 February [O.S. 3 February] 1704 – 11 September [O.S. 31 August] 1795) was a Russian school reformer who served as Catherine II's advisor on education and President of the Imperial Academy of Arts for thirty years (1764–94). Perhaps the crowning achievement of his long career was the establishment of Russia's first unified system of public education.

Betskoy's parents were Prince Ivan Trubetskoy, a Russian Field Marshal, and his Swedish mistress, Baroness Wrede. His surname is the abbreviated form of his father's.

He was born in , where Trubetskoy was held captive throughout the Great Northern War, and went to Copenhagen to get a military education before joining a Danish cavalry regiment. It was in the Danish service that he sustained a fall from a horse which forced him to retire from the service. Field Marshal Trubetskoy, having no other sons but Betskoy, recalled him to Russia in 1729. At first he served as his father's aide-de-camp but later would be sent on diplomatic missions to various capitals of Europe.

Betskoy was actively involved in a coup d'etat that brought Elizaveta Petrovna to the Russian throne. The grateful empress promoted him to General Major and asked him to attend Johanna Elisabeth of Holstein, whose daughter Catherine was selected as a bride for the Empress' nephew and heir, Grand Duke Peter. In truth, Betskoy had been on friendly terms with Johanna Elisabeth for two decades previous, their intimacy giving rise to rumours that Catherine was his biological daughter.

After Johanna Elisabeth was expelled from Russia in 1747, Betskoy found it necessary to lay down his offices and settle in Paris, where he spent the following 15 years in commerce with the Encyclopédistes especially to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. And to Denis Diderot, he was at least in correspondence with him. He was introduced to the highest echelons of the French aristocracy by his only sister Anastasia Ivanovna, Landgravine von Hesse-Homburg (her first husband was Prince Demetre Cantemir, ruler of Moldavia).

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