Sophia

Russian regent (r. 1682-1689)

• Born: September 27, 1657
• Birthplace: Moscow, Russia
• Died: July 14, 1704
• Place of death: Novodevichy Convent, Moscow, Russia

Sophia acted as regent on behalf of her younger brother, Ivan V, and her half brother, Peter the Great, between 1682 and 1689. She built upon the trickle of reforms initiated by her father, Czar Alexis, accustoming her people to modest innovation, which became a flood under Peter the Great.

Early Life

Sophia (SAWF-yuh) was the sixth of thirteen children born to Czar Alexis and to his first wife, Maria Miloslavskaya, who belonged to a distinguished Muscovite family. Sophia was one of nine sisters and five brothers, some of whom died prematurely, but two of her brothers became czars, Fyodor II (r. 1676-1682) and Ivan V (r. 1682-1696). Her famous half brother, Czar Peter the Great (r. 1682-1725), was Alexis’s son with his second wife, Natalya Kirillovna Naryshkina.

Like all aristocratic Muscovite women prior to Peter the Great’s reforms, Sophia was brought up in the Terem (women’s quarters) of the Faceted Palace, where women passed their secluded lives in a routine of religious duties, needlework, eating, and drinking. The Terem in many respects resembled the harems of aristocratic Muslim families. Terem women were uneducated, except for religious instruction, but Sophia was an exception. Somehow (the details remain unknown), she contrived to be present during the instruction given to her brother, Fyodor, and thereby acquired an education far beyond that of other women of the Romanov family.

After her mother’s death in 1669 and her father’s remarriage, Sophia would soon have become aware of the bitter and relentless rivalry between the families and retainers of the two wives. Alongside these individual intrigues, she would also have observed the deep schism in the Russian Orthodox Church , initiated during the reign of her father. This schism resulted in many conservatives known as Old Believers (raskolniki) being savagely persecuted as schismatics. Sophia would also have noticed her father’s various attempts to reform the ramshackle Russian state, including military reforms involving the establishment of units under foreign officers. The foreign officers’ presence was bitterly resented by the core of the Russian army, the strelsi, a reactionary corps of musketeers first established by Ivan the Terrible. For all that, no evidence survives to suggest that Sophia had, or indeed could have expected to have, political aspirations. It was the premature death of Fyodor and the feeble health of Ivan that provided the unique circumstances for her astonishing rise to power.

Life’s Work

The reign of Fyodor II was short and uneventful, with the government firmly in the hands of his Miloslavsky relatives. The czar suffered from poor health and died young. At her brother’s death, Sophia was twenty-five and seems to have enjoyed a following within the court. On the day of Fyodor’s death, the patriarch of Moscow summoned a cross-section of the community, drawn mainly from the immediate vicinity of the Kremlin, and offered them the choice of having as ruler one or other of the young princes, Ivan or Peter. The crowd favored Peter, with his mother as regent, thereby empowering the Naryshkins and excluding the Miloslavsky faction from power.

What happened next remains uncertain. At the center of events was Prince Ivan Khovansky, an experienced commander, extremely ambitious and with a reputation as a braggart and a debauché. He enjoyed extensive influence among the restless streltsi. His brief political role caused this period to be known as Khovanshchina (Khovansky Mischief, which became the title of Modest Mussorgsky’s great opera of 1886). A rumor began, perhaps originating with Prince Khovansky, that Ivan V had been murdered. This caused the streltsi, on May 15, 1682, to burst into the Kremlin and riot in front of the Faceted Palace. After further disorders, the young czars, with Peter’s mother Natalya, appeared on the Red Staircase. An ally of Natalya and former favorite of Alexis, Artemon Matveev, attempted to soothe the crowd. He was followed by a streltsi commander, Prince Mikhail Dolgoruky, son of the head of the Streltsi Prikaz (the streltsi bureau), who insulted the men and threatened them. The effect was explosive. The streltsi rushed the steps and hacked both Matveev and Dolgoruky to pieces. Then they burst into the palace and murdered any members and supporters of the Naryshkin family they could find.

By the end of May, the triumphant streltsi were in control: Ivan and Peter were to reign jointly as co-czars, and Sophia was to be regent, a position that she held from 1682 to 1689. The joint coronation took place on June 25, 1682. Prince Khovansky was appointed head of the Streltsi Prikaz. His son, Prince Andrei, was appointed head of the Sudnyi Prikaz, the bureau of justice. Sophia, while consolidating her position, avoided direct confrontation with Prince Khovansky, the darling of the streltsi. Instead, she left Moscow and, during July and August, visited various royal estates and monasteries. She kept apprised of the situation in Moscow, however, and when Prince Khovansky, who was instigating unrest among the Old Believers, failed to appear when summoned, she had him and his son arrested, denounced before the Boyar Duma (council of nobles), and executed (September 17, 1682). Fyodor Shaklovity, Sophia’s devoted supporter, who would remain loyal almost to the end, was appointed to replace Khovansky as head of the Streltsi Prikaz.

Sophia, as a woman, could not rule Muscovy in the way later eighteenth century czarinas were to do, and she turned for a mentor and chief minister to the brilliant Prince Vasily Vasilyevich Golitsyn (1643-1714), who had served both czars Alexis and Fyodor in various capacities. Like Alexis and Sophia herself, Golitsyn favored cautious change. The boy-czars, meanwhile, participated in the ceremonial life of the monarchy: Ivan lived in the Kremlin, while Peter lived with his mother in the village of Preobrazhenskoe, where he played war games with his companions and servants and established close ties with various foreign nationals. Sophia, who, despite her willingness to innovate, strictly adhered to the elaborate formality of religious life expected of Muscovite rulers, lived in the Kremlin but regularly visited the famous monastic complexes, such as the Trinity-Saint Sergius monastery at Zagorsk and the Novodevichy, which she built up lavishly in the style known as Muscovite Baroque.

Sophia’s six-year regency left a strong imprint upon Russia’s foreign relations, replacing the old Muscovite xenophobia with cautious commitment. She negotiated treaties with the Holy Roman Empire, Sweden, Denmark, and Brandenburg. On April 26, 1686, eternal peace with Poland was proclaimed by the Treaty of Moscow, a major triumph for Sophia. In retrospect, it seems clear that it was from this treaty that Russia emerged as a truly great power in eastern Europe, while Poland sank into political decrepitude. Further afield, Cossack penetration of the Amur region had provoked a Manchu counterattack on the fort of Albazin, leading to the Russo-Chinese Treaty of Nerchinsk (August 27, 1689).

The Crimean Khanate, itself a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire , continued to occupy not only the Crimean peninsula but also part of the Ukraine. In February, 1687, Prince Golitsyn led an expedition against the Crimea, while Sophia joined with the Holy Roman Empire, Poland, the Papal States, and the Venetian Republic in the Holy League against the Ottomans, ostensibly out of concern for the welfare of the Orthodox Christians under Muslim rule. Neither the Orthodox patriarch nor his people was comfortable with an alliance with the Catholic powers, however. Moreover, Golitsyn blundered in his campaign on the steppes and turned back in June, 1687. A second expedition between February and July, 1689, fared no better and came at a time when Sophia’s regency was already unraveling. She and Golitsyn attempted to present the expedition as a triumph, but the reality of the situation soon became public knowledge.

As Ivan and Peter grew older, Sophia’s position was becoming untenable, for there was no precedent for Russian female rule. The seventeen-year-old Peter, eager for power and growing assertive, had publicly clashed with Sophia on July 8, 1689, in Moscow’s Kazan Cathedral, even before Golitsyn’s return from the Crimea. Peter then withdrew to the Trinity monastery (August 7-8) and summoned the streltsi and the service-nobles to join him there. When Sophia attempted to see him, she was turned back (August 29, 1689), and on September 7, she was denied the use of her royal titles (“Great Sovereign Lady, Pious Czarevna and Great Princess Sophia Alekseevna, Autocrat of all the Great and Little and White Russias”). She was confined in the Novodevichy convent. Golitsyn and his family were sent into exile near the White Sea, and the loyal Shaklovity was executed (November, 1689).

Ivan V and Peter I were now indubitably the czars of Russia, with Peter the effective ruler. Ivan died in January, 1696. Peter thereafter departed for his Grand Embassy to Western Europe (1697-1698) but returned prematurely at news of a streltsi mutiny. In the course of his brutal interrogation, torture, and execution of the streltsi, Peter sought unsuccessfully for proof of Sophia’s complicity. In October, 1698, he interrogated her personally at Novodevichy but apparently could not prove her involvement. That same month she was made to take the veil as the nun Susanna. She died in Novodevichy on July 14, 1704.

Significance

Although conservative in matters of religion, Sophia, with her modest reforms, provided a significant bridge between the reign of her father, Alexis, a cautious and timid innovator, and that of Peter the Great, with his dynamic program of modernization. Her diplomatic career, although short-lived, had lasting effects upon the fate of Eastern Europe. She may also have set a precedent for a series of eighteenth century czarinas—Catherine I, Anna, Elizabeth, and Catherine II—the last of whom raised the Russian state to the pinnacle of its national glory.

Bibliography

Dixon, Simon. The Modernization of Russia, 1676-1825. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. A good general introduction to early modern Russia.

Hughes, Lindsey. Russia and the West: The Life of a Seventeenth-Century Westernizer, Prince Vasily Vasil’evich Golitsyn, 1643-1714. Newtonville, Mass.: Oriental Research Partners, 1984. The biography of Sophia’s mentor and prime minister.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Russia in the Age of Peter the Great. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998. An essential introduction to Petrine studies.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Sophia: Regent of Russia, 1657-1704. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990. The only study of Sophia available in English. A superb biography.

Longworth, Philip. Alexis: Tsar of All the Russias. New York: Franklin Watts, 1884. Essential for understanding the world into which Sophia was born.