Peter the Great

by Robert K. Massie

  Sophia, sitting in the Kremlin, powerless to halt the continuing exodus to Troitsky, was becoming desperate. In a final effort to resolve the crisis by conciliation, she decided to go to Troitsky herself and confront Peter personally. Accompanied by Vasily Golitsyn, Shaklovity and a guard of Streltsy, she set out along the Great Russian Road. At the village of Vozdvizhenskoe, about eight miles from the great monastery, she was met by Peter's friend Ivan Buturlin and a company of soldiers with loaded muskets. Aligning his men across the road, Buturlin ordered the Regent to halt. He told her that Peter refused to see her, forbade her coming to Troitsky and commanded that she return immediately to Moscow. Insulted and angry, Sophia declared, "I shall certainly go to Troitsky!" and ordered Buturlin and his men out of her path. At this moment, another of Peter's supporters, the younger Prince Troekurov, arrived with the Tsar's command that his sister must definitely be prevented from coming, if necessary by force.

  Frustrated and humiliated, Sophia retreated. Returning to the Kremlin before dawn on September 11, she sent for the dwindling circle of her supporters. Her tone was near hysterical: "They almost shot me at Vozdvizhenskoe. Many people rode out after me with muskets and bows. It was with difficulty I got away and hastened to Moscow in five hours. The Naryshkins and Lopukhins are making a plot to kill the Tsar Ivan Alexeevich, and are even aiming at my head. I will collect the regiments and talk to them myself. Obey us and do not go to Troitsky. I trust in you. In whom should I trust rather than you, O faithful supporters? Will you also run away? Kiss the cross first"—and Sophia held out the cross for each one to kiss. "Now if you try to run away, the cross will not let you go. When letters come from Troitsky, do not read them. Bring them to the palace."

  Having gained the initiative, Peter and his advisors were not to give it up. Within a few hours of Sophia's return to Moscow, Colonel Ivan; Nechaev arrived from Troitsky with official letters addressed to Tsar Ivan and the Regent Sophia. These letters formally announced the existence of a plot against the life of Tsar Peter and declared the leading plotters to be Shaklovity and Medvedev—traitors who were to be arrested immediately and sent to Peter at Troitsky for judgment.

  These letters, delivered first to a palace clerk at the foot of the Red Staircase, produced a shock wave which rolled through the palace. Officials and officers who had stood by Sophia expecting either that she would win or that there would be a compromise understood now that they faced ruin or death. Those Streltsy still partially loyal to the Regent began to grumble that they would not protect traitors and that the plotters must be surrendered. Sophia ordered that Colonel Nechaev, the bearer of these unwelcome letters, be brought to her, and he received the full force of her seething emotions. Raging, trembling, she asked him, "How dare you take upon yourself such a duty?" Nechaev answered that he did not dare to disobey the Tsar. In a fury, Sophia ordered his head cut off. Luckily for Nechaev, no executioner could be found at that moment, and in the ensuing uproar he was forgotten.

  Sophia, alone and at bay, tried one final time to rally her supporters. Going out to the top of the Red Staircase, she addressed a crowd of Streltsy and citizens in the palace square. Her head high, she hurled defiance at the Naryshkins and begged her audience not to desert her:

  "Evil-minded people . . . have used all means to make me and the Tsar Ivan quarrel with my younger brother. They have sown discord, jealousy and trouble. They have hired people to talk of a plot against the life of the younger Tsar and of other people. Out of jealousy of the great services of Fedor Shaklovity and of his constant care, day and night, for the safety and prosperity of the empire, they have given him out to be the chief of the conspiracy, as if one existed. To settle the matter and to find out the reason for this accusation, I went myself to Troitsky, but was kept back by the advice of the evil counselors whom my brother has about him and was not allowed to go farther. After being insulted in this way, I was obliged to come home. You all well know how I have managed these seven years; how I took on myself the regency in the most unquiet times; how I have concluded a famous and true peace with the Christian rulers, our neighbors, and how the enemies of the Christian religion have been brought by my arms into terror and confusion. For your services you have received great reward and I have always shown you my favor. I cannot believe that you will betray me and will believe the inventions of enemies of the general peace and prosperity. It is not the life of Fedor Shaklovity that they want, but my life and that of my brother."

  Three times that day, Sophia made this speech, first to the Streltsy, then to the leading citizens of Moscow, finally to a large crowd which included a number of foreign officers summoned from the German Suburb. Her exhortations had an effect: "It was a long and fine speech," said Gordon, and the mood of the crowd seemed much improved. At his sister's command, Tsar Ivan descended into the crowd to hand cups of vodka to the boyars, officials and Streltsy. Sophia was pleased. In a generous mood, she sent for Colonel Nechaev, forgave him and handed him a cup of vodka.

  In this interim, Prince Boris Golitsyn, one of the dominant leaders in Peter's party at Troitsky, tried to win the support of his cousin Vasily. Boris sent a messenger asking Vasily to come to Troitsky to seek the Tsar's favor. Vasily replied by asking Boris to help him mediate between the two parties. Boris refused and suggested again that Vasily come to Troitsky, promising that he would be favorably received by Peter. Honorably, Vasily refused, saying that duty required him to remain at Sophia's side.

  It was again Peter's move, and again he increased the pressure on Sophia. On September 14, a written order from Peter arrived in the German Suburb. Addressed to all the generals, colonels and other officers residing there, it restated the existence of a plot, named Shaklovity and Medvedev as the chief conspirators and commanded that all foreign officers come to Troitsky, fully armed and on horseback. For these foreign soldiers, this order posed a dangerous dilemma. They had contracted to serve the government, but, in this chaotic situation, who was the government? Already, in an effort to avoid taking sides in a family quarrel between brother and sister, General Gordon, the leader of the foreign officers, had declared that without an order from both Tsars none of his officers would stir. Now Peter's command forced the issue for Gordon. Personally, aside from all threats, Gordon was embarrassed by the need to choose a side: He was fond of Peter and had often helped him in his games with artillery and fireworks, and he was even closer to Golitsyn, with whom he had worked for years to reform the Russian army and whom he had followed on the two disastrous campaigns to the Crimea. Thus, when Peter's letter was opened and read in the presence of all the senior foreign officers, Gordon's reaction was to report Peter's command to Golitsyn and ask his advice. Golitsyn was distressed and said that he would discuss the matter immediately with Sophia and Ivan. Gordon reminded Golitsyn that all the foreigners, through no fault of their own, risked their heads if they made the wrong move. Golitsyn understood and said that he would give them an answer by evening. He asked that Gordon send his son-in-law to the palace to receive4 the Regent's answer.

  Gordon, however, made his own decision as soon as he saw Golitsyn's hesitation. If the Regent's favorite, the Keeper of a Great Seal, the commander-in-chief of the army, could not issue a command, then the regime in Moscow was obviously near collapse. Gordon saddled his horse and told his officers that, no matter what orders came from the Kremlin, he meant to leave for Troitsky. That night, a long cavalcade of foreign officers rode out of the capital and reached the monastery at dawn. Peter arose to greet them and give them his hands to kiss.

  The departure of the foreign officers was, as Gordon himself noted in his diary, "the decisive break." The Streltsy remaining in Moscow realized that Peter had won. To save themselves, they crowded in front of the palace demanding that Shaklovity be surrendered to them so that they could take him to Troitsky and hand him over to Peter. Sophia refused, whereupon the Streltsy began to shout, "You had better finish this matter at once! If you do not give him up, we shall sound the alar
m bell!" Sophia understood what this meant: another riot, with soldiers running wild, slaughtering whoever they decided was a traitor. In this violence, anyone—even she—might die. She was beaten. She sent for Shaklovity, who, like Ivan Naryshkin seven years before, had been hiding in the palace chapel. Tearfully, she gave him up, and that night he was taken in chains to Troitsky.

  The struggle was over, the regency was concluded, Peter had won. After victory came vengeance. The first blows fell swiftly on Shaklovity. Upon his arrival at Troitsky, he was interrogated under the knout. After fifteen blows, he admitted that he had considered the murder of Peter and his mother, Natalya, but he denied making any specific plans. In the course of his confession, he completely exonerated Vasily Golitsyn from any knowledge of, or participation in, his activities. Golitsyn himself was now also at Troitsky. On the morning of Shaklovity's arrival, Golitsyn had voluntarily appeared outside the monastery walls, asking permission to enter and pay homage to Tsar Peter. His request to enter was denied and he was commanded to wait in the village until a decision about him had been made. How to handle him was a difficult problem for Peter and his supporters! On the one hand, he had been Sophia's principal minister, general and lover for the seven years of the regency and therefore must be degraded along with the Regent's other intimate advisors. On the other hand, it was widely recognized that the intent of Golitsyn's service had been honorable even when he failed in execution. Shaklovity had stated that Golitsyn had had no part in any plot. Most important, Golitsyn was a member of one of Russia's preeminent families, and his cousin Prince Boris Golitsyn was anxious to spare the family the disgrace of a charge of treason.

  In trying to spare Vasily, Boris Golitsyn risked the anger of the Tsaritsa Natalya and others of Peter's advisors. At one point, they even threatened to implicate him along with his cousin. This moment came after Shaklovity had written a nine-page confession in the presence of Boris Golitsyn. It was after midnight when Shaklovity finished, and Peter had gone to bed, so Boris took the confession to his own room, intending to hand it to Peter in the morning. But someone rushed to the Tsar, awakened him and reported that Boris Golitsyn had taken Shaklovity's confession to his room so that he could remove anything in it detrimental to his cousin. Peter immediately sent a messenger to ask Shaklovity whether he had written a confession and, if so, where it was. Shaklovity replied that he had given it to Prince Boris Golitsyn. Golitsyn, luckily, was warned by a friend that Peter was awake and hurried to present the confession to the Tsar. Sternly, Peter asked why he had not been given the papers immediately. When Golitsyn replied that it was late and he had not wished to wake the Tsar, Peter accepted the explanation and, on the basis of Shaklovity's exoneration, decided to spare Vasily Golitsyn's life.

  At nine that evening, Vasily Golitsyn was summoned. Expecting to see Peter in person, he had prepared a statement reciting his services to the state as a preface to asking for pardon. But no audience was granted. Golitsyn was left to stand in the middle of a crowded anteroom while a clerk appeared on a staircase and read his sentence aloud. He was charged with reporting only to the Regent and not to the Tsars in person, with writing Sophia's name on official documents in equality with those of the Tsars, and with causing harm and burdens to the government and people by his bad generalship of the two Crimean campaigns. Although his life was spared, his sentence was harsh: He was deprived of the rank of boyar, stripped of all property and exiled with his family to a village in the Arctic. He set out, miserable and newly impoverished. Along the way, he was cheered by a courier from Sophia who brought him a packet of money and her promise to procure his release through the intercession of Tsar Ivan. It was perhaps the last good news Golitsyn ever received. Soon, Sophia was unable to help anyone, not even herself, and the handsome, urbane Golitsyn began twenty-five years of exile. He was forty-six in that summer of 1689 when Sophia was overthrown, and he lived a wretched existence in the Arctic until he died in 1714 at the age of seventy-one.

  It is ironic that a man so advanced for the Russia of his day, one who might have been so useful to Peter in the Tsar's effort to modernize the state, should have found himself in the party opposing Peter, should have lost everything in the shift of power and thus been condemned to sit out most of the Great Reformer's reign in an Arctic hut. And it was equally ironic that the Muscovite boyars should have rallied to Peter in opposition to Golitsyn. By helping Peter overthrow Sophia and Golitsyn, they believed they were rejecting the dangerous intrusion of Western culture. In fact, they had cleared away the major obstacles to the rise of the greatest Westernizer in Russia's history.

  Golitsyn's end seems wretched, but it was mild in comparison to the fate of other members of Sophia's inner circle. Although, according to Gordon, Peter was reluctant to impose the ultimate penalty upon his opponents, the older leaders of his party, and especially the Patriarch, insisted on it. Shaklovity was condemned to death, and four days after his arrival at Troitsky he was beheaded outside the great wall of the monastery. Two others died with him. Three Streltsy were knouted, their tongues were torn out and they were exiled to Siberia. Sylvester Medvedev had fled from Moscow, hoping to find asylum in Poland, but he was intercepted, brought to Troitsky and interrogated under torture. He admitted that he had heard vague talk against the lives of some of Peter's adherents and that he had written the damningly complimentary verses inscribed beneath Sophia's portrait, but he denied that he had been involved in any conspiracy against either Peter or the Patriarch. He was held, then denounced again, severely tortured with fire and hot irons, and finally, two years later, he was executed.

  With Sophia's supporters annihilated, there still remained the central problem of what to do with Sophia herself. Alone and friendless, she waited in the Kremlin to learn her fate. None of the testimony given under torture by Shaklovity had implicated her in a conspiracy to remove Peter from the throne, much less to murder him. The most that could be said was that she was aware of designs against certain members of Peter's party and that she had been ambitious to share power with her brothers by right as autocrat rather than by delegation as regent. This, however, was enough for Peter. From Troitsky, he wrote to Ivan declaring his grievances against Sophia and proposing that henceforth the two of them alone should rule the state. He pointed out that in their coronation God had given the crown to two, not three, persons; the presence of their sister Sophia and her claims to equality with the two anointed by God were a trespass on God's will and their rights. He proposed that they govern jointly, without the disagreeable interference of "this shameful third person." He asked Ivan's permission to appoint new officials without Ivan's specific consent to each one, and concluded that Ivan should still be the senior Tsar—"I shall be ready to honor you as I would my father."

  Powerless to disagree, Ivan agreed. An order was given that Sophia's name be excluded from all official documents. Soon afterward, Peter's emissary, Prince Ivan Troekurov, arrived in the Kremlin to ask Tsar Ivan to request Sophia to leave the Kremlin for the Novodevichy Convent on the city's outskirts. She was not required to take the veil as a nun, and a suite of comfortable, well-furnished apartments was assigned to her; a large number of servants was to accompany her, and she was to live a comfortable life, restricted only in the fact that she could not leave the convent and could be visited only by her aunts and sisters. But Sophia immediately understood that this kind of confinement, however luxurious, meant the end of everything in life that held meaning for her. Power, action, excitement, intellect and love were to be stripped away. She resisted, refusing for more than a week to leave the Kremlin palace, but the pressure became too great and she was escorted ceremonially to the convent, within the walls of which she would pass the remaining fifteen years of her life.

  Peter refused to return to Moscow until Sophia had left the Kremlin. Once his sister was safely incarcerated, he rode south from Troitsky, but delayed for a week en route, passing the time with General Gordon, who exercised his infantry and cavalry under the ey
e of the Tsar. Finally, on October 16, Peter re-entered the capital, riding along a road lined with Streltsy regiments kneeling to ask his pardon. Entering the Kremlin, he went to the Uspensky Cathedral to embrace his brother, Ivan; then, dressed in robes of state, he presented himself at the top of the Red Staircase. For the first time, the young man who stood there, very tall, with round face and dark eyes, was the master of the Russian state.

  Thus fell Sophia, the first woman to rule in Moscow. Her achievements as a ruler have been exaggerated. Prince Boris Kurakin strained the truth when he said, "Never had there been such wise government in the Russian state. During the seven years of her rule, the whole state did come to a flower of great wealth." On the other hand, she was not, as some admirers of Peter have depicted her, simply 'the last ruler of the old order, a final reactionary stumbling block before the path of Russian history smoothed and broadened into the new modern avenue of the Petrine era. The truth is that Sophia was competent and, on the whole, ruled well. During the years she guided the state, Russia was in transition. Two tsars, Alexis and Fedor, had instituted mild changes and reforms in Russian policies. Sophia neither slowed nor hurried this pace, but she did allow it to continue and, in so doing, helped prepare the way for Peter. In the light of what had begun under Alexis and continued under Fedor and Sophia, even the striking changes made by Peter take on more of an evolutionary than a revolutionary character.

  It was not as a Russian ruler but as a Russian woman that Sophia was remarkable. Over the centuries, Russian woman had been degraded into domestic chattels hidden away in the dark chambers of the terem. Sophia stepped into the light of day and seized control of the state. Regardless of how well she exercised power once she had it, the simple fact of taking power in that era was enough to make of her a historic figure. Unfortunately, Sophia's womanhood was not only her distinction, it was also her undoing. When the crisis came, Muscovites were still unwilling to follow a woman in opposition to a crowned tsar.