The terem should have been Sophia's world. Born in 1657, she lived there in early childhood, one of a dozen princesses—the sisters, aunts and daughters of Tsar Alexis—all caged behind its tiny windows. There seemed no reason for her rare and extraordinary quality. She was simply the third of Alexis' eight daughters by Maria Miloslavskaya; she was one of six who survived. Like her sisters, she should have been equipped with a rudimentary female education and passed her life in anonymous seclusion.
And yet Sophia was different. That strange alchemy which, for no apparent reason, lifts one child out of a large family and endows it with a special destiny had created Sophia. She had the intelligence, the ambition, the decisiveness which her feeble brothers and anonymous sisters so overwhelmingly lacked. It was almost as if her siblings had been drained of normal health, vitality and purpose in order to magnify these qualities in Sophia.
From an early age, it was apparent that Sophia was exceptional. As a child, she somehow persuaded her father to break the terem tradition and permit her to share the lessons of her brother Fedor, who was four years younger. Her tutor was the eminent scholar
Simeon Polotsky, a monk of Polish ancestry from the famous academy in Kiev. Polotsky found her "a maiden of great intelligence and the most delicate understanding, with an accomplished masculine mind." Together with a younger monk, Sylvester Medvedev, Polotsky taught his pupil theology, Latin, Polish and history. She became acquainted with poetry and drama and even performed in religious plays. Medvedev snared Polotsky's view that the Tsarevna was a student with "marvelous understanding and judgment."
Sophia was nineteen when her father died and her fifteen-year-old brother became Tsar Fedor II. Soon after Fedor's coronation, the Tsarevna began to emerge from the obscurity of the terem. Increasingly throughout his reign, she was seen in circumstances hitherto wholly unknown to women. She attended sessions of the boyar council. Her uncle Ivan Miloslavsky and the leading minister, Prince Vasily Golitsyn, included her in their conversations and decisions, so that her political views matured and she learned to judge the character of men. Gradually, she came to realize that her intellectual attainments and strength of will matched and even surmounted those of the men around her, that there was no reason, except her sex and the unbroken tradition in Muscovy that the autocrat be a man, to bar her from supreme power.
During the last week of Fedor's life, Sophia stayed at his bedside, acting as comforter, confidante and messenger, and became deeply involved in affairs of state. Fedor's death and sudden elevation to the throne of her half-brother, Peter, rather than her full brother, Ivan, were terrible blows to Sophia. She genuinely mourned Fedor, who had been her classmate and friend as well as her brother; further, the promise of a Naryshkin restoration at court meant the end of any special status for her, a Miloslavsky princess. She would certainly have less contact with high officers of state like Prince Vasily Golitsyn, whom she had come to admire. Worse, because she and the new regent, the Tsaritsa Natalya, disliked each other, she might even be sent back to the terem.
Desperately, Sophia sought another solution. She hurried to the Patriarch to complain of Peter's quick election to the throne. "This election is unjust," she protested. "Peter is young and impetuous. Ivan has reached his majority. He must be the tsar." Joachim said that the decision could not be changed. "But at least let them both rule!" begged Sophia. "No," decreed the Patriarch, "joint rule is ruinous. Let there be one tsar. It is thus pleasing to God." For the moment, Sophia had to retreat. A few days later, however, at Fedor's funeral, she made her feelings public. Peter, accompanied by his mother, followed the bier in the procession to the cathedral. Walking along, Natalya heard loud noises behind her and turned to find that Sophia had joined the procession without the moving canopy which traditionally screened a daughter of a tsar from the public. In the open, only partially veiled, Sophia was weeping theatrically and calling on the crowd to witness her grief.
Sophia's act was unprecedented, and at the crowded cathedral Natalya retaliated. During the long burial service, Natalya took Peter by the hand and walked out. Later, she explained that her son was exhausted and hungry and to have remained would have been bad for his health, but the Miloslavskys were scandalized. The situation was made worse by Natalya's arrogant younger brother Ivan Naryshkin, only just recalled to court. "The dead," he said, referring to the entire Miloslavsky clan, "should bury the dead."
On leaving the cathedral, Sophia again gave vent to her grief, now mingled with bitter rage. "You see how our brother Tsar Fedor has suddenly gone from this world. His enemies have poisoned him. Have pity on us orphans. We have no father, nor mother, nor brother. Our elder brother, Ivan, has not been elected tsar, and if we are to blame, let us go live in other lands which are ruled over by Christian kings."
4
THE REVOLT OF THE STRELTSY
Throughout the first half of Peter's life, the key to power in Russia was the Streltsy, the shaggy, bearded pikemen and musketeers who guarded the Kremlin and were Russia's first professional soldiers. They were sworn to protect "the government" in a crisis but often had difficulty deciding where the legitimate government lay. They were a kind of collective dumb animal, never quite sure who was its proper master, but ready to rush and bite anyone who challenged its own privileged position. Ivan the Terrible had formed these regiments to give a permanent professional core to the unwieldy feudal host which previous Muscovite rulers had led into battle. These older armies, consisting of squadrons of mounted noblemen and a horde of armed peasants, were summoned in the spring and sent home in the autumn. Usually, these summer soldiers, untrained and undisciplined, clutching whatever spear or axe lay at hand when they were mustered, fared badly against their better-equipped Western enemies, the Poles or the Swedes.
On guard or on parade, the Streltsy were a colorful sight. Each regiment had its own vivid colors: a caftan or full-length coat of blue, green or cherry, a fur-trimmed hat of the same color, breeches tucked into yellow boots turned up at the toe. Over the caftan, each soldier buckled a black leather belt from which to sling his sword. In one hand, he carried a musket or arquebus, in the other a halberd or pointed battle-axe.
Most of the Streltsy were simple Russians, living by the old ways, revering both tsar and patriarch, hating innovation and opposing reforms. Both officers and men were suspicious and resentful of the foreigners brought in to train the army in new weapons and tactics. They were ignorant of politics, but when they believed the country was veering from proper traditional paths, they easily convinced themselves that duty demanded their interference in affairs of state.
In peacetime, they had not enough to do. A few detachments were stationed on the Polish and Tatar frontiers, but the bulk was concentrated in Moscow, where they lived in special quarters near the Kremlin. By 1682, they numbered 22,000—divided into twenty-two regiments of 1,000 men each—who with their wives and children were an enormous mass of idle soldiery and dependents quartered in the heart of the capital. They were coddled: the tsar provided the handsome log houses in which they lived, the tsar furnished their food, their clothing and their pay. In return they served as sentries in the Kremlin and guards at the city gates. When the tsar traveled in Moscow, the Streltsy lined his route; when he left the city, they provided an escort. They served as policemen, carrying small whips to break up fights. When the city caught fire, the Streltsy became firemen.