Gradually, with so much extra time on their hands, the Streltsy drifted into trade. Individual Strelets opened shops. As members of the army, they paid no taxes on their profits and became rich. Membership in the regiments became desirable and enlistment a privilege passed down on an almost hereditary basis. As soon as a boy was old enough, he was enrolled in his father's regiment. Naturally, the richer the Streltsy became, the more reluctant they were to resume their primary duties as soldiers. A Streltsy with a profitable shop was likely to offer bribes rather than accept some arduous assignment. The Streltsy officers also profited from this large pool of manpower. Some used the idle musketeers as servants, others to build their houses or tend their gardens. Sometimes the officers embezzled the soldiers' pay, and soldiers' formal complaints to the government were usually ignored and the petitioners punished.
This is exactly what happened in May 1682, as the young Tsar Fedor lay on his deathbed. The Griboyedov Regiment presented a formal petition accusing their colonel, Semyon Griboyedov, of withholding half their pay and forcing them to work during Easter Week on a house he was building outside Moscow. The commander of the Streltsy, Prince Yury Dolgoruky, ordered the soldier presenting the petition to be whipped for insubordination. But this time, as the petitioner was being led to the knout, he passed a watching group of his regimental comrades. "Brothers," he cried "why do you give me up? I gave the petition by your orders and for you!" Aroused, the Streltsy fell upon the guards and liberated the prisoner.
This incident inflamed the Streltsy Quarter. Seventeen regiments immediately accused their colonels of cheating or maltreatment and demanded punishment. The Regent Natalya's fledgling government, just taking office, inherited the crisis and floundered badly. Many boyars of the oldest families of Russia—the Dolgorukys, Repnins, Romodanovskys, Sheremetevs, Sheins, Kurakins and Urusovs—had rallied behind Peter and his mother, but none knew how to placate the Streltsy. In the end, desperate to blunt the soldiers' hostility, Natalya sacrificed the colonels. Without investigation, she ordered the colonels arrested and stripped of rank, and their property and wealth divided to meet the soldiers' claims. Two of the colonels, one of them Semyon Griboyedov, were publicly knouted, while twelve others were given the lesser punishment of being beaten with sticks, called batogs, at the direction of the Streltsy themselves. "Beat them harder," they urged, until their officers fainted. Then, the Streltsy grumbled with satisfaction. "They have had enough. Let them go-"
Allowing a mutinous soldiery to beat its officers was a risky way of restoring discipline. For the moment, the Streltsy were appeased, but in fact their new sense of power, their increased assurance that they were entitled and even obligated to purge the state of its enemies, had made them far more dangerous.
The Streltsy thought they knew who these enemies were: the boyars and the Naryshkins. Sinister stories had been passed among them. It was rumored that Fedor had not died naturally, as had been announced, but had been poisoned by foreign doctors with the connivance of the boyars and the Naryshkins. These same enemies had then pushed aside Ivan, the rightful heir, in favor of
Peter. Now that their diabolical schemes had succeeded, foreigners would be given power in the army and government, Orthodoxy would be degraded and trampled, and, worst of all, those faithful defenders of the old values in Muscovy, the Streltsy, would be horribly punished.
These were stories which played on the traditional prejudices of the Streltsy. And other events were described in a manner calculated to arouse the soldiery. On taking office, Natalya had distributed wholesale new promotions in rank to all her Naryshkin relatives, even elevating her arrogant twenty-three-year-old younger brother Ivan to the rank of boyar. Ivan Naryshkin already was an object of dislike for his remark at Fedor's funeral. Now, fresh rumors spread: that he had rudely pushed the Tsarevna Sophia to the ground; that he had taken the crown and placed it on his own head, declaring that it looked better on him than on anyone else.
But the stories had a source, the rumors a purpose. Who was behind this effort to arouse the Streltsy? One instigator was Ivan Miloslavsky, who was keenly anxious to overthow Peter, Natalya and the Naryshkin party. Having already been exiled himself during the previous period of Naryshkin dominance at court, he had retaliated by sending Matveev to six years of harsh internment in the Arctic; now, Matveev was returning to Moscow to act as chief advisor to the new Regent—Tsaritsa Natalya Naryshkina— and Ivan Miloslavsky knew what he could expect in this- latest shift of power. Another plotter was Prince Ivan Khovansky, a vain, incessantly noisy man whose soaring ambitions were constantly thwarted by his own incompetence. Relieved of his post as Governor of Pskov, he was called before Tsar Alexis, who told him, "Everybody calls you a fool." Never willing to accept this valuation, convinced by the Miloslavskys that high office awaited him at their hands, he was an active supporter of then-cause.
Surprisingly, the plot also involved Prince Vasily Golitsyn, a man of Western tastes, caught on the Miloslavsky side because of the enemies he had made. During Fedor's reign, Golitsyn had urged reforms. It was he who drew up the new organization of the. army and proposed the abolition of precedence, and for this the boyars hated him. As the boyars now supported Natalya and the Naryshkins, Golitsyn was thrown among the Miloslavskys.
Ivan Miloslavsky, Ivan Khovansky and Vasily Golitsyn all had motives for inciting the Streltsy, but, should such a revolt succeed, none of them could step forward and rule the Russian state. Only one person was a member of the royal family, had been the confidante of Tsar Fedor and could act as regent if young Ivan mounted the throne. Only one person was now threatened with complete seclusion in a convent or terem and the extinction of all meaningful political or personal existence. Only one person had the intelligence and courage to attempt to overthrow an elected tsar. No one knows the exact extent of her involvement in the plot and the terrible events that followed; some say it was done on her behalf but without her knowledge. But the circumstantial evidence is strong that the chief conspirator was Sophia.
Meanwhile, completely unaware, Natalya waited anxiously m the Kremlin for Matveev's return. On the day of Peter's election as tsar, she had sent messengers urging him to come quickly to Moscow. He started back, but his trip turned into a triumphal progress. Every town through which he passed offered thanksgiving services and a feast for the rehabilitated statesman. Finally, on the evening of May 11, after six years in exile, the old man re-entered Moscow. Natalya greeted him as her savior and presented him to the ten-year-old Tsar, whom he had last seen as a child of four. Matveev's hair was white and his step was slow, but Natalya was certain that, with his experience and wisdom, with the prestige he enjoyed among both boyars and Streltsy, the old man would soon be able to establish order and harmony.
So it seemed for three days. During this time, Matveev's house was crowded with welcoming boyars, merchants and foreign friends from the German Suburb. The Streltsy, remembering him as an honorable former commander, sent delegations from the regiments to pay their respects. Even members of the Miloslavsky family came, with the exception of Ivan Miloslavsky, who sent word that he was ill. Matveev received them all with happy tears streaming down his face, while his house, cellars and courtyard overflowed with welcoming gifts. Peril seemed distant, but Matveev, newly arrived on the scene and still not in full control, underestimated the danger. Sophia and her party never relaxed, and the spark of revolt remained alive among the regiments. Matveev and Natalya, isolated in the Kremlin and enveloped in their happiness, did not feel the mounting tension, but others did. Baron Van Keller, the Dutch ambassador, wrote: "The discontent of the Streltsy continues. All public affairs are at a standstill. Great calamities are feared and not without cause, for the might of the Streltsy is great and no resistance can be opposed to them."