Although Peter had already ascended the throne, the Miloslavskiis conspired to exploit this discontent. They set 15 May 1682 (the anniversary of the suspicious death of the Tsarevich Dmitrii in Uglich) as the date for a massacre that, according to plans, was to take the lives of forty-six adversaries. To incite the mass of Streltsy, they spread false rumours that the Naryshkins had murdered Ivan; it did not help when the Streltsy who stormed the Kremlin were shown that Ivan was alive. For three days long they raged, killing some seventy victims, including Matveev (who had just returned from exile) and other high officials. The young Peter had to watch this bloodbath and suffered a nervous shock that had a profound impact on the rest of his life.
To Sofia’s credit, she herself acted with moderation and persuaded the Streltsy to allow the mere banishment of many other boyars. She also reached a compromise agreement with I. A. Khovanskii (head of the Streltsy Chancellery and the rebels’ leader) for the coronation of both tsareviches, as Ivan V and Peter I, on 26 May (using a specially constructed double throne). The manifesto justifying this diarchy cited precedents in world history but also practical advantages: one tsar could remain in the Kremlin while the other led military campaigns. More problematic was the regency of Sofia (which had been offered by the Streltsy): Ivan was already of age and Peter’s mother could have been his regent.
As the rebels continued to indulge in a violent reign of terror (the ‘Khovanshchina’) and declared all bondsmen to be free, Sofia attempted to pacify them with gifts of money. But the Streltsy felt increasingly insecure. In early June they demanded that the government rename them ‘court infantry’ and also acknowledge the honourable goals of their rebellion—through a formal declaration and erection of a column on Red Square that would explain why so many famous men had to perish. Their political programme could have exerted considerable influence had the Streltsy themselves enjoyed the support of the general populace. But they had the support only of Old Believers, who—after Avvakum’s immolation (on the eve of the rebellion)—regarded Khovanskii as their leader. At his insistence a debate over the true belief was staged in the Kremlin, with the participation of the patriarch and numerous high-ranking church officials. But the most sensational moment came when, contrary to tradition, Sofia herself intervened in the debate and, using deft arguments, dealt Khovanskii a defeat. She then put the rebels under pressure by announcing that the court was moving out of Moscow.
It did so that summer. Although élites usually went to Kolomenskoe to pass the summer, her real intent became apparent when the tsars failed to return to the Kremlin for new year celebrations on 1 September. The Streltsy were now blamed for having driven off the government. Shortly thereafter Sofia charged Khovanskii with high treason and had him executed without trial. The government finally returned to Moscow in November, but only after the Streltsy had begged for forgiveness and removed their column from Red Square. Security for the Kremlin was now assigned to a noble regiment (a step that inadvertently laid the foundations for the recurring palace coups by guard regiments in the eighteenth century). The Streltsy threat neutralized, Sofia now assumed the reins of power, with the ‘tsars’ appearing only for Kremlin celebrations.
The Regency of Sofia (1682–1689)
Her regency lasted just seven years, almost as brief as Fedor’s reign. V. V. Golitsyn, her leading official and probably her lover, continued his predecessor’s foreign policy and cultivated contacts with the West.
However, reform initiatives were now rare; because plans for domestic reform were, unfortunately, poorly preserved, much about her reign must remain speculative. The tensions between the Miloslavskiis and the Naryshkins apparently hampered decision-making, but Sofia did tackle three problems: she finally began the long-awaited land survey, intensified the search for fugitives, and gave the conditional service estate (pomest′e) the same juridical status as the hereditary family estate (votchina). The last reform thus eliminated any distinction between the two forms of landholding—something that the service nobility had demanded. But this concession also served to level the nobility—something that the autocracy itself had wanted.
Golitsyn’s tolerant attitude towards the West proved advantageous for the foreigners’ suburb and even Jesuits. This was in marked contrast to the vigorous persecution of Old Believers, who were even burned at the stake if they refused to recant. Such harshness derived from the government’s lingering fear of a new uprising of the Streltsy. But immolation failed to quell the religious dissenters and even impelled them to commit mass suicide—from apocalyptical fears that the Last Judgement was imminent, that they might somehow be ensnared in the service of Anti-Christ. As a result, some 2,700 Old Believers in Paleostrov Monastery and several thousand more in Berezov (on the Volok) burnt themselves alive in 1687–8 alone; after a year of siege another 1,500 in Paleostrov put themselves to the torch.
The infusion of Western culture also brought a major confrontation between ‘Latinizers’ and ‘Hellenizers’. The two chief protagonists included a monk Evfimii (a collaborator of Patriarch Ioakim) and Silvestr Medvedev (the Polotskii pupil who drafted the charter for the Slavonic-Greek-Latin academy in 1682). Under the patriarch’s direction, Evfimii revised that statute so as to replace Latin with Greek and to exclude teachers from Ukraine and Lithuania. The struggle, which lasted for several years, produced a number of learned treatises. When the academy finally opened in 1687 as the first school of higher learning in Russia, its curriculum nevertheless included Latin—as well as such subjects as grammar, poetics, rhetoric, didactics, and physics. Nevertheless, pressure against the ‘Latinizer’ Medvedev steadily mounted, for Sofia feared a new schism, particularly when many Old Believers—from anti-Hellenistic sentiments—expressed sympathy for the Latinizers.
By then Sofia had come to nourish her own ambitions. In 1685 she began to appear at public ceremonies that had traditionally been reserved for the tsar; in 1686 she affixed the title of ‘Autocratrix’ to her portrait. And, apparently, she sought formal coronation after signing the Eternal Peace with Poland in 1686, the greatest triumph of her regency. The agreement ratified the Armistice of Andrusovo (1667), for the Poles now realized the need to co-operate with Russia on the Ukrainian-Ottoman border. Therefore they now recognized the partition of Ukraine and approved Russia’s entry into an anti-Turkish coalition that had been formed as the ‘Holy League’ (Habsburg, Poland, and Venetia) in 1684. In addition, the rulers recognized each other’s title and granted freedom of confession to each other’s fellow believers—the Orthodox in Poland-Lithuania, Catholics in Muscovy. This religious policy had been preceded by subordination of the Kievan metropolitanate to the Moscow Patriarchate in 1685, a long-cherished goal of the Russian Orthodox Church. Moscow also obtained a stronger claim to a protectorate over the Orthodox Christians under the Turkish yoke, something which it had already asserted for several decades. However, the tolerance promised to Catholics alienated the distrustful patriarch and impelled him to embrace Peter in the next coup of 1689.