Fyodor Shaklovity: The Brilliant Career and Fall of Tsarevna Sophia's Loyal Supporter
In this portrait, the subject of the article is depicted as Feodor Stratilat, 1680s.
The reign of Tsarevna Sophia Alexeyevna, the elder sister of the two nominal co-tsars (Ivan V and Peter I), is not well known to most of our fellow citizens. This daughter of Alexei Mikhailovich is often portrayed as a supporter of conservative forces opposed to the "progressive" Peter and his associates. This is completely untrue, as in fact, relatives of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich's two wives were vying for power in Russia at the time, and each family advocated reforms along European lines. The only question was who (and how) would implement them.
Sophia became the head of the Miloslavsky clan, whose representatives included two tsars – the childless Feodor and Ivan, the father of Empress Anna Ioannovna. The nominal head of the Naryshkin clan was the young Peter I, but in reality, even after Sophia's fall, the tsar amused himself for five years by building small ships and training his "toy" soldiers. Peter's mother, Natalya Kirillovna, a protégé of the "Russian European" Artamon Matveyev, her brother Lev Naryshkin, and the tsar's uncle Boris Golitsyn (brother of Sophia's favorite, Vasily), entered into opposition to Sophia on Peter's behalf.
This is how Lev Naryshkin was seen by viewers of the film "Youth of Peter" in 1980:
And this is how Boris Golitsyn is presented in the same film:
As for Sophia, she was undoubtedly an outstanding woman of her time, far surpassing all her brothers in education and talent. Praise for Sophia was written by such diverse people as Simeon Polotsky and his student, Sylvester Medvedev, a corrector at the Moscow Printing House, the Likhud brothers, Greek teachers at the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy, the French diplomat Foix de la Neuville, and even Prince B. I. Kurakin, the husband of Peter I's first wife's sister. Peter's brother-in-law wrote the following about Sophia's reign:
It began with all diligence and justice, and to the people's satisfaction, so that never before had the Russian state seen such wise governance. And during her reign, after seven years, the entire state reached the height of great wealth. Commerce and all manner of crafts also prospered. And sciences began to flourish. Courtesy was also established in a European manner—in carriages, in house construction, in attire, and in tables... And then, public contentment reigned supreme.
Sofia Alekseevna on the engraving by A. Bloteling
This princess was also highly valued by Peter I's great admirer Catherine II, who claimed that Sophia:
For several years, she managed the affairs of state with all the insight one could wish for. Looking at the affairs that passed through her hands, one cannot help but admit that she was quite capable of reigning.
Sophia's comrades are even less well known. While some might at least recall Vasily Golitsyn, the name of her most loyal man, Fyodor Leontyevich Shaklovitov, is a distant memory. It's him we'll be discussing today.
The youth of the article's hero
The year and place of Fyodor Shaklovity's birth are unknown, but it is believed he was born in the mid-40s and lived to be around 45 years old. His father is believed to have been a "town clerk," a type of worker who did not receive a "sovereign salary" and "lived" from their work, but was subordinate to the governors. The number of "town clerks" was constant in each city; in Kostroma, for example, there were 16 from 1686 to 1697. They certified deeds of sale and exchange and wrote petitions, thus being similar to the notaries who emerged later. They are sometimes referred to as "semi-service people." They could not boast of high birth. For example, in Pronsk in 1682, the "town clerks" were "streltsy, Cossack, and soldier children and brothers."
In 1673, still under Alexei Mikhailovich, Fyodor Shaklovity joined the Discharge Prikaz, whose activities involved matters of army personnel and supplies, fortress construction, the administration of "Ukrainian lands," and so on. From there, he transferred to the Prikaz of Secret Affairs, but it was soon disbanded, and Shaklovity returned to the Discharge Prikaz. He was evidently a capable man, and by the spring of 1676, Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich had promoted him to clerk of the Discharge Prikaz. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1676-1681, the subject of this article was responsible for army supplies and "oversaw" the Cannon Yard.
It is known that Fyodor Shaklovity was a principled opponent of the archaic local government system, which was abolished in 1682. It appears that Fyodor was a highly educated man, as he participated in the compilation of genealogical books that same year.
"Khovanshchina"
During the tragic events of 1682, which history Our country entered under the name "Khovanshchina," Shaklovity decisively supported the Miloslavskys. This clan was led by 25-year-old Sophia, who had effectively ruled the state for six years through her younger brother, Feodor, who had fallen completely under her influence. She managed to push away even his favorite, Ivan Yazykov, as well as his uncle, the boyar Ivan Miloslavsky, and Patriarch Joachim, from the sickly tsar. To be closer to her ailing brother, she personally spoon-fed him, gave him medicine, and talked about his health. the news and accompanied to the meetings of the Boyar Duma.
Tsar Feodor III, the eldest of Alexei Mikhailovich's remaining sons by his wife Maria Miloslavskaya, died on April 27 (May 7), 1682. Patriarch Joachim "lobbied" for the election of Natalia Naryshkina's ten-year-old son, Peter, to the Russian throne, rather than Maria's sixteen-year-old son, Ivan. Naturally, his mother and her relatives intended to govern the country in his stead. This provoked outrage within the Miloslavsky family, now openly headed by the young Princess Sophia, who declared:
Our brother, John the Elder, was not elected tsar! If we have offended you and the boyars in any way, then let them send us to foreign lands, to Christian kings!
Natalia Bondarchuk as Princess Sophia, still from the film "Peter's Youth", 1980
Sophia's main allies were the Gediminovich princes Vasily Golitsyn and Ivan Khovansky Tararui (Pustomelya). She was also supported by her mother's relatives, the Tolstoy brothers: Ivan (brother-in-law of the deceased Tsar Feodor) and Peter (famous for his successful "hunt" for Tsarevich Alexei, who had fled to the protection of the Austrian Emperor).
Sophia also had on her side very authoritative and experienced military leaders: Duma General Venedikt Zmeev and Lieutenant General Grigory Kosagov.
Finally, the Miloslavskys' allies were the Streltsy of 20 regiments stationed in Moscow.
A. Vasnetsov. Streletskaya Sloboda. Set design for M. Mussorgsky's opera "Khovanshchina." Incidentally, one of its characters bears the surname "Shaklovity," but he has nothing in common with the subject of the article.
The Naryshkins curried favor with the Streltsy and even dismissed colonels at their complaints, who were beaten with whips and rods and sent to prison. The Streltsy were not appeased; on the contrary, they felt like masters of the capital.
On May 15, 1682, the Miloslavskys spread a rumor that the Naryshkins had "exterminated" Tsarevich Ivan, and the Streltsy stormed the Kremlin. Ivan Miloslavsky and his nephew, Pyotr Tolstoy, played a major role in this, personally raising the Streltsy to storm the Kremlin, accusing the Naryshkins of strangling the disfavored Tsarevich.
This is how the Streltsy revolt is depicted in the 1986 Soviet-American film Peter the Great:
And so, Sophia, played by Vanessa Redgrave, greets her Streltsy allies:
The Naryshkins brought both Peter and Ivan out onto the porch, but this didn't improve the situation: many of the Naryshkins' supporters were killed before the tsareviches' eyes, including M. Dolgorukov, who headed the Streletsky Prikaz, Artamon Matveyev, Tsarina Natalia Kirillovna's tutor, and her brother Ivan. Regarding the latter, Sophia declared to her stepmother:
Your brother will not escape the archers; we should not all perish because of him.
This is how this episode is depicted in A. Korzukhin's painting: before the eyes of Natalya Kirillovna, Peter, and the triumphant Sophia, the Streltsy drag Ivan Naryshkin to execution:
According to the petitions of the Streltsy on May 23 and 29, Ivan Miloslavsky was also proclaimed tsar (and the eldest one), and their elder sister Sophia was appointed ruler, due to the young age of the brothers.
The coronation of Ivan and Peter Alekseevich. Sophia stands in the background. Engraving based on a drawing by K. Brozhe.
However, Sophia and the Miloslavskys' victory was not yet complete, as Ivan Khovansky, who had become the head of the Streltsy Prikaz, slipped out of control. The problem was resolved on September 17, 1682, when Khovansky was arrested in the village of Pushkin and subsequently beheaded. Left without a leader, the Streltsy confessed to Sophia and were forgiven.
Let's ask ourselves: was the victory of the Miloslavskys and Sophia beneficial to Russia? Let's give a simple example. During V. Golitsyn's second campaign against Crimea in 1689, his army numbered 112,000 men, of which 80,000 were in the "new order" regiments. But in 1695, out of Peter I's 120,000-man army, only 14,000 men were in the "new order" regiments. Only six years had passed, but the difference is simply astounding.
In 1700, during the siege of Narva, the Russian army consisted of 33 regular regiments, four of which were trained and organized according to European models: the Semenovsky and Preobrazhensky Guards, and the Lefortovo and Butyrsky regiments. And, apparently, the Russian army had not returned to its 1689 status in 1717, when, at a banquet, Prince Yakov Dolgoruky declared to Peter that his father, Alexei Mikhailovich, had "showed the way," but "the foolish had destroyed all his institutions." Those "foolish" were the Naryshkin favorites who overthrew Sophia in 1689. They never allowed Peter I to regain power. Only after the death of his mother in 1694 was the 22-year-old tsar finally able to free himself from his "guardians" and begin personally handling state affairs. And he discovered that in 5 years without Sophia, the number of soldiers of the “new order” decreased by 5,7 times.
Moreover, within five years, Sophia managed to sign two important treaties. The first, in April 1688, was the "Eternal Peace" with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, by which the Poles recognized the Russian occupancy of Smolensk, Kyiv, Left-Bank Ukraine, and the Seversk lands. And in 1689, the Treaty of Nerchinsk with China, which for the first time defined Russia's borders with that state. And what did the Naryshkins accomplish in those five years, from 1689 to 1694?
Fyodor Shaklovity during the reign of Sophia
V. Spiridonov as Fyodor Shaklovity, still from the film "Youth of Peter"
Let's return to the article's hero, who was elevated to the rank of Duma clerk on August 27, 1682, and to Duma nobleman on December 7. From that moment on, he could participate in meetings of the Boyar Duma, as well as be appointed head of a Prikaz (Order) or governor of a city. Shaklovity was given a very important order—the Streletsky Order.
In May 1684, he was tasked with meeting and escorting the ambassadors of Emperor Leopold I of Habsburg to Moscow. In late August and early September, he conducted land surveys and "registered scribes in the cities." In the autumn of that same year, he investigated the case of a certain widow, Brusilova, who, according to a denunciation, had uttered some "intricate and unruly words." And in 1688, he was sent to Hetman Mazepa to negotiate a new campaign against Turkey.
In early 1689, when Golitsyn set out on his second Crimean campaign, Shaklovity replaced him in the preparation of the Treaty of Nerchinsk with China. That same year, Sophia granted him the second-highest rank of okolnichy and appointed him governor of Vyazemsk. According to contemporaries, by this time it was he, not Vasily Golitsyn, who was the dignitary closest to Sophia. And the aforementioned memoirist Prince Kurakin (Peter I's brother-in-law) asserted that it was Fyodor Shaklovity, not Golitsyn, who "was the one who profited most from the Cupid under Princess Sophia." However, these were mere rumors, lacking any documentary evidence. Sophia was a woman of very strict morals, and, moreover, openly imitated Saint Pulcheria, the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Arcadius Flavius, who, upon becoming Augusta and regent for her younger brother Theodosius II, took a vow of celibacy and dedicated her virginity to God. And, according to Socrates Scholasticus, she established monastic-like rules in the imperial palace, so that her young brother, the emperor, "rose early in the morning and, together with his sisters, sang antiphons to the glory of God."
A silver Byzantine coin bearing a portrait of Pulcheria, minted in Constantinople around 420. The obverse bears the inscription: Aelia Pulcheria Augusta
After the death of her brother, 51-year-old Pulcheria, for reasons of state expediency, entered into marriage with the commander Marcian, setting him the following condition:
Since the emperor has died, I choose you from among the entire senate as the most worthy. Give me your word that you will respect my virginity, which I promised to God, and I will proclaim you king.
Under these circumstances, losing her virginity was unacceptable to Sophia, as it would immediately destroy her carefully cultivated "image." Keeping an "intimate" relationship secret in the royal chambers, filled with numerous servants, was simply impossible, and no one could rule out pregnancy.
Shaklovity became an implacable enemy of the Naryshkins, and his cherished dream was to assassinate not only Peter I but also his domineering mother. A story survives of a provocation he orchestrated to discredit one member of this hated family.
Having learned that the clerk of the Great Treasury, Matvey Shoshin, looked very much like Lev Kirillovich Naryshkin (Peter I’s uncle), he ordered him to wear a white satin caftan, gave him a “retinue” of officers loyal to him, and ordered him to attack the guardsmen at night, beat them with a whip, shouting:
You killed my brothers, and I will avenge the blood of my brothers!
The disguised Streltsy accompanying him at this time were beating their fellow soldiers with their butts, while simultaneously persuading the imaginary Naryshkin:
Lev Kirillovich! Why beat him to death? A Christian soul!
Shaklovity ordered an inventory of the beatings to be made, reported the incident to both tsars, and ordered that the injured archers be treated with medicines from the tsar's pharmacy.
The fall and death of the article's hero
On September 1, 1689, Sophia planned to be officially crowned. An unexpected incident occurred on the night of August 7–8, 1689, which prevented this. Nikolai Kostomarov gives the following account of the events:
A secret letter appeared in the royal chambers "at the top," warning the princess that on the night of August 7th-8th, the Tsar's "amusement soldiers" would arrive from Preobrazhenskoye to assassinate Tsar Ivan Alexeevich and all his sisters. On the evening of August 7th, Shaklovity summoned four hundred Streltsy with loaded rifles to the Kremlin and stationed three hundred at Lubyanka. His henchmen began to incite the Streltsy to kill the "she-bear," the old Tsarina, and that "if the son were to intercede for his mother, then he would have nothing to lose."
But:
Larion Elizariev, a 500-man Strelets Regimental Guardsman, and seven other Strelets devised a plan to warn Peter. Two of his comrades set out for Preobrazhenskoye at night to inform the Tsar that evil was being plotted against him.
The 17-year-old tsar, wearing only his shirt, mounted his horse and galloped to the heavily fortified Trinity Monastery of St. Sergius. The next day, Peter's abandoned mother, his pregnant wife, soldiers of the "amusement" army, and some of the Streltsy arrived at the Lavra unopposed. The tsar temporarily forgot his love of all things foreign, donned a Russian caftan, and diligently began to portray the "truly Orthodox sovereign."
It would seem like a joke and a source of ridicule for caustic Muscovites. However, this strange and even shameful flight of Peter led to Sophia's downfall.
The princess had no desire for a quarrel and did everything possible to reconcile with her brother. But the Naryshkin family members who had arrived at the Lavra viewed these attempts at reconciliation as weakness on the part of the empress and became increasingly arrogant with each passing day. Under their dictation, Peter wrote to the "senior tsar," his brother Ivan:
It is shameful, sir, at our mature age for that shameful person to rule the state without us.
The Naryshkin clan's members became especially defiant after the patriarch, sent by Sophia as a mediator in the negotiations, remained at the Lavra. On the other hand, Sophia's supporters also couldn't understand her delay. Shaklovitov was also ready to act immediately, but Sophia never gave the order, and time was running out.
On August 27, a letter from Peter arrived in Moscow, ordering all the Streltsy colonels, as well as the "elected" (10 men from each regiment), to report to the Lavra. Sophia's supporters dwindled with each passing day. The foreign mercenaries, led by the Scotsman Patrick Gordon, left.
This is how the Scotsman was seen by viewers of the film "Youth of Peter" in 1980.
Among them was the notorious Franz Lefort, who was then under the protection of Sophia's favorite, Vasily Golitsyn. Vasily Golitsyn himself lost his nerve – he retreated to his estate at Medvedkovo near Moscow, and then went to the Lavra, but was not received by Peter. In a last attempt to reach an agreement, Sophia herself went to her brother, but in the village of Vozdvizhenskoye, she was informed that he was refusing to meet, and she turned back. Then came the order for the arrest of Fyodor Shaklovity. Morally broken, Sophia, after much hesitation, finally betrayed her most loyal and devoted man. However, she understood that power was no longer on her side.
K. Lebedev. "Farewell of Princess Sophia to Shaklovity"
Shaklovity was tortured for five days and executed on September 12, 1689, in the square near the Trinity-Sergius Monastery. His body was buried only two weeks later. And Sophia's fate was now sealed. She spent the rest of her life virtually imprisoned in the Novodevichy Convent, where she died in July 1704 at the age of just 47.
I. Repin. Grand Duchess Sophia in the Novodevichy Convent
And this is how the princess who took the schema is presented in the film "Peter the Great" (played by Vanessa Redgrave):
Sophia's grave can still be seen in the Smolensk Cathedral of this monastery.
The grave of Sophia Alekseevna, photograph from 1908.
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