Sophia Alekseyevna of Russia - Regency

Regency

When the Old Believers joined the rebels in the fall of 1682 and demanded the reversal of Nikon's reforms, Sophia lost control of the unsteady Streltsy to her once ally, Prince Ivan Khovansky. After aiding Sophia in May, Khovansky used his influence with the troops to force her court to flee the Moscow Kremlin and seek refuge in the Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra. The streltsy rebels, who instigated the rebellion, hoped to depose Sophia and to make Prince Ivan Khovansky a new regent, to satisfy their increasing desire for concessions. Calling together the gentry militia, Sophia managed to suppress the so-called Khovanshchina with the help of Fyodor Shaklovityi, who succeeded Khovansky in charge of the Muscovite army. Silencing the dissatisfied parties until Peter reached of his age of majority, Sophia executed Khovansky and the other figureheads of the attempted rebellion.

During the seven years of her regency, Sophia made a few concessions to posads and loosened detention policies towards runaway peasants, which caused dissatifaction among the nobles. She also made an effort to further the organization of the military. Notably intrigued by baroque style architecture, Sophia held responsibility for the promotion of the foreign district, and the creation of the Slavonic-Greek-Latin Academy, the first Russian higher learning institution. The most important highlights of her foreign policy, as engineered by Galitzine, were the Eternal Peace Treaty of 1686 with Poland, the 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk with China, and the Crimean campaigns against Turkey. Although spearheaded by Prince Galitzine, Sophia’s reign oversaw two of the earliest diplomatic treaties and underwent inner growth and progress. Despite her other achievements, Sophia’s influence and effect on a young Peter remains as the most historically significant portion of her reign, as the rebellion of 1682 bred a distrust in nobility that came to define his leadership.