GOLITSYN, DMITRY MIKHAILOVICH (1665 '737), Russian statesman, was sent in 1697 to Italy to learn "mili tary affairs" ; in 1704 he was appointed to the command of an auxiliary corps in Poland against Charles XII.; from 1711 to 1718 he was governor of Byelogorod. In 1718 he was appointed president of the newly erected Kammer Kollegium and a senator. In May 1723 he was implicated in the disgrace of the vice chancellor Shafirov and was deprived of all his offices and dignities, which he only recovered through the mediation of the empress Catherine I. Golitsyn remained in the background till the fall of Menshikov, 1727. During the last years of Peter II. (1728-3o) his high aristocratic theories had full play. On the death of Peter II. he conceived the idea of limiting the autocracy by subordinat ing it to the authority of the supreme privy council, of which he was president. He drew up a form of constitution which the em press Anne was forced to sign at Mittau before leaving for St. Petersburg. Anne lost no time in repudiating this constitution, and never forgave its authors. Golitsyn lived in retirement till 1736, when he was arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the conspiracy of his son-in-law Prince Constantine Cantimir. He was really prosecuted for his anti-monarchical sentiments. A court, largely composed of his antagonists, condemned him to death, but the empress commuted the sentence to lifelong im prisonment in Schliisselburg and confiscation of all his estates. He died in prison on April after three months of con finement.
See R. N. Bain, The Pupils of Peter the Great (1897).