GOLOVIN, FEDOR ALEKSEYEVICH, COUNT (d. 1706), Russian statesman. During the regency of Sophia, sister of Peter the Great, he was sent to the Amur to defend the new Muscovite fortress of Albazin against the Chinese. In 1689 he concluded with the Celestial empire the Treaty of Nerchinsk, by which the line of the Amur, as far as its tributary the Gorbitsa, was retroceded to China. In Peter's grand embassy to the West in 1697 Golovin occupied the second place immediately after Lefort. It was his chief duty to hire foreign sailors and obtain everything necessary for the construction and complete equipment of a fleet. On Lefort's death, in March 1699, he succeeded him as admiral-general. The same year he was created the first Russian count, and was also the first to be decorated with the newly instituted Russian order of St. Andrew. The conduct of foreign affairs was at the same time entrusted to him, and from 1699 to his death he was "the premier minister of the tsar." Golovin supplemented the Treaty of Carlowitz, by which peace with Turkey had only been secured for three years, by concluding with the Porte a new treaty at Constantinople (June 13, 1700), by which the term of the peace was extended to 3o years and, be sides other concessions, the Azov district and a strip of territory extending thence to Kuban were ceded to Russia.
See R. N. Bain, The First Romanovs (19o5). (R. N. B.)