SOPHIA ALEKSEYEVNA (1657-1704), tsarevna and regent of Russia, was the third daughter of Tsar Alexius and Maria Miloslayskaya. Educated on semi-ecclesiastical lines by the learned monk of Kiev, Polotsky, she emancipated herself betimes from the traditional tyranny of the teem, or women's quarters. Setting aside court etiquette, she had nursed her brother Tsar Theodore III. in his last illness, and publicly appeared at his obsequies, though it was usual only for the widow of the deceased and his successor to the throne to attend that ceremony. Three days after little Peter, then in his fourth year, had been raised to the throne, she won over the stryeltsy, or musketeers, who at her instigation burst into the Kreml, murdering everyone they met, including Artamon Matveyev, Peter's chief supporter, and Ivan Naryshkin, the brother of the tsaritsa-regent Natalia, Peter s mother (May 15-17, 1682). When the rebellion was over there was found to be no government. Everyone was panic-stricken and in hiding except Sophia, and to her, as the only visible repre sentative of authority, the court naturally turned for orders. She paid off and pacified the stryeltsy, and secretly worked upon them to present (May 29) a petition to the council of state to the effect that her half-brother Ivan should be declared senior tsar, while Peter was degraded into the junior tsar. This duumvirate was but a stepping-stone to the ambition of Sophia, who thus became the actual ruler of Russia.
By Nov. 6, Sophia's triumph was complete. The conduct of for eign affairs she committed entirely to her paramour, Prince Vasily Golitsuin, while the crafty and experienced clerk of the council, Theodore Shaklovity, looked after domestic affairs and the treas ury. Sophia's fondness for Golitsuin induced her to magnify his
barely successful campaigns in the Crimea into brilliant triumphs which she richly rewarded, thus disgusting everyone who had the honour of the nation at heart. Most of the malcontents rested their hopes for the future on the young tsar Peter, who was the first to benefit by his sister's growing unpopularity. Sophia took council of Shaklovity, and it was agreed (1687) between them that the stryeltsy should be employed to dethrone Peter. The stryeltsy, however, received the whole project so coldly that it had to be abandoned. A second conspiracy to seize him in his bed (August 1689) was betrayed to Peter, and he fled to the fortress monastery of Troitsa. Here all his friends rallied round him, in cluding the bulk of the magnates, half the stryeltsy, and all the foreign mercenaries. From Aug. 12 to Sept. 7 Sophia endeavoured to set up a rival camp in the Kreml ; but her professed adherents gradually left her. She was compelled to retire within the Novo Dyevichy monastery, but without taking the veil. Nine years later (1698), on suspicion of being concerned in the rebellion of the stryelsty, she was shorn a nun and imprisoned for life.