Fyodor Alexeyevich Golovin

Fyodor Golovin
Фёдор Головин
Portrait of Golovin
Head of the Posolsky Prikaz
In office 1700–1706
Preceded by	Lev Naryshkin
Succeeded by	Peter Shafirov
Personal details
Born	1650
Died	10 August 1706
Nationality	Russian
Military service
Rank	Field marshal

Count Fyodor Alexeevich Golovin (Russian: Фёдор Алексеевич Головин; 1650 – 10 Aug [O.S. 30 July] 1706) was the last Russian boyar and the first Chancellor of the Russian Empire. He was also a field marshal, and general admiral (1700).

Biography

Golovin descended from a family of Russian treasurers of Byzantine Greek descent.

Monument to Fyodor Alekseevich Golovin in St. Petersburg, Vasilievsky Island.

Military career

During the regency of Sophia Alekseyevna, sister of Peter the Great, Golovin was sent to the Amur to defend the new fortress of Albazin against the Chinese Qing Empire. In 1689, he was the Tsardom of Russia's signatory to the Treaty of Nerchinsk between the Tsardom and the Qing Empire, by which the line of the Amur, as far as its tributary the Gorbitsa, was retroceded to China because of the impossibility of seriously defending it.

In Peter the Great's Grand Embassy to the West in 1697, Golovin occupied the second place immediately after Franz 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 Field Marshal, and during that same year he was granted the title as the first Russian Count and was also the first to be decorated with the newly instituted Russian Order of St. Andrew.

Foreign affairs

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's first achievement as foreign minister was to supplement the Treaty of Karlowitz, by which peace with the Ottoman Empire had only been secured for three years, by forging a new treaty at Constantinople on 13 June 1700. In the treaty, the term of Russian-Ottoman peace was extended to thirty years, and the Azov district and a strip of territory extending into Kuban was seceded to Russia. Golovin also controlled, with consummate ability, the operations of the brand new Russian diplomats at the various foreign courts.

Death

Golovin died on 30 July 1706 (O.S), on the road from Moscow to Kiev. His remains were delivered to the Simonov monastery. Historian R. N. Bain also claims his death was an irreparable loss to the Tsar, who wrote that "Peter was filled with grief" at the news of his death.

References

Sources

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Bain, Robert Nisbet (1911). "Golovin, Fedor Aleksyeevich". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 12 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 226.
• Bushkovitch, Paul, A Concise History of Russia. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.