Fyodor Alexeyevich Golovin

Fyodor Golovin
Фёдор Головин
Minister of Foreign Affairs
In office 1700–1706
Preceded by	Lev Naryshkin
Succeeded by	Gavriil Golovkin
Personal details
Born	1650 Tsardom of Russia
Died	10 Aug [O.S. 30 July] 1706 Glukhov, Tsardom of Russia
Military service
Rank	field marshal, general admiral

Count Fyodor Alexeyevich Golovin (Russian: Фёдор Алексеевич Головин; 1650 – 10 Aug [O.S. 30 July] 1706) was a Russian statesman, diplomat, and military leader. During the reign of Peter the Great, Golovin served as his foreign minister from 1699–1706 and became the first chancellor of Russia. In addition to his political roles, he also held the positions of field marshal and general admiral, mostly holding the titles nominally and acting more in the capacity of a military administrator.

Biography

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

Diplomatic career

Portrait in the Sytin Military Encyclopedia

During the regency of Sophia Alekseyevna, Golovin was sent on a diplomatic mission to the Amur River region and entered into negotiations with the Qing dynasty over border disputes with the Tsardom of Russia. In August 1689, he served as the Tsardom's representative in signing the Treaty of Nerchinsk with the Qing. Upon his return to Moscow, he was granted the title of boyar by Peter the Great, who had overthrown Sophia, his half-sister, in September 1689.

In 1697, Golovin was appointed as one of three diplomats to head Peter's Grand Embassy to Western Europe, along with Franz Lefort, the chief ambassador, and Prokopii Voznitsyn. When Lefort died in 1699, Golovin succeeded him as general admiral. During this time, he also became the first person to be decorated with the newly instituted Order of St. Andrew.

Foreign minister

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

Upon Lefort's death in March 1699, Golovin succeeded him as de facto foreign minister until he was officially appointed as the head of the Ambassadorial Chancellery in February 1700. In October 1699, Golovin and Peter Shafirov participated in a secret meeting between Peter and Johann Patkul in which Russia allied themselves with Saxony, Denmark–Norway, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth against Sweden in the upcoming Great Northern War. At the start of the conflict, he was appointed as a field marshal by Peter.

In June 1700, he helped successfully negotiate the signing of the Treaty of Constantinople with the Ottoman Empire. The treaty extended Russian-Turkish peace for thirty years, and the Ottomans seceded the Azov region and additional territory in Kuban to the Tsardom. The treaty secured the Tsardom's southern border with the Ottomans and allowed it to focus more of its resources towards the Great Northern War until Ottoman involvement in 1710.

Death

Golovin died on 10 Aug [O.S. 30 July] 1706, in Glukhov, on the road from Moscow to Kyiv. His remains were transported to the Simonov Monastery.

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.