Sophia, Regent of Russia: 1657-1704

Sophia Alekseevna, the half-sister of Peter the great, was the first woman to rule Russia.  In 1682, following a dynastic crisis that left Russia without a mature male ruler, ten-year-old Peter and his mentally retarded brother Ivan were declared joint tsars with twenty-five year old Sophia as their regent.  The regency survived for seven years until Sophia was ousted by Peter and dispatched to a convent for the last fifteen years of her life.  This book—the first scholarly biography of Sophia in any language—not only offers a vivid portrayal of a remarkable woman but also sheds new light on an obscure and fascinating period of Russian history.

The biography describes Sophia’s life and rise to power, setting her against the background of a traditional society on the eve of major reform.  During the regency, Sophia and her foreign minister (and, according to some, her lover,) Prince Vasily Golitsyn, extended Russia’s relations with Europe and were increasingly receptive to new ideas and influences from abroad.  There were also significant developments in domestic, cultural, and religious affairs within Russia, and Hughes describes profess in education, literature, and religion, the emergence of the Moscow Baroque style of art and architecture favored by Sophia and her circle, and the operation of the patronage networks of the Muscovite ruling elite.  Hughes also examines in new detail the musketeer rebellion of 1682, which helped bring Sophia into power, and the rebellion of 1698, which allowed her to emerge from the convent for a brief spell of notoriety.

Described by a contemporary as ambitious and daring above her sex, Sophia’s reputation has long languished in the shadow of Peter the Great.  This book reassesses and records the extraordinary achievement of an exceptional woman in a society more thoroughly male-dominated than any in seventeenth-century Europe.