Fedor succeeded to the throne without dispute. On September 1, 1674, the Russian Orthodox New Year’s Day, his father had presented him as his heir to the people and the representatives of foreign rulers. It had been an impressive occasion when the crowd had heard the tsar formally proclaim his eldest son as their next tsar. But few had expected Fedor to ascend the throne. Then a frail thirteen-year-old boy who was suffering from scurvy, he had seemed unlikely to outlive his robust father. But the sickly boy was now tsar of Russia.

The savage rivalries that had smoldered for years within the court surfaced immediately after Alexei’s death. The family of the tsaritsa had always enjoyed prominence and power at court. After some twenty years, the Naryshkini, the family of Tsar Alexei’s second wife, now replaced his first wife’s family. The daughters of Maria Miloslavskaya, and Tsarevna Sofia in particular, resented the change. The usual fate of the tsarevni was to be isolated in the terem and, when they were older, to become nuns and spend their lives in religious seclusion. Maria’s daughters had hoped to avoid that type of life. No subject could marry a daughter of the tsar, and attempts to arrange marriages with ruling families in the West had all failed. But now the Western influence spreading through the Kremlin was raising the hopes of the tsar’s daughters that they might at least take part in court life.

Tsarevna Sofia, a strong-willed and intelligent young woman, had seized these new opportunities. She had shared Fedor’s tutor, Simeon Polotsky, and had received an exceptional education for a woman in seventeenth-century Russia. She had also had contact with her brothers and leading men at court and had been especially close to her father. Suddenly Alexei’s second marriage had threatened her new position and her ambition to break free from the terem. The hatred that she felt for her stepmother, who was about her age, grew because of Natalya’s influence over Alexei and by the fact that she refused to accept her stepdaughters. Despite her own Western upbringing, Natalya wanted to push them back into the terem. But now with Fedor on the throne and the Miloslavsky once more prominent at court, Sofia was in a strong position. Natalya and her children, Peter and Natalya, born in August 1673, had no influence. Artamon Matveev, Alexei’s chief minister, had not anticipated the sudden death of the tsar, and he now felt the hostility of the Miloslavsky.

With the aid of two of Matveev’s enemies at court, Bogdan Khitrovo and Vasily Volynsky, the Miloslavsky planned his downfall. First he was told that the tsar had appointed him to be governor of the Verkhoture region beyond the Urals. This was honorable exile, but he had hardly left Moscow when his enemies stopped him and accused him of numerous charges. The main accusation was that he had failed to taste the tsar’s medicine before and after giving it to him, the standard precaution against attempts to poison the autocrat, and thus by implication was responsible for his death. They stripped Matveev of the rank of boyar and of his estates and exiled him with his son to Pustozersk, a primitive settlement within the Arctic Circle.

Tsar Fedor approved or at least condoned this treatment of his father’s minister. But he would soon show that he was not a puppet of the Miloslavsky and their faction. Although so young and ailing, he did not lack character and could form his own ideas. While they disposed of Matveev and other rivals and while Ioakim dealt with his personal enemies in the Church, whom Alexei had protected, Tsar Fedor chose his own favorites. Confined most of the time by illness to his own room, he found the men he trusted in his personal court. Chief among them were Ivan Yazykov, whom he would promote to the rank of boyar, and Alexei Likhachev.

Allied with them was the young boyar, Prince Vasily Vasilievich Golitsyn, who would become for a time the most powerful man in the land. Golitsyn belonged to one of the oldest and most respected Muscovite noble families. He had received an excellent education and enjoyed Western culture. He furnished his palace in Moscow in Western style. Many foreigners considered it to be among the most magnificent palace in Europe. On the walls were mirrors, portraits, maps, and fine carpets; the ceilings featured a painting of the planetary system as then known; and every room contained clocks and instruments of the best European workmanship. His library included a valuable collection of manuscripts and printed books in Latin, Russian, Polish, and Greek, because he was fluent in all of those languages. He entertained lavishly and kept open house for foreigners of learning. Golitsyn shared the ideas and policies of Ordin-Nashchokin and tried to advance them after he gained a position of power. His plans for internal reform, for instance, went so far as to include the freeing of the peasants from serfdom and grants of land to them together with a system of direct taxation that would increase the tsar’s revenues.

When Fedor ascended the throne, there was immediate concern about who would become his wife. The Miloslavsky, in particular, were anxious that he should marry someone of their choosing who would ensure their position at court both at present and, through heirs to the throne, in the future. They could lose no time in finding a wife for Fedor if they were to prevent the succession of Peter and the return of the Naryshkini.

Fedor, however, made his own decision. During the procession of the cross at Easter, he saw a young woman and asked Yazykov to learn more about her. When he discovered that she was Agrafya Semenovna Grushetskaya, the daughter of a Clerk to the Council, he gave orders that she was not to marry without his approval. Meanwhile, Ivan Miloslavsky did not approve the match and did everything to blacken the reputation of the family. Fedor was distressed to learn this. He married Agrafya in July 1680 and ordered the expulsion of Ivan Miloslavsky from court. The young tsaritsa interceded on his behalf, but Fedor mistrusted his uncle so much that he excluded him from positions of influence.

During Alexei’s reign, the movement for change and reform had gathered momentum. Although young and destined to reign so briefly, Fedor made his own contributions. Probably encouraged by Golitsyn, he tried to modify the savagery of Russian life. For example, the usual punishment for theft was to cut off two or more of the offender’s fingers, a hand or a foot, depending on the gravity of the crime. In 1679-1680, Fedor issued decrees that outlawed such punishments and directed that officials should send offenders to work the land in Siberia with their wives and any children over three years old. He also sent instructions to all towns in 1680 that they should no longer hold people accused of crimes in prison for lengthy periods awaiting trial, but should deal with them promptly. Fedor also sought to improve the position of women. In 1677, when he learned about a peasant woman who had cut off her husband’s head with a scythe and who had survived partial burial for several days, he released her on condition that she live in a monastery. He also pardoned two other guilty wives on the same condition. In 1679, women had a right to their inheritances. In addition, husbands and wives could no longer dissolve their marriages by entering a monastery with the result that the other spouse could not remarry and might be destitute. This regulation benefited women whose husbands often deserted them in this way. But a patriarchal society would not grant extensive rights to its women, and women continued to have very difficult lives.

The persecution of Schismatics continued. They settled in small groups in the Ukraine, in Siberia, and in the northern forests, worshiping according to the old rites, and ready to suffer as martyrs. But the church itself, shaken by the fury of the schism, now turned its attention to reform. A Church council, summoned in 1681, considered a series of propositions from the tsar. The reforms that resulted affected the appointment of archbishops, changed the domestic arrangements of monasteries, and included a ban on alcohol in religious establishments as a step to counteract the widespread drunkenness among priests and monks.

They designed ambitious projects for the reform of the national financial system, for the division of the landowning nobility and gentry into those performing civil service and those providing military service to the state, and for establishing a college or academy. The three projects were probably the work of Golitsyn. Fedor approved these plans but did not live to introduce them. However, he did manage to abolish mestnichestvo as a preliminary to further reform of the army. Vasily Golitsyn was also responsible for this reform and as one of the great nobles of the day had enough influence to promote it. Mestnichestvo was the crippling system under which no member of a boyar family would accept an appointment in the tsar’s service that was inferior to an appointment held by a family member who preceded him. This system didn’t take into consideration experience and ability; only the position of the family and its members in the hierarchy mattered. They carefully kept records of appointments and referred to them in all disputes. In most of the major campaigns in the reigns of Mikhail and Alexei, mestnichestvo had been set aside by general agreement and then revived by jealous boyars as soon as the campaign was over.

On January 12, 1682, at a formal session of the Council of Boyars, Tsar Fedor, followed by the patriarch, condemned this system and threatened punishment by the state and excommunication by the church for any boyar who again invoked it. Surprisingly, the boyars agreed to this and immediately burned the records. Abolition of mestnichestvo not only cleared the way for reform of the army, but it also broke down the entrenched position of the nobles. They served now on equal terms with the gentry; eventually the two groups would merge.

During Fedor’s brief reign, he had to spend a lot of time trying to defend his lands. As the Russians colonized new lands, the local citizens became unsettled. Moscow received reports of disputes between Don Cossacks and Kalmyks, of unrest along the Yaik (Ural) River, among the Tatars and Bashkirs, the Kirgiz, and even the Samoeds in the North and the Yakuts and Tungus in the East. The Russians had to send small detachments of troops to settle each dispute.

These incidents at great distances from the capital helped define the three main problems of Fedor’s reign. First, there was the Ukraine and the question of Hetman Doroshenko’s loyalty to the tsar; second, the Polish demanded that Fedor should honor the terms of the treaty of Andrussovo and surrender Kiev and the right-bank enclave; third, and by far the most serious threat, was war with Turkey.

In the summer of 1677 Turkish and Tatar forces invaded the Ukraine, causing Russia and Turkey to be at war for the first time in history. The Russo-Ukrainian army, commanded by Prince Romodanovsky and Hetman Samoilovich, comprised some 60,000 men, but the invading army had double this strength. Fedor ordered Don Cossacks and Russian reinforcements to move up in support. In Moscow, there was great anxiety over the outcome of this campaign because the Ottoman Porte had far greater resources than Russia.

The Turks planned to take Chigirin, which was then the political center of the Ukraine, and from there conquer the whole steppeland. They began their assault in August 1677 expecting an easy victory, but the small garrison held out for three weeks until the relief armies arrived. On August 28, the Russians and Turks fought, and the Russians defeated the sultan’s forces. The sultan sent an army of 200,000 men to take Chigirin and get revenge in the summer of 1678. Although the defending forces again resisted bravely, the Turks captured and destroyed Chigirin. Having suffered heavy losses, the Turks then retired to the Bug River.

Fearing a new campaign by the Turks, the Russians quickly reinforced their positions while seeking allies. Turkey was a threat to both Austria and Poland. But Austria refused to join Russia in an alliance against Turkey, and Poland made the return of Kiev the condition of participation. Left to face Turkey alone, the tsar proposed peace with the sultan. Anxious to concentrate his forces against Austria, the sultan readily agreed.

Negotiated at Bakhchisarai in the Crimea and ratified by the sultan in May 1681, the treaty gave the Russians an advantage that they wanted. The Turks agreed to a twenty-year armistice and acknowledged Russian sovereignty over both left-bank Ukraine and Kiev and its right-bank enclave. Moreover, the treaty gave Russia a new sense of security, especially in relations with Austria and Poland. Both countries had often sought to deflect Turkish aggression from themselves against Russia, and this threat had always disturbed Moscow. But the Treaty of Bakhchisarai now exposed Austria and Poland rather than Russia to attack by the Ottoman Porte.

As always, there continued to be concern among the court and the citizens about succession to the throne. They rejoiced when Tsaritsa Agrafya gave birth to a son, Tsarevich Ilya, on July 11, 1681. But the joy didn’t least because both mother and son died within six days. There was immediate discussion of remarriage. Ivan Yazykov, who was closest to Fedor, proposed Marfa Matveevna Apraksina, who was related to him and was also a goddaughter of Artamon Matveev. On February 14, 1682, Fedor married her. Soon afterward, he died at the age of twenty-one.