Fyodor Alekseyevich, Count Golovin

Fyodor Alekseyevich, Count Golovin (born 1650, Russia—died July 30 [Aug. 10, New Style], 1706) was a Russian statesman and diplomat who served prominently during the reign (1682–1725) of Peter I the Great of Russia.

Despite Golovin’s loyalty to Peter, the regent Sophia Alekseyevna (reigned 1682–89)—Peter’s half sister and political rival—promoted Golovin to the rank of okolnichi (court official) in 1685. Sent on a diplomatic mission to the Amur River region, he entered into negotiations with China which resulted in the Treaty of Nerchinsk (ratified 1689). When Golovin returned to Moscow, he was rewarded with the rank of boyar (next in rank below the ruling princes) by Peter, who had displaced Sophia in 1689.

Golovin later participated as a general in Peter’s two Azov campaigns against the Ottoman Turks (1695 and 1696), and in 1697–98 he accompanied Peter on his grand tour of western Europe, seeking and hiring trained naval officers for service in the new Russian navy. In 1699 he was made an admiral general and placed in charge of the new navy department. In addition he was head of the foreign department and in charge of Russian diplomacy; before the outbreak of the Great Northern War against Sweden, he engaged in extensive diplomatic activity to prepare Russia for the war. Among other accomplishments, he secured Russia’s southern frontier by concluding the peace treaty of Constantinople with the Turks (1700) and directed, until his death, the negotiations with Peter’s ally, the Polish king Augustus II.