Military officer, diplomat, courtier, boyar.
The son of a non-noble bureaucrat, Artamon
Matveyev began his career at the age of thirteen as a court page and companion
to the future Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. He soon became colonel of a musketeer
regiment and traveled much of Russia and its borderlands on military and
diplomatic missions. He helped negotiate the union of Ukraine with Russia in 1654,
defended the tsar in the Copper Riots of 1662, and guarded many foreign
embassies, including the clerics arriving to judge Patriarch Nikon in 1666 and
1667. By 1669, although still a musketeer colonel, he had become a stolnik
(table attendant, a high court rank), namestnik (honorary governor-general) of
Serpukhov, and head of the Ukrainian Chancellery (Malorossysky Prikaz).
Soon his fortunes rose even higher. After
the death of Tsaritsa Maria Miloslavskaya, the tsar is said to have visited
Matveyev’s home and met the family’s foster daughter Natalia Naryshkina, whom
he married. This made Matveyev the tsar’s de facto father-in-law, traditionally
a very powerful position in Muscovite politics. He quickly added leadership of
the Department of Foreign Affairs or Posolsky Prikaz (in effect becoming
Russia’s prime minister), several other diplomatic or regional departments, and
the State Pharmacy to his Ukrainian Chancellery post. He skillfully formulated
foreign policy and dealt with governments as diverse as England, Poland, the
Vatican, Persia, China, and Bukhara. He also improved Russia’s medical
facilities, headed publishing, mining, and industrial ventures for the tsar,
and organized the creation of a Western-style court theater.
Foreign visitors noted his diverse
responsibilities. They often referred to him as “factotum,” the man who does
everything. They also remarked on his knowledge of and interest in their
societies. A patron of education and the arts, he kept musicians in his home,
had his son taught Latin, and collected foreign books, clocks, paintings, and
furniture. He remained close to the tsar, although he rose slowly through the
higher ranks. At the birth of the future Peter the Great in 1672, he was made
okolnichy (majordomo), and in 1674 he received the highest Muscovite court
rank, boyar.
With the sudden death of Tsar Alexei in
1676, things changed. The succession of sickly fourteen-year-old Tsar Fyodor
brought the Miloslavsky family back into power. Matveyev immediately began to
lose posts, prominence, and respect. During his journey into “honorable
exile”—provincial governorship in Siberia—he was convicted of sorcery. He was
stripped of rank and possessions and exiled, first to the prison town of
Pustozersk and later to Mezen. Tsar Fyodor’s death and Peter’s accession in
1682 brought Matveyev back to Moscow in triumph, but only days later he was
killed when pro- Miloslavsky rioters surged through the capital.
Because of his decades of service, his
prominence, fall, and dramatic death, and a collection of autobiographical
letters from exile, Matveyev received frequent and generally favorable
attention from Russian writers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Their works ranged from scholarly biographies and articles to poems, plays, and
children’s books. He became less visible in the twentieth century, when Soviet
historians lost interest in supporters of the old regime. To date there has
been only fragmentary treatment of his life in English.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bushkovitch, Paul. (2001). Peter the Great: The Struggle for Power,
1671–1725. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
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