GOLOVIN, FEDOR ALEKSYEEVICH, Count (d. 1706), Russian statesman, learnt, like so many of his countrymen in later times, the business of a ruler in the Far East. During the regency of Sophia, sister of Peter the Great, he was sent to the Amur to defend the new Muscovite fortress of Albazin against the Chinese. In 1689 he concluded with the Celestial empire the treaty of Nerchinsk, by which the line of the Amur, as far as its tributary the Gorbitsa, was retroceded to China because of the impossibility of seriously defending it. In Peter’s grand embassy to the West in 1697 Golovin occupied the second place immediately after Lefort. It was his chief duty to hire foreign sailors and obtain everything necessary for the construction and complete equipment of a fleet. On Lefort’s death, in March 1699, he succeeded him as admiral-general. The same year he was created the first Russian count, and was also the first to be decorated with the newly-instituted Russian order of St Andrew. The conduct of foreign affairs was at the same time entrusted to him, and from 1699 to his death he was “the premier minister of the tsar.” Golovin’s first achievement as foreign minister was to supplement the treaty of Carlowitz, by which peace with Turkey had only been secured for three years, by concluding with the Porte a new treaty at Constantinople (June 13, 1700), by which the term of the peace was extended to thirty years and, besides other concessions, the Azov district and a strip of territory extending thence to Kuban were ceded to Russia. He also controlled, with consummate ability, the operations of the brand-new Russian diplomatists at the various foreign courts. His superiority over all his Muscovite contemporaries was due to the fact that he was already a statesman, in the modern sense, while they were still learning the elements of statesmanship. His death was an irreparable loss to the tsar, who wrote upon the despatch announcing it, the words “Peter filled with grief.”
See R. N. Bain, The First Romanovs (London, 1905).
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GOLOVKIN, GAVRIIL IVANOVICH, Count (1660-1734), Russian statesman, was attached (1677), while still a lad, to the court of the tsarevitch Peter, afterwards Peter the Great, with whose mother Natalia he was connected, and vigilantly guarded him during the disquieting period of the regency of Sophia, sister of Peter the Great (1682-1689). He accompanied the young tsar abroad on his first foreign tour, and worked by his side in the dockyards of Saardam. In 1706 he succeeded Golovin in the direction of foreign affairs, and was created the first Russian grand-chancellor on the field of Poltava (1709). Golovkin held this office for twenty-five years. In the reign of Catherine I. he became a member of the supreme privy council which had the chief conduct of affairs during this and the succeeding reigns. The empress also entrusted him with her last will whereby she appointed the young Peter II. her successor and Golovkin one of his guardians. On the death of Peter II. in 1730 he declared openly in favour of Anne, duchess of Courland, in opposition to the aristocratic Dolgorukis and Golitsuins, and his determined attitude on behalf of autocracy was the chief cause of the failure of the proposed constitution, which would have converted Russia into a limited monarchy. Under Anne he was a member of the first cabinet formed in Russia, but had less influence in affairs than Ostermann and Münnich. In 1707 he was created a count of the Holy Roman empire, and in 1710 a count of the Russian empire. He was one of the wealthiest, and at the same time one of the stingiest, magnates of his day. His ignorance of any language but his own made his intercourse with foreign ministers very inconvenient.
See R. N. Bain, The Pupils of Peter the Great (London, 1897).
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GOLOVNIN, VASILY MIKHAILOVICH (1776-1831), Russian vice-admiral, was born on the 20th of April 1776 in the village of Gulynki in the province of Ryazan, and received his education at the Cronstadt naval school. From 1801 to 1806 he served as a volunteer in the English navy. In 1807 he was commissioned by the Russian government to survey the coasts of Kamchatka and of Russian America, including also the Kurile Islands. Golovnin sailed round the Cape of Good Hope, and on the 5th of October 1809, arrived in Kamchatka. In 1810, whilst attempting to survey the coast of the island of Kunashiri, he was seized by the Japanese, and was retained by them as a prisoner, until the 13th of October 1813, when he was liberated, and in the following year he returned to St Petersburg. Soon after this the government planned another expedition, which had for its object the circumnavigation of the globe by a Russian ship, and Golovnin was appointed to the command. He started from St Petersburg on the 7th of September 1817, sailed round Cape Horn, and arrived in Kamchatka in the following May. He returned to Europe by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and landed at St Petersburg on the 17th of September 1819. He died on the 12th of July 1831.
Golovnin published several works, of which the following are the most important:—Journey to Kamchatka (2 vols., 1819); Journey Round the World (2 vols., 1822); and Narrative of my Captivity in Japan, 1811-1813 (2 vols., 1816). The last has been translated into French, German and English, the English edition being in three volumes (1824). A complete edition of his works was published at St Petersburg in five volumes in 1864, with maps and charts, and a biography of the author by N. Grech.