The regent Sophia had sponsored two disastrous…

The regent Sophia had sponsored two disastrous military campaigns, led by Galitzine, against the Crimean Tatars, who are Turkish vassals, in 1687 and 1689.

Her government has also concluded the favorable Treaty of Nerchinsk with China, setting Russia's eastern border at the Amur River, but Galitzine's failures reinforce the increasing dissatisfaction among both the Naryshkins and the general population with her rule.

Her half-brother Peter turns seventeen years of age, upon which his Naryshkin relatives demand that Sophia step down.

Army chief Fyodor Shaklovityi advises Sophia to proclaim herself tsarina in response, and attempts to induce the Streltsy, the units of Russian guardsmen armed with firearms, to a new uprising.

Most of the Streltsy units, however, desert downtown Moscow for the suburb of Preobrazhenskoye and later for the Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra, where the young tsar is living.

Sophia, feeling the power slipping from her hands,  sends the boyars and the Patriarch to Peter, asking him to join her in the Kremlin.

He flatly refuses her overtures, demanding Shaklovityi's execution and Galitzine's exile.

Sophia agrees to surrender her senior boyars, and is put under house arrest and forced to withdraw into the Novodevichy Convent without formally taking the veil.

Peter rewards Golovin, on his return to Moscow from a diplomatic mission to the Amur River region, with the rank of boyar (next in rank below the ruling princes).