Nikita Zotov

Nikita Zotov, Gravure

Count Nikita Moiseevich Zotov (Russian: Никита Моисеевич Зотов) (1644 – December 1717) was a childhood tutor and life-long friend of Russian Tsar Peter the Great. Zotov was chosen to be Peter's tutor in the late seventeenth century. Zotov taught Peter about both religion and secular events, though Peter never truly learned writing, mathematics, or philosophy well as a result of the short time that Zotov taught Peter. Historians have mixed interpretations about Zotov's teaching; Robert K. Massie, for example, praises the work that Zotov did, while Lindsey Hughes criticizes the poor education that he gave Peter.

Zotov left Moscow for a diplomatic mission to Crimea in 1680, and returned to Russia before 1683. He became part of the "Jolly Company", which eventually became The All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters. He was mockingly appointed "Prince-Pope" of the Synod and regularly led them in games and celebrations. Zotov also was with Peter in many important events, such as the Azov campaigns and the torture of Streltsy after their uprising. From 1701, Zotov held a leading position in the Tsar's personal secretariat. Just three years before his death, Zotov married a woman fifty years his junior.

Peter I's education

Zotov teaches young Peter I, painting by Klavdy Lebedev

After the death of Tsar Alexis at the age of 47 on 8 February 1676, Peter's half brother and godfather Feodor, the "semi-invalid eldest surviving son of Maria Miloslavskaya", became the Tsar of Russia. Ivan Miloslavsky, Feodor's uncle and chief minister, came back to Moscow after having been virtually exiled as the Governor of Astrakhan, as his family had not been in power for some time. Ivan Miloslavsky hated the Naryshkins, which included Peter, Peter's mother Natalia Naryshkina, and Natalia's foster father Artamon Matveyev. When the ruling family took over, the previously ruling family was usually banished to a ceremonial position somewhere far from Moscow. Instead, Ivan Miloslavsky tried to arrest the Naryshkins, though he was only successful in arresting Artamon Matveyev, for Tsar Feodor liked both his half-brother Peter and Peter's mother, and both were allowed to remain in the Kremlin in private apartments.

Most people of 17th-century Moscow, even among the nobility, received little education and were illiterate. Education for the nobility usually consisted of a little reading, writing, and a small amount of history and geography. Religious scholars were usually the exception to this rule; they often learned grammar, mathematics, and foreign languages. Two of Tsar Alexis' children were also exceptions to this rule – Feodor and his sister, Tsarevna Sophia. They had received a thorough education from the religious scholars of Kiev, and could speak both Latin and Polish.

At the age of three, in 1674 or 1675, Peter had received a primer from Tsar Alexis to help him learn the alphabet. Two years later, Tsar Feodor suggested to Peter's mother that he begin his studies. Estimates of the exact year when Peter's tutoring began have ranged widely; it has been said to have started as early as 1677, but also as late as 1683. Lambin's История Петра Великого (History of Peter the Great) points to a specific date – March 12, 1677. Nikita Zotov, a former church clerk, or "Duma secretary" from the tax-collection department of the governmental bureaucracy, was chosen to teach Peter to read and write.

Zotov was one of the few men in Moscow who was literate at the time. Though Zotov was not a religious scholar, he knew the Bible well, an important qualifier for Tsaritsa Natalia. And although Zotov did not expect it, he was well rewarded for his work; Feodor and the Tsaritsa, as well as Patriarch Joachim gave him a variety of presents before Zotov even started his work, including a set of apartments, two new sets of clothing and 100 rubles. He was also raised to the position of a minor nobleman. Zotov was deeply humbled by the Tsaritsa's request and was enthralled to begin lessons with Peter.

Peter's first lesson began the morning after Zotov was chosen as Peter's tutor. After the books were sprinkled with holy water, Zotov began teaching Peter, first about the alphabet, and then the Prayer Book and the Bible, which Peter memorized long passages of, and could even recite by memory forty years later. Zotov also taught Peter to sing, and Peter would often attend church services and spontaneously sing with the choir in his later years.

Although Zotov was originally tasked only with teaching Peter reading and writing, Peter was intellectually curious and interested in all that Zotov taught, and asked for lessons on Russian history, battles, and heroes. On Zotov's request, the Tsaritsa ordered engravings from the Ordnance Office of "foreign cities and palaces, sailing ships, weapons and historical events". Zotov placed them, along with a fairly accurate globe for the time, in the study room to show Peter when Peter was uninterested in his lessons. Other non-formal "makeshift" tutors, both foreign and domestic, and servants taught Peter other subjects as well, ranging from rowdy outdoor games with live ammunition to royal and military history, to carpentry, joinery, blacksmith work, printing, and uniquely for Russian nobility at the time, sailing and shipbuilding.

Zotov became one of Peter's earliest friends, and the two remained close throughout Zotov's life. Lindsey Hughes has criticized Zotov for giving Peter an education that did not meet the necessities of what a future tsar ought to know. However, Robert K. Massie argues that the education was the best possible one for a curious boy like Peter because it was unlikely that Peter would ever become Tsar with a half-brother, Ivan V, before him in the line of succession. According to Massie, Zotov may have not taught Peter at the highest possible level, but he gave him a more proper education than the average nobleman would receive, and also stimulated Peter's curiosity, allowing Peter to become the self-made man he would be in the future. Zotov's closeness to the Tsar would later worry other men within the government; many, including even the powerful Menshikov, feared his influence.

Zotov left on a diplomatic mission to the Crimea in 1680 for three years, but with contradicting sources, this could be either before or after his tutoring of Peter. When Peter left the Kremlin to spend his childhood at Preobrazhenskoye, just two years after Zotov left, his memories of the tutors who had taught his siblings Feodor and Sophia were so negative that he cut himself off from the traditional academic subjects, though he resumed his learning with Afanassyi Nesterov and Zotov after the latter returned from his trip to Crimea in 1683. Robert K. Massie states that Peter sought to learn of nature and military matters rather than literature, good writing, foreign languages, philosophy, or theology, though he did learn a great deal in the latter from his tutors. He also forgot or did not learn a great deal about mathematics, a subject which he had to learn properly in his late teens for use in siege warfare and fortification. In later years, he regretted his lack of a full education. Valentin Gitermann, on the other hand, notes that despite the fact that Massie states that Peter did not learn of good writing or foreign languages, at least in the year 1709, Zotov translated books from a Western European language into Russian and Peter would correct them, giving suggestions on how Zotov could improve his translations in the future.

Prince-Pope of Drunken Synod

In 1692, Peter the Great organized himself and several dozen of his friends into "The All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters", a group of which Nikita Zotov eventually became the "Prince-Pope". As "Prince-Pope" (sometimes referred to as Patriarch Bacchus), Zotov first drank to everyone's health at the mocking celebrations and then "blessed" the group with the Sign of the Cross made by two long Dutch pipes. At holidays, the games even spilled on to the streets of Moscow. At Christmas, the Jolly Company would ride around the city singing on sleighs, with Zotov at their head, on a sleigh pulled by twelve bald men. Zotov wore a highly unusual costume costume; his outfit was adorned with playing cards, he wore a tin hat, and he sat upon a barrel. During the first week of Lent, a procession of "penitents" followed Zotov through the city on donkeys, oxen, and sleighs; the sleighs were pulled by goats, pigs, and bears.

Other activities

Morning of Execution of Streltsy, by Vasily Ivanovich Surikov, 1881

In 1695 and 1696, Peter the Great mounted two campaigns against the Turkish garrison of Azov. Though the campaign in 1695 was ultimately unsuccessful, the 1696 campaign succeeded. The Russians surrounded the city with both men and ships and breached the wall, causing the Pasha of Azov to "surrender under honorable conditions". People in Moscow were amazed by the news of victory; not since the reign of Peter's father Alexis had a Russian army won a victory. Peter delayed his return home to allow Andrei Vinius, another member of the The All-Joking Company, time to set up a victory parade through Moscow. On 10 October, the army returned home, but instead of leading the army to a traditional Orthodox reception, the army instead marched through an arch seemingly held up by Hercules and Mars. In addition, Peter did not ride in the front of the procession as usual for a tsar, but instead had the procession led by 18 horsemen leading along carriages carrying both the war hero Fedor Golovin and Nikita Zotov, the latter of whom bore in his hands a sword and shield and acted as a religious authority.

After the Streltsy Uprising in 1698, Peter the Great, who had been on a grand tour in Europe, rushed home from Vienna. Angry and wishing to know who had instigated the Streltsy to rebel, Peter ordered the Streltsy's torture. For almost a month and a half, many of the men from Peter's Jolly Company, including Romodanovsky, Boris Golitsyn, and Zotov, led the torture in secret from the rest of Moscow. In 1701, Zotov was made president of the Tsar's newly created personal secretariat, a highly important post. In 1710, Peter made Zotov a count, and bestowed upon him the titles of Privy Councillor and General-President of the Privy Chancellery.

Personal life

Marriage of Zotov in 1714 Lubok, XVIII c.

According to Robert K. Massie and Lindsey Hughes, in October 1713, Peter told Nikita Zotov that he intended to have him marry Anna Pashkova, fifty years younger than Zotov, against Zotov's wishes; Zotov simply had wished to spend his final years in a monastery. However, the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary says that Zotov came up with the idea to marry Pashkova in 1714.

Friedrich Christian Weber, the ambassador of Hanover, described the wedding as "solemnized by the court in masks". Guests were instructed to match in groups of three and register ahead of time so as not to look too similar to other guests. Witnesses described the event, which took place on 27 and 28 January 1715, and which had been prepared for three months, as a "world turned upside-down". The Jolly Company dressed in ridiculous regalia, and many people behaved exactly opposite the norm; "invitations to the guests were delivered by stammerers, the bridesmen were cripples, the runners were fat men with gout, the priest was allegedly one hundred years old" (and blind). The event has been seen as a "variation on the Western charivari or shaming ceremonies", through which the Tsar could demonstrate how much power he had over his subjects' lives. During the wedding, the Drunken Synod routinely sang carols in the streets of Moscow and demanded money, which became a New Year tax for the wealthy.

Nikita Zotov had three sons. One was Vasily Zotov, who was educated outside of Russia and became the Revisor-General of Ukazes (Inspector General of Decrees) in November 1715. Because of Vasily's age, he was born a long time before Nikita was married. As Inspector General, it was Vasily's job to preside over the Senate of Russia, enforce its decrees, and report absent senators to Peter. However, Vasily had little political power, and so was unable to carry out his orders against some of the most powerful men within the Russian empire. Another was Ivan Zotov, who studied in France and worked as a translator. He died before 1723. And a third son was Konon Zotov, who voluntarily studied in England, and served in various positions the Russian Navy and in the Russian Judicial System.

Death

In December 1717, Nikita Zotov died of causes unreported in any historical sources. Peter wasted no time in moving on, at least publicly; he replaced Zotov as "Prince-Pope" with a man named Peter Buturlin by "electing" him on December 28, 1717, and appointing him on January 10, 1718. Peter even ordered that Zotov's widow be married to Buturlin in the fall of 1721.

Bibliography

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