The Pharaoh’s Dream or the Collapse of Kirill Naryshkin, the Fourth Moscow Governor

Abstract

For the first time in historiographe the article reconstructs the personal history of Kirill Alekseevich Naryshkin. This research is based on the personal and private letters of Naryshkin to the Tsar and Prince Alexander Menshikov. The former are extracted from various documentary collections, first of all, “Letters and Papers of Peter the Great”, the latter are found by the author in the Russian Archive of Ancient Acts and have not been studied before. The reconstruction is focused on the history of the career that was built by K. A. Naryshkin during the first one and a half decades of the 18th century. He successfully and efficiently ruled over the northwestern counties of Russia, solving the difficult tasks of endowing the Russian army, reorganizing garrison regiments, mapping and supervising fortifications on the adjoining lands of Ingria and eastern Estonia as a chief commandant (ober-komendant). However, after being appointed to the post of Moscow governor in 1716, the career of Naryshkin collapsed. Problems at work, tensions with the Senate, harassment by investigative and administrative authorities coincided with a personal drama - the death of his wife and serious property losses. The author both in the context of the general administrative situation of the era, and in line with the then established system of informal ties surrounded by Tsar Peter analyzes the reasons for the collapse of a capable and energetic manager.