ALEXEI PETROVICH, TSAREVICH

B. Feb. 18 (Feb. 28, N.S.), 1690, Moscow - D. June 26 (July 7), 1718, St. Petersburg, heir to the throne of Russia, who was accused of trying to overthrow his father, Peter I the Great.

After his mother, Eudoxia, was forced to enter a convent (1698), Alexis was brought up by his aunts and, after 1702, was educated by the tutor Baron Heinrich von Huyssen. Although he dutifully obeyed his father - participating in the siege of Narva (1704) and directing the fortification of Moscow (1707) during the Great Northern War, studying at Dresden in Saxony (1709), and marrying Princess Sophia Charlotte of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1711) - he never developed an enthusiasm for Peter's wars and reforms and became increasingly hostile toward his father. After Peter's second wife, Catherine, provided the tsar with another male heir in 1715, Alexis was offered the choice of either reforming his behavior or renouncing his right of succession and becoming a monk.

When Peter later ordered Alexis to join him and the Russian army in Denmark (August 1716), Alexis fled to Vienna, where the Holy Roman emperor Charles VI gave him protection. Peter, fearing that his opponents might support Alexis as an alternative ruler, sent envoys to bring Alexis home. Promising him a full pardon, the envoys persuaded Alexis to return to Moscow (Jan. 31 [Feb. 11], 1718). He soon discovered, however, that his father's forgiveness was contingent upon renouncing his right to the throne and denouncing those who had helped him escape.

Although Alexis accepted these terms, Peter, using extraordinarily cruel methods, conducted an investigation of Alexis' supporters, discovered the existence of a potential movement of reaction for which Alexis might become a rallying point, and concluded that his son was involved in a treasonous conspiracy. Alexis was then forced to confess before the Senate, and a special court tried him and condemned him to death. Before his execution, however, he died in the Peter-Paul Fortress from shock and the effects of torture.