Dmitry Mikhailovich Golitsyn the Elder

Golitsyn was sent by Peter the Great in 1697 to Italy to learn military affairs; in 1704 he was appointed to the command of an auxiliary corps in Poland against Charles XII; from 1711 to 1718 he was governor of Belgorod.

[1] On the death of Peter II he conceived the idea of limiting the autocracy by subordinating it to the authority of the Supreme privy council, of which he was president.

He drew up a Conditions which Anna of Courland, the newly elected Russian empress, was forced to sign at Mittau before being permitted to proceed to Saint Petersburg.

[2] Golitsyn was left in peace, however, and lived for the most part in retirement, till 1736, when he was arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the conspiracy of his son-in-law Prince Konstantin Dmitrievich Kantemir.

A court, largely composed of his antagonists, condemned him to death, but the empress reduced the sentence to lifelong imprisonment in Schlisselburg and confiscation of all his estates.