Peter was very tall, extremely powerful, incredibly energetic, and an intellectually gifted child4. However, Peter received no extensive education, barely being taught to read and write. Instead, he began to view and absorb information on his own and came to pursue a variety of interests. The sector for foreigners in Moscow became his favorite backdrop. There he learned from a variety of specialists what he wanted to know most about military and naval matters, geometry, and the erection of fortifications. There too, in a busy, informal, and unrestrained atmosphere, the tsar apparently felt much more at ease than in the conservative, tradition-bound palace environment, which he never accepted as his own. This kind of life style never left his life. He would always judge people not by their background, but by what they knew and what they were able to do. As a result, throughout his reign his assistants constituted a remarkably diverse group, ranging socially from the old, established Russian aristocracy to able newcomers from lower classes and including a great variety of foreigners5.
The war games of Peter's childhood developed over a period of years into a serious military undertaking. He had formed two disciplined regiments of soldiers, known as the guards, from among his friends while at Preobrazhenskoye. The guards would later become the elite core of a new, modernized army. In addition, the young tsar began building small vessels on a nearby body of water, and as early as 1694 he had established a dockyard in Arkhangel’sk and he then personally constructed a large ship there. Few would know it, but a Russian navy was being created literally from scratch6.
The first years of Peter's effective rule brought more military surprises. Peter declared war against the Ottoman Empire in 1695. After failing to capture the key fortress of Azov near the mouth of the Don River by land, Peter built in one winter a fleet at Voronezh, a settlement up the Don. Working indefatigably himself and ruthlessly driving everyone around him, from foreign experts to Russian peasants, he managed to bring 30 seagoing vessels and about 1000 transport barges to Azov in May 1696. Besieged by sea as well as by land, the Ottomans surrendered Azov in July.
Next, Peter organized a large delegation—the so-called Grand Embassy—to visit a number of European countries. He was spurred by the desire to form a mighty coalition against the Ottoman Empire, but also by his intense interest in the West. His ambition even drove Peter to travel with the Grand Embassy himself. The party of approximately 250 men set out in March 1697. It was headed by Peter’s close Swiss friend and associate, Franz Lefort, while the tsar himself journeyed in the disguised name of Peter Mikhailov. Even with his changes his identity was easy to discover, and it was no secret to the rulers and officials he visited or even to the peasant crowds that frequently gathered around him. The tsar engaged in a number of important talks on diplomatic and other state matters.
Above all desires, Peter tried to learn as much as possible from the West7. He seemed most concerned with navigation, but he also tried to absorb other technical skills and crafts, together with the ways, manners, and entire way of life of Europe as he saw it. As the Grand Embassy progressed across the continent Peter also took trips of his own, most notably to the British Isles, and obtained firsthand knowledge of Prussia, Holland, England, the Habsburg Empire, and the Baltic provinces of Sweden. From Vienna the tsar intended to go to Italy, but instead he rushed back to Moscow in the fall of 1698 at news of a rebellion of the streltsy. During his 18-month trip abroad, Peter recruited more than 750 foreigners, especially Dutchmen, to serve in Russia. Experts in their fields, these artisans, doctors, and soldiers continued their careers while training the Russians their jobs.
The Streltsy, who had made a bid to depose Peter in favor of Sofia, were defeated before Peter's return, yet the tsar acted with great violence and severity. After investigation and torture of the prisoners, more than 1000 Streltsy were executed. Their mangled bodies were displayed publicly as a valuable lesson to all. The Streltsy soon disbanded altogether. Finally, Sofia was forced to become a nun, as was Peter's wife, (Eudoxia Lopukhina) who had sympathized with the rebels8. In addition, after returning home the tsar commanded that officials, courtiers and the military conform to Western standards of appearance, even going as far as ordering them to cut their beards and wear Western-style clothing. With the beginning of the new century, Peter changed the Old Russian calendar to the Julian calendar used in the West to conduct business with other countries.
Before long, however, these and other reform measures had to yield to the prosecution of the Great Northern War (1700-1721) against Sweden. Peter’s journey west did not result in a great alliance against the Ottomans, but it led to one against Sweden. Russia fought with Denmark and the union of Poland and Saxony against Sweden to win the Baltic coastline, the "window into Europe," and to break Swedish dominance over the northern part of the continent. At the time, Sweden was considered to have the strongest army in all of Europe and was led by the most famous commander, the youthful King Charles XII. Thus, the war required the utmost valiant exertion from the primitive Russia.
In 1700, Russia was crushed by the Swedes. Peter learned his lesson and soon transformed the Russian army to the modern times, and hence turned tide of war. By 1703 the Russians had won important victories against the Swedes. Peter even founded Saint Petersburg at the site of a former Swedish fortress on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Finland9. Russia destroyed invading Swedish forces at Poltava on July 8, 1709, and, although the war lasted many more years, the Swedes could not ever gain the advantage. By 1714 Russian troops occupied most of Finland, then a Swedish duchy. The new Russian Baltic navy, under Peter's direct command, joined the army to defeat the Swedish fleet off Hangö and to finally carry the war into Sweden itself. The Treaty of Nystad, concluded on August 30, 1721, gave Russia Livonia, Estonia, Latvia, Ingria, part of Karelia, and certain islands, although Russia returned the bulk of Finland and paid 2 million Swedish rix-dollars. Russia obtained the Finnish borderlands located strategically next to Saint Petersburg as well. At a celebration of the peace settlement, the Senate, which had been recently created to assist the tsar in governing the country, prevailed upon Peter to accept the titles of Great, Father of the Fatherland, and Emperor of Russia. His acceptance of the last title marked the official installation of the Russian Empire10.
Internal reforms under Peter were generally enacted under the pressure of war, usually in a hectic, disjointed manner. Often the confusion they were designed to fix was made worse. Still, Peter's reforming of Russia was by no means limited to hectic measures to bolster the war efforts. Rather, he wanted to Westernize and modernize the entire Russian government, society, and culture. Peter literally moved the capital west, from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, in 1712. Even if he failed to overhaul all of Russia, changes pointed more and more away from old Muscovy and toward borrowing from the West. Peter the Great was not a theoretician, but he had the utter makings of a visionary.
The modernization of the army and the creation of the navy were among the most successful of all his changes. In 1711, before leaving on the Ottoman campaign, Peter created a Senate of 10 (later 11) members to supervise all judicial, financial, and administrative affairs in his absence. Upon his return it became a permanent institution, with a special high official, the ober-procurator, serving as the link between the Senate and the monarch, this senate was to become Peter’s “Sovereign’s Eyes”. This just meant that it helped Peter govern the country while he conducted his own affairs.
In 1717, Peter replaced Muscovy’s numerous and bulky governmental departments with new agencies, called colleges. Originally nine in number, the colleges were councils that served as the main agencies of the newly structured government, dealing with such matters as foreign affairs, justice, and commerce. The group leadership of each agency was meant to provide a variety of opinion and to deter corruption. Town government also underwent major reform. In 1699 control of the cities was shifted from appointed governors to locally elected officials. Intended to stimulate the initiative and activity of the townspeople, the reform failed in practice because of local ignorance. An even greater failure was provincial reform, again very progressive and ambitious but totally unrealistic at the time. Peter divided the country into 50 provinces, for which he established a vast bureaucracy. A governor headed each province and answered to the Senate. The system provided more uniformity, yet corruption and confusion thrived within the new bureaucracy11.
Despite his failure at the government, Peter was more effective at changing the structure of the Russian Orthodox Church. His reforms were influenced especially by church-state arrangements in the Lutheran states of Northern Europe. In 1721 a Holy Synod, or religious college, of 10, and later 12, clerics replaced the patriarch at the head of the Orthodox Church. A secular official, a ober-procurator (government official), was appointed to supervise the synod for the ruler. Although the emperor acquired no authority on questions of faith, the reform enabled the government to exercise control over church organization, possessions, and policies.
On the whole Peter had to accept Russian society as it was, with serfdom and the economic and social dominance of the gentry; he did not produce any revolutionary changes in the Russian economy. However, Peter’s effort to make that society and economy brought some lasting social results. To fund the wars and the building of Saint Petersburg, taxation became extremely oppressive, with new taxes of every kind. After a census was ordered in the early 1720s, a head, or poll, tax replaced the household tax and the tax on cultivated land. Serfs and eventually even vagrants—individuals who had previously escaped taxation because they did not own land or were not part of a household—were subject to the new tax. This decision led to the mass displease of his people.
Under Peter, members of the service gentry, landowners who held property in return for their service to the state, were divided into classes. In 1722, Peter broadcasted a system of ranks that classified the gentry according to their level of service. This system, called the Table of Ranks, listed in hierarchic order the 14 ranks to be attained in the military, civil, and imperial court service12. Promotion now depended on ability and service to the state, not birth, which historically determined how far one rose in Russian society. The Table of Ranks served as the foundation of the imperial Russian bureaucracy and lasted, with modification, until 1917. This led to making the people come first and not their names. This system awarded the hard working people of Russia.
Peter’s war endeavors provided a strong stimulus to the Russian economy, from mining and metallurgy, which supplied armaments and ships for the army and navy, to the new textile industry. His most significant impact was in the broad field of education and culture, where the Western orientation could never again be reversed. This orientation began before Peter’s reforms, but it was Peter who made it state policy and thus transformed an optional and slow process into a compulsory official drive. In a sense, the Academy of Sciences, planned by the emperor and established shortly after his death, remained his most fitting monument.
In February of 1725, Peter dived in the icy waters of a nearby shipwreck and helped rescue his people from drowning, unfortunately, this led to his demise13. Peter however, never had a chance to appoint a successor. His only son to grow to maturity, Alexis, had died in 1718 in prison for treason against his father, whose views he never shared. The reformer's second wife ascended the throne as Empress Catherine I, sponsored especially by Peter's most recognized assistant, Aleksandr Menshikov, and the guards.
Peter the Great was unconditionally admired, almost worshiped, in his native country by the educated public during the Age of Enlightenment, which followed after his death and which he had done so much to introduce. He then became a subject of argument in the first half of the 19th century among such ideologists as the Westernizers, who applauded Peter’s accomplishments, and the Slavophiles, who claimed he had betrayed his country’s traditions with his reforms.
While historical studies provided a more realistic context for understanding Peter the Great and his significance, his figure remained immense in Russian literature and culture. Even Soviet Marxist writing after the Russian Revolution of 1917 applauded the emperor. Soviet historians de-emphasized the role of personality in history and stressed the oppressive feudal nature of Peter’s reign, but they glorified his creation of the navy, his military reform and victories, and the emergence of Russia as a great world power.
End Note
1. McDermott, Kathleen. Peter the Great. Chelsea House, 1990 pp 25-26
2. McDermott, Kathleen. Peter the Great. Chelsea House, 1990. pp 35
3. Jonge, Alex. Fire & Water: A Life of Peter the Great. First American, 1980 pp 225-27
4. Troyat, Henri. Peter the Great. Whiteside Limited, TO 1987 pp 196-97
5. Massie, Robert K. Peter the Great: His Life and World. Ballantine, 1980 pp 50
6. Jonge, Alex. Fire & Water: A Life of Peter the Great. First American, 1980 pp 317
7. Troyat, Henri. Peter the Great. Whiteside Limited, TO 1987 pp 163
8. Massie, Robert K. Peter the Great: His Life and World. Ballantine, 1980 pp 89
9. Troyat, Henri. Peter the Great. Whiteside Limited, TO 1987 pp 186
10. Torchinsky, Oleg. Cultures of the World: Russia North Bellmore: Marshall Cavendish Corp. 1994. pp 204
11. Troyat, Henri. Peter the Great. Whiteside Limited, TO 1987 pp 294
12. Torchinsky, Oleg. Cultures of the World: Russia North Bellmore: Marshall Cavendish Corp. 1994 pp 310
13. Troyat, Henri. Peter the Great. Whiteside Limited, TO 1987 pp 245-246
