Peter the Great

Peter the Great the tsar and later emperor of Russia (1672-1725), who transformed a backward continental kingdom into a European great power. Through war, reform and the founding of a new capital at St Petersburg, he imposed Western institutions and techniques on Russia and made himself one of the most consequential rulers of the early modern world.

Youth and Seizure of Power

Peter was born in 1672, the fourteenth child of tsar Alexis. He was proclaimed tsar at the age of ten jointly with his feeble half-brother Ivan, while his sister Sophia held real power as regent. For years the half-siblings were rivals, and Peter grew up in the village of Preobrazhenskoe, where he formed a fascination with ships, soldiers and machines.

In 1689 he removed Sophia from power and took the government into his own hands, though he shared the title with Ivan until 1696. His early years were marked by experiments with a small boy army, by the construction of a toy flotilla on the river and later on lake Pleshcheyevo, and by the discovery of Western learning that shaped his ambitions.

The death of Ivan in 1696 left Peter sole ruler. He had already begun to look abroad, and he resolved to make Russia a naval and commercial power, judging that access to the sea and to European knowledge was the key to the survival and advancement of his state.

The Great Northern War

Peter's central military struggle was the Great Northern War against Sweden, which began in 1700 with a Russian defeat at Narva. He learned from the disaster, reorganised his army on European lines, raised new regiments, and created a navy and a munitions industry, and over the following years he drove the Swedes from the eastern Baltic.

In 1703 he founded the city of St Petersburg at the mouth of the Neva as a window on Europe and a new port. The decisive encounter came at Poltava in 1709, where the Swedish king Charles XII was utterly defeated. The war continued until 1721, when the treaty of Nystad gave Russia the Baltic provinces of Estonia, Livonia and part of Finland, and with them a direct outlet to the sea.

In the same peace Peter accepted the title of emperor, and Russia was recognised as a great power. He also campaigned against Persia and the Ottoman Empire, gaining footholds on the Caspian, though some acquisitions were later given up. His victories established Russia as a member of the European states system.

Reforms of State and Society

Peter reformed the government of Russia by overhauling the army, the treasury, the administration and the church. He abolished the patriarchate and replaced it with a Holy Synod under state control, introduced a Table of Ranks that opened official and noble status to talent and service, and created ministries, or colleges, modelled on those of Sweden.

He insisted that the nobility serve in the army or the civil administration, and he required education for nobles, establishing schools of mathematics, navigation and engineering and sending young Russians abroad to study. He founded the Academy of Sciences and encouraged the translation of European books, and he introduced a simplified alphabet and a new calendar.

He also imposed social changes by decree, requiring nobles to adopt Western dress, shave their beards and follow European manners, and he taxed the beards of those who refused. His policies were enforced with harshness and provoked resistance, yet they reshaped the elite of Russia and tied the country to European culture and technology.

St Petersburg and the Building of an Empire

Peter's new capital, built on marshland from 1703, became the symbol of his reign. Designed with Western palaces, canals and public buildings, the city was constructed at frightful cost in labour and lives, yet it became a great port and the seat of the imperial government, embodying his intention to face Europe rather than Asia.

He pursued industry and trade with vigour, founding ironworks and shipyards in the Urals and the Baltic region, promoting manufacturers and merchants, and encouraging foreign specialists to settle in Russia. The Russian navy and merchant marine grew, and the economy was drawn into the commerce of northern Europe.

His reign established the framework of the Russian empire: a standing army and navy, a centralised administration, a Europeanised elite and a capital on the sea. These instruments served his successors for two centuries in the expansion of Russian power across northern Eurasia.

Character and Legacy

Peter was a ruler of immense energy and a practical curiosity that was unusual in a monarch. He worked with his own hands as a carpenter and shipwright, served in his own army at the rank of bombardier, and studied shipbuilding in Holland and England, asking constantly how things were done in the West.

He was also violent and punitive, capable of brutal severity toward those who opposed him, including his own son Alexis, who was tried and died after torture. The cost of his reforms fell heavily on the peasants and on the church, and the northern war and the building of the capital strained the resources of the state.

Yet his achievement was decisive. He opened Russia to Europe, built its armed forces and its administration, and founded a city and a navy that gave it access to the world. His reign is remembered as the beginning of imperial Russia, and the monument to him erected by Catherine the Great in St Petersburg images him as the bronze horseman driving his nation forward.

See also

• Great Northern War
• St Petersburg
• Table of Ranks
• Battle of Poltava