May 30, 2018

Peter the Great, Emperor of All Russia


Peter the Great, Emperor of All Russia

Peter the Great was born on May 30 (Old Style, June 9, New Style). Here's a quick Tsar's Tour of one of the country's most important leaders...

Peter I of Russia was a busy man.

After a trip to Europe in 1698 (known as the Grand Embassy), he became convinced that Russia had a long way to go before she could “catch up” with the West. And so this giant of a tsar – 6 foot 8 inches! – set to changing everything.

First, the boring parts: Peter tried several administrative reforms – it took him a few tries to get it right, as he copied one European country after another. His most lasting contribution was the Table of Ranks, a supposedly meritocratic system for advancing in the tsar’s service, which remained in force all the way until the Russian Revolution. The Table of Ranks also conveniently undermined the hereditary authority of the boyars, who vied with the tsar for power. In addition to their pedigrees, the boyars, like the biblical Samson, had one other source of power: their hair, more specifically, their beards – and so Peter demanded that everyone shave their beards, or else pay a beard tax.

In fact, beard-shaving was just one part of making everyone Western. New clothing was also imported, as were European wigs, manners, and aesthetics. Peter brought much of contemporary Europe’s knowledge and skills with him from the Grand Embassy (where he had at times pretended to be a commoner and studied at a shipyard), but he also invited experts from abroad, mostly Germans.

These Germans (to be fair, some were Dutch) brought their books, their newspapers, and their words with them. The Russian language was fleshed out and filled up with neologisms (not all of them stuck). Peter couldn’t be happier: determined to meet the linguistic changes halfway, he devised a new script, borrowing heavily from Western sources. And if you wanted to be in the know about all the new-fangled technology, you had to read the new script!


The entire reform in a nutshell: "shave beards, cut hair, sew clothing, start thinking."

Oh, he also built the Russian navy practically from scratch.

And, as a pat on the back at the end of it all, in 1721 he got himself crowned as the first Russian Emperor. He wasn’t even dead yet before they started calling him “Great.”

The "Bronze Horseman" - a monument "to Peter the First from Catherine the Second"

But the crown jewel of Peter’s reforms was the city of St. Petersburg. Built on a swamp that had just recently been captured from the Swedes in the Northern War, with its foundation made – quite literally – out of the bones of workers who died building it, the city was filled with the new architecture and the new customs, and held in place by the sheer force of Peter’s will, as Russian writers so like to muse about:

“Hundreds of times, as I’ve walked through the Petersburg morning fog, this strange thought has cropped up: ‘What if, when the fog lifts and disperses somewhere high up over the earth, this rotten, slimy city were to lift up with it and vanish like vapor, until there remains only this old Finnish swamp, and – I suppose – in the middle of it, as decoration, that bronze horseman on his panting, exhausted horse?’ ”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Adolescent

But, for all its fantastical qualities, St. Petersburg has so far stayed in place – and we remember Peter the Great as the willful reformer who put it there and nailed it down, like a piece of lumber on his newest ship.

When we say Peter built the Russian navy, we mean it literally.

Photo credits: Wikimedia Commons, Eugenia Sokolskaya

Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

Faith & Humor: Notes from Muscovy

Faith & Humor: Notes from Muscovy

A book that dares to explore the humanity of priests and pilgrims, saints and sinners, Faith & Humor has been both a runaway bestseller in Russia and the focus of heated controversy – as often happens when a thoughtful writer takes on sacred cows. The stories, aphorisms, anecdotes, dialogues and adventures in this volume comprise an encyclopedia of modern Russian Orthodoxy, and thereby of Russian life.
Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Bilingual series of short, lesser known, but highly significant works that show the traditional view of Dostoyevsky as a dour, intense, philosophical writer to be unnecessarily one-sided. 
Woe From Wit (bilingual)

Woe From Wit (bilingual)

One of the most famous works of Russian literature, the four-act comedy in verse Woe from Wit skewers staid, nineteenth century Russian society, and it positively teems with “winged phrases” that are essential colloquialisms for students of Russian and Russian culture.
Tolstoy Bilingual

Tolstoy Bilingual

This compact, yet surprisingly broad look at the life and work of Tolstoy spans from one of his earliest stories to one of his last, looking at works that made him famous and others that made him notorious. 
The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The Frogs Who Begged for a Tsar (bilingual)

The fables of Ivan Krylov are rich fonts of Russian cultural wisdom and experience – reading and understanding them is vital to grasping the Russian worldview. This new edition of 62 of Krylov’s tales presents them side-by-side in English and Russian. The wonderfully lyrical translations by Lydia Razran Stone are accompanied by original, whimsical color illustrations by Katya Korobkina.
Marooned in Moscow

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.
Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

In this comprehensive, quixotic and addictive book, Edwin Trommelen explores all facets of the Russian obsession with vodka. Peering chiefly through the lenses of history and literature, Trommelen offers up an appropriately complex, rich and bittersweet portrait, based on great respect for Russian culture.
Jews in Service to the Tsar

Jews in Service to the Tsar

Benjamin Disraeli advised, “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” With Jews in Service to the Tsar, Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history, and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europe’s Jews, illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.
Okudzhava Bilingual

Okudzhava Bilingual

Poems, songs and autobiographical sketches by Bulat Okudzhava, the king of the Russian bards. 

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955