Warriors! Now the hour has come that will decide the fate of the Fatherland. And so you should not think that you are fighting for Peter, but for the state handed over to Peter, for your family, for the Fatherland, for our Orthodox faith and church. You should also not be embarrassed by the glory of the enemy, as if invincible, which lie you yourself have repeatedly proved by your victories over him. Have righteousness before your eyes in battle, and God to fight against you. And know about Peter that his life is not dear to him, if only Russia would live in bliss and glory, for your well-being.
― Peter the Great
Peter Alekseevich Romanov, who went down in world history as Emperor Peter I the Great (1682-1725), was born on May 30, 1672 in Moscow in the family of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich (1645-1676) and his second wife, Natalia Kirillovna Naryshkina. The death of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and the accession of his eldest son Fyodor (from Tsarina Maria Ilyinichna, nee Miloslavskaya) pushed Tsarina Natalya Kirillovna and her relatives, the Naryshkins, into the background. Tsarina Natalya was forced to go to the village of Preobrazhenskoye near Moscow.
Young Peter had to fight for his right to be the autocrat of Russia. On his way there was a hostile court group, and at first he had to share the kingdom with his half-brother Ivan. The imperious and vain princess Sophia, who took care of the young princes (also Peter's half-sister), herself dreamed of the royal crown. So the young and fragile Peter, before achieving his goal, had to learn early lies, deceit, betrayal and slander and go through a series of intrigues, conspiracies and riots that were most dangerous for his life.
Hence his suspiciousness, distrust and suspicion of others, hence his recurring epileptic seizures from time to time - the result of a fright experienced in childhood. Therefore, distrust of his subjects, who could fail, fail to obey orders, betray or deceive, was simply in Peter's blood. Therefore, he had to control everything, if possible, take everything upon himself and do everything himself.
He is extremely cautious, he calculates his steps forward and tries to foresee the dangers that threaten him from everywhere and take appropriate measures. Peter practically did not receive any education (Nikita Zotov taught him to read and write), and the tsar had to acquire all his knowledge after ascending the throne and in the process of leading the country.
The hobbies of the lad Peter were of a constructive nature: his lively mind was interested in military, naval, cannon and weapons business, he tried to delve into various technical inventions, was interested in science, but the main difference between the Russian tsar and all his contemporaries was, in our opinion, in motivation his activities. The main goal of Peter I was to bring Russia out of centuries of backwardness and to introduce it to the achievements of European progress, science and culture and to introduce it on an equal footing into the so-called. European concert.
There is nothing surprising in the fact that the king made a bet on foreigners. Knowledgeable and experienced people were needed to command regiments and study military science. But among the Russian courtiers there were none. The German settlement, which was so close to his palace in Preobrazhensky, was Europe in miniature for young Peter. Since 1683, the Swiss Franz Lefort, the Holsteiner Theodor von Sommer, the Scot Patrick Gordon, the Dutchmen Franz Timmerman and Karsten Brandt have been in his entourage. With their help, "amusing" regiments were created - Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky, which later became the imperial guard, bombardment company, the amusing fortress of Preshburg was built.
Then, in 1686, the first amusing ships appeared near Preshburg on the Yauza - a large shnyak and a plow with boats. During these years, Peter became interested in all the sciences that were associated with military affairs. Under the guidance of the Dutchman Timmerman, he studied arithmetic, geometry, and military sciences. Having discovered a boat in a barn shed in Izmailovo, the sovereign was carried away by the idea of creating a regular fleet. Soon, on Lake Pleshcheyevo, near the city of Pereyaslavl-Zalessky, a shipyard was founded and a “funny fleet” began to be built.
Communicating with foreigners, the king became a great admirer of the laid-back foreign life. Peter lit a German pipe, began attending German parties with dancing and drinking, and began an affair with Anna Mons. Peter's mother strongly opposed this. In order to reason with her 17-year-old son, Natalya Kirillovna decided to marry him to Evdokia Lopukhina, the daughter of the okolnichi. Peter did not contradict his mother, but he did not love his wife. Their marriage ended with the tonsure of Empress Evdokia as a nun and her exile to a monastery in 1698.
In 1689, Peter, as a result of a confrontation with his sister Sophia, became an independent ruler, imprisoning her in a monastery.
The priority of Peter I in the first years of autocracy was the continuation of the war with the Ottoman Empire and the Crimea. He decided instead of campaigns against the Crimea, undertaken during the reign of Princess Sophia, to strike at the Turkish fortress of Azov, located at the confluence of the Don River into the Sea of Azov.
The first Azov campaign, which began in the spring of 1695, ended unsuccessfully in September of the same year due to the lack of a fleet and the unwillingness of the Russian army to operate far from supply bases. However, already in the autumn of 1695, preparations began for a new campaign. In Voronezh, the construction of a rowing Russian flotilla began. In a short time, a flotilla was built from different ships, led by the 36-gun ship "Apostle Peter". In May 1696, the 40,000-strong Russian army under the command of Generalissimo Shein again laid siege to Azov, only this time the Russian flotilla blocked the fortress from the sea. Peter I took part in the siege with the rank of captain in a galley. Without waiting for the assault, on July 19, 1696, the fortress surrendered. So the first exit of Russia to the southern seas was opened.
The result of the Azov campaigns was the capture of the fortress of Azov, the beginning of the construction of the port of Taganrog, the possibility of an attack on the Crimean peninsula from the sea, which significantly secured the southern borders of Russia. However, Peter failed to get access to the Black Sea through the Kerch Strait: he remained under the control of the Ottoman Empire. Forces for the war with Turkey, as well as a full-fledged navy, Russia has not yet had.
To finance the construction of the fleet, new types of taxes were introduced: landowners were united in the so-called kumpanships of 10 thousand households, each of which had to build a ship with their own money. At this time, the first signs of dissatisfaction with the activities of Peter appear. The conspiracy of Zikler, who was trying to organize a streltsy uprising, was uncovered. In the summer of 1699, the first large Russian ship "Fortress" (46-gun) took the Russian ambassador to Constantinople for peace negotiations. The very existence of such a ship persuaded the Sultan to conclude peace in July 1700, which left the fortress of Azov to Russia.
During the construction of the fleet and the reorganization of the army, Peter was forced to rely on foreign specialists. Having completed the Azov campaigns, he decides to send young nobles for training abroad, and soon he himself sets off on his first trip to Europe.
As part of the Great Embassy (1697-1698), which had the goal of finding allies to continue the war with the Ottoman Empire, the tsar traveled incognito under the name of Peter Mikhailov.
Peter studied artillery in Brandenburg, built ships at Dutch and English shipyards, visited mines, factories, government agencies, met with the monarchs of European countries. For the first time, the Russian tsar undertook a journey outside the borders of his state. The embassy recruited several hundred shipbuilding specialists to Russia and purchased military and other equipment.
He was primarily interested in the technical achievements of Western countries, and not in the legal system. Having visited the English parliament incognito, where the speeches of the deputies before King William III were translated for him, the tsar said: “It’s fun to hear when the sons of the patronymic tell the king clearly the truth, this should be learned from the British.”
And yet, Peter was an adherent of absolutism, considered himself the anointed of God and vigilantly monitored the observance of his royal privileges. He was a man who early "saw through" life from its negative side, but also early matured from the consciousness of the state burden.
The Grand Embassy did not achieve its main goal: it was not possible to create a coalition against the Ottoman Empire due to the preparation of a number of European powers for the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). However, thanks to this war, favorable conditions were created for Russia's struggle for the Baltic. Thus, there was a reorientation of Russia's foreign policy from the south to the north.
After returning from the Grand Embassy, the tsar began to prepare for a war with Sweden for access to the Baltic Sea. In 1699, the Northern Alliance was created against the Swedish king Charles XII, which, in addition to Russia, included Denmark-Norway, Saxony and, since 1704, the Commonwealth, headed by the Saxon elector and the Polish king Augustus II. The driving force behind the union was the desire of August II to take away Livonia from Sweden, Frederick IV of Denmark - Schleswig and Skane. For help, they promised Russia the return of lands that previously belonged to the Russians (Ingermanland and Karelia). No one then suspected that the Great Northern War (1700-1721) would last for twenty-one years.
Two giant figures towered in the first quarter of the 18th century, obscuring all the acting characters of both the Northern War and Europe in general - the Russian reformer Tsar Peter I and the Swedish warrior king Charles XII. Each of them in their own country and in their field left an indelible mark in the minds of their descendants, although not always a grateful memory.
Fate brought them into a cruel and uncompromising confrontation, from which one emerged victorious and lived to the unanimous and universal reverence and recognition of his subjects, and the second found his premature and dramatic death, either from an enemy bullet, or as a result of an insidious conspiracy, providing his subjects with a pretext for fierce and still ongoing disputes regarding their deeds and personality.
Peter I demonstrated in the confrontation with Charles XII the genuine art of a talented and cautious (but far from cowardly, as Charles XII mistakenly believed) strategist. It seems to us that the king, already at an early stage, unraveled the explosive and carried away character of the king, who was ready to put everything at stake for the sake of a fleeting victory and satisfaction of his vanity (a vivid example of this is the assault on the insignificant fortress of Veprik), and countered it with cautious maneuvering, far-sightedness and cold calculation. “The search for a general battle is very dangerous, because in one hour the whole thing can be refuted,” he instructs the diplomatic representatives of Baron J.R. who were in Poland. Patkul and Prince G.F. Dolgorukov.
Peter cherishes his army and constantly reminds his generals to be careful in contacts with the Swedish army. “From the enemy to be in fear and to have every caution and send for the sake of conducting frequent parties and having truly found out about the enemy’s condition and his strength and asking God for help, repair the enemy as far as possible,” he teaches the quite experienced General Rodion Bour in 1707 d. “Non-fear harms a person everywhere,” he never tires of repeating on the eve of Poltava.
At the same time, he correctly and boldly recommends to his generals not to sit behind the walls of fortresses, because sooner or later any fortress surrenders or is taken by storm, and therefore it is necessary to seek meetings with the enemy in open battle: “True, the fortress rebuffs the enemy, but the Europeans not for long. Victory will be decided by the art of war and the courage of the commanders and the fearlessness of the soldiers ... It is convenient to sit behind the wall against the Asians.
Peter is a talented diplomat, his policy towards all European powers was balanced and cautious. There is no hint of adventurism in his diplomacy. He knew, for example, that Augustus II was an unreliable ally who deceived him at every turn, but Peter understood that he had no other allies. And he needed August, on the one hand, to distract the Swedes from the invasion of Russia longer, and on the other, as a counterbalance to Stanislav Leshchinsky, the henchman of Charles XII, in order to have at least part of the Poles on his side. After Poltava, he worked hard and hard to recreate the destroyed anti-Swedish coalition and achieved success. He also skillfully played on the interest of Holland and England in trade relations with Russia and significantly neutralized the hostility of these countries to his plans.
And one more thing: Peter was constantly learning, especially from Karl and in general from the Swedish army and state. The Narva of 1700 served him as a great lesson. Peter looked at the war as a school for the people, in which the teachers (Swedes) gave the Russians hard lessons, and they severely beat them for a poorly learned lesson, but then the students must study more diligently until they start beating their teachers.
The result of his far-reaching conclusions was the creation of a modern combat-ready army and navy. At the same time, suppressing pride, he was ready to admit his mistakes, as, for example, he did after the unsuccessful Prut campaign: “Now I am in the same condition as my brother Karl was at Poltava. I made the same mistake as he did: I entered the enemy's land without taking the necessary measures to maintain my army.
Peter was a very gifted military leader. Of course, his military abilities were discovered after Narva. Gaining experience, he became more and more convinced that it was dangerous to blindly rely on foreign generals - what a mercenary like Field Marshal de Croix cost him near Narva! In the future, he increasingly began to take on the most important decisions, relying on the advice and recommendations of his associates. After Narva, almost the entire course of the war was determined by the will and instructions of Tsar Peter, and all major campaigns and battles did not take place without his knowledge, detailed instructions and guiding hand.
As the most striking evidence of Peter's talent as a commander, one can cite his idea of building 10 redoubts in the forefield of the Poltava battle, which played an almost decisive role in the defeat of the Swedish army. And his idea of artillery as a particularly important type of weapon? It was thanks to him that powerful artillery appeared in the Russian army, which was given exceptionally great importance both during the sieges of fortresses, and in field and naval battles. Recall what a big role artillery played in the battle of Poltava, in which the Swedish army was forced to oppose the Russians with only a few guns, and even those without charges.
Of course, the invited foreigners greatly contributed to Peter's victories, but all or almost all military tasks were solved by the tsar himself and only by him. Turenne, as he said, over time he had his own, Russians - only there was not a single Sully!
The enumeration of Peter's military merits could be continued. Peter understood very well: if he died in battle, his whole work would be lost. Nevertheless, we recall that the tsar, already during the capture of Shlisselburg and Noteburg, was nearby, in the same ranks, with the besiegers of these fortresses. Near Poltava, he was ahead of his regiments, repulsing the attack of Levenhaupt's infantrymen, and in the battle they shot his hat. What about Lesnaya, Nyuenschantz, Narva (1704), Gangut (1714)? Was he not there at the head or in front of the troops? Peter took a direct part in naval battles.
In 1710, Turkey intervened in the war. After the defeat in the Prut campaign in 1711, Russia returned Azov to Turkey and destroyed Taganrog, but due to this, it was possible to conclude another truce with the Turks.
On August 30 (September 10), 1721, the Peace of Nystadt was concluded between Russia and Sweden, which ended the 21-year war. Russia received access to the Baltic Sea, annexed the territory of Ingria, part of Karelia, Estonia and Livonia. Russia became a great European power, in commemoration of which, on October 22 (November 2), 1721, Peter, at the request of the senators, took the title of Father of the Fatherland, Emperor of All Russia.
Peter I, who constantly pushed his ideas to his assistants and ministers, was not truly understood by any of his contemporaries. The king was doomed to loneliness - such is always the lot of people of genius. And he was outraged and unbalanced.
Peter carried out a reform of public administration, reforms were carried out in the army, a navy was created, a reform of church administration was carried out, aimed at eliminating church jurisdiction autonomous from the state and subordinating the Russian church hierarchy to the Emperor. Financial reform was also carried out, measures were taken to develop industry and trade.
Secular educational institutions began to appear, translations of many books into Russian, and the first Russian newspaper was founded. Success in the service of Peter made the nobles dependent on education.
Peter was clearly aware of the need for enlightenment, and took a number of decisive measures to this end. On January 14, 1700, a school of mathematical and navigational sciences was opened in Moscow. In 1701-1721. Artillery, engineering and medical schools were opened in Moscow, an engineering school and a naval academy in St. Petersburg, mining schools at the Olonets and Ural factories. In 1705, the first gymnasium in Russia was opened. The goals of mass education were to be served by the digital schools created by decree of 1714 in provincial cities, called upon "to teach children of all ranks to read and write, numbers and geometry." It was supposed to create two such schools in each province, where education was supposed to be free. For soldiers' children, garrison schools were opened, for the training of priests, starting from 1721, a network of theological schools was created. Peter's decrees introduced compulsory education for nobles and clergy, but a similar measure for the urban population met with fierce resistance and was canceled. Peter's attempt to create an all-estate elementary school failed (the creation of a network of schools ceased after his death, most of the digital schools under his successors were redesigned into class schools for the training of the clergy), but nevertheless, during his reign, the foundations were laid for the spread of education in Russia.
Peter created new printing houses, in which for 1700-1725. 1312 book titles were printed (twice as many as in the entire previous history of Russian book printing). Thanks to the rise of printing, paper consumption increased from 4,000 to 8,000 sheets at the end of the 17th century to 50,000 sheets in 1719.
There have been changes in the Russian language, which included 4.5 thousand new words borrowed from European languages.
In 1724, Peter approved the charter of the Academy of Sciences being organized (opened in 1725 after his death).
Of particular importance was the construction of stone St. Petersburg, in which foreign architects took part and which was carried out according to the plan developed by the tsar. He created a new urban environment with previously unfamiliar forms of life and pastime (theatre, masquerades).
The reforms carried out by Peter I affected not only politics, economics, but also art. Peter invited foreign artists to Russia and at the same time sent talented young people to study "arts" abroad. In the second quarter of the XVIII century. "Peter's pensioners" began to return to Russia, bringing with them new artistic experience and acquired skills.
Peter tried to change the position of women in Russian society. He by special decrees (1700, 1702 and 1724) forbade forced marriage and marriage. Legislative prescriptions 1696-1704 about public festivities introduced the obligation to participate in the celebrations and festivities of all Russians, including "female".
From the "old" in the structure of the nobility under Peter, the former serfdom of the service class remained unchanged through the personal service of each service person to the state. But in this enslavement, its form has somewhat changed. Now they were obliged to serve in the regular regiments and in the navy, as well as in the civil service in all those administrative and judicial institutions that were transformed from the old ones and arose anew. The decree on uniform inheritance of 1714 regulated the legal status of the nobility and secured the legal merger of such forms of land ownership as an estate and an estate.
From the reign of Peter I, the peasants began to be divided into serfs (landlords), monastic and state peasants. All three categories were recorded in the revision tales and subjected to a poll tax. Since 1724, the owner's peasants could leave their villages to work and for other needs only with the written permission of the master, witnessed by the zemstvo commissar and the colonel of the regiment that was stationed in the area. Thus, the landowner's power over the personality of the peasants received even more opportunities to increase, taking both the personality and property of the privately owned peasant into their unaccountable disposal. From that time on, this new state of the rural worker received the name of the "serf" or "revisionist" soul.
In general, Peter's reforms were aimed at strengthening the state and familiarizing the elite with European culture while strengthening absolutism. In the course of the reforms, Russia's technical and economic backwardness from a number of other European states was overcome, access to the Baltic Sea was won, and transformations were carried out in many areas of Russian society. Gradually, among the nobility, a different system of values, worldview, aesthetic ideas took shape, which was fundamentally different from the values and worldview of most representatives of other estates. At the same time, the people's forces were extremely exhausted, the preconditions were created (Decree on the succession to the throne of 1722) for the crisis of the supreme power, which led to the "epoch of palace coups". The decree of 1722 violated the usual way of succession to the throne, but Peter did not have time to appoint an heir before his death.
In the last years of his reign, Peter was very ill. In the summer of 1724, his illness intensified, in September he felt better, but after a while the attacks became more painful. (An autopsy after death showed the following: "a sharp narrowing in the back of the urethra, hardening of the neck of the bladder and anton fire." Death followed from inflammation of the bladder, which turned into gangrene due to urinary retention).
In October, Peter went to inspect the Ladoga Canal, against the advice of his life physician Blumentrost. From Olonets, Peter traveled to Staraya Russa and in November went to St. Petersburg by water. At Lakhta, he had to, standing waist-deep in water, rescue a boat with soldiers that had run aground. The attacks of the disease intensified, but Peter, not paying attention to them, continued to deal with state affairs. On January 17, 1725, he had such a bad time that he ordered a camp church to be built in the room next to his bedroom, and on January 22 he confessed. The strength began to leave the patient, he no longer screamed, as before, from severe pain, but only moaned.
At the beginning of the sixth hour in the morning on January 28 (February 8), 1725, Peter the Great died in his Winter Palace near the Winter Canal. He was buried in the Cathedral of the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. The palace, cathedral, fortress and city were built by him.