The Reforms of Peter the Great
Peter the Great (1672 – 1725) was a towering figure, both literally in that he stood 6 foot 7 inches tall, and figuratively in that he transformed Russia from a backwards medieval state, into a less backwards westernizing one. He established Russia as a great nation by instituting great reforms that revolutionized both the state and society. Many Russian governmental institutions today trace their origins to his reign.
Peter ascended the throne at age ten in 1682, ruling jointly with his brother Ivan V, until the latter’s death in 1696. Thereafter, Peter ruled alone as Tsar of All the Russias. The Russia inherited by Peter was extremely backwards, having remained isolationist and rejected modernity while the rest of Europe had experienced the Renaissance and Reformation. So he set out to drag his realm into the modern world.
Peter’s reforms were radical and far-reaching, and were strongly resented and resisted by Russia’s medieval aristocracy and religious reactionaries, many of whom came to see him as the (literal) Antichrist. He persisted, nonetheless. Peter introduced secular education, and paying special attention to the sciences, recruited foreign experts and technicians, and brought them to Russia to teach his subjects. He modernized the Russian army along western lines, and created a strong navy. He also brought the reactionary Orthodox Church under tighter governmental control and organized Russia into more rational territorial and administrative divisions.
Peter’s greatest territorial ambition was to secure access to the sea for his mostly landlocked realm. He expanded along the Baltic, seizing Finland, Latvia, and Estonia, which got him into a major war with Sweden, then a great power. He eventually crushed the Swedes at Poltava in 1709, then consolidated his gains by establishing the city of Saint Petersburg on the Baltic, and made it his capital in lieu of Moscow. He also successfully warred against the Ottoman Turks, and thus secured access to the Black Sea. In 1721, Peter proclaimed Russia an empire, and had himself declared Emperor.
His reforms were geared towards westernizing Russia’s ruling and professional classes, as he sought to develop industry and commerce, and create a gentrified bourgeoisie. His reforms did not extend to the Russian masses, however. Conspicuously absent from Peter’s reforms were efforts to alleviate the abominable conditions of the serfs, a majority of Russia’s population, whose lot actually worsened. He squeezed them hard to pay for his wars, by raising their taxes, which, thanks to his more efficient bureaucracy, were now harder to evade. He also conscripted serfs into his armies, with enlistment terms as high as 25 years, which amounted to life sentences given the era’s life expectancy. Those policies led to bloody peasant and Cossack uprisings, which Peter brutally crushed.
