Peter the
Great:
Czar of
Russia
(1689-1725)
Personality:
• Belching Contests
• Crude Jokes
• Comical Funerals
• Vicious Punishments
Peter was determined to westernize Russia with
technology to build up his army and navy with the
purpose of winning military victories.
Peter
conscripted
peasants for 25
years of military
service and was
credited with
forming the first
Russian navy.
Central Government:
Senate created to supervise
administrative departments
Russia divided into 8
provinces, later 50
Hoped for a sense of honest
civic duty in bureaucrats
Written to an
administrator:
“According to these
orders act, act, act. I
won’t write more, but
you will pay with your
head if you interpret
orders again.”
Response to cautious
interpretations of his orders:
“This is as if a servant,
seeing his master drowning,
would not save him until he
had satisfied himself as to
whether it was written down
in his contract that he should
pull him out of the water.”
Peter clearly made
impossible
demands on his
officials to be
simultaneously
slaves and
independent men.
Peter required that all the landholding class serve
in military or civil offices. His Table of Ranks
made each work his way up the ladder via merit.
Peter imposed state
control over the
Russian Orthodox
Church in 1721. He
abolished the position
of patriarch and
created a Holy Synod
to make decisions for
the church.
Peter introduced
Western
customs,
practices, and
manners into
Russia
In the first Russian
book of etiquette to
teach Western
manners, it was
pointed out that it was
not polite to spit on
the floor or scratch
one’s self at dinner.
The Western
nobility did not wear
beards or the
traditional longskirted coat. Peter
ordered the beards
to be shaven and
the coats to be
shortened.
Peter personally shaved
the beards and coats of his
nobles at court with his
own hands. Barbers and
tailors were placed at town
gates and did the same.
Failure to cooperate resulted in being
“beaten without mercy.”
Women benefited from
Peter’s Western
influence. They could
mix at social gatherings
with men and he insisted
they could marry of their
own free will.
Peter ordered the construction of St. Petersburg
in 1703. It was considered his “window to the
West.” It cost the lives of thousands of peasants.
The Peterhof Palace entrance
Interior view of the Peterhof
By Peter the Great’s
death in 1725, Russia had
become a great military
power and an important
member of the European
state system.