How long did Peter the Great live? The reverse side of the reforms

Peter I The Great (Peter I) Russian Tsar since 1682 (ruled since 1689), the first Russian emperor (since 1721), the youngest son of Alexei Mikhailovich from his second marriage to Natalya Kirillovna Naryshkina.

Peter I was born June 9 (May 30, old style), 1672, in Moscow. March 22, 1677, at the age of 5, he began to study.

According to the old Russian custom, Peter began to be taught from the age of five. The tsar and the patriarch came to the opening of the course, served a prayer service with the blessing of water, sprinkled the new stude with holy water and, having blessed, sat down at the alphabet. Nikita Zotov bowed to his student to the ground and began the course of his teaching, and he immediately received a fee: the patriarch gave him a hundred rubles (more than a thousand rubles for our money), the sovereign granted him a court, made him a nobleman, and the queen mother sent two pairs of rich top and bottom dresses and “the whole outfit”, into which, upon the departure of the sovereign and the patriarch, Zotov immediately dressed up. Krekshin also noted the day when Peter's education began - March 12, 1677, when, therefore, Peter was not even five years old.

Who is cruel is not a hero.

The prince studied willingly and smartly. In his spare time, he liked to listen to various stories and look at books with “kunsht” and pictures. Zotov told the queen about this, and she ordered him to give out "historical books", manuscripts with drawings from the palace library, and ordered several new illustrations from the masters of painting in the Armory.

Noticing when Peter began to tire of reading books, Zotov took the book from his hands and showed him these pictures, accompanying the review with their explanations.

Peter I carried out public administration reforms (created Senate, colleges, bodies of higher state control and political investigation; the church is subordinate to the state; the country was divided into provinces, a new capital was built - St. Petersburg).

Money is the artery of war.

Peter I used the experience of Western European countries in the development of industry, trade and culture. He pursued a policy of mercantilism (the creation of manufactories, metallurgical, mining and other plants, shipyards, marinas, canals). He supervised the construction of the fleet and the creation of a regular army.

Peter I led the army in the Azov campaigns of 1695-1696, the Northern War of 1700-1721, the Prut campaign of 1711, the Persian campaign of 1722-1723; he commanded troops during the capture of Noteburg (1702), in battles near the village of Lesnaya (1708) and near Poltava (1709). Contributed to the strengthening of the economic and political position of the nobility.

At the initiative of Peter I, many educational institutions, the Academy of Sciences were opened, and the civil alphabet was adopted. The reforms of Peter I were carried out by cruel means, by extreme exertion of material and human forces (poll tax), which entailed uprisings (Streletskoye 1698, Astrakhan 1705-1706, Bulavinskoye 1707-1709), mercilessly suppressed by the government. Being the creator of a powerful absolutist state, he achieved recognition for Russia of the authority of a great power.

Childhood, youth, education of Peter I

For recognition - forgiveness, for concealment - there is no pardon. Better sin is open than secret.

Having lost his father in 1676, Peter was brought up until the age of ten under the supervision of the elder brother of Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich, who chose for him as a teacher the clerk Nikita Zotov, who taught the boy to read and write. When Fedor died in 1682, Ivan Alekseevich was supposed to inherit the throne, but since he was in poor health, the supporters of the Naryshkins proclaimed Peter the tsar. However, the Miloslavskys, relatives of the first wife of Alexei Mikhailovich, did not accept this and provoked a streltsy riot, during which ten-year-old Peter witnessed a brutal reprisal against people close to him. These events left an indelible mark on the boy's memory, affecting both his mental health and worldview.

The result of the rebellion was a political compromise: Ivan and Peter were put on the throne together, and their elder sister, Princess Sofya Alekseevna, was named ruler. Since that time, Peter and his mother lived mainly in the villages of Preobrazhensky and Izmailovo, appearing in the Kremlin only to participate in official ceremonies, and their relationship with Sophia became increasingly hostile. The future tsar received neither secular nor ecclesiastical systematic education. He was left to himself and, mobile and energetic, spent a lot of time in games with his peers. Later, he was allowed to create his own "amusing" regiments, with which he played battles and maneuvers, and which later became the basis of the Russian regular army.

In Izmailovo, Peter discovered an old English boat, which, on his orders, was repaired and tested on the Yauza River. Soon he ended up in the German Quarter, where he first became acquainted with European life, experienced his first heartfelt hobbies and made friends among European merchants. Gradually, a company of friends formed around Peter, with whom he spent all his free time. In August 1689, when a rumor reached him that Sophia was preparing a new Streltsy revolt, he fled to the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, where loyal regiments and part of the court arrived from Moscow. Sophia, feeling that strength was on her brother's side, made an attempt at reconciliation, but it was too late: she was removed from power and imprisoned in the Novodevichy Convent. Sophia was supported by her favorite - Fedor Leontyevich Shaklovity, who, when Peter came to power, was executed under torture.

Beginning of independent government

To be afraid of misfortune is not to see happiness.

In the second half of the 17th century. Russia was going through a deep crisis associated with the socio-economic lagging behind the advanced countries of Europe. Peter, with his energy, inquisitiveness, interest in everything new, turned out to be a person capable of solving the problems facing the country. But at first he entrusted the administration of the country to his mother and uncle, L.K. Naryshkin. The tsar still rarely visited Moscow, although in 1689, at the insistence of his mother, he married E. F. Lopukhina.

Peter was attracted by sea fun, and he left for Pereslavl-Zalessky and Arkhangelsk for a long time, where he participated in the construction and testing of ships. Only in 1695 did he decide to undertake a real military campaign against the Turkish fortress of Azov. The first Azov campaign ended in failure, after which a fleet was hastily built in Voronezh, and during the second campaign (1696) Azov was taken. Then Taganrog was founded. This was the first victory of the young Peter, which significantly strengthened his authority.

Soon after returning to the capital, the king went (1697) with the Great Embassy abroad. Peter visited Holland, England, Saxony, Austria and Venice, studied shipbuilding, working at shipyards, got acquainted with the technical achievements of the then Europe, its way of life, political structure. During his trip abroad, the foundation was laid for an alliance between Russia, Poland and Denmark against Sweden. The news of a new Streltsy rebellion forced Peter to return to Russia (1698), where he dealt with the rebels with extraordinary cruelty (Streltsy uprising of 1698).

The first transformations of Peter I

The world is good, but at the same time, one should not doze, so that their hands are not tied, and the soldiers so that they do not become women.

Peter's political program was basically formed abroad. Its ultimate goal was the creation of a regular police state based on universal service to him, the state was understood as the "common good". The tsar himself considered himself the first servant of the fatherland, who had to teach his subjects by his own example. The unconventional behavior of Peter, on the one hand, destroyed the image of the sovereign as a sacred figure that had been developing for centuries, and on the other hand, it provoked a protest from a part of society (primarily among the Old Believers, whom Peter cruelly persecuted), who saw the Antichrist in the king.

The reforms of Peter I began with the introduction of foreign dress and the order to shave beards for everyone except the peasants and the clergy. Thus, initially, Russian society was divided into two unequal parts: for one (the nobility and the top of the urban population), the Europeanized culture implanted from above was intended, the other retained the traditional way of life.

In 1699, the calendar reform was also carried out. A printing house was set up in Amsterdam to publish secular books in Russian, and the first Russian order, St. Andrew the First-Called, was founded. The country was in dire need of its own qualified personnel, and the king ordered to send young men from noble families to study abroad. In 1701, the Navigation School was opened in Moscow. The reform of city government has also begun. After the death of Patriarch Adrian in 1700, no new patriarch was elected, and Peter created the Monastic Order to manage the church economy. Later, instead of the patriarch, a synodal government of the church was created, which lasted until 1917. Simultaneously with the first transformations, preparations were intensively made for a war with Sweden, for which a peace treaty with Turkey was previously signed.

Peter I also introduced the celebration of the New Year in Russia.

Lessons of the Northern War

The war, the main goal of which was to consolidate Russia in the Baltic, began with the defeat of the Russian army near Narva in 1700. However, this lesson went to Peter for the future: he realized that the reason for the defeat was primarily in the backwardness of the Russian army, and with even greater energy set about rearming it and the creation of regular regiments, first by collecting "subsistence people", and from 1705 through the introduction of recruitment (in 1701, after the defeat of the Russian army near Narva, the economist and publicist Ivan Tikhonovich Pososhkov wrote a note for Peter I "On military behavior", proposing measures to create a combat-ready army.). The construction of metallurgical and weapons factories began, supplying the army with high-quality cannons and small arms. The campaign of the Swedish troops led by King Charles XII to Poland allowed the Russian army to win the first victories over the enemy, to capture and devastate a significant part of the Baltic. In 1703, at the mouth of the Neva, Peter founded St. Petersburg, the new capital of Russia, which, according to the tsar's plan, was to become an exemplary "paradise" city. In the same years, the Boyar Duma was replaced by the Council of Ministers, which consisted of members of the inner circle of the tsar, along with the Moscow orders, new institutions were created in St. Petersburg. In 1708 the country was divided into provinces. In 1709, after the Battle of Poltava, a turning point in the war came and the tsar was able to pay more attention to domestic political affairs.

Management reform of Peter I

In 1711, setting out on the Prut campaign, Peter I founded the Governing Senate, which had the functions of the main body of executive, judicial and legislative power. Since 1717, the creation of collegiums began - the central bodies of sectoral management, founded in a fundamentally different way than the old Moscow orders. New authorities - executive, financial, judicial and control - were also created in the localities. In 1720, the General Regulations were issued - detailed instructions for organizing the work of new institutions. In 1722, Peter signed the Table of Ranks, which determined the order of organization of military and civil service and was in effect until 1917. Even earlier, in 1714, a Decree on uniform inheritance was issued, equalizing the rights of owners of estates and estates. This was important for the formation of the Russian nobility as a single full-fledged estate. But the tax reform, begun in 1718, was of paramount importance for the social sphere. In Russia, a poll tax was introduced from males, for which regular population censuses (“audits of souls”) were carried out. During the reform, the social category of serfs was eliminated and the social status of some other categories of the population was clarified. In 1721, after the end of the Northern War, Russia was proclaimed an empire, and the Senate awarded Peter the titles "Great" and "Father of the Fatherland".

When the sovereign obeys the law, then no one will dare to oppose it.

Transformations in the economy

Peter I clearly understood the need to overcome the technical backwardness of Russia and in every possible way contributed to the development of Russian industry and trade, including foreign trade. Many merchants and industrialists enjoyed his patronage, among whom the Demidovs are most famous. Many new plants and factories were built, new branches of industry arose. However, its development in wartime conditions led to the priority development of heavy industries, which, after the end of the war, could no longer exist without state support. The virtually enslaved position of the urban population, high taxes, the forcible closure of the Arkhangelsk port, and some other government measures did not favor the development of foreign trade. In general, the exhausting war that lasted for 21 years, requiring large investments, received mainly through emergency taxes, led to the actual impoverishment of the country's population, mass escapes of peasants, and the ruin of merchants and industrialists.

Transformations of Peter I in the field of culture

The time of Peter I is the time of active penetration into Russian life of elements of secular Europeanized culture. Secular educational institutions began to appear, the first Russian newspaper was founded. Success in the service of Peter made the nobles dependent on education. By a special decree of the tsar, assemblies were introduced, representing a new form of communication between people for Russia. 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. The interior decoration of houses, the way of life, the composition of food, etc., have changed. Gradually, a different system of values, worldview, and aesthetic ideas took shape in the educated environment. The Academy of Sciences was founded in 1724 (opened in 1725).

The personal life of the king

Upon his return from the Great Embassy, ​​Peter I finally broke with his unloved first wife. Subsequently, he became friends with the captive Latvian Martha Skavronskaya (the future Empress Catherine I), whom he married in 1712.

There is a desire, a thousand ways; no desire - a thousand reasons!

On March 1, 1712, Peter I married Marta Samuilovna Skavronskaya, who converted to Orthodoxy and was called Ekaterina Alekseevna from that time.

Marta Skavronskaya's mother, a peasant woman, died early. Pastor Gluck took Marta Skavronskaya (as she was called then) to bring up. At first, Martha was married to a dragoon, but she did not become his wife, since the groom was urgently summoned to Riga. Upon the arrival of the Russians in Marienburg, she was taken as a prisoner. According to some sources, Martha was the daughter of a Livonian nobleman. According to others - a native of Sweden. The first statement is more reliable. When she was captured, B.P. took her in. Sheremetev, and A.D. took it from him or begged for it. Menshikov, the latter - Peter I. Since 1703, she became a favorite. Three years before their church marriage, in 1709, Peter I and Catherine had a daughter, Elizabeth. Martha took the name of Catherine, having converted to Orthodoxy, although she was called by the same name (Katerina Trubacheva) when she was with A.D. Menshikov.

Marta Skavronskaya gave birth to several children to Peter I, of whom only daughters Anna and Elizabeth (future Empress Elizabeth Petrovna) survived. Peter, apparently, was very attached to his second wife and in 1724 crowned her with the imperial crown, intending to bequeath the throne to her. However, shortly before his death, he learned about his wife's infidelity with V. Mons. Nor did the relationship between the tsar and his son from his first marriage, Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich, who died under circumstances that were not fully clarified in the Peter and Paul Fortress in 1718 (for this purpose, the Secret Chancellery was created by the tsar). Peter I himself died of a urinary tract disease without leaving a will. The emperor had a whole bunch of diseases, but uremia plagued him more than other ailments.

The results of Peter's reforms

Forgetting service for a woman is unforgivable. To be a prisoner of a mistress is worse than a prisoner in war; the enemy is more likely to have freedom, but the woman's fetters are long-term.

The most important result of Peter's reforms was to overcome the crisis of traditionalism by modernizing the country. Russia became a full-fledged participant in international relations, pursuing an active foreign policy. Significantly increased the authority of Russia in the world, and Peter I himself became for many a model of the sovereign-reformer. Under Peter, the foundations of Russian national culture were laid. The tsar also created a system of administration and administrative-territorial division of the country, which was preserved for a long time. At the same time, violence was the main tool for carrying out reforms. Not only did Peter's reforms fail to rid the country of the previously established system of social relations embodied in serfdom, but, on the contrary, conserved and strengthened its institutions. This was the main contradiction of the Petrine reforms, the prerequisites for a future new crisis.

PETER I THE GREAT (article by P. N. Milyukov from the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron, 1890 - 1907)

Peter I Alekseevich the Great- the first emperor of all Russia, was born on May 30, 1672, from the second marriage of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich with Natalya Kirillovna Naryshkina, a pupil of the boyar A. S. Matveev.

Contrary to the legendary stories of Krekshin, the education of the young Peter went rather slowly. Tradition makes a three-year-old child report to his father, in the rank of colonel; in fact, he had not yet been weaned for two and a half years. We do not know when N. M. Zotov began teaching him to read and write, but it is known that in 1683 Peter had not yet finished learning the alphabet.

Do not trust three: do not trust a woman, do not trust a Turk, do not trust a non-drinker.

Until the end of his life, Peter continued to ignore grammar and spelling. As a child, he gets acquainted with the "exercise of the soldier's system" and adopts the art of beating the drum; this is what his military knowledge is limited to military exercises in the village. Vorobyov (1683). This autumn Peter still plays with wooden horses. All this did not go out of the pattern of the then usual "fun" of the royal family. Deviations begin only when political circumstances throw Peter out of the rut. With the death of Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich, the dull struggle between the Miloslavskys and the Naryshkins turns into an open clash. On April 27, the crowd that had gathered in front of the red porch of the Kremlin Palace called out Peter the Tsar, bypassing his elder brother John; On May 15, on the same porch, Peter stood in front of another crowd that had thrown Matveev and Dolgoruky onto archery spears. The legend portrays Peter as calm on this day of revolt; it is more likely that the impression was strong and that Peter's well-known nervousness and his hatred of archers originate from here. A week after the beginning of the rebellion (May 23), the victors demanded from the government that both brothers be appointed kings; a week later (on the 29th), at the new demand of the archers, due to the youth of the kings, the reign was handed over to Princess Sophia.

The party of Peter was removed from any participation in state affairs; Natalya Kirillovna during the entire time of Sophia's regency came to Moscow only for a few winter months, spending the rest of the time in the village of Preobrazhensky near Moscow. A significant part of the noble families, who did not dare to link their fate with the provisional government of Sophia, were grouped around the young court. Left to his own devices, Peter unlearned to endure any constraint, to deny himself the fulfillment of any desire. Tsaritsa Natalia, a woman of "mindless", in the words of her relative Prince. Kurakina, apparently cared exclusively about the physical side of her son's upbringing.

From the very beginning we see Peter surrounded by "young children, simple people" and "young people of the first houses"; the first, in the end, prevailed, and the "noble persons" were distant. It is very likely that both simple and noble friends of Peter's childhood games equally deserved the nickname "naughty ones" given to them by Sophia. In 1683-1685, two regiments were organized from friends and volunteers, settled in the villages of Preobrazhensky and neighboring Semenovsky. Little by little, interest in the technical side of military affairs develops in Peter, which made him look for new teachers and new knowledge. "For mathematics, fortification, turning skills and artificial fires" is under Peter a foreign teacher, Franz Timmermann. The surviving (from 1688?) study notebooks of Peter testify to his persistent efforts to master the applied side of arithmetic, astronomical and artillery wisdom; the same notebooks show that the foundations of all this wisdom remained a mystery to Peter 1. But turning art and pyrotechnics have always been Peter's favorite pastimes.

The only major, and unsuccessful, intervention of the mother in the private life of the young man was his marriage to E.F. Lopukhina, on January 27, 1689, before Peter reached 17 years old. It was, however, rather a political than a pedagogical measure. Sophia married Tsar John, too, immediately upon reaching the age of 17; but only daughters were born to him. The very choice of a bride for Peter was a product of the party struggle: noble adherents of his mother offered a bride of a princely family, but the Naryshkins won, with Tikh. Streshnev at the head, and the daughter of a small estate nobleman was chosen. Following her, numerous relatives (“more than 30 people,” Kurakin says) reached out to the court. Such a mass of new seekers of places, who, moreover, did not know the "circle of the courtyard", caused general irritation at the court against the Lopukhins; Queen Natalya soon “had hated her daughter-in-law and wanted to see her husband more in disagreement than in love” (Kurakin). This, as well as the dissimilarity of characters, explains that Peter's "fair love" for his wife "lasted only a year," and then Peter began to prefer family life - camping, in the regimental hut of the Preobrazhensky regiment.

The new occupation of shipbuilding - distracted him even further; from the Yauza, Peter moved with his ships to Lake Pereyaslavskoe, and had fun there even in winter. Peter's participation in state affairs was limited, during the regency of Sophia, to the presence at solemn ceremonies. As Peter grew up and expanded his military amusements, Sophia began to worry more and more about her power and began to take measures to preserve it. On the night of August 8, 1689, Peter was awakened in Preobrazhenskoye by archers who brought news of a real or imaginary danger from the Kremlin. Peter fled to the Trinity; his adherents ordered to convene the noble militia, demanded to themselves the chiefs and deputies from the Moscow troops and committed a short massacre with Sophia's main supporters. Sophia was settled in a monastery, John ruled only nominally; in fact, power passed to the party of Peter. At first, however, "the royal majesty left his reign to his mother, and he spent his time in the amusements of military exercises."

In honor of the New Year, make decorations from fir trees, amuse children, ride sleds from the mountains. And adults should not commit drunkenness and massacre - other days are enough for that.

The reign of Tsaritsa Natalia was presented to contemporaries as an epoch of reaction against the reform aspirations of Sophia. Peter took advantage of the change in his position only to expand his amusements to grandiose proportions. So, the maneuvers of the new regiments ended in 1694 with the Kozhukhovsky campaigns, in which “Tsar Fyodor Pleshbursky (Romodanovsky) defeated “Tsar Ivan Semenovsky” (Buturlin), leaving 24 real dead and 50 wounded on the amusing battlefield. The expansion of sea amusements prompted Peter to make a trip to the White Sea twice, and he was in serious danger during his trip to the Solovetsky Islands. Over the years, the center of Peter's wild life has become the house of his new favorite, Lefort, in the German Quarter. “Here a debauchery began, drunkenness so great that it is impossible to describe that for three days, having locked themselves in that house, they were drunk and that many happened to die because of this” (Kurakin).

In Lefort's house, Peter "began to deal with foreign ladies and Cupid began to be the first to visit one merchant's daughter." “From practice”, at the balls of Lefort, Peter “learned to dance in Polish”; the son of the Danish commissioner Butenant taught him fencing and horseback riding, the Dutchman Vinius taught him the practice of the Dutch language; during a trip to Arkhangelsk, Peter changed into a sailor's Dutch suit. In parallel with this assimilation of European appearance, there was a rapid destruction of the old court etiquette; ceremonial exits to the cathedral church, public audiences and other "yard ceremonies" fell into disuse. "Swearing to noble people" from royal favorites and court jesters, as well as the establishment of "the most joking and most drunken cathedral", originate in the same era. In 1694 Peter's mother died. Although now Peter "himself was forced to enter the administration, however, he did not want to bear the labor of that and left all his government to his ministers" (Kurakin). It was difficult for him to give up the freedom to which years of involuntary retirement had taught him; and later he did not like to bind himself with official duties, entrusting them to other persons (for example, “Prince-Caesar Romodanovsky, before whom Peter plays the role of a loyal subject), while himself remaining in the background. The government machine in the first years of Peter's own reign continues to run its course; he intervenes in this move only when and insofar as it proves necessary for his naval amusements.

Very soon, however, Peter's "infantile play" at soldiers and ships leads to serious difficulties, for the elimination of which it turns out to be necessary to significantly disturb the old state order. “We were joking near Kozhukhov, and now we are going to play near Azov,” - this is how Peter F. M. Apraksin reports, at the beginning of 1695, about the Azov campaign. Already in the previous year, having become acquainted with the inconveniences of the White Sea, Peter began to think about transferring his sea activities to some other sea. He fluctuated between the Baltic and the Caspian; the course of Russian diplomacy prompted him to prefer a war with Turkey and the Crimea, and Azov was appointed as the secret goal of the campaign - the first step towards access to the Black Sea.

The playful tone soon disappears; Peter's letters become more concise, as the unpreparedness of the troops and generals for serious actions is revealed. The failure of the first campaign forces Peter to make new efforts. The flotilla built in Voronezh, however, turns out to be of little use for military operations; foreign engineers ordered by Peter are late; Azov surrenders in 1696 "on a contract, and not by war." Peter noisily celebrates the victory, but he well feels the insignificance of success and the lack of strength to continue the struggle. He invites the boyars to grab "fortune by the hair" and find funds to build a fleet in order to continue the war with the "infidels" at sea.

The boyars entrusted the construction of ships to the "kumpans" of secular and spiritual landowners, who had at least 100 households; the rest of the population had to help with money. The ships built by the "Kumpans" later turned out to be worthless, and this entire first fleet, which cost the population about 900 thousand rubles of that time, could not be used for any practical purposes. Simultaneously with the establishment of the "Kumpanism" and in view of the same goal, that is, the war with Turkey, it was decided to equip an embassy abroad in order to consolidate the alliance against the "infidels". "Bombardier" at the beginning of the Azov campaign and "captain" at the end, Peter now adjoins the embassy as a "volunteer of Peter Mikhailov", with the aim of the closest study of shipbuilding.

I point out to the gentlemen senators that they should not speak according to the written word, but in their own words, so that everyone can see the nonsense.

On March 9, 1697, the embassy moved from Moscow, with the intention of visiting Vienna, the kings of England and Denmark, the pope, the states of Holland, the Elector of Brandenburg and Venice. Peter's first foreign impressions were, in his words, "little pleasant": the Riga commandant Dalberg took the tsar's incognito too literally and did not allow him to inspect the fortifications: later Peter made a casus belli out of this incident. A magnificent meeting in Mitau and a friendly reception of the Elector of Brandenburg in Konigsberg improved matters. From Kolberg, Peter went ahead, by sea, to Lübeck and Hamburg, striving to reach his goal as soon as possible - a secondary Dutch shipyard in Saardam, recommended to him by one of his Moscow acquaintances.

Here Peter stayed for 8 days, surprising the population of a small town with his extravagant behavior. The embassy arrived in Amsterdam in mid-August and remained there until mid-May 1698, although the negotiations were over in November 1697. In January 1698, Peter went to England to expand his maritime knowledge and remained there for three and a half months, working mainly at the shipyard in Deptford. The main goal of the embassy was not achieved, since the states resolutely refused to help Russia in the war with Turkey; for this, Peter used his time in Holland and England to acquire new knowledge, and the embassy was engaged in the purchase of weapons and all kinds of ship supplies; hiring sailors, artisans, etc.

To European observers, Peter appeared to be an inquisitive savage, interested mainly in crafts, applied knowledge and all sorts of curiosities and not sufficiently developed to be interested in the essential features of European political and cultural life. He is portrayed as an extremely quick-tempered and nervous person, quickly changing his mood and plans and not knowing how to control himself in moments of anger, especially under the influence of wine.

The embassy's return route lay through Vienna. Here Peter experienced a new diplomatic setback, as Europe was preparing for the war of the Spanish Succession and was busy with the reconciliation of Austria with Turkey, and not with a war between them. Restricted in his habits by the strict etiquette of the Viennese court, and not finding new lures for curiosity, Peter was in a hurry to leave Vienna for Venice, where he hoped to study the structure of the galleys.

Speak briefly, ask little, leave quickly!

The news of the Streltsy revolt called him to Russia; on the way, he only had time to see the Polish king Augustus (in m. Rava), and here; in the midst of three days of uninterrupted fun, the first idea flashed to replace the failed plan of alliance against the Turks by another plan, the subject of which, instead of the Black Sea that had slipped out of the hands, would be the Baltic. First of all, it was necessary to put an end to the archers and the old order in general. Directly from the road, without seeing his family, Peter drove to Anna Mons, then to his Preobrazhensky yard. The next morning, August 26, 1698, he personally began to cut the beards of the first dignitaries of the state. The archers were already defeated by Shein near the Resurrection Monastery and the instigators of the rebellion were punished. Peter resumed the investigation of the rebellion, trying to find traces of influence on the archers of Princess Sophia. Having found evidence of mutual sympathy rather than definite plans and actions, Peter nevertheless forced Sophia and her sister Martha to have their hair cut. He took advantage of this moment to forcibly cut his wife's hair, who was not accused of any involvement in the rebellion.

The king's brother, John, died as early as 1696; no connections with the old hold back Peter anymore, and he indulges with his new favorites, among whom Menshikov comes to the fore, some kind of continuous bacchanalia, a picture of which Korb paints. Feasts and drinking bouts are replaced by executions, in which the king himself sometimes plays the role of an executioner; from the end of September to the end of October 1698, more than a thousand archers were executed. In February 1699 hundreds of archers were executed again. The Moscow Streltsy army ceased to exist.

Decree December 20, 1699 on the new chronology formally drew a line between the old and the new time. On November 11, 1699, a secret treaty was concluded between Peter and Augustus, by which Peter was obliged to enter Ingria and Karelia immediately after the conclusion of peace with Turkey, no later than April 1700; Livonia and Estonia, according to Patkul's plan, August provided himself. Peace with Turkey was concluded only in August. Peter took advantage of this period of time to create a new army, since "after the dissolution of the archers, this state did not have any infantry." On November 17, 1699, a recruitment of 27 new regiments was announced, divided into 3 divisions, headed by the commanders of the Preobrazhensky, Lefortovsky and Butyrsky regiments. The first two divisions (Golovin and Veide) were fully formed by the middle of June 1700; together with some other troops, up to 40 thousand in total, they were moved to the Swedish borders, on the next day after the promulgation of peace with Turkey (August 19). To the displeasure of the allies, Peter sent his troops to Narva, taking which he could threaten Livonia and Estonia. Only towards the end of September did the troops gather at Narva; only at the end of October was fire opened on the city. During this time, Charles XII managed to put an end to Denmark and, unexpectedly for Peter, landed in Estonia.

On the night of November 17-18, the Russians learned that Charles XII was approaching Narva. Peter left the camp, leaving command to Prince de Croix, unfamiliar with the soldiers and unknown to them - and the eight thousandth army of Charles XII, tired and hungry, defeated the forty thousandth army of Peter without any difficulty. The hopes aroused in Petra by a trip to Europe are replaced by disappointment. Charles XII does not consider it necessary to further pursue such a weak enemy and turns against Poland. Peter himself characterizes his impression with the words: “then captivity drove away laziness and forced day and night to industriousness and art.” Indeed, from that moment Peter is transformed. The need for activity remains the same, but it finds a different, better application for itself; all Peter's thoughts are now focused on defeating the opponent and gaining a foothold in the Baltic Sea.

In eight years, he recruits about 200,000 soldiers and, despite losses from the war and from military orders, brings the size of the army from 40 to 100 thousand. The cost of this army in 1709 costs him almost twice as much as in 1701: 1810000 R. instead of 982,000. For the first 6 years of the war, more than that was paid; subsidies to the King of Poland about one and a half million. If we add here the expenses for the fleet, for artillery, for the maintenance of diplomats, then the total expense caused by the war will be 2.3 million in 1701, 2.7 million in 1706 and 3.2 billion in 1710 Already the first of these figures was too great in comparison with the funds that before Peter the Great were delivered to the state by the population (about 11/2 million).

A subordinate in the face of those in authority should look dashing and foolish, so as not to embarrass the authorities with his understanding.

We had to look for additional sources of income. For the first time, Peter cares little about this and simply takes for his own purposes from the old state institutions - not only their free remnants, but even those amounts that were previously spent on another purpose; this upsets the correct course of the state machine. Nevertheless, large items of new expenses could not be covered by the old funds, and Peter was forced to create a special state tax for each of them. The army was maintained from the main income of the state - customs and tavern duties, the collection of which was transferred to a new central institution, the town hall. To maintain the new cavalry, recruited in 1701, it was necessary to impose a new tax (“dragoon money”); in the same way - and to maintain the fleet ("ship"). Then the tax on the maintenance of workers for the construction of St. Petersburg, "recruited", "underwater" is added here; and when all these taxes become habitual and merge into the total amount of permanent ("salary"), they are joined by new emergency fees ("request", "non-salary"). And these direct taxes, however, soon turned out to be insufficient, especially since they were collected rather slowly and a significant part remained in arrears. Next to them, therefore, other sources of income were invented.

The earliest invention of this kind - stamped paper introduced on the advice of Alexei Aleksandrovich Kurbatov - did not give the profits expected from it. The more important was the damage to the coin. The re-minting of a silver coin into a coin of lower denomination, but at the same nominal price, gave 946 thousand in the first 3 years (1701-03), 313 thousand in the next three; from here foreign subsidies were paid. However, soon all the metal was converted into new coin, and its value in circulation fell by half; thus, the benefit of the defacement of the coin was temporary and accompanied by great harm, dropping the value of all treasury receipts in general (together with the decline in the value of the coin).

A new measure for raising state revenues was the repayment, in 1704, of old quitrent articles and the return of new quitrents; all the owner's fishing, domestic baths, mills, inns were taxed, and the total amount of state revenues under this item rose by 1708 from 300 to 670 thousand annually. Further, the treasury took over the sale of salt, which brought it up to 300 thousand annual income, tobacco (this enterprise was unsuccessful) and a number of other raw products, which gave up to 100 thousand annually. All these private events served the main task - to survive somehow a difficult time.

During these years, Peter could not devote a single minute of attention to the systematic reform of state institutions, since the preparation of means of struggle occupied all his time and required his presence in all parts of the state. Peter began to come to the old capital only for Christmas; here the usual wild life was resumed, but at the same time the most urgent state affairs were discussed and decided. The Poltava victory gave Peter the opportunity to breathe freely for the first time after the Narva defeat. The need to understand the mass of individual orders of the first years of the war; became more insistent; both the means of payment of the population and the resources of the treasury were greatly depleted, and a further increase in military spending was foreseen ahead. From this position, Peter found a way out, already familiar to him: if the funds were not enough for everything, they had to be used for the most important thing, that is, for military affairs. Following this rule, Peter had previously simplified the financial management of the country, transferring collections from individual areas directly into the hands of the generals, for their expenses, and bypassing the central institutions, where the money had to be received according to the old order.

It was most convenient to apply this method in the newly conquered country - in Ingermanland, given to the "government" of Menshikov. The same method was extended to Kyiv and Smolensk - to bring them into a defensive position against the invasion of Charles XII, to Kazan - to pacify unrest, to Voronezh and Azov - to build a fleet. Peter only summarizes these partial orders when he orders (December 18, 1707) “to paint cities in parts, except for those that were in the 100th century. from Moscow - to Kyiv, Smolensk, Azov, Kazan, Arkhangelsk. After the Poltava victory, this vague idea of ​​a new administrative and financial structure of Russia was further developed. The assignment of cities to central points, in order to collect all sorts of fees from them, implied a preliminary clarification of who and what should pay in each city. A general census was appointed to inform payers; in order to inform the payments, it was ordered to collect information from the former financial institutions. The results of these preliminary works revealed that the state was in a serious crisis. The 1710 census showed that, as a result of continuous collections and escapes from taxes, the payment population of the state had greatly decreased: instead of 791 thousand households, which were listed before the 1678 census, the new census counted only 637 thousand; in the entire north of Russia, which carried the main part of the financial burden to Peter, the decline reached even 40%.

In view of this unexpected fact, the government decided to ignore the figures of the new census, with the exception of places where they showed the income of the population (in the SE and in Siberia); in all other localities it was decided to levy taxes in accordance with the old, fictitious figures of payers. And under this condition, however, it turned out that the payments did not cover the costs: the former turned out to be 3 million 134 thousand, the latter - 3 million 834 thousand rubles. About 200 thousand could be covered from the salt income; the remaining half million constituted a permanent deficit. During the Christmas congresses of Peter's generals in 1709 and 1710, the cities of Russia were finally distributed among 8 governors; each in his "province" collected all taxes and directed them, first of all, to the maintenance of the army, navy, artillery and diplomacy. These "four places" swallowed up the entire stated income of the state; how the "provinces" will cover other expenses, and above all their own, local - this question remained open. The deficit was eliminated simply by a corresponding reduction in government spending. Since the maintenance of the army was the main goal when introducing "provinces", the next step of this new organization was that the maintenance of certain regiments was entrusted to each province.

For constant relations with them, the provinces appointed their "commissars" to the regiments. The most significant drawback of this arrangement, put into effect from 1712, was that it effectively abolished the old central institutions, but did not replace them with any others. The provinces were in direct contact with the army and with the highest military institutions; but above them there was no higher office that could control and coordinate their functioning. The need for such a central institution was already felt in 1711, when Peter I had to leave Russia for the Prut campaign. "For his absences" Peter created the Senate. The provinces were to appoint their commissars to the senate, "for the demand and adoption of decrees." But all this did not accurately determine the mutual relationship between the senate and the provinces. All attempts by the Senate to organize the same control over the provinces as the “Near Chancellery” established in 1701 had over orders; ended in complete failure. The irresponsibility of the governors was a necessary consequence of the fact that the government itself constantly violated the rules established in 1710-12. order of the provincial economy, took money from the governor not for the purposes for which he was supposed to pay them according to the budget, freely disposed of provincial cash amounts and demanded from the governors more and more “instruments”, i.e., an increase in income, at least at the cost oppression of the population.

The main reason for all these violations of the established order was that the budget of 1710 fixed the figures for the necessary expenses, but in reality they continued to grow and could no longer fit within the budget. The growth of the army is now, however, somewhat suspended; on the other hand, expenditures on the Baltic fleet, on buildings in the new capital (where the government finally moved its residence in 1714), and on the defense of the southern border increased rapidly. We had to find new, extra-budgetary resources again. It was almost useless to impose new direct taxes, since the old ones were paid worse and worse, as the population became poorer. The re-minting of coins, the state monopolies also could not give more than what they had already given. In place of the provincial system, the question arises of itself about the restoration of central institutions; the chaos of old and new taxes, "salary", "everyday" and "request", makes it necessary to consolidate the direct tax; the unsuccessful collection of taxes based on fictitious figures of 1678 leads to the question of a new census and a change in the taxable unit; Finally, the abuse of the system of state monopolies raises the question of the benefit to the state of free trade and industry.

The reform enters its third and final phase: until 1710 it was reduced to the accumulation of random orders dictated by the need of the moment; in 1708-1712 attempts were made to bring these orders into some purely external, mechanical connection; now there is a conscious, systematic striving to erect a completely new state structure on theoretical grounds. The question of the extent to which Peter I personally participated in the reforms of the last period is still debatable. An archival study of the history of Peter I has recently revealed a whole mass of "reports" and projects in which almost the entire content of Peter's government measures was discussed. In these reports, presented by Russian and especially foreign advisers to Peter I, voluntarily or at the direct call of the government, the state of affairs in the state and the most important measures necessary to improve it are considered in great detail, although not always on the basis of sufficient familiarity with the conditions of Russian reality. Peter I himself read many of these projects and took from them everything that directly answered the questions that interested him at the moment - especially the question of increasing state revenues and developing Russia's natural resources. To solve more complex state problems, for example. on trade policy, financial and administrative reform, Peter I did not have the necessary training; his participation here was limited to posing the question, mostly on the basis of verbal advice from someone around him, and working out the final version of the law; all intermediate work - collecting materials, developing them and designing appropriate measures - was assigned to more knowledgeable persons. In particular, in relation to trade policy, Peter I himself “more than once complained that of all state affairs, nothing is more difficult for him than commerce and that he could never form a clear idea about this matter in all its connection” (Fockerodt).

However, state necessity forced him to change the former direction of Russian trade policy - and the advice of knowledgeable people played an important role in this. Already in 1711-1713. a number of projects were presented to the government, in which it was proved that the monopolization of trade and industry in the hands of the treasury harms, in the end, the fiscus itself and that the only way to increase state revenues from trade is to restore freedom of commercial and industrial activity. Around 1715 the content of the projects becomes wider; foreigners take part in the discussion of issues, verbally and in writing inspire the tsar and government with the ideas of European mercantilism - about the need for a favorable trade balance for the country and about the way to achieve it by systematic patronage of national industry and trade, by opening factories and plants, concluding trade agreements and establishing trade consulates Abroad.

Once he has assimilated this point of view, Peter I, with his usual energy, carries it out in a multitude of separate orders. He creates a new trading port (Petersburg) and forcibly transfers trade there from the old one (Arkhangelsk), begins to build the first artificial waterways to connect Petersburg with central Russia, takes great care to expand active trade with the East (after his attempts in the West turned out to be of little success in this direction), gives privileges to the organizers of new factories, writes out craftsmen from abroad, the best tools, the best breeds of livestock, etc.

Peter I is less attentive to the idea of ​​financial reform. Although in this respect life itself shows the unsatisfactoriness of the current practice, and a number of drafts submitted to the government discuss various possible reforms, nevertheless, he is only interested here in the question of how to distribute the content of a new, standing army to the population. Already at the establishment of the provinces, expecting, after the Poltava victory, an imminent peace, Peter I proposed to distribute the regiments between the provinces, following the model of the Swedish system. This idea resurfaces in 1715; Peter I orders the Senate to calculate how much the maintenance of a soldier and an officer will cost, leaving the Senate itself to decide whether this expense should be covered with the help of a house tax, as it was before, or with the help of a poll tax, as various "informers" advised.

The technical side of the future tax reform is developed by the government of Peter, and then he insists with all his energy on the speedy completion of the per capita census necessary for the reform and on the possible implementation of the new tax as soon as possible. Indeed, the poll tax increases the figure of direct taxes from 1.8 to 4.6 million, accounting for more than half of the budget receipts (81/2 million). The question of administrative reform interests Peter I even less: here the very idea, and its development, and its implementation belongs to foreign advisers (especially Heinrich Fick), who suggested that Peter fill the lack of central institutions in Russia by introducing Swedish collegiums. When asked what interested Peter in his reform activities, Fokerodt already gave an answer very close to the truth: “he especially and with all zeal tried to improve his military forces.”

Indeed, in his letter to his son, Peter I emphasizes the idea that by military deeds “we came from darkness to light, and (we), who were not known in the world, are now revered.” “The wars that occupied Peter I all his life (continues Fockerodt), and the treaties concluded with foreign powers about these wars, forced him to pay attention also to foreign affairs, although he relied here for the most part on his ministers and favorites ... By his beloved and a pleasant occupation was shipbuilding and other matters related to navigation. It entertained him every day, and even the most important affairs of state had to yield to him ... In the first thirty years of his reign, Peter I cared little or not at all about internal improvements in the state - legal proceedings, economy, income and trade, and was pleased , if only his admiralty and army were adequately supplied with money, firewood, recruits, sailors, provisions and ammunition.

Immediately after the Poltava victory, Russia's prestige abroad rose. From Poltava, Peter I goes straight to meet with the Polish and Prussian kings; in mid-December 1709 he returned to Moscow, but in mid-February 1710 he left it again. Half the summer before the capture of Vyborg, he spends on the seaside, the rest of the year - in St. Petersburg, engaged in its refurbishment and marriage unions of his niece Anna Ioannovna with the Duke of Courland and his son Alexei with the Princess of Wolfenbüttel.

On January 17, 1711, Peter I left St. Petersburg on the Prut campaign, then went straight to Karlsbad, for treatment with water, and to Torgau, to be present at the marriage of Tsarevich Alexei. He returned to St. Petersburg only by the new year. In June 1712, Peter again leaves St. Petersburg for almost a year; he goes to the Russian troops in Pomerania, in October he is treated in Karlsbad and Teplice, in November, having been in Dresden and Berlin, he returns to the troops in Mecklenburg, at the beginning of the next 1713 he visits Hamburg and Rendsburg, passes in February through Hannover and Wolfenbüttel in Berlin, for a meeting with the new King Friedrich Wilhelm, then returns to St. Petersburg.

A month later, he is already on a Finnish campaign and, returning in mid-August, continues to undertake sea trips until the end of November. In mid-January 1714, Peter I left for Revel and Riga for a month; On May 9, he again goes to the fleet, wins a victory with him at Gangeude and returns to St. Petersburg on September 9. In 1715, from the beginning of July to the end of August, Peter I was with the fleet on the Baltic Sea. At the beginning of 1716 he leaves Russia for almost two years; On January 24, he leaves for Danzig, for the wedding of Ekaterina Ivanovna's niece with the Duke of Mecklenburg; from there, through Stettin, he goes to Pyrmont for treatment; in June he goes to Rostock to the galley squadron, with which he appears at Copenhagen in July; in October, Peter I goes to Mecklenburg; from there to Havelsberg, for a meeting with the Prussian king, in November - to Hamburg, in December - to Amsterdam, at the end of March of the next 1717 - to France. In June we see him in Spa, on the waters, in the middle of the field - in Amsterdam, in September - in Berlin and Danzig; On October 10, he returns to St. Petersburg.

For the next two months, Peter I leads a fairly regular life, devoting the morning to work in the Admiralty and then driving around the St. Petersburg buildings. On December 15, he goes to Moscow, waits there for the arrival of his son Alexei from abroad, and on March 18, 1718, he leaves back for St. Petersburg. On June 30 they buried, in the presence of Peter, Alexei Petrovich; in early July, Peter I left already for the fleet and, after a demonstration near the Aland Islands, where peace negotiations were underway, he returned to St. Petersburg on September 3, after which he went to the seaside three more times and once to Shlisselburg.

In the following year, 1719, Peter I left on January 19 for the Olonets waters, from where he returned on March 3. On May 1, he went to sea, and returned to St. Petersburg only on August 30. In 1720, Peter I spent the month of March on the Olonets waters and at the factories: from July 20 to August 4 he sailed to the Finnish shores. In 1721 he traveled by sea to Riga and Revel (March 11 - June 19). In September and October, Peter celebrated the peace of Nishtad in St. Petersburg, in December - in Moscow. On May 15, 1722, he left Moscow for Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan and Astrakhan; On July 18, he set off from Astrakhan on a Persian campaign (to Derbent), from which he returned to Moscow only on December 11. Returning to St. Petersburg on March 3, 1723, Peter I already on March 30 left for the new Finnish border; in May and June he was engaged in equipping the fleet and then went to Reval and Rogervik for a month, where he built a new harbor.

In 1724, Peter I suffered greatly from ill health, but it did not force him to abandon the habits of nomadic life, which hastened his death. In February, he travels for the third time to the Olonets waters; at the end of March, he goes to Moscow for the coronation of the Empress, from there he makes a trip to Miller's Waters and on June 16 leaves for St. Petersburg; in autumn he travels to Shlisselburg, to the Ladoga Canal and the Olonets factories, then to Novgorod and Staraya Rusa to inspect the salt factories: only when the autumn weather decisively interferes with swimming along the Ilmen, Peter I returns (October 27) to St. Petersburg. On October 28, he goes from dinner with Pavel Ivanovich Yaguzhinsky to the fire that happened on Vasilyevsky Island; On the 29th he goes by water to Sesterbek and, having met a boat that has run aground on the way, he helps to remove the soldiers from her waist in the water. Fever and fever prevent him from moving on; he spends the night on the spot and returns to St. Petersburg on November 2. On the 5th he invites himself to the wedding of a German baker, on the 16th he executes Mons, on the 24th he celebrates the betrothal of his daughter Anna to the Duke of Holstein. Amusements are resumed on the occasion of the selection of a new prince-pope, on January 3rd and 4th, 1725.

The bustling life goes on as usual until the end of January, when, finally, one has to resort to doctors, whom Peter I did not want to listen to until that time. But time turns out to be missed and the disease is incurable; On January 22, an altar is erected near the patient’s room and communed, on the 26th “for health” he is released from the prisons of convicts, and on January 28, at a quarter past six in the morning, Peter I dies, not having time to dispose of the fate of the state.

A simple list of all the movements of Peter I over the last 15 years of his life already gives a sense of how Peter's time and his attention were distributed between various activities. After the navy, army and foreign policy, Peter I devoted most of his energy and concerns to St. Petersburg. Petersburg is a personal affair of Peter, carried out by him despite the obstacles of nature and the resistance of those around him. Tens of thousands of Russian workers, summoned to the deserted outskirts populated by foreigners, fought and died in this struggle with nature; Peter I himself coped with the resistance of those around him, with orders and threats.

The judgments of contemporaries of Peter I about this undertaking of his can be read in Fokerodt. Opinions on the reform of Peter I were extremely divergent even during his lifetime. A small handful of close associates held the opinion, which Mikhail Lomonosov later formulated with the words: "he is your God, your God was, Russia." The masses of the people, on the contrary, were ready to agree with the schismatics' assertion that Peter I was the Antichrist. Both proceeded from the general idea that Peter made a radical revolution and created a new Russia, not like the old one. A new army, navy, relations with Europe, finally, a European appearance and European technology - all these were facts that caught the eye; they were recognized by everyone, differing only in a fundamental way in their assessment.

What some considered useful, others considered harmful to Russian interests; what some considered a great service to the fatherland, others saw in it a betrayal of native traditions; finally, where some saw a necessary step forward along the path of progress, others recognized a simple deviation caused by the whim of a despot.

Both views could bring factual evidence in their favor, since both elements were mixed in the reform of Peter I - both necessity and chance. The element of chance came out more, as long as the study of the history of Peter was limited to the external side of the reform and the personal activity of the reformer. The history of the reform, written according to his decrees, should have seemed exclusively Peter's personal affair. The study of the same reform in connection with its precedents, as well as in connection with the conditions of contemporary reality, should have yielded other results. A study of the precedents of the Petrine reform showed that in all areas of public and state life - in the development of institutions and estates, in the development of education, in private life - long before Peter I, the very tendencies that the Petrine reform gives triumph are revealed. Being thus prepared by the entire past development of Russia and constituting the logical result of this development, the reform of Peter I, on the other hand, even under him still does not find sufficient ground in Russian reality, and therefore after Peter in many respects remains formal and visible for a long time.

New dress and "assemblies" do not lead to the assimilation of European social habits and propriety; likewise, the new institutions borrowed from Sweden are not based on the corresponding economic and legal development of the masses. Russia enters the ranks of European powers, but for the first time only to become an instrument in the hands of European politics for almost half a century. Of the 42 numbered provincial schools opened in 1716-22, only 8 survive until the middle of the century; out of 2,000 students recruited, mostly by force, by 1727, only 300 were actually studying in all of Russia. Higher education, despite the Academy project, and lower education, despite all the orders of Peter I, remain a dream for a long time.

According to the decrees of January 20 and February 28, 1714, the children of nobles and clerks, clerks and clerks, must learn tsifiri, i.e. arithmetic, and some part of geometry, and was supposed to be “such a fine that he would not be free to marry until he learned this,” coronal memories were not given without a written certificate of learning from the teacher. To this end, it was prescribed in all provinces at bishops' houses and in noble monasteries to open schools, and as teachers to send there students of mathematical schools established in Moscow around 1703, then real gymnasiums; the teacher was given a salary of 300 rubles a year with our money.

The decrees of 1714 introduced a completely new fact into the history of Russian education, the compulsory education of the laity. The case was conceived on an extremely modest scale. Only two teachers were assigned to each province, from students of mathematical schools who had learned geography and geometry. Tsifir, elementary geometry and some information according to the law of God, placed in the primers of that time - this is the entire composition of elementary education, recognized as sufficient for the purposes of the service; expanding it would be at the expense of the service. The children had to go through the prescribed program at the age of 10 to 15, when the teaching was sure to end, because the service began.

Students were recruited from everywhere, like hunters in the then regiments, just to staff the institution. 23 students were recruited into the Moscow Engineering School. Peter I demanded to bring the set to 100 and even up to 150 people, only with the condition that two-thirds were from noble children. The educational authorities failed to comply with the instructions; a new angry decree - to recruit the missing 77 students from all ranks of people, and from court children, from the capital's nobility, behind whom there are at least 50 peasant households - forcibly.

This character of the then school in the composition and program of the Naval Academy stands out even more clearly. In this predominantly noble and specially technical institution, out of 252 students, there were only 172 from the gentry, the rest were raznochintsy. In the upper classes, big astronomy, flat and round navigation were taught, and in the lower classes, 25 raznochintsy taught the alphabet, 2 hours from the gentry and 25 raznochintsy, 1 psalter from the gentry and 10 raznochintsy, and 8 raznochintsy writing.

Schooling was fraught with many difficulties. It was already difficult to teach and study even then, although the school was not yet constrained by regulations and supervision, and the tsar, busy with the war, cared about the school with all his heart. The necessary teaching aids were lacking, or they were very expensive. The state-owned printing house, the Printing House in Moscow, which published textbooks, in 1711 bought from its own referrer, proofreader, Hierodeacon Herman, the Italian lexicon needed “for school affairs” for 17 ½ rubles with our money. The engineering school in 1714 demanded from the Printing House 30 geometries and 83 books of sines. The Printing Yard issued geometry for 8 rubles a copy with our money, but wrote about the sines that it did not have them at all.

The school, which turned the upbringing of youth into the training of animals, could only push away from itself and helped develop among its pupils a peculiar form of resistance - escape, a primitive, not yet perfected way for schoolchildren to fight with their school. School runaways, together with recruiting ones, became a chronic disease of Russian public education and Russian state defense. This school desertion, then a form of educational strike, will become a completely understandable phenomenon for us, without ceasing to be sad, if the hard-to-imaginable language in which the prescribed foreign teachers taught, clumsy and, moreover, difficult to obtain textbooks, and the methods of the then pedagogy, which did not at all want to please students, let us add the government's view of schooling not as a moral need of society, but as a natural duty of youth, preparing them for compulsory service. When the school was considered as the threshold of the barracks or the office, then the youth also learned to look at the school as a prison or hard labor, from which it is always pleasant to escape.

In 1722, the Senate published an imperial decree for public information ... This decree of His Majesty the Emperor and Autocrat of All Russia announced publicly that 127 schoolchildren fled from the Moscow navigation school, which depended on the St. these schoolchildren are scholarship holders, "living for many years and taking their salary, they fled." The decree delicately invited the fugitives to report to school at the specified time, under the threat of a fine for the children of the gentry and a more severe "punishment" for the lower ranks. A list of fugitives was also attached to the decree, as persons deserving the attention of the entire empire, which was notified that 33 students fled from the gentry, and among them Prince A. Vyazemsky; the rest were children of reiters, guards soldiers, raznochintsy up to 12 people from boyar serfs; so heterogeneous was the composition of the then school.

Things did not go well: children were not sent to new schools; they were recruited by force, kept in prisons and behind guards; at the age of 6, these schools were few in places; townspeople asked the Senate for their children from digital science, so as not to distract them from their father's affairs; of the 47 teachers sent to the province, eighteen did not find students and returned back; In the Ryazan school, opened only in 1722, 96 students were recruited, but 59 of them fled. The Vyatka governor Chaadaev, who wanted to open a digital school in his province, met opposition from the diocesan authorities and the clergy. In order to recruit students, he sent soldiers from the voivodeship office around the district, who grabbed all those fit for school and delivered them to Vyatka. The case, however, failed.

Peter I died February 8 (January 28, old style), 1725, in St. Petersburg.

On January 13, 1991, the Day of the Russian Press was established. The date is associated with the birthday of the first Russian newspaper founded by Peter I.

Empire of Peter the Great (1700-1725) Team of Authors

Peter - the first emperor

Peter - the first emperor

PETER I THE GREAT(05/30/1672–28/01/1725) - tsar since 1682, the first Russian emperor since 1721

Peter I was the youngest son of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich from his second marriage to N.K. Naryshkina.

At the end of April 1682, after the death of Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich, ten-year-old Peter was declared king. After the Streltsy uprising in May 1682, during which several relatives of the young tsar died, two tsars ascended the throne at the same time - Peter and his older brother Ivan, the son of Alexei Mikhailovich from his first marriage to M. Miloslavskaya. But the state in 1682-1689. in fact, their elder sister, Princess Sofya Alekseevna, ruled. The Miloslavskys were bosses in the Kremlin and young Peter and his mother survived from there to the village of Preobrazhenskoye near Moscow. The young king devoted all his time to "military fun." In Preobrazhensky and in the neighboring village of Semenovsky, he created two "amusing" regiments. Later, the Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky regiments became the first guard units in Russia.

Peter made friends with many foreigners who lived in the German Quarter, not far from Preobrazhensky. Communicating with the Germans, the British, the French, the Swedes, the Danes, Peter was more and more asserted in the opinion that Russia was significantly behind Western Europe. He saw that in his homeland sciences and education were not so developed, there was no strong army, there was no navy. The Russian state, huge in its territory, had almost no influence on the life of Europe.

In January 1689, the wedding of Peter and Evdokia Lopukhina took place, in 1690 a son, Alexei Petrovich, was born in this marriage. In the summer of 1689, the archers began to prepare a new uprising against Peter I. The young tsar fled in fear to the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, but it turned out that most of the troops went over to his side. The instigators of the uprising were executed, and Princess Sophia was removed from power. Peter and Ivan became independent rulers. The sickly Ivan almost did not take part in state activities, and in 1696, after his death, Peter I became the sovereign tsar.

Peter received his first baptism of fire in the war with Turkey in 1695-1696. during the Azov campaigns. Then Azov was taken - the stronghold of Turkey on the Black Sea. In a more convenient and deeper bay, Peter laid the new harbor of Taganrog.

In 1697–1698 with the Great Embassy, ​​under the name of Peter Mikhailov, the tsar first visited Europe. He studied shipbuilding in Holland, met with the sovereigns of various European powers, and hired many specialists to serve in Russia.

In the summer of 1698, when Peter was in England, a new streltsy uprising broke out. Peter urgently returned from abroad and brutally cracked down on the archers. He and his associates personally chopped off the heads of the archers.

Over time, from a hot-tempered young man, Peter turned into an adult man. He was over two meters tall. Constant physical labor further developed his natural strength, and he became a real strong man. Peter was an educated person. He had a deep knowledge of history, geography, shipbuilding, fortification, and artillery. He was very fond of making things with his own hands. No wonder he was called the "king carpenter." Already in his youth, he knew up to fourteen crafts, and over the years he acquired a lot of technical knowledge.

Peter loved fun, jokes, feasts and feasts, sometimes lasting for several days. In moments of reflection, he preferred a quiet study and a pipe to tobacco. Even in adulthood, Peter remained very mobile, impulsive and restless. His companions could barely keep up with him, skipping. But the turbulent events of his life, the upheavals of his childhood and youth, affected Peter's health. At the age of twenty, his head began to shake, and during the excitement, convulsions passed through his face. He often had nervous attacks and bouts of unjustified anger. In a good mood, Peter presented his favorites with the richest gifts. But his mood in a few seconds could change dramatically. And then he became uncontrollable, could not only scream, but also use his fists or a club. Since the 1990s Peter began to carry out reforms in all areas of Russian life. He used the experience of Western European countries in the development of industry, trade and culture. Peter emphasized that his main concern was "the benefit of the Fatherland." His words, spoken to the soldiers on the eve of the Poltava battle, became famous: “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 the Orthodox faith and the church ... And know about Peter that life is not dear to him, if only Russia would live in bliss and glory for your welfare."

Peter sought to create a new, powerful Russian Empire, which would become one of the strongest, richest and most enlightened states in Europe. In the 1st quarter 18th century Peter changed the system of state administration: instead of the Boyar Duma, the Senate was created, in 1708-1715. provincial reform was carried out, in 1718–1721. orders are replaced by colleges. A regular army and navy were created, recruitment and compulsory military service for the nobles were introduced. By the end of Peter's reign, about a hundred plants and factories were operating, and Russia began to export manufactured goods: iron, copper and linen. Peter took care of the development of culture and education: many educational institutions were opened, the civil alphabet was adopted, the Academy of Sciences was founded (1725), theaters appeared, new printing houses were equipped, in which more and more new books were printed. In 1703 the first Russian newspaper Vedomosti was published. Foreign specialists were invited from Europe: engineers, craftsmen, doctors, officers. Peter sent Russian youths abroad to study sciences and crafts. In 1722, the Table of Ranks was adopted - a legislative act that brought all state ranks into the system. The service became the only way to obtain a state rank.

Since 1700, a new chronology from the Nativity of Christ and the celebration of the New Year on January 1, adopted in Western Europe, were introduced in Russia. On May 16, 1703, on one of the islands at the mouth of the Neva River, Peter I founded the fortress of St. Petersburg. In 1712 St. Petersburg officially became the new capital of Russia.

Stone houses were built in it, and the streets for the first time in Russia began to be paved with stones.

Peter began to pursue a policy of limiting church power, church possessions were transferred to the state. Since 1701, property issues were withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the church. In 1721, the power of the patriarch was replaced by the power of the Synod, a collegiate body that headed the church administration. The synod reported directly to the sovereign.

After the conclusion of peace with Turkey in 1700 in the field of foreign policy, Peter I considered the struggle with Sweden for access to the Baltic Sea to be the main task. In the summer of 1700, Russia entered the war, called the Northern. During the years of the Great Northern War (1700–1721), Peter proved himself to be a talented commander and an excellent strategist. He beat the Swedish army several times - the best in Europe at that time.

The king repeatedly showed personal courage. On May 7, 1703, near the Nyenschanz fortress, Russian soldiers under his command in thirty boats captured two Swedish ships. For this feat, Peter was awarded the highest order in the Russian state - the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called. On June 27, 1709, during the Battle of Poltava, the tsar personally led one of the battalions of the Novgorod regiment and did not allow the Swedish troops to break through. The Northern War ended with the signing of the Treaty of Nystadt between Sweden and Russia. All the Baltic lands she conquered (Estland, Livonia, Courland, Ingermanland) and the opportunity to have a fleet in the Baltic Sea remained behind Russia. The victory in the Northern War turned Russia into a powerful state with borders from the Baltic Sea to the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. Now all European states had to reckon with it.

In 1710–1713 Russia participated in the war with Turkey. In 1711, Peter I led the Prut campaign, which ended in failure. Russia ceded the city of Azov to Turkey, and also promised to tear down the fortresses of Taganrog, Bogoroditsk and Kamenny Zaton. As a result of the Persian campaign of 1722-1723. Russia acquired land on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea.

On October 22, 1721, the Senate presented Peter I with the title of Emperor of All Russia, the title of "Great" and "Father of the Fatherland." Since then, all Russian sovereigns began to be called emperors, and Russia turned into the Russian Empire.

Peter's reforms had not only positive consequences. In the 1st quarter 18th century a powerful bureaucratic system of government was formed, subordinate only to the will of the king. For many years, the dominance of foreigners was established in the Russian state apparatus, whom the tsar often trusted more than Russian subjects.

Peter's reforms and long-term wars exhausted the country's economy and laid a heavy burden on the working population of Russia. The peasants were forced to work more and more on the corvee, and the workers of the manufactories were forever attached to the factories. Thousands of ordinary peasants and working people died of starvation, disease, under the whip of overseers in shipyards, in the construction of new fortresses and cities.

In 1718–1724 a tax reform was carried out, which increased the tax burden by 1.5–2 times. In addition, this reform led to even greater enslavement of the peasants. During the reign of Peter there were several major popular uprisings: in Astrakhan (1705–1706), on the Don, Sloboda Ukraine, the Volga region (1707–1708), in Bashkiria (1705–1711). The church policy of Peter I is also ambiguous. The complete subordination of the church to the state, the weakening of the role of the Orthodox clergy led to the destruction of traditional spiritual values. Petrovsky acts caused a negative reaction in the upper strata of Russian society. Peter abruptly broke the habitual life of the Russian people, especially the nobles. They hardly got used to the assemblies, refused to shave their beards and go to the theaters. The tsar's son and heir, Alexei Petrovich, did not accept Peter's reforms. Accused of plotting against the tsar, in 1718 he was deprived of the throne and sentenced to death.

The tsar's first wife, Evdokia Lopukhina, was sent to a monastery. Since 1703, a simple peasant woman, Marta Skavronskaya, who received the name of Catherine in Orthodox baptism, became the tsar's wife. But the official wedding took place only in 1712. Several children were born in this marriage, but the sons died in infancy, two daughters survived - Anna (the mother of the future Emperor Peter III) and Elizabeth, the future Empress Elizabeth Petrovna. In 1724, in the Assumption Cathedral, Peter I placed the imperial crown on the head of his wife.

In 1722, Peter 1, who by that time had no male heirs * adopted a decree on the succession to the throne: the heir was appointed at the will of the "ruling sovereign", and the sovereign, having appointed the heir, could change his mind if he found that the heir did not justify hopes. This decree laid the foundation for the palace revolutions of the 18th century. and became the reason for the preparation of forged wills of sovereigns. In 1797, Paul I canceled the decree.

In the last months of his life, Peter was very ill and spent most of his time in bed. Before his death, the emperor did not have time to draw up a will and transfer power to his successor. He was buried in the Petrovsky Cathedral. S. P.

ALEXEY PETROVICH(02.18.1690–26.06. 1718) - Tsarevich, son of Peter I and his first wife Evdokia Lopukhina.

Alexei spent his childhood in his mother's house. Evdokia and her relatives did not approve of the transformations of Peter I, and this had a great influence on the heir. Relations between father and son worsened after Evdokia Lopukhina was forcibly tonsured a nun (1698). Neither Alexei's trip to Dresden, where he studied mathematics and military affairs, nor his wedding with Princess Sophia Charlotte of Wolfenbüttel, arranged by Peter I in 1711, could change the relationship between father and son.

Peter demanded from his son that he began to engage in state activities or retired to a monastery. Alexei agreed to abdicate in favor of his son Peter Alekseevich, but he did not go to the monastery.

Gradually, people began to unite around the prince, dissatisfied with the transformations of Peter I. In 1716, Alexei and his beloved, serf Euphrosyne, left for Vienna under the patronage of his brother-in-law, the Austrian emperor Charles VI. For some time he hid in his possessions, then left for Italy. But Peter's agents, P.A. Tolstoy and A.I. Rumyantsev, persuaded Alexei to return home. A month after his arrival, in February 1718 in Moscow, Tsarevich Alexei signed an oath renunciation of the throne. Soon he was arrested on charges of plotting against the tsar and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. On June 24, 1718, the court sentenced the prince to death, but on June 26, 1718, Alexei died suddenly under unclear circumstances. Buried in the Peter and Paul Fortress. I.V.

EMPEROR (lat. imperator - "ruler") - in ancient Rome, the title of senior officials who were granted empires - imperium - "full power", "powers" in the military or civil sphere. Since the time of Augustus (emperor since 27 BC), the emperor began to be called a monarch with sole power. In Russia, those who had supreme power called themselves tsars (as the emperors of Byzantium) or cesars (as the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire). The Russian word "tsar" comes from the Latin caesar - caesar, which denoted the title of the Roman emperors.

The royal title in Russia was first assumed by Ivan IV the Terrible in 1547. The title of Emperor was taken by Peter I on November 11, 1721 after the end of the Northern War. The Russian emperor was the autocratic sovereign of the Russian Empire, who concentrated all power in his hands. According to the ideas of the Russian people, the source of the emperor's power is God's will, and the emperor himself is God's anointed one. Therefore, the most important part of the coronation of emperors in the 18-19 centuries. there was a rite of "anointing to the kingdom", which was performed in

Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. In the course of this rite, the emperor assumed obligations before God to take care of the state and people entrusted to him by the Lord.

Imperial power lasted in Russia until March 2, 1917 (the day Nicholas II abdicated), while the Russian Empire formally existed until September 1, 1917, when a republic was proclaimed in Russia. E.P.

RUSSIAN EMPIRE- the official name of the Russian state in 1721–1917. The Russian Empire was formed on the basis of the Russian centralized state. The very name "Russian Empire" was established on October 22, 1721, during the celebrations on the occasion of the conclusion of the Peace of Nystadt, when Chancellor G.I. Golovkin turned to Peter I with a request to accept the title of emperor and the title of "Father of the Fatherland, Peter the Great, Emperor of All Russia." This put the Russian tsar in a position of equal status with the then only emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, which caused many protests from the European powers. Prussia, the Netherlands and Sweden were the first to recognize the new title of Russian tsars, then Turkey (1739), England and the German Empire (1742). In 1745, the Russian Empire was recognized by France and Spain, and in 1764 by Poland.

The monarchy in the Russian Empire was hereditary. The entire population was considered subjects of the emperor. The Russian Empire had a coat of arms, an anthem and a flag. According to the laws of the Russian Empire, the supreme autocratic power in the state belonged to the emperor, whose power and person were "sacred and inviolable." Being at the head of the state, the emperor exercised sole executive and legislative power (through the State Council and, from the beginning of the 20th century, the State Duma), issued laws, directed international relations, declared wars, and concluded treaties with other powers. Through the Senate, he led the state apparatus, the Council of Ministers and ministries, through the Synod he controlled the Orthodox Church. The emperor also led the Russian army and navy. V.S.

CORONATION- the ceremony of taking power, consecrated by the Church, performed upon accession to the throne (crowning the kingdom).

Coronations were performed in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin in the presence of senior officials, as well as representatives of various estates and territories. The order of the coronation evolved gradually. It was developed under Peter I, taking into account European traditions, and finally took shape by 1856.

The coronation began at 8 o'clock in the morning with the ringing of bells (blessings) in the Assumption Cathedral and a prayer service. At the cannon signal, those invited to the ceremony passed into the palace. At the beginning of ten in the morning, the sovereign and his wife followed to the Assumption Cathedral, where he himself or the highest bishop laid on him a mantle and a crown to the singing of the church choir, cannon volleys and bell ringing. Then followed the liturgy, chrismation and communion. The rite of chrismation - the extraordinary gift of the Holy Spirit - gave the person of the emperor the significance of God's anointed.

Leaving the Assumption Cathedral, the Empress venerated the relics of the saints and the graves of the kings in the Archangel Cathedral and the Ascension Convent. The day of the coronation was equated to the birthdays and name days of the emperor.

The coronation was accompanied by the publication of special manifestos, the issuance of commemorative medals, the distribution of ranks and awards to the nobles, the granting of various benefits to the people, the cancellation of arrears and fines, the easing of punishments, pardons (Alexander II pardoned the Decembrists), etc.

The first coronation took place in Russia in 1724, when Peter I crowned his wife Catherine I. For this, the imperial crown was made for the first time. At the same time, the composition of the regalia participating in the coronation changed. Under Anna Ivanovna, they included the chain of the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called, and under Elizabeth - the state banner, the state seal and the state sword.

The coronation of Byzantine emperors served as a model for the coronation of Paul I. He put on a dalmatic - the ancient clothes of the Byzantine emperors. He was the first to be crowned together with his wife. The emperor laid on her a mantle and a crown, and also handed over a scepter. Pavel was dressed in the uniform of the Preobrazhensky Regiment with a special valve for chrismation, which later became another tradition. Beginning with Alexander II, a new state seal and state banner were made for each coronation. O. N.

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From the book Great People Who Changed the World author Grigorova Darina

Peter I - Emperor-reformer Peter I (Peter Alekseevich Romanov) was born on May 30, 1672 in Moscow, his father was Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, his mother was Natalya Kirillovna Naryshkina. Having lost his father in 1676, Peter was brought up until the age of ten under the supervision of a

Portrait of Peter I. Paul Delaroche (1838)

Pyotr Alekseevich Romanov, already in childhood, became king twice within a few days. For the first time he was elevated to the throne on April 27 (May 7), 1682 after the death of Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich. At the same time, Peter's older brother, Ivan, was formally bypassed, who was considered incapable of governing the state due to poor health. Together with the young tsar, supporters of the Naryshkin clan came to power, which immediately caused active opposition from the Miloslavsky clan, supported by Princess Sophia and her favorite Vasily Golitsyn.

Unknown artist.
Portrait of Tsarevich Peter Alekseevich. 18th century
Museums of the Moscow Kremlin.

Two weeks later, a riot provoked by the Miloslavsky archers began, which led to the physical elimination of many Naryshkins and their supporters. As a result, Ivan was proclaimed the first king, and Peter, as the youngest in age, the second. On June 25, Patriarch Joachim crowned two kings at once. But in reality, all power was in the hands of Princess Sophia, who officially took over the government of the country due to the infancy of the royal brothers.

From that time on, Peter, formally remaining the second person in the state, ruled almost independently, having received the approval of his brother for this. In January 1696, Tsar Ivan died, and all power finally passed to Peter I. The young tsar had to solve many difficult tasks in order not only to glorify Russia, but also to make it one of the largest European powers.

Peter I literally raised the country on its hind legs, expanded and strengthened its borders, created a regular army and navy, carried out a comprehensive reform of public administration, brought up and trained a new state elite, which would later be rightfully called "Petrov's nestlings", won the hardest Northern War, which lasted over 20 years. In fact, through the efforts of Peter I, by the 20s of the 18th century, Russia turned into a powerful empire, although officially it continued to be called a kingdom.

From the cathedral, everyone went to the Senate, where tables were set for a thousand people. The ceremonial reception and dancing continued until three in the morning, interrupted by the festive fireworks, which glorified the victory in the Northern War with allegorical symbols. Soon two medals were stamped in honor of the Peace of Nystadt, one with Latin text, the other with Russian. Peter on them was already titled emperor. This is the inscription that was engraved on one side of the medal with the Russian text: “V.I.B.Shch. Sovereign Peter I, in the name and deeds of the forerunner, the Great Russian Emperor and Father, who died after twenty years of triumphs of the North, this medal from home gold is most zealously brought.

Peter I did not begin to be crowned emperor, considering that this was no longer necessary, since he already had unlimited power in his hands, which no one doubted. But three years later, he solemnly crowned his wife as empress, and he laid the crown on her himself. By this, Peter wanted to raise the status of both his wife and the daughters she had born before marriage, through whom he wanted to intermarry with European monarchs.

Europe reacted to the imperial title of Peter I with caution. He was immediately recognized by Holland and Prussia, and two years later by Sweden. It took more than 20 years to be recognized by the rest of the major European countries. Austria and England did it in 1742, and Spain and France in 1745. According to tradition, Poland “resisted” for a long time, recognizing the Russian monarch as emperor, more precisely, empress, since at that time Catherine II ruled the country, only in 1764.

The first years of the reign of Peter I.

Azov campaigns and the "Great Embassy".

Industry.

Trade.

Agriculture.

financial policy.

Reorganization of the public administration system.

The Church and the liquidation of the patriarchate.

Creation of a regular army and navy.

Streltsy uprising of 1698

"The case of Tsarevich Alexei".

Astrakhan uprising.

The uprising led by K. Bulavin.

The main directions of foreign policy in the era of Peter I and the Northern War.

Reforms in the field of education and culture.

The first years of the reign of Peter I.

After the August coup in 1689, power in the country passed to the supporters of the seventeen-year-old Tsar Peter Alekseevich (who formally ruled until 1696 together with his brother Ivan) - P.K. Naryshkin, T.N. Streshnev, B.A. Golitsyn and others. A number of important government posts were also occupied by relatives of the first wife of Peter E.F. Lopukhina (the wedding with her took place in January 1689). Having given them the leadership of the country, the young tsar gave all his strength to “Neptune and Mars fun”, for which he actively attracted “serving foreigners” who lived in the German Quarter (Kukuy).

Peter surrounded himself with capable, energetic assistants and specialists, especially the military. Among the foreigners, the following stood out: the closest friend of the tsar F. Lefort, an experienced general P. Gordon, a talented engineer J. Bruce, and others. Golovin, G.I. Golovkin, brothers P.M. and F.M. Apraksina, A.D. Menshikov. With their help, Peter arranged the maneuvers of the "amusing" troops (the future two guards regiments - Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky), which were held in the village of Preobrazhensky. Peter paid special attention to the formation of a Russian navigator. Already in May 1692, his first “amusing” ship, built with the participation of the tsar himself, was launched on Lake Pereslavl. In 1693-1694. the first Russian naval ship was built in Arkhangelsk and another one was ordered in Amsterdam. It was on board a Dutch-built ship in July 1694, during a real sea voyage arranged by the tsar, that the Russian red-blue-white flag was first hoisted.

Behind Peter's "military amusements" was a far-reaching goal: the struggle for Russia's access to the sea. Due to the short winter navigation, the Arkhangelsk port could not provide year-round trade. Therefore, the bet was made on access to the Black Sea. Thus, Peter returned to the idea of ​​the Crimean campaigns, in which Prince V.V. Golitsyn. After a three-month siege of Azov (spring - summer 1695), Peter was forced to retreat. Without a fleet, it was impossible to besiege the fortress both from land and from the sea. The first Azov campaign ended in failure. In the winter of 1695/96 preparations began for a second campaign. The construction of the first Russian fleet began in Voronezh. By spring, 2 ships, 23 galleys, 4 firewalls and 1300 plows were ready, on which the 40,000th Russian army in May 1696 again laid siege to Azov. After the blockade from the sea on July 19, the Turkish fortress surrendered. The fleet found a convenient harbor Taganrog, began to build a port. But still, the forces to fight Turkey and the Crimea were clearly not enough. Peter ordered the construction of new ships (52 ships in 2 years) at the expense of landowners and merchants.

At the same time, it was necessary to look for allies in Europe. This is how the idea of ​​the “Great Embassy” was born (March 1697-August 1698). Formally, it was intended to visit the capitals of a number of European states to conclude an alliance against Turkey. General-Admiral F.Ya. Lefort, General F.A. Golovin, head of the Ambassadorial Department, and Duma clerk P.B. Voznitsyn. The embassy included 280 people, including 35 volunteers who went to study crafts and military sciences, among whom, under the name of Peter Mikhailov, was Tsar Peter himself. The main task of the embassy was to get acquainted with the political life of Europe, to study foreign crafts, life, culture, military and other orders. During a year and a half of his stay abroad, Peter visited Courland, Brandenburg, Holland, England and Austria with an embassy, ​​met with sovereign princes and monarchs, studied shipbuilding and other crafts. Came in the summer of 1698. from Moscow, a message about a new uprising of archers forced the tsar to return to Russia.

International relations in Europe at that time were not in favor of continuing the war with Turkey, and soon (January 14, 1699) Russia, like other countries members of the Holy League, had to agree to a truce concluded in Karlovtsy. However, the “Great Embassy” became a real academy for Peter, and he used the experience gained in carrying out reforms both in domestic and foreign policy. It determined for a long period the task of Russia's struggle with Sweden for the possession of the Baltic coast and access to the sea. Reorientation of Russia's foreign policy by the beginning of the 18th century. from the south to the north coincided with the huge transformations that swept the country in all spheres of life from priority diplomatic and military efforts to the Europeanization of everyday life. Preparations for the war with Sweden served as an impetus for deep political and socio-economic reforms, which ultimately determined the appearance of the Petrine era. Some reforms were carried out over the years, others - in a hurry. But in general, they developed into a system of an extremely centralized absolutist state, headed by “an autocratic monarch who, as Peter himself wrote, should not give an answer to anyone in the world.” Transformations were formalized by legislative decrees of the king, and their number for the first quarter of the eighteenth century. amounted to more than 2.5 thousand.

Industry.

Under the accession of Peter the Russian industry, in fact, did not exist, and in Russia there was only one major merchant: the tsar. During the time of the duumvirate of Peter and John, a large reward was promised to the captain of a French ship for the importation into the country of white paper, wine, and some other goods that were difficult to obtain in any other way. At the same time, the first Russian economist Pososhkov wrote a book - his "Testament", where he proclaimed contempt for wealth. Twenty years later, the same author wrote already on white paper made in Russia, “Discourse on Poverty and Wealth”, where he tries to think of means to increase the wealth of the state and private individuals and, before Smith and Turgot, finds out the advantage of piecework over daily work. Peter did his job.

This matter is very significant. In terms of the intensity of efforts, the variety and ingenuity of the means used, the logical cohesion of the guiding threads, despite some inconsistency, it deserves an honorable place in the history of a brilliant worker. To increase the well-being of private individuals, at the same time strengthening the revenues of the state, to create at the same time new sources of taxation and new sources of production, to replace imported goods with products of domestic industry; arouse the activity of the people and their spirit of enterprise; to force idle people, monks, nuns, beggars to take their places in the ranks of the working population; to eliminate the indifference and even hostility of the administration to the forces of production, to make a change in the unsatisfactory justice, to eliminate the insufficient development of credit. lack of public security, create a third estate, finally bring Russia into the modern economic movement.

The success of his enterprise was partly spoiled by an unfortunate coincidence and a fundamental mistake. Coincidence - was the war with its consequences and inevitable demands. It turned Peter, a staunch opponent of monopolies, into a creator of new monopolies, destroying with one hand what the other was doing. The mistake was his confidence in the possibility of creating commercial and industrial life, supplying this creation with organs corresponding to its needs, giving it flesh and blood, then controlling its movements, turning it right and left, as regiments being created and commanded; by decrees and under the threat of the stick. Commercial and industrial companies were in 1699 the first attempt of this kind. The Dutch at first were afraid of this, but in the end they began to laugh.

The war demanded money; the maintenance of permanent troops gave impetus to the spirit of mercantilism in the West, and now Peter is a zealous imitator of Colbert. True, the national covenants, too, without having been on the side of Colbert. Already under Alexei Mikhailovich, perhaps even earlier, the right to import was paid at the Russian customs with Hungarian chervonets or Dutch thalers. Peter preserved, strengthening it, this system, which has survived to this day. He forbade the export of precious metals, ignoring the warnings of Baudin and Childe about the dangers of such an admission. Having never read Klock, Schroeder or Decker, Pegr went further than them, forbidding his subjects to accept domestic coinage in payment for their goods. According to Marperger, around 1723, Russia earned several barrels of gold annually by exchanging with foreign countries. Peter also believed in the beneficence of protectionism. The ruler of a country which to this day has remained almost exclusively, in terms of foreign trade, a producer of raw products, forbade the export of some of these products, such as flax, and so limited the right to export the rest that it was almost a prohibition. In anticipation of being able to dress the entire army in locally made cloth, he himself did not recognize otherwise for his dress and made it obligatory for liveries. When a Frenchman named Mamoron set up a stocking factory in Moscow, Muscovites were forbidden to buy them anywhere else. The industrialists, who were under the patronage of the tsar, hesitated to use the felt they had worked out for hats; a decree appeared that gave them courage: they were allowed to sell their goods only by putting on the market a certain number of headdresses of their own production.

Such perseverance of convictions, such an abundance of incentive and coercive measures, moral and monetary support, gradually did their job. Factories arose, some subsidized, others operated directly by the sovereign, the rest, finally, existing on their own. The Empress maintained a tulle factory and a starch factory in Ekateringof. Peter, who at first limited his activity to the production of items related to navigation: sailing cloth, saltpeter, sulfur, leather, weapons, gradually and partly against his will, also expanded its scope. We see him as a manufacturer of Kolomyanka in St. Petersburg, paper in Duderhof, cloth almost everywhere.

Unfortunately, all these institutions were far from flourishing. In vain did the sovereign sell the kolomyanka at a loss, paying five kopecks for a yard of cloth, which cost him fifteen. But he, as usual, continued to persist, even expanding his business, striving to introduce the production of luxury goods into his state. Russia produced carpets and tapestries without even having a cotton mill! And as always, the tsar did not limit himself to prompting, he struck from the shoulder. In 1718 By decree, it was prescribed to use lard instead of tar when processing yuft. A period of two years was given, “for learning this, after which, if anyone continues to do yuft, he will be exiled to hard labor and deprived of all his property.”

But, scattering in this way in all directions, Peter finally stumbled upon a grateful, immediately productive, inexhaustibly rich soil, and immediately his swiftness, ardor, and creative enthusiasm began to work wonders. He took up the mines. Already under Alexei Mikhailovich, a Dutchman and a Dane mined ore and built factories and cast cannons in the vicinity of Moscow. With the intervention of Peter, the matter took on grandiose proportions. Having commanded by decree, from 1697, the construction of ironworks in Verkhotur and Tobolsk, the tsar had in mind exclusively military purposes: he needed guns and guns; but once accepted, he went further and further, and the modern widespread development of the mining industry in Russia owes its appearance to him.

The sovereign began with the extraction and processing of iron ore; , later he was seized by a fever of gold. He got even more carried away, collected all the directions, explored all the paths. True, numerous expeditions organized by him, Bekovich-Cherkassky to Persia in 1717, Likharev to Siberia in 1719, remained without results. Until 1720, the only silver mines were open. But along the way, copper was found, again iron, and in 1722 coal. Thirty-six foundries were set up in the Kazan province and thirty-nine in Moscow.

Private initiative - with the exception of the isolated case of Demidov - was inactive for a long time. The decree issued in 1719 gives characteristic indications in this respect: it declares free and publicly available the exploration and extraction of all kinds of metals on all lands without distinction. The owners of ore-bearing lands have only the right of primacy. So much the worse for them if they were slow to use it. “If they cannot or do not want to, then the right to build factories is given to others, with the payment of a share of the profits to the landowner, so that God's blessing does not remain underground in the tun.” Whoever hides the ore or interferes with its extraction is subject to corporal punishment and the death penalty. In 1723 the legislator took another step; he intended to finally end the crown industrial monopoly system. He added a manifesto to the charter drawn up by the Manufactory College, inviting private individuals to replace the state in the operation of institutions of all kinds created by it, offering favorable conditions. And such versatile, persistent efforts did not remain fruitless; the creative movement of life grew and expanded, and domestic industry became a reality.

Trade.

The history of trade under Peter, almost entirely the history of domestic trade. Upon accession to the throne, Peter had a strong desire to renounce his royal rights, which turned him into the largest and even the only major merchant of the state. But he had to submit to the law of war: he remained a merchant in order to earn money, and, doing nothing by halves, he increased the number of his business, monopolizing more than before, completely absorbing the entire internal and external market. Creating new branches of trade, he only increased the list of monopolies. A wholesale buyer, a petty trader, he even sold Hungarian wine in Moscow! At one time, absorbed in the cares of management and disappointed by the uncertainty of the income derived from trading enterprises, he decided to rent out the latter. Menshikov took Arkhangelsk fishing, blubber and seal skins. Then the hope for a close peace reduced the sovereign's financial difficulties, and he returned to his natural, liberal aspirations. In 1717 the grain trade was declared free, and in 1719 all monopolies were abolished. At the same time, the College of Commerce, which had existed since 1715, began to show fruitful activity, among other things, engaged in the commercial education of the merchant class, sending dozens of young people abroad, to Holland and Italy, chosen among the sons of large Moscow merchants, whose number is rapidly increasing. increased. The sovereign's diplomacy, in turn, worked to expand international relations. The war had previously led to unfortunate compromises in this respect, such as the sale in 1713 to the city of Lübeck of emergency rights and privileges for thirty-something thousand thalers, and similar conditions with Danzig and Hamburg. Since 1717, Peter has resolutely sought to put an end to these errors, and in the negotiations begun at that time with France, he no longer touched on such a question, just as in the instructions given to the consulates established at the same time in Toulon, Lisbon and London. Sometimes Peter still succumbed to the temptation to control, rather arbitrarily, the destinies of these emerging relationships. The proof of this is the history of the St. Petersburg port, as well as the uniform battles of the great man with foreign and Russian merchants, who stubbornly preferred the port of Arkhangelsk. When the king has exhausted the means of peace-loving persuasion; when he saw that neither the creation of the vast Gostiny Dvor, nor the special magistracy, made up for the most part of foreigners, nor the labors he had spent to concentrate in his new capital their favorite commodity, hemp, at cheap prices and in abundance, could attract them there , he resolutely resorted to the precepts of his ancestors. He did not carry out a direct forced transportation of the Archangels to Petersburg, as Grand Duke Vasily did with the Pskovites, resettling them in Moscow; but ordered the people of Arkhangelsk to continue to buy or sell hemp only in St. Petersburg.

The measure bore fruit, which was to be expected. The new capital was still a disgusting warehouse. The canal system, designed to connect the Volga with the Neva through Lake Ladoga, was still in the project. The eminent English engineer Perry, who was entrusted with the execution of the work, dissatisfied with the ill treatment he had to endure, abandoned them at the very beginning. The second canal, invented by Peter to avoid dangerous navigation on Lake Ladoga, remained unfinished until 1732. The third system, based on the use of connecting rivers, served only to enrich the miller Serdyukov, who offered and used the concession granted to him too hastily to build up the banks of the Una and Shlina mills and taverns that had nothing to do with the port of St. Petersburg. Therefore, hemp, leather and other goods, since since 1717 two-thirds of all products were necessarily sent to St. Petersburg, were delivered with great difficulty, burdened with enormous transportation costs, and not finding buyers here, piled up in heaps, depreciated due to the large accumulation, and finally spoiled, especially hemp.

By good or by force, Petersburg was to become a trading port. In 1714, only sixteen foreign ships came there, a year later already fifty, one hundred and nineteen in 1722, one hundred and eighty in 1724. Peter laid the foundation for a system of water communications, which his successors, including Catherine II, tried to complete and to improve, and which, connecting the Volga basin with the basins of the Neva and Dvina, that is, the Caspian Sea with the Baltic and White Seas, concluded in the space occupied by canals three hundred and two versts, seventy-six lakes and one hundred and six rivers. There has been an enormous expenditure of wealth, labor, and even human lives; but the strength of Russia and the secret of her fate has always been for the most part in the desire and ability not to think about the victims in order to achieve the intended goal. The long-suffering peasants, buried by the tens of thousands in the Finnish swamps, this time submitted rather resignedly.

Peter did not attach the same importance to the development of land communications, and did not pay any attention to them. He didn't make roads. This is still one of the weaknesses of Russia from an economic point of view, and the too insufficient number of existing highways is exclusively the work of the engineers of the Institute of Communications, founded only in 1809. However, the great husband treated the caravan trade organized by his ancestors with due care. He himself was engaged in it, he bought harvests of Tokay grapes in Hungary; transporting the wine obtained from it to Moscow on hundreds of carts and sending Siberian products back to Hungary. Directing the greatest effort to the Baltic Sea and to the west, he did not lose sight of his southeastern border and trade interests that required his intervention. It is possible that, having reached Bukhara, he would subsequently start trade with India. Separate caravans were already arriving in Astrakhan, bringing not only silk and paper fabrics of Bukhara production, but also goods from India: precious stones, gold and silver items. In any case, Peter managed to take possession first of the course of the Irtysh, the possession of which protected the borders of Siberia from the Kalmyks and Kirghiz, then the Kolyvan mountains, where treasures discovered later fulfilled the Greek fairy tale about gold placers guarded by gnomes. Having stayed in Azov, Peter would also have continued, and perhaps would have achieved the restoration of the ancient trade route of the Venetians and Genoese. Thrown back to the Caspian Sea, he, of course, made an attempt to move this route, directing it from Astrakhan to St. Petersburg. The great expedition of 1722, supposed, and the beginning of the laying of a large city - a storage point - at the mouth of the Kura, where five thousand people of Tatars, Cheremis, Chuvashs worked at the moment of the death of the king, apparently indicate the existence of such a thought. We can say that the plan was partly fantastic, even insane, and there was absolutely no calculation of possibilities, distances, transportation costs. But despite the disproportionate courage of the enterprise and the oblivion that its immediate successors betrayed, a well-known result was achieved: the planned path to the markets of Persia and India is part of the heritage, a colossal asset of which Russia continues to enjoy at the present time.

Agriculture.

Such a versatile, almost all-encompassing person could not but be a farmer. And indeed, he was, and even passionate. In the history of Russian agriculture, the reign of Peter also constitutes an epoch. He was not content to teach his peasants how to plant potatoes, as Friedrich later did; with a sickle in his hands, he showed the peasants near Moscow how to harvest bread, near St. Petersburg, how to weave bast shoes. He considered the peasants to be students, and himself to be an educator, forbade them to wear soles lined with large nails, because this spoiled the floors, determined the width of the coarse canvas that they wove on their thighs. Having admired in France the garden of a village priest, he immediately upon his return to Russia scolded his clergy: “Why don’t they plant such vegetable gardens in their own country!” He was concerned with the selection of seeds for sowing, the breeding of livestock, the fertilization of fields, and the use of tools and methods of improved farming; tried to plant grapes on the land of the Don Cossacks and took care of his more successful culture in the vicinity of Derbent, where he ordered to try Persian and Hungarian vines. In 1712, the first horse factories were arranged by him; in 1706, the first herds of rams were introduced in the present provinces of Kharkov, Poltava and Yekaterinoslav, where rams are now bred in huge numbers. Peter was also the first forester of his homeland. He was the first to defend the forests against the reigning reckless extermination. For this, however, he used methods that are hardly applicable at the present time even in Russia: along the banks of the Neva and the Gulf of Finland, at five-verst intervals, gallows were set up to edify the devastators. Even within the boundaries of present-day Petersburg, in the place now occupied by customs, a spruce forest then towered. Since the felling did not stop in it, Peter ordered a round-up, hang every tenth of the disobedient caught and punish the rest with a whip. In general, on the basis of economic progress, the desire of the reformer ran into a double obstacle: a moral and a political one. Marked on March 13, 1706, a decree addressed to the Senate punished by death local merchants who, in keeping with their habit, which their English buyers complained about, mixed spoiled fiber or even stones with hemp bales to increase weight. Raising the moral level of trade and industry, however, remained a task bequeathed to the future. At the end of the reign, the elements of commercial and industrial activity, created, called almost from non-existence by the great creator, were still in a wild state. In 1722, Bestuzhev reported from Stockholm about the arrival of several Russian merchants from Abo and Verel: “They brought a small amount of coarse canvas, wooden spoons, nuts, and they sell these goods through the streets in layers, cooking themselves porridge in the open air; refuse to obey the orders of the police, get drunk, quarrel, fight and present a shameful spectacle of disgusting uncleanliness.

financial policy.

The political obstacle was finances. In the history of the great reign, financial policy is a dark spot. Of all the branches of the creation of Peter, this branch, apparently, was most directly inspired, caused by the war, which was reflected in it. First of all, it does not have a transformative character at all; besides, she is almost always frank and disgusting.

The funds that Peter had at his disposal during his accession to the throne cannot be put in direct parallel with the funds of other European states. According to Golikov, they did not exceed 1,750,000 rubles. Based on such a meager budget, the material existence of the Russian state would, even if only touching the inner side, regardless of any efforts directed beyond it, look like an insoluble riddle, if one does not take into account the very special conditions in which it then found itself. First of all, in addition to the maintenance of the army, almost no duties lay on the state itself. It did not pay its employees: they were obliged to serve it in return for the privileges given to them, or received salaries indirectly, by “feeding”. It didn't support roads that didn't exist then, and so on. Take, for example, the budget of expenditures of 1710. It is very instructive in this respect.

artillery ......................... 221,799 r.

fleet .................................. 444.288 r.

garrisons ......................... 977,896 p.

Recruitment costs.............................. 30,000 rubles.

the purchase of weapons .................. 84.104 rubles.

Other expenses (including salary

feldzeugmeisters .................................. 675.775 r.

Before the accession of Peter in 1679, a very important beneficent measure was taken in this primitive organization, namely, the centralization of income in the Order of the Great Treasury, replaced in 1699 by the town hall. The great man, by his intervention, only destroyed everything that had been done. He had too little time to follow a program that promised satisfactory results only over a long period of time. Needing big money and immediately, he acted like the confused sons of wealthy parents. Instead of continuing to centralize and thus gradually destroy the individual in terms of money). At the same time, high customs tariffs (up to 40% in foreign currency) reliably protected the domestic market. The growth of industrial production was accompanied by the intensification of feudal exploitation, the widespread use of forced labor in manufactories: the use of serfs, bought (possession) peasants, as well as the labor of the state (black-eared) peasantry, which was attributed to the plant as a constant source of labor. The decree of January 18, 1721, and subsequent laws (for example, of May 28, 1723) allowed private manufacturers to buy peasants by entire villages “without restriction, so that those villages would always be at those factories inseparably.”

Peter I (Peter Alekseevich, First, Great) - the last Moscow tsar and the first Russian emperor. He was the youngest son of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov from his second wife, noblewoman Natalia Naryshkina. Born in 1672 on May 30 (9) (June).

A brief biography of Peter I is presented below (Peter 1 photo also).

Peter's father died when he was 4 years old, and his elder brother, Tsar Fedor Alekseevich, became his official guardian, a strong party of the Miloslavsky boyars came to power in Moscow (Fedor's mother was Alexei's first wife, Maria Miloslavskaya).

The upbringing and education of Peter I

All historians are unanimous in their opinion about the education of the future emperor. They believe that it was as weak as possible. Up to a year he was raised by his mother, and up to 4 years old by nannies. Then the clerk N. Zotov took up the education of the boy. The boy did not have the opportunity to study with the famous Simeon of Polotsk, who taught his older brothers, since the Patriarch of Moscow Joachim, who began the fight against "Latinization", insisted on the removal of Polotsk and his students from the court. N. Zotov taught the tsar to read and write, the law of God and the initial account. The prince wrote poorly, his vocabulary was meager. However, in the future, Peter will fill in all the gaps in his education.

The struggle of Miloslavsky and Naryshkin for power

Fedor Alekseevich died in 1682 leaving no male heir. The boyars Naryshkins, taking advantage of the confusion that arose and the fact that Tsarevich Ivan Alekseevich, the next brother in seniority, was mentally ill, elevated Peter to the throne, and made Natalya Kirillovna regent, while a close friend and relative of the Narashkins boyar Artamon Matveev was appointed guardian.

The Miloslavsky boyars, led by Princess Sophia, the eldest daughter of Alexei Mikhailovich, began to incite the archers, who numbered about 20 thousand in Moscow, to revolt. And the riot happened; as a result, the boyar A. Matveev, his supporter, the boyar M. Dolgoruky, and many of the Naryshkin family were killed. Tsarina Natalya was sent into exile, and both Ivan and Peter were elevated to the throne (and Ivan was considered the eldest). Princess Sophia, who enlisted the support of the leaders of the streltsy army, became their regent.

Link to Preobrazhenskoye, the creation of amusing regiments

After the wedding ceremony, young Peter was sent to the village of Preobrazhenskoye. There he grew up without feeling any restrictions. Very soon, the interest of the young prince in military affairs became clear to everyone around him. From 1685 to 1688, Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky (after the name of the neighboring village of Preobrazhensky, Semenov) amusing regiments were created in the village, and “amusing” artillery was created.

At the same time, the prince became interested in maritime affairs and founded the first shipyard on Lake Pleshcheyevo near Pereslavl-Zalessky. Since there were no Russian boyars who knew maritime science, the heir to the throne turned to foreigners, Germans and Dutch, who lived in the German Quarter in Moscow. It was at this time that he met Timmerman, who taught him geometry and arithmetic, Brandt, who studied navigation with him, Gordon and Lefort, who in the future would become his closest associates and associates.

First marriage

In 1689, on the orders of his mother, Peter married Evdokia Lopukhina, a girl from a rich and noble boyar family. Tsarina Natalya pursued three goals: to connect her son with the well-born Moscow boyars, who, if necessary, would provide him with political support, to announce the boy tsar’s coming of age and, as a result, his ability to rule independently, and to distract her son from his German mistress, Anna Mons. The prince did not love his wife and very quickly left her alone, although Tsarevich Alexei, the future heir to the emperor, was born from this marriage.

The beginning of independent rule and the struggle with Sophia

In 1689, another conflict broke out between Sophia and Peter, who wanted to rule independently. At first, archers led by Fyodor Shaklovity took the side of Sophia, but Peter managed to turn the tide and forced Sophia to retreat. She went to the monastery, Shaklovity was executed, and the elder brother Ivan fully recognized the right of his younger brother to the throne, although nominally, until his death in 1696, he remained co-ruler. From 1689 to 1696 year affairs in the state were handled by the government formed by Tsarina Natalya. The tsar himself completely "surrendered" to his favorite deeds - the creation of an army and navy.

The first independent years of reign and the final destruction of Sophia's supporters

Since 1696, Peter began to rule independently, choosing for himself the priority task of continuing the war with the Ottoman Empire. In 1695, 1696, he undertook two campaigns in order to capture the Turkish fortress of Azov on the Sea of ​​Azov (Peter deliberately refused to go to the Crimea, believing that his army was not yet strong enough). In 1695, it was not possible to take the fortress, and in 1696, after more thorough preparations and the creation of a river fleet, the fortress was taken. So Peter received the first port on the southern sea. In the same 1696, another fortress, Taganrog, was founded on the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov, which would become an outpost for Russian forces preparing to attack the Crimea from the sea.

However, an attack on the Crimea meant a war with the Ottomans, and the tsar understood that he still did not have enough strength for such a campaign. That is why he began to intensively look for allies who would support him in this war. For this purpose, he organized the so-called "Great Embassy" (1697-1698).

The official goal of the embassy, ​​which was headed by F. Lefort, was to establish ties with Europe and train underage people, the unofficial goal was to conclude military alliances against the Omani Empire. The king also went with an embassy, ​​though incognito. He visited several German principalities, Holland, England and Austria. The official goals were achieved, but it was not possible to find allies for the war with the Ottomans.

Peter intended to visit Venice and the Vatican, but in 1698 an uprising of archers, incited by Sophia, began in Moscow, and Peter was forced to return to his homeland. The Streltsy uprising was brutally suppressed by him. Sophia is tonsured to a monastery. Peter also sent his wife, Evdokia Lopukhina, to a monastery in Suzdal, but she was not trimmed as a nun, as Patriarch Adrian opposed this.

Empire building. Northern War and expansions to the South

In 1698, Peter completely disbanded the archery army and created 4 regular regiments, which became the basis of his new army. There was no such army in Russia yet, but the tsar needed it, as he was going to start a war for access to the Baltic Sea. The elector of Saxony, the ruler of the Commonwealth, and the Danish king offered Peter to fight with Sweden, the then hegemon of Europe. They needed a weak Sweden, and Peter needed access to the sea and convenient harbors for building a fleet. The reason for the war was allegedly an insult inflicted on the king in Riga.

First stage of the war

The beginning of the war cannot be called successful. On 19 (30) 11/1700, the Russian army was defeated near Narva. Then Charles XII, king of Sweden, defeated the allies. Peter did not back down, drew conclusions and reorganized the army and rear, carrying out reforms according to the European model. They immediately paid off:

• 1702 - the capture of Noteburg;
• 1703 - the capture of Nyenschantz; the beginning of the construction of St. Petersburg and Kronstadt;
• 1704 - the capture of Dorpat and Narva

In 1706 Charles XII, confident in his victory after strengthening in the Commonwealth, began to break through to the south of Russia, where he was promised support by the hetman of Ukraine I. Mazepa. But the battle near the village of Lesnoy (the Russian army was led by Al. Menshikov) deprived the Swedish army of fodder and ammunition. Most likely, it was this fact, as well as the military talent of Peter I, that led to the complete defeat of the Swedes near Poltava.

The Swedish king fled to Turkey, where he wanted to win the support of the Turkish Sultan. Turkey intervened, and as a result of the unsuccessful Prut campaign (1711), Russia was forced to return Azov to Turkey and abandon Taganrog. The loss was heavy for Russia, but peace with Turkey was concluded. This was followed by victories in the Baltic:

• 1714 - victory at Cape Gangut (in 1718 Charles XII died and peace negotiations began);
• 1721 - victory at the island of Grengam.

In 1721, the Treaty of Nystadt was concluded, according to which Russia received:

• access to the Baltic;
• Karelia, Estonia, Livonia, Ingria (but Russia had to give the conquered Finland to Sweden).

In the same year, Peter the Great proclaimed Russia an Empire, and endowed himself with the title of Emperor (moreover, in a short time, this new title of Peter I of Moscow Tsar was recognized by all European powers: who could challenge the decision taken by the most powerful ruler of Europe at that time?).

In 1722 - 1723, Peter the Great undertook the Caspian campaign, which ended with the signing of the Treaty of Constantinople with Turkey (1724), which recognized Russia's right to the western shores of the Caspian. The same treaty was signed with Persia.

Domestic policy of Peter I. reforms

From 1700 to 1725, Peter the Great carried out reforms that in one way or another affected every sphere of life in the Russian state. The most significant of them:

Finance and trade:

We can say that it was Peter the Great who created the industry of Russia, opening state-owned and helping to create private manufactories throughout the country;

Army:

• 1696 - the beginning of the creation of the Russian fleet (Peter did everything to make the Russian fleet become the most powerful in the world in 20 years);
• 1705 - the introduction of recruitment (the creation of a regular army);
• 1716 - creation of military charters;

Church:

• 1721 - the abolition of the patriarchate, the creation of the Synod, the creation of the Spiritual Regulations (the church in Russia was completely subordinate to the state);

Internal management:

Noble law:

• 1714 - a decree on single inheritance (a ban on splitting noble estates, which led to the strengthening of noble land ownership).

Family and personal life

After a divorce from Evdokia Lopukhina, Peter married (in 1712) his longtime mistress Catherine (Martha Skavronskaya), with whom he had been in connection with 1702 and from whom he already had several children (including Anna, the mother of the future Emperor Peter III, and Elizabeth , the future Russian empress). He crowned her the kingdom, making her empress and co-ruler.

With the eldest son, Tsarevich Alexei, Peter had a difficult relationship, which led to treason, abdication and death of the first in 1718. In 1722, the emperor issues a decree on succession to the throne, which states that the emperor has the right to appoint himself an heir. The only male heir in a straight line was the grandson of the emperor - Peter (son of Tsarevich Alexei). But who will take the throne after the death of Peter the Great remained unknown until the end of the emperor's life.

Peter had a stern character, he was quick-tempered, but the fact that he was a bright and extraordinary personality can be judged from the photos taken from the lifetime portraits of the emperor.

Almost all his life, Peter the Great suffered from kidney stones and uremia. From several attacks that occurred between 1711-1720, he could well have died.

In 1724-1725, the disease intensified and the emperor suffered from terrible attacks of pain. In the autumn of 1724, Peter caught a bad cold (he stood for a long time in cold water, helping sailors to save a boat that had run aground), and the pains became uninterrupted. In January, the emperor fell ill, on the 22nd he confessed and took the last communion, and on the 28th, after a long and painful agony (the photo of Peter I, taken from the painting “The Emperor on his deathbed”, proves this fact), Peter the Great died in the Winter Palace of St. -Petersburg.

The doctors diagnosed pneumonia, and after the autopsy, it became clear that the emperor had gangrene after the urinary canal finally narrowed and clogged with stones.

The emperor was buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg. His reign is over.

On January 28, with the support of A. Menshikov, Ekaterina Alekseevna, the second wife of Peter the Great, became empress.