History of Russia
Heads of the stateTHE ROMANOVS
Emperor Peter I (1672-1725)
Reign
1682-1725.Parents: Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and Tsarina Natalia Kirillovna Naryshkina.
Wifes:
Eudokia Fedorovna (Praskovia Illarionovna) Lopukhina, the daughter of Illarion Abramovich Lopukhin (1679-1731).
Married: 27 January 1689.
Ekaterina I Alexeyevna (1684-1727), the daughter of Samuel Skowronski.
Married: 19 February 1712.
Children of Peter I and Eudokia:
Alexei (1690-1718). He grew up at Preobrazhenskoe under the watchful eye of Tsarevna Natalia Alexeyevna. He learnt French, German and basic arithmetic, but had a poor knowledge of geometry and military tactics. In 1709, he was sent to study in Dresden, where he acquired a taste for reading, assembling a large library. In 1710, Peter the Great decided that Alexei should marry Princess Charlotte Christina Sophie of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel. They were married in Torgau on 14 December 1711. Despite their dislike for one another, they managed to have two children - Natalia in 1714 and the future Peter II in 1715. After giving birth to Peter, Charlotte contracted postnatal fever and died. She was so unhappy with her husband that she refused all medicines and deliberately ate things that could only do her harm. Sixteen days after the birth of Alexei's son Peter, his father's second wife, Catherine I, gave birth to son, also called Peter. Catherine and Prince Menshikov did not like Alexei and began a deliberately campaign of defamation. Peter the Great told his son to either help him rule Russia or become a monk. Alexei preferred the latter option. When his father went to Denmark in 1716, he fled to Austria, talking refuge with his former brother-in-law, Emperor Charles VI. When Peter the Great learnt of his son's flight, he sent Peter Tolstoy to find him. Tolstoy tracked him down and returned Alexei to Moscow. A plot against Peter the Great was uncovered and the ringleaders were executed. Peter appointed a supreme court of generals, senators, senior clergymen and guards officers, who sentenced Alexei to death. On 26 June 1718, he died in unclear circumstances in the Trubetskoi bastion of the Peter and Paul Fortress ans was buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral.
Alexander (1691-1692).
Pavel was born and died in 1693.
Important events:
......1695-1699 Prince Fedor Romodanovsky of the Preobrazhensky Office Launched an official investigation into the Streltsy revolt. Streltsy guards were executed en masse, with Peter himself chopping off several heads. In February 1699, the Streltsy detachments were disbanded and any surviving guards were banished to the far reaches of the country.
......1695 and 1696 In 1695 and 1696, Peter the Great led two attempts to capture the Turkish fortress of Azov. The second attempt was successful and Peter founded a Russian fleet at Azov. On 20 October 1696, at Peter's command, the duma of boyars announced the creation of a high seas fleet. Russia was not only to be a great continental power, but also a great naval power. Construction of a regular Russian navy began on 4 November 1696.
......1682-1725 Peter the Great developed Russian industry, opening many new factories, mills and mines and building the Vyshny Volochek and Ladoga Canals. The merchant class was divided into guilds, while craftsmen were grouped in corporations. Medical institutes, a public theater and schools of translators were opened. New form of clothing, assemblies, taxes and letterhead notepaper were introduced. New silver coins were minted. The reforms of Peter the Great affected virtually every aspect of Russian life.
......1703 On 16 May 1703, Peter the Great laid the foundations of a fort on Zayachy (hare) Island, not far from the mouth of the River Neva. The construction was based on the tsar's own design and became known as the Peter and Paul Fortress. On the surrounding marshlands, Peter planned to build a new town and port. The city was originally named Piterburkh or the "town of St Peter". St Petersburg was the capital of Russia from the 1710s to 1918.
......1672-1725 Peter the Great had an iron will and boundless energy. He was ambitious, intuitive, despotic, courageous, cruel and self-assured. The tsar could be decisive, forceful, convulsive and fidgety. He combined an amazing capacity for work with an equally unquenchable thirst for amusement.
......1703 Petersburg became the primary concern and favorite "child of the northern giant, in which the energy, brutality and revolutionary force of the '93 Convention were concentrated... the favourite child of the tsar, who renounced his country for its own good and oppressed it in the name of Europeanism and civilisation" (Alexander Herzen).
......1709 In April 1709, the Swedish army besieges the strategic Ukrainian town of Poltava. Peter rushed south with Russian forces and a battle was fought on 27 June 1709. The Russian army scored a brilliant victory, which was also of great political importance. Sweden never recovered from the blow.
......1718 Alexei was forced to renounce his rights to the throne in favour of his half-brother Peter and to inform on those who had helped him to flee to Austria. The investigation continued when the court moved to St Petersburg in March 1718. A plot against Peter the Great was uncovered and the ring-leaders were executed. Peter appointed a supreme court of generals, senators, senior clergymen and guards officers, who sentenced Alexei to death.
......1718 In autumn 1718, Peter announced his intention of introducing a new concept into the life of St Petersburg - informal gatherings or forums called assemblies: "Assembly comes from the French word assemblee and cannot be translated into word in Russian. A meeting in a house, not only for entertainment, but also for business. A place where people can meet, talk and hear what is being done and where it is being done, accompanied by entertainment".
......1724 In 1724, on a cold and stormy night in October, Peter the Great was sailing from Kronstadt to St Petersburg when he heard cries for help from the sea, not far from village of Lakhta. A warship had struck a sandbank and was sinking. The tsar immediately set off in their direction. Standing up to his waist in icy water, he helped to save the sailors, aggravating the disease that eventually killed him.
The subject of countless books, films and works of art, Peter the Great is probably the most famous member of the Romanov family. He single-handedly changed the course of Russian history, turning the country into a powerful empire ranking alongside the other European power. The imperial period of Russian history begins with Peter I.
Peter was born in Moscow on 30 May 1672 and baptised at the Monastery of the Miracle on 29 June 1672. He began walking at the age of six months. At the age of five, he was introduced to his first tutor - Nikita Zotov, a deacon of the petitions department. Although he learnt to read and write, he did not receive a good education.
On the death of his father on 27 April 1682, Peter was proclaimed tsar at the age of ten. The intrigues of the Miloslavsky family, however, led to the Streltsy revolt and the murder of his mother's allies in Moscow in May 1682. The upshot was the crowning of two co-tsars with Sophie as regent. Peter and his mother were forced to leave Moscow and live in Preobrazhenskoe became a temporary royal residence or, in the words of Vasily Klyuchevsky, "a stopping place on the way to St Petersburg".
Peter was haunted by the memories of the Streltsy uprising and fears for the future. There was no force at Preobrazhenskoe capable of defending him and his mother should the Streltsy revolt break out again. He decided to set about creating his own army.
Besides the children of boyars, the tsar was joined at Preobrazhenskoe by a large number of courtiers. From their ranks he formed a toy (poteshny) brigade, which gradually, under the guise of childhood games, turned into a military unit. This detachment was called the Preobrazhensky Toy Regiment. When the number of amateur forces grew, a second battalion was formed in the neighbouring village of Semyonovskoe, called the Semyonovsky Toy Regiment. The forces mock battles with real weapons, often leading to serious injuries and several deaths. Peter's steward, Prince Ivan Dolgoruky, was killed during one such battle, while the tsar's face badly burnt in an artillery barrage. The first mock battles were more like village fistfights. The two regiments would line up against a detachment of Streltsy guards on the bank of the River Yauza. Brawny representatives of each "army" came forward and began insulting one another. The situation became increasingly heated, with the two sides eventually coming to blows. The foreign instructors gradually began to develop these battles into regular manoeuvres along Western lines. A fortress called Pressburg - a miniature copy of the fort in modern-day Bratislava - was built on the River Yauza to study the art of defending and besieging fortifications. Besides infantry formations, there were also artillery formations, there were also artillery and cavalry detachments and a toy navy on Lake Pereyaslavl.
The toy forces were officially renamed the Preobrazhensky and Semyonovsky regiments in 1687. The four hundred officers were mostly foreigners, although only Russian noblemen could be the sergeants. Both regiments were headed by General Artamon Golovin. The size of the regiments gradually grew. By the mid-1690s, the Preobrazhensky Regiment counted ten companies, including a bomber squad. The Preobrazhensky and Semyonovsky regiments gave Peter the means to defend himself from potential enemies and a tool to resolve important matters of state. In August 1689, he learnt that Sophie and her new lover, Fedor Shaklovity, were preparing a coup d'etat. Peter left Preobrazhenskoe for the safety of the Trinity Monastery at Sergiev Posad, where he was joined by the Preobrazhensky and Semyonovsky regiments. He managed to isolate and overthrow the "third, discreditable person", as he referred to Sophie in his letters to his brother Ioann. She was incarcerated in the Novodevichy Convent, while her Streltsy supporters went to the scaffold.
Peter did not abandon his war games after securing his hold on the throne. He entrusted all affairs of state to his mother, a shrewd, but, however, not very intelligent woman. She was helped by Prince Vasily Golitsyn (a heavy drinker and a shrewd politician) and her brother Lev (a heavy drinker and a poor politician). Her council included Tikhon Streshnev, a master of intrigue whom many believed to be Peter's real Father. The tsar often referred to him as"father" and appointed him minister of war in 1703. In his poem Russia, Maximilian Voloshin describes one of Peter's attempts to learn the truth of his origin:
The tsar, in his cups, interrogated
Streshnev on the rack:
"Tell me, am I your son or not?"
"The devil knows who you are;
The tsarina was often on her back!"
Natalia Naryshkina took sometimes independent decisions, such as the decree banishing the Jesuits from Russia or the burning of Kulman the Mystic at the stake on Red Square. Patrick Gordon, a Scottish general in Russian service, complained in a letter to London in July 1690 that Peter was completely uninterested in governing. He divided his time between drinking sessions and toy battles, leading what Vasily Klyuchevsky called "the life of a homeless, itinerant student". The Crimean Tatars, meanwhile, defeated Prince Golitsyn and captured a number of Russian provinces. Russia's prestige in Europe fell. When a new sultan assumed power in Turkey, he informed all the European rulers, with the exception of the Russian tsar.
When Peter's mother died in 1694, he was forced to take over the running of the state. In 1695 and 1696, he led two attempts to capture the Turkish fortress of Azov. The second attempt was successful and Peter founded a Russian fleet at Azov. In 1697, he decided to go on a fact-finding mission to Europe. The Great Embassy left Moscow in March, with the tsar traveling incognito as "Peter Mikhailov, sergeant of the Preobrazhensky Regiment". Peter I visited Holland, England, Germany and Austria, where he studied shipbuilding, anatomy, dentistry and many other skills and crafts. His plans to visit Italy in 1698 were thwarted when he received news of another revolt of the Streltsy guards in support of Sophie. Although the tsar hurried back to Moscow, by the time he arrived the revolt had already been put down by his toy regiments.
Prince Fedor Romodanovsky of the Preobrazhensky Office Launched an official investigation into the Streltsy revolt. Streltsy guards were executed en masse, with Peter himself chopping off several heads. In February 1699, the Streltsy detachments were disbanded and any surviving guards were banished to the far reaches of the country.
Peter decided to make a clean sweep by confining his wife Eudokia to a convent. When he was nineteen, his mother had married him to the sixteen-year-old daughter of Illarion Lopukhin on 27 January 1689. Although her name was actually Praskovia Illarionovna, Peter's mother thought that Eudokia sounded better. She did not like the father's name either and he was forced to change it to Fedor. Praskovia Illarionovna thus became Eudokia Fedorovna. Prince Boris Kurakin describes her as a handsome girl of "only average intelligence". Peter and Eudokia's marriage was initially happy. Eudokia gave birth to a son called Alexei in 1690, followed by two more boys. Peter then tired of his wife and began a relationship with Anna Mons, the daughter of a wine trader in the German Suburb (foreigners' settlement).
Following the breakdown of their marriage, Peter decided to rid himself of Eudokia. He banished her to the convent of the Intercession in Suzdal on 23 September 1698. The following year, he sent Semyon Yazykov to the convent to inform Eudokia that she was to join the sisterhood as Sister Helen. In 1709, Peter's former wife began a nine-year love affair with Capitan Stepan Glebov. This came to light in 1718, when the tsar was investigating the flight abroad of their son, Tsarevich Alexei. Both were harshly punished. Stepan Glebov was impaled, while Eudokia was tortured and moved to the Convent of the Dormition in Staraya (Old) Ladoga.
Eudokia's troubles did not end there. When Peter's second wife ascended the throne in 1725, she was imprisoned at Schlusselburg and only released in October 1727, during the reign of her grandson, Peter II. The former tsarina spend the rest of her life at the Novodevichy Convent in Moscow, where she died in 1731. She was buried there alongside three of Peter's half-sisters - Sophie, Ekaterina and Eudokia.
Much has been written about Peter's physical appearance, particularly his great height. The closest physical likeness to the tsar is Mikhail Shemyakin's famous statue in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Valentin Serov, a fin-de-siecle Russian artist who painted a series of works dedicated to Peter the Great, a figure he admired, compiled his own image of the tsar: " It is regretful that a man who did not have a single jot of sweetness about him is always portrayed as some operatic hero or beauty. He was frightening to look at - a long body on thin, scrawny legs, with such a small head in comparison to the rest of the body that he must have looked more like a scarecrow with a badly fitting head than a living person. He was forever grimacing, winking, twitching his mouth and slapping his chin. He took enormous strides and his companions were forced to run to keep up with him. I can imagine whet a monster he must have seemed to foreigners and how frightening he was to the people of St Petersburg. A freak with a constantly twitching head ... a terrible person".
Peter had a nervous character. He was quick to fly into a rage, when his face would begin to twitch - possibly a nervous reaction brought on by the shock of the Streltsy revolt in his childhood. Vasily Klyuchevsky noted another of his traits : "In keeping with Old Russian habits, Peter did not like wide rooms or high ceilings. He always avoided magnificent royal palaces whenever he was abroad. A son of the endless Russian steppe, he felt suffocated among the hills of a narrow German valley. Strangely enough, growing up in the open air and accustomed to wide spaces, he could not live in a room with a high ceiling. Whenever he found himself in one, he would order a special canvas ceiling to be hung low. Perhaps the cramped conditions of his childhood had left its mark on him".
Peter the Great had an iron will and boundless energy. He was ambitious, intuitive, despotic, courageous, cruel and self-assured. The tsar could be decisive, forceful, convulsive and fidgety. He combined an amazing capacity for work with an equally unquenchable thirst for amusement. His curious and lively mind led him to acquire knowledge in many different crafts and sciences, including shipbuilding, artillery, fortifications, diplomacy, military tactics, mechanics, medicine and astronomy. The tsar held audiences with leading scientists as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Sir Isaac Newton and was elected an honorary member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1717.
Peter the Great developed Russian industry, opening many new factories, mills and mines and building the Vyshny Volochek and Ladoga Canals. The merchant class was divided into guilds, while craftsmen were grouped in corporations. Medical institutes, a public theater and schools of translators were opened. New form of clothing, assemblies, taxes and letterhead notepaper were introduced. New silver coins were minted. The reforms of Peter the Great affected virtually every aspect of Russian life. Peter created a pyramidal form of state structure. The peasantry served the nobility, the nobility served the monarch and the monarch served the state.
On 5 February 1722, Peter signed a decree altering the way in which the Russian throne was inherited. Instead of the crown passing from father to son, the sovereign would henceforth nominate his own successor from the members of his family. In 1724, Peter signing a document bequeathing the throne to Catherine, who was crowned empress in the Dormition Cathedral in Moscow on 7 May 1724. Later that year, Peter learnt of Catherine's love affair with the chamberlain William Mons. They were only discovered by accident, during an investigation into an accusation of bribery and embezzlement. William Mons was executed and Peter tore up the document naming Catherine as his successor.
Peter began 1725 in poor health. On 16 January, he took to his bed. The pains grew worse and his groans and cries could be heard throughout the palace. Under the terms of his manifesto changing the rules of inheritance, the emperor was obliged to name his own successor. On 27 January, he sat down to write his will, but only managed to command Leave everything to ...
On 28 January 1725, Peter died in great pain from a stone in his bladder. He was buried in the still unfinished Peter and Paul Cathedral in St Petersburg. The tsar was officially proclaimed "Emperor Peter the Great of All the Russias". Many, however, believed that he was the Antichrist, sent to punish Russia for her sins. Public opinion was sharply split over the merits of his reign.
Peter the Great died without leaving an official heir. A meeting of senators, clergymen, generals and guards officers was split over who should inherit the throne. Members of the old aristocracy - the Dolgoruky, Golitsyn and Repnin families - wanted to offer the crown to Alexei's son Peter, the eleven-year-old grandson of Peter the Great. They regarded Catherine as a Lithuanian laundress not worthy of even approaching the Russian throne. Peter's proteges - Menshikov, Yaguzhinsky and Tolstoy - supported Catherine. The second group carried the day thanks to the brilliant oratory of Archbishop Feofan Prokopovich and the actions of General Ivan Buturlin, who stationed two guards regiments beneath the palace windows. Catherine was declared empress, and captain of the Bomber Squad.
Wifes:
Eudokia Fedorovna (Praskovia Illarionovna) Lopukhina, the daughter of Illarion Abramovich Lopukhin (1679-1731).
Married: 27 January 1689.
Ekaterina I Alexeyevna (1684-1727), the daughter of Samuel Skowronski.
Married: 19 February 1712.
Children of Peter I and Eudokia:
Alexei (1690-1718). He grew up at Preobrazhenskoe under the watchful eye of Tsarevna Natalia Alexeyevna. He learnt French, German and basic arithmetic, but had a poor knowledge of geometry and military tactics. In 1709, he was sent to study in Dresden, where he acquired a taste for reading, assembling a large library. In 1710, Peter the Great decided that Alexei should marry Princess Charlotte Christina Sophie of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel. They were married in Torgau on 14 December 1711. Despite their dislike for one another, they managed to have two children - Natalia in 1714 and the future Peter II in 1715. After giving birth to Peter, Charlotte contracted postnatal fever and died. She was so unhappy with her husband that she refused all medicines and deliberately ate things that could only do her harm. Sixteen days after the birth of Alexei's son Peter, his father's second wife, Catherine I, gave birth to son, also called Peter. Catherine and Prince Menshikov did not like Alexei and began a deliberately campaign of defamation. Peter the Great told his son to either help him rule Russia or become a monk. Alexei preferred the latter option. When his father went to Denmark in 1716, he fled to Austria, talking refuge with his former brother-in-law, Emperor Charles VI. When Peter the Great learnt of his son's flight, he sent Peter Tolstoy to find him. Tolstoy tracked him down and returned Alexei to Moscow. A plot against Peter the Great was uncovered and the ringleaders were executed. Peter appointed a supreme court of generals, senators, senior clergymen and guards officers, who sentenced Alexei to death. On 26 June 1718, he died in unclear circumstances in the Trubetskoi bastion of the Peter and Paul Fortress ans was buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral.
Alexander (1691-1692).
Pavel was born and died in 1693.
Important events:
- 1696 - Creation of the Russian high seas fleet. Young noblemen sent abroad to study. Foundation of a system of orders.
- 1699 - Opening of the Academy of Gunners.
- 1700 - Adoption of the Julian calendar, counting the new year from 1 January and not 1 September and the year from the birth of Christ and not the creation of the world. Formation of guards regiments. Signing of the Treaty of Constantinople with Turkey.
- 1701 - Opening of a School of Mathematical and Navigational Sciences in Moscow.
- 1703 - Foundation of St Petersburg, later the capital of Russia (1712). Foundation of the first Russian newspaper Vedomosti.
- 1705 - Introduction of conscription.
- 1708-09 - Formation of eight (later ten) provinces headed by governors to replace the old system of districts, waywodeships and governorships. The provinces are later divided into forty-seven regions (1719).
- 1708-10 - Introduction of the Russian "civil" alphabet.
- 1710-11 - End of the Russo-Turkish War.
- 1711 - Replacement of the duma of boyars with the Senate.
- 1714 - Decree of primogeniture transferring property to one son and strengthening the nobility's hold on the land.
- 1715 - Opening of a Naval Academy in St Petersburg.
- 1716 - Introduction of the Military Code.
- 1718 - Replacement of the offices with colleges.
- 1719 - Opening of School of Engineering and Artillery in St Petersburg. Opening of the first museum (Kunstkammer) and public library in St Petersburg.
- 1720 - Introduction of the Naval Code.
- 1721 - Signing of the Treaty of Nystad with Sweden, giving Russia territory along the River Neva, Karelia, the Baltic provinces and Vyborg. Russia becomes an empire with the tsar as emperor. Replacement of the patriarchate with the Holy Synod.
- 1722 - Formation of the table of ranks - promotion in the army, navy and civil service is now based on personal abilities, rather than descent.
- 1722-23 - Russo-Persian War giving Russia the western shores of the Caspian Sea and the towns of Derbent and Baku.
- 1723 - The peasanty becomes the personal property of the nobility.
- 1724 - Foundation and opening of the Academy of Sciences, with a grammar school and university in St Petersburg.
......1695-1699 Prince Fedor Romodanovsky of the Preobrazhensky Office Launched an official investigation into the Streltsy revolt. Streltsy guards were executed en masse, with Peter himself chopping off several heads. In February 1699, the Streltsy detachments were disbanded and any surviving guards were banished to the far reaches of the country.
......1695 and 1696 In 1695 and 1696, Peter the Great led two attempts to capture the Turkish fortress of Azov. The second attempt was successful and Peter founded a Russian fleet at Azov. On 20 October 1696, at Peter's command, the duma of boyars announced the creation of a high seas fleet. Russia was not only to be a great continental power, but also a great naval power. Construction of a regular Russian navy began on 4 November 1696.
......1682-1725 Peter the Great developed Russian industry, opening many new factories, mills and mines and building the Vyshny Volochek and Ladoga Canals. The merchant class was divided into guilds, while craftsmen were grouped in corporations. Medical institutes, a public theater and schools of translators were opened. New form of clothing, assemblies, taxes and letterhead notepaper were introduced. New silver coins were minted. The reforms of Peter the Great affected virtually every aspect of Russian life.
......1703 On 16 May 1703, Peter the Great laid the foundations of a fort on Zayachy (hare) Island, not far from the mouth of the River Neva. The construction was based on the tsar's own design and became known as the Peter and Paul Fortress. On the surrounding marshlands, Peter planned to build a new town and port. The city was originally named Piterburkh or the "town of St Peter". St Petersburg was the capital of Russia from the 1710s to 1918.
......1672-1725 Peter the Great had an iron will and boundless energy. He was ambitious, intuitive, despotic, courageous, cruel and self-assured. The tsar could be decisive, forceful, convulsive and fidgety. He combined an amazing capacity for work with an equally unquenchable thirst for amusement.
......1703 Petersburg became the primary concern and favorite "child of the northern giant, in which the energy, brutality and revolutionary force of the '93 Convention were concentrated... the favourite child of the tsar, who renounced his country for its own good and oppressed it in the name of Europeanism and civilisation" (Alexander Herzen).
......1709 In April 1709, the Swedish army besieges the strategic Ukrainian town of Poltava. Peter rushed south with Russian forces and a battle was fought on 27 June 1709. The Russian army scored a brilliant victory, which was also of great political importance. Sweden never recovered from the blow.
......1718 Alexei was forced to renounce his rights to the throne in favour of his half-brother Peter and to inform on those who had helped him to flee to Austria. The investigation continued when the court moved to St Petersburg in March 1718. A plot against Peter the Great was uncovered and the ring-leaders were executed. Peter appointed a supreme court of generals, senators, senior clergymen and guards officers, who sentenced Alexei to death.
......1718 In autumn 1718, Peter announced his intention of introducing a new concept into the life of St Petersburg - informal gatherings or forums called assemblies: "Assembly comes from the French word assemblee and cannot be translated into word in Russian. A meeting in a house, not only for entertainment, but also for business. A place where people can meet, talk and hear what is being done and where it is being done, accompanied by entertainment".
......1724 In 1724, on a cold and stormy night in October, Peter the Great was sailing from Kronstadt to St Petersburg when he heard cries for help from the sea, not far from village of Lakhta. A warship had struck a sandbank and was sinking. The tsar immediately set off in their direction. Standing up to his waist in icy water, he helped to save the sailors, aggravating the disease that eventually killed him.
The subject of countless books, films and works of art, Peter the Great is probably the most famous member of the Romanov family. He single-handedly changed the course of Russian history, turning the country into a powerful empire ranking alongside the other European power. The imperial period of Russian history begins with Peter I.
Peter was born in Moscow on 30 May 1672 and baptised at the Monastery of the Miracle on 29 June 1672. He began walking at the age of six months. At the age of five, he was introduced to his first tutor - Nikita Zotov, a deacon of the petitions department. Although he learnt to read and write, he did not receive a good education.
On the death of his father on 27 April 1682, Peter was proclaimed tsar at the age of ten. The intrigues of the Miloslavsky family, however, led to the Streltsy revolt and the murder of his mother's allies in Moscow in May 1682. The upshot was the crowning of two co-tsars with Sophie as regent. Peter and his mother were forced to leave Moscow and live in Preobrazhenskoe became a temporary royal residence or, in the words of Vasily Klyuchevsky, "a stopping place on the way to St Petersburg".
Peter was haunted by the memories of the Streltsy uprising and fears for the future. There was no force at Preobrazhenskoe capable of defending him and his mother should the Streltsy revolt break out again. He decided to set about creating his own army.
Besides the children of boyars, the tsar was joined at Preobrazhenskoe by a large number of courtiers. From their ranks he formed a toy (poteshny) brigade, which gradually, under the guise of childhood games, turned into a military unit. This detachment was called the Preobrazhensky Toy Regiment. When the number of amateur forces grew, a second battalion was formed in the neighbouring village of Semyonovskoe, called the Semyonovsky Toy Regiment. The forces mock battles with real weapons, often leading to serious injuries and several deaths. Peter's steward, Prince Ivan Dolgoruky, was killed during one such battle, while the tsar's face badly burnt in an artillery barrage. The first mock battles were more like village fistfights. The two regiments would line up against a detachment of Streltsy guards on the bank of the River Yauza. Brawny representatives of each "army" came forward and began insulting one another. The situation became increasingly heated, with the two sides eventually coming to blows. The foreign instructors gradually began to develop these battles into regular manoeuvres along Western lines. A fortress called Pressburg - a miniature copy of the fort in modern-day Bratislava - was built on the River Yauza to study the art of defending and besieging fortifications. Besides infantry formations, there were also artillery formations, there were also artillery and cavalry detachments and a toy navy on Lake Pereyaslavl.
The toy forces were officially renamed the Preobrazhensky and Semyonovsky regiments in 1687. The four hundred officers were mostly foreigners, although only Russian noblemen could be the sergeants. Both regiments were headed by General Artamon Golovin. The size of the regiments gradually grew. By the mid-1690s, the Preobrazhensky Regiment counted ten companies, including a bomber squad. The Preobrazhensky and Semyonovsky regiments gave Peter the means to defend himself from potential enemies and a tool to resolve important matters of state. In August 1689, he learnt that Sophie and her new lover, Fedor Shaklovity, were preparing a coup d'etat. Peter left Preobrazhenskoe for the safety of the Trinity Monastery at Sergiev Posad, where he was joined by the Preobrazhensky and Semyonovsky regiments. He managed to isolate and overthrow the "third, discreditable person", as he referred to Sophie in his letters to his brother Ioann. She was incarcerated in the Novodevichy Convent, while her Streltsy supporters went to the scaffold.
Peter did not abandon his war games after securing his hold on the throne. He entrusted all affairs of state to his mother, a shrewd, but, however, not very intelligent woman. She was helped by Prince Vasily Golitsyn (a heavy drinker and a shrewd politician) and her brother Lev (a heavy drinker and a poor politician). Her council included Tikhon Streshnev, a master of intrigue whom many believed to be Peter's real Father. The tsar often referred to him as"father" and appointed him minister of war in 1703. In his poem Russia, Maximilian Voloshin describes one of Peter's attempts to learn the truth of his origin:
The tsar, in his cups, interrogated
Streshnev on the rack:
"Tell me, am I your son or not?"
"The devil knows who you are;
The tsarina was often on her back!"
Natalia Naryshkina took sometimes independent decisions, such as the decree banishing the Jesuits from Russia or the burning of Kulman the Mystic at the stake on Red Square. Patrick Gordon, a Scottish general in Russian service, complained in a letter to London in July 1690 that Peter was completely uninterested in governing. He divided his time between drinking sessions and toy battles, leading what Vasily Klyuchevsky called "the life of a homeless, itinerant student". The Crimean Tatars, meanwhile, defeated Prince Golitsyn and captured a number of Russian provinces. Russia's prestige in Europe fell. When a new sultan assumed power in Turkey, he informed all the European rulers, with the exception of the Russian tsar.
When Peter's mother died in 1694, he was forced to take over the running of the state. In 1695 and 1696, he led two attempts to capture the Turkish fortress of Azov. The second attempt was successful and Peter founded a Russian fleet at Azov. In 1697, he decided to go on a fact-finding mission to Europe. The Great Embassy left Moscow in March, with the tsar traveling incognito as "Peter Mikhailov, sergeant of the Preobrazhensky Regiment". Peter I visited Holland, England, Germany and Austria, where he studied shipbuilding, anatomy, dentistry and many other skills and crafts. His plans to visit Italy in 1698 were thwarted when he received news of another revolt of the Streltsy guards in support of Sophie. Although the tsar hurried back to Moscow, by the time he arrived the revolt had already been put down by his toy regiments.
Prince Fedor Romodanovsky of the Preobrazhensky Office Launched an official investigation into the Streltsy revolt. Streltsy guards were executed en masse, with Peter himself chopping off several heads. In February 1699, the Streltsy detachments were disbanded and any surviving guards were banished to the far reaches of the country.
Peter decided to make a clean sweep by confining his wife Eudokia to a convent. When he was nineteen, his mother had married him to the sixteen-year-old daughter of Illarion Lopukhin on 27 January 1689. Although her name was actually Praskovia Illarionovna, Peter's mother thought that Eudokia sounded better. She did not like the father's name either and he was forced to change it to Fedor. Praskovia Illarionovna thus became Eudokia Fedorovna. Prince Boris Kurakin describes her as a handsome girl of "only average intelligence". Peter and Eudokia's marriage was initially happy. Eudokia gave birth to a son called Alexei in 1690, followed by two more boys. Peter then tired of his wife and began a relationship with Anna Mons, the daughter of a wine trader in the German Suburb (foreigners' settlement).
Following the breakdown of their marriage, Peter decided to rid himself of Eudokia. He banished her to the convent of the Intercession in Suzdal on 23 September 1698. The following year, he sent Semyon Yazykov to the convent to inform Eudokia that she was to join the sisterhood as Sister Helen. In 1709, Peter's former wife began a nine-year love affair with Capitan Stepan Glebov. This came to light in 1718, when the tsar was investigating the flight abroad of their son, Tsarevich Alexei. Both were harshly punished. Stepan Glebov was impaled, while Eudokia was tortured and moved to the Convent of the Dormition in Staraya (Old) Ladoga.
Eudokia's troubles did not end there. When Peter's second wife ascended the throne in 1725, she was imprisoned at Schlusselburg and only released in October 1727, during the reign of her grandson, Peter II. The former tsarina spend the rest of her life at the Novodevichy Convent in Moscow, where she died in 1731. She was buried there alongside three of Peter's half-sisters - Sophie, Ekaterina and Eudokia.
Much has been written about Peter's physical appearance, particularly his great height. The closest physical likeness to the tsar is Mikhail Shemyakin's famous statue in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Valentin Serov, a fin-de-siecle Russian artist who painted a series of works dedicated to Peter the Great, a figure he admired, compiled his own image of the tsar: " It is regretful that a man who did not have a single jot of sweetness about him is always portrayed as some operatic hero or beauty. He was frightening to look at - a long body on thin, scrawny legs, with such a small head in comparison to the rest of the body that he must have looked more like a scarecrow with a badly fitting head than a living person. He was forever grimacing, winking, twitching his mouth and slapping his chin. He took enormous strides and his companions were forced to run to keep up with him. I can imagine whet a monster he must have seemed to foreigners and how frightening he was to the people of St Petersburg. A freak with a constantly twitching head ... a terrible person".
Peter had a nervous character. He was quick to fly into a rage, when his face would begin to twitch - possibly a nervous reaction brought on by the shock of the Streltsy revolt in his childhood. Vasily Klyuchevsky noted another of his traits : "In keeping with Old Russian habits, Peter did not like wide rooms or high ceilings. He always avoided magnificent royal palaces whenever he was abroad. A son of the endless Russian steppe, he felt suffocated among the hills of a narrow German valley. Strangely enough, growing up in the open air and accustomed to wide spaces, he could not live in a room with a high ceiling. Whenever he found himself in one, he would order a special canvas ceiling to be hung low. Perhaps the cramped conditions of his childhood had left its mark on him".
Peter the Great had an iron will and boundless energy. He was ambitious, intuitive, despotic, courageous, cruel and self-assured. The tsar could be decisive, forceful, convulsive and fidgety. He combined an amazing capacity for work with an equally unquenchable thirst for amusement. His curious and lively mind led him to acquire knowledge in many different crafts and sciences, including shipbuilding, artillery, fortifications, diplomacy, military tactics, mechanics, medicine and astronomy. The tsar held audiences with leading scientists as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Sir Isaac Newton and was elected an honorary member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1717.
Peter the Great developed Russian industry, opening many new factories, mills and mines and building the Vyshny Volochek and Ladoga Canals. The merchant class was divided into guilds, while craftsmen were grouped in corporations. Medical institutes, a public theater and schools of translators were opened. New form of clothing, assemblies, taxes and letterhead notepaper were introduced. New silver coins were minted. The reforms of Peter the Great affected virtually every aspect of Russian life. Peter created a pyramidal form of state structure. The peasantry served the nobility, the nobility served the monarch and the monarch served the state.
On 5 February 1722, Peter signed a decree altering the way in which the Russian throne was inherited. Instead of the crown passing from father to son, the sovereign would henceforth nominate his own successor from the members of his family. In 1724, Peter signing a document bequeathing the throne to Catherine, who was crowned empress in the Dormition Cathedral in Moscow on 7 May 1724. Later that year, Peter learnt of Catherine's love affair with the chamberlain William Mons. They were only discovered by accident, during an investigation into an accusation of bribery and embezzlement. William Mons was executed and Peter tore up the document naming Catherine as his successor.
Peter began 1725 in poor health. On 16 January, he took to his bed. The pains grew worse and his groans and cries could be heard throughout the palace. Under the terms of his manifesto changing the rules of inheritance, the emperor was obliged to name his own successor. On 27 January, he sat down to write his will, but only managed to command Leave everything to ...
On 28 January 1725, Peter died in great pain from a stone in his bladder. He was buried in the still unfinished Peter and Paul Cathedral in St Petersburg. The tsar was officially proclaimed "Emperor Peter the Great of All the Russias". Many, however, believed that he was the Antichrist, sent to punish Russia for her sins. Public opinion was sharply split over the merits of his reign.
Peter the Great died without leaving an official heir. A meeting of senators, clergymen, generals and guards officers was split over who should inherit the throne. Members of the old aristocracy - the Dolgoruky, Golitsyn and Repnin families - wanted to offer the crown to Alexei's son Peter, the eleven-year-old grandson of Peter the Great. They regarded Catherine as a Lithuanian laundress not worthy of even approaching the Russian throne. Peter's proteges - Menshikov, Yaguzhinsky and Tolstoy - supported Catherine. The second group carried the day thanks to the brilliant oratory of Archbishop Feofan Prokopovich and the actions of General Ivan Buturlin, who stationed two guards regiments beneath the palace windows. Catherine was declared empress, and captain of the Bomber Squad.
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