Peter the Great’s Reforms

in stature and will.
Interests: manufacture, armed forces, practical crafts.
The first

Tsar to travel outside Russia.
‘Great Embassy’ to Europe, 1697-8.


Peter the Great by Paul Delaroche

with Sweden, Turkey and campaigns in the Middle East.
Creation of

a Russian navy.
Many reforms driven by the need to power the military machine.

up around the Peter and Paul Fortress during war with

Sweden.
Completed in 50 years, at massive financial, material and human cost.
‘A window on the West’; an emblem of progress and enlightenment.
“The most abstract and intentional city in the whole world” – Dostoevsky.

of beards, frock coats instead of kaftans.
A symbol of Peter’s

will and of the tone of his reforms.
Stark division between gentry and peasantry.
Resistance: Peter was called ‘the Antichrist’ by some (‘Old Believers’).
Peter adopts title of imperator (Emperor), 1721.

to the State.
Compulsory education (often abroad), followed by army, navy

or civil service.
Table of Ranks instituted in 1722. 14 ranks, equivalent across the army, navy and civil service
This stimulated a great preoccupation with social rank and promotion (which is depicted – often satirised - in works of Russian literature)

Synod, 1721. Subordination of Russian Orthodox Church: in this respect

Peter has been compared to Bolsheviks after 1917
Development of the education system.
Founding of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Adoption of the Julian calendar in 1700.
Simplification of the Cyrillic alphabet.
Publication of the first newspaper, Vedomosti (News) and secular books.
Women encouraged to ‘come out’ into society.

the human body: secular portraiture, sculpture, Western fashions.

Cult of classical

antiquity.

Performing arts: theatre, opera, ballet.

Rastrelli and baroque architecture, particularly in St Petersburg.

The Smolny Cathedral (photo by G. Shuklin)

to achieve desirable
ends.
The Slavophiles of the 19th century didn’t
even view

these ends as desirable or
good for Russia. They idealised pre-Petrine
Russia.

Russia and
Japan:
Extraordinary openness and eagerness to
imitate foreign ways
Under Nicholas I

(19th c.) and Stalin (20th c.):
Isolation and fearfulness of ‘the foreigner’,
who might ‘infect’ and ‘contaminate’ the
population with ‘foreign’ ideas and lifestyles.

Square), St Petersburg. Commissioned by Catherine the Great, executed by

Étienne Maurice Falconet (1782).