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Peter the Great: A Biography
This is the definitive short biography of Russia's dramatic, appealing, and unconventional Tsar Peter the Great. The book provides new insights into Peter's enigmatic character, his remarkable fantasy world, and his personal relationships, along with intriguing discussions of how painters and sculptors portrayed him and how he is remembered to the present day.
324 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
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About the author
Lindsey Hughes
15 books8 followersProfessor of History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (part of University College London) from 1997.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
September 17, 2025
The Great Tyrant
Regularly voted at the greatest Russian or his reign the great period in history of the country, Peter the Great is not controversial in the mind of the average Russian. The man founded St Petersburg (a Dutch not German name, technically for Saint Peter not himself), dragged Russia into the 18th century, Europe and the world stage, was the founder of the Russian navy, the victor of Poltava. However, he was also an autocrat, violent, immovable and lost the southern provenances. Equally popular and unpopular with differing groups in his lifetime, Peter has now been engraved into stone in the history of Russia. As Simon Sebag Montefiore says ‘it all starts with Peter’ and every Russian ruler has wanted to emulate him. Either way the man was remarkable and exciting.
Lindsey Hughes does a great job on bringing this all to life in this short and concise biography. For me a little too short in places, but in analysis I’d argue it tips Robert K Massie excellent book. Peter was born in old, holy Russia, the third son of Tsar Alexis. A barbarous backwater, considered to be as irrelevant to European politics as far away China. He died in as the Emperor of the Russian Empire, a new player on the world stage. Hughes explores how he did this, how his curiosity and restless character, innovation and outward thinking influence perhaps drove Russia 200 years forward. All of the key elements of Peter’s life and persona are there, his belief in the meritocracy, his pseudonyms, play on the system, cruel embarrassing jokes and twitching defect. The man was a world wind, who was both a genius and an enigma. The Great Embassy and marrying a peasant women are two crazy examples of this complicated man. Torturing his own son and heir is perhaps not so ‘great’. However, this is Russia and being a Tsar is violent.
What is further offered in Peter the Great: A Biography, which makes it really stand out is that following the traditional narrative of Peters life, which great analysis and opinion on events and lore; Hughes reviews Peters legacy, asks if he really was ‘great’ and what he has meant in Russia since his death. For me this was the most interesting part. Peter has always been there and if imagery of a tsar can survive in Soviet Russia, Peter did it best. Although he didn’t come though ‘unspoilt’. His statues and possessions were destroyed, he was lambasted as a user of the present, but then he was needed to rally popular support and nationalism during the Nazi invasion in 1941.
I highly recommend Peter the Great: A Biography, it is perfect for the causal reader slightly interested in Peter or Russia.
Regularly voted at the greatest Russian or his reign the great period in history of the country, Peter the Great is not controversial in the mind of the average Russian. The man founded St Petersburg (a Dutch not German name, technically for Saint Peter not himself), dragged Russia into the 18th century, Europe and the world stage, was the founder of the Russian navy, the victor of Poltava. However, he was also an autocrat, violent, immovable and lost the southern provenances. Equally popular and unpopular with differing groups in his lifetime, Peter has now been engraved into stone in the history of Russia. As Simon Sebag Montefiore says ‘it all starts with Peter’ and every Russian ruler has wanted to emulate him. Either way the man was remarkable and exciting.
Lindsey Hughes does a great job on bringing this all to life in this short and concise biography. For me a little too short in places, but in analysis I’d argue it tips Robert K Massie excellent book. Peter was born in old, holy Russia, the third son of Tsar Alexis. A barbarous backwater, considered to be as irrelevant to European politics as far away China. He died in as the Emperor of the Russian Empire, a new player on the world stage. Hughes explores how he did this, how his curiosity and restless character, innovation and outward thinking influence perhaps drove Russia 200 years forward. All of the key elements of Peter’s life and persona are there, his belief in the meritocracy, his pseudonyms, play on the system, cruel embarrassing jokes and twitching defect. The man was a world wind, who was both a genius and an enigma. The Great Embassy and marrying a peasant women are two crazy examples of this complicated man. Torturing his own son and heir is perhaps not so ‘great’. However, this is Russia and being a Tsar is violent.
What is further offered in Peter the Great: A Biography, which makes it really stand out is that following the traditional narrative of Peters life, which great analysis and opinion on events and lore; Hughes reviews Peters legacy, asks if he really was ‘great’ and what he has meant in Russia since his death. For me this was the most interesting part. Peter has always been there and if imagery of a tsar can survive in Soviet Russia, Peter did it best. Although he didn’t come though ‘unspoilt’. His statues and possessions were destroyed, he was lambasted as a user of the present, but then he was needed to rally popular support and nationalism during the Nazi invasion in 1941.
I highly recommend Peter the Great: A Biography, it is perfect for the causal reader slightly interested in Peter or Russia.
December 13, 2008
To me, imperial Russia is absolutely fascinating. I think it would be extremely difficult to write an uninteresting book about the subject, even if your approach is very straight forward, your prose is uninspired and your book reads like a list of biographical facts. Indeed, I do mean this book was all those things, but it was also a wonderful introduction to Peter the Great. This book provided a very feeling overall portrait of the man. After reading this book, I could talk about him as a person and understand him in that way more than as a political figure. It was a great introduction that breezed through the main "plot points" of Peter's life and provided a fascinating look into early eighteenth century imperial Russia.
The book itself was less than interesting but the topic's singular draw and intrigue carried the day and made the book worth reading.
The book itself was less than interesting but the topic's singular draw and intrigue carried the day and made the book worth reading.
January 28, 2019
A great biography and a great starting point for getting to know Peter the Great, imo. The author touched every subject, gave a general picture of 17th century Russia before diving into Peter I's life and, while I greatly appreciated it, some passages were still obscure to me... but it's probably my fault because I am a complete neophyte in Russian history.
In any case, once the author started to talk about Peter the Great himself, both the book and the pace completely improved.
I read this book for my early modern history exam and, while it was not my first choice, I truly enjoyed it and I think I will read some more about Peter the Great, his half-sister Sophia and his second wife Catherine (the future Catherine I)
In any case, once the author started to talk about Peter the Great himself, both the book and the pace completely improved.
I read this book for my early modern history exam and, while it was not my first choice, I truly enjoyed it and I think I will read some more about Peter the Great, his half-sister Sophia and his second wife Catherine (the future Catherine I)
August 2, 2020
Hughes did a great job at condensing the mass amount of information available on Peter, but the structure of her biography was not reader-friendly and made an otherwise fascinating subject tedious. The reader doesn't know what to anticipate from each chapter and events from Peter's life seem haphazardly thrown together. However, like some of the reviewers before me, would like to comment on Hughes's interesting analysis of the artwork created depicting Peter. Loved her analysis.
December 27, 2025
I didn’t warm to this book. There was something strangely flat about it for me, something almost of the inconsequential. One gathers that Lindsey Hughes has written the definitive, jumbo, work on Peter the Great and that this is a kind of summary digest, extracted from that much larger opus. Possibly so, but in that case, I wonder a little at her choice of materials to extract – it was striking for example how many times she digresses (in my eyes) from an account of the life of Russia’s greatest ruler to describe the content of a painting or portrait, when a simple reproduction of the item in question was enough, or what fancy dress he wore on a particular night. All too often she describes the minutiae of what Peter or his wife did or ate on such and such a day – like a kind of ‘dear diary’ entry – and huge events like battles in the Great Northern War are whizzed through with the same absence of detail. We learn a lot about the balls and parties he organised, the dwarfs he insisted on employing, the kind of food served at this or that wedding, the fireworks displays; but precious little about how he ran the country – other than that he was astonishingly an astonishingly anal micro-manager. The whole thing reads more like a Vanity Fair account than The Times of London.
Still, as an account of the man who dragged ‘barbarian’ Russia towards Europe, it paints an interesting picture. I finished it with no real feeling for why Peter should have been called “Great”, as the book somehow glosses over that. Maybe the long version of her biography does it better.
Still, as an account of the man who dragged ‘barbarian’ Russia towards Europe, it paints an interesting picture. I finished it with no real feeling for why Peter should have been called “Great”, as the book somehow glosses over that. Maybe the long version of her biography does it better.
November 12, 2008
A friend loaned me this book before I went to Russia (in 2003) and I just now got around to finishing it. So I guess that shows I had some reservations from the beginning! I knew nothing about Peter the Great before this book, and I think maybe it was not a good choice for a beginner to Russian history. That said, it was not as dry as I had feared it would be. Peter the Great was one kooky guy. But this part of world history does not captivate me, and I believe this book is better for the reader who has some knowledge of and interest in the Petrine era.
June 22, 2018
Although I accept that Lindsey Hughes was a towering expert in all things to do with Russian history and her judgements and historical skills are widely praised, I still found this book hard going: there's something about her prose style that makes reading progress much slowly than the material should warrant. I turned to this book after making very slow progress with Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, but but even the much shorter length could get me over the writing style. And it's not easy to descibe exactly why this is so.
October 27, 2011
A pretty good biography overall. I never realized quite how influential Peter the Great was to modern Russia. His legacy is amazing.
October 5, 2021
This is fairly interesting but I can definitely believe the author’s comment in the introduction that this material was selected from an earlier draft thrice the size. It felt a bit brassic at times. Obviously a biography has to focus on the main subject but a little more information and context on the other players would have really rounded out the image.
The one thing I think I would have liked to see developed further was the idea of ‘Peter the Freak’. This only really comes up as a swiftly dismissed concept in the last chapters on Petrine reception in the modern era.
Overall I think the author handles the infamous ‘parallel court’ and mock appointments quite well. Most historians dealing with characters with such foibles fall into one of two pitfalls; they either try to diagnose them, or they try to account for them with some kind of rational framework. This author, however, avoids both of these traps nimbly, refusing to try to find a materialist explanation for the ineffable and focusing on the measurable impact of the Tsar’s actions instead.
This is quite a refreshing approach but I did feel that a bit more depth might have been warranted, particularly around the idea of Peter himself as Head Freak in Charge. The man was 6 foot 7 and had serious facial tics. He would not be the first visibly non-conforming person to lean into jokes and mockery in order to take control of the situation. When you think about what his reception around Europe would have been like, it starts to make a lot of sense why ridiculing ceremony at every turn and deliberately contravening precedent would be preferable to the potential embarrassment of trying to act the part.
Most Europeans rulers on tour would expect gifts of clothes or cloth, a sumptuously decorated set of apartments for the duration, even furniture to take home with them. Then this giant shows up, someone whose proportions in court dress would be cause for ridicule even if an outfit that fitted could swiftly be put together. Being seated at a table only to find no specially sourced chair was prepared so his knees are up round his ears? Arriving at his appointed apartments to find a regular sized bed? Rulers throughout history have been well aware of the Streisand effect and I’m sure he knew that the harder he tried, or the more aggressively he came down on those who made comments or laughed, the more open he would be to mockery. Makes total sense to me that Peter would choose to rent his own accommodations, prepare his own fanciful outfits, and show up in a state of mirth already. In on the joke and in control of its direction!
This is what I think is missing from the author’s assessment. It’s a discussion that would benefit from the otherwise good textual research shown throughout the book. I’d love to know how often Peter’s papers did or did not mention his body, spasming, necessary adjustments. Were there any official documents letting foreign hosts know about special needs or preparations required in advance of a visit? Did the internal papers of civil servants or diplomats ever mention any of this? I’d like to know more so it’s a shame the author missed this!
The one thing I think I would have liked to see developed further was the idea of ‘Peter the Freak’. This only really comes up as a swiftly dismissed concept in the last chapters on Petrine reception in the modern era.
Overall I think the author handles the infamous ‘parallel court’ and mock appointments quite well. Most historians dealing with characters with such foibles fall into one of two pitfalls; they either try to diagnose them, or they try to account for them with some kind of rational framework. This author, however, avoids both of these traps nimbly, refusing to try to find a materialist explanation for the ineffable and focusing on the measurable impact of the Tsar’s actions instead.
This is quite a refreshing approach but I did feel that a bit more depth might have been warranted, particularly around the idea of Peter himself as Head Freak in Charge. The man was 6 foot 7 and had serious facial tics. He would not be the first visibly non-conforming person to lean into jokes and mockery in order to take control of the situation. When you think about what his reception around Europe would have been like, it starts to make a lot of sense why ridiculing ceremony at every turn and deliberately contravening precedent would be preferable to the potential embarrassment of trying to act the part.
Most Europeans rulers on tour would expect gifts of clothes or cloth, a sumptuously decorated set of apartments for the duration, even furniture to take home with them. Then this giant shows up, someone whose proportions in court dress would be cause for ridicule even if an outfit that fitted could swiftly be put together. Being seated at a table only to find no specially sourced chair was prepared so his knees are up round his ears? Arriving at his appointed apartments to find a regular sized bed? Rulers throughout history have been well aware of the Streisand effect and I’m sure he knew that the harder he tried, or the more aggressively he came down on those who made comments or laughed, the more open he would be to mockery. Makes total sense to me that Peter would choose to rent his own accommodations, prepare his own fanciful outfits, and show up in a state of mirth already. In on the joke and in control of its direction!
This is what I think is missing from the author’s assessment. It’s a discussion that would benefit from the otherwise good textual research shown throughout the book. I’d love to know how often Peter’s papers did or did not mention his body, spasming, necessary adjustments. Were there any official documents letting foreign hosts know about special needs or preparations required in advance of a visit? Did the internal papers of civil servants or diplomats ever mention any of this? I’d like to know more so it’s a shame the author missed this!
October 23, 2022
After reading the first two books in The Bronze Horseman Trilogy, I became interested in Russian history; I began reading this interesting biography of Peter the Great. I wanted to see what made Peter I, 1672-1725, so great. He brought civilization to Russia. He traveled to other European countries and then brought back these innovations and modernizations to his country. He made numerous reforms and founded the first Russian navy. Even today, Russians consider him the most revered past leader.
He was the Tzar of Russia from 1682 (at age 10) till his death in 1725. His dad, Mikhail, had two wives. Peter was the only son born to Natalia, from the second marriage.
Dad's first wife, Maria, died after giving birth to her 13th child. Maria had 11 daughters and two sons. The sons were Fedor (1661-1682) and autistic Ivan (1666-1696). When Dad died in 1676, Fedor, as oldest son, became Tzar at age 14. Ivan was 9 and Peter was 3. Fedor died six years later.
Now since Ivan had autism, the leaders decided to skip him and give the title of Tzar to now 9 year old Peter. Ivan's sister, Sophia had a fit! She argued that Ivan was the rightful heir. She riled up a large group of Russians who backed her. The leaders were in a quandary. WHAT should they do? Their compromise was a dual czarship for a while. Both boys ruled as Tzar with regents until Ivan died at age 30. After that Peter was the sole Tzar.
Peter was definitely an interesting character. He had some weird interests-- fascination with dwarfs, collecting "monsters" and putting them on display, dressing up in disguises, clowning, tooth extracting, doing autopsies, firefighting, etc.
At age 17 he had an arranged marriage and a race to have a male heir before his autistic brother. Peter won. He had 3 sons in this loveless marriage, while Ivan had 5 daughters in five years. Then Peter divorced her and married for love, and had 10 more children.
Alexis, his first born son in that first marriage, plotted to kill his father. Once Peter found out he had this son tortured and executed. What a dad!! There were several other dissident citizens that received this punishment throughout the book, too.
Lots of wars. Lots of turmoil. Lots of arranging marriages for his children.
Peter must have had a strong pain thresh0ld. He died of gangrene caused by inserting a catheter when he couldn't urinate. Ah! Ouch!! Just reading that gave me the willies!!
He was the Tzar of Russia from 1682 (at age 10) till his death in 1725. His dad, Mikhail, had two wives. Peter was the only son born to Natalia, from the second marriage.
Dad's first wife, Maria, died after giving birth to her 13th child. Maria had 11 daughters and two sons. The sons were Fedor (1661-1682) and autistic Ivan (1666-1696). When Dad died in 1676, Fedor, as oldest son, became Tzar at age 14. Ivan was 9 and Peter was 3. Fedor died six years later.
Now since Ivan had autism, the leaders decided to skip him and give the title of Tzar to now 9 year old Peter. Ivan's sister, Sophia had a fit! She argued that Ivan was the rightful heir. She riled up a large group of Russians who backed her. The leaders were in a quandary. WHAT should they do? Their compromise was a dual czarship for a while. Both boys ruled as Tzar with regents until Ivan died at age 30. After that Peter was the sole Tzar.
Peter was definitely an interesting character. He had some weird interests-- fascination with dwarfs, collecting "monsters" and putting them on display, dressing up in disguises, clowning, tooth extracting, doing autopsies, firefighting, etc.
At age 17 he had an arranged marriage and a race to have a male heir before his autistic brother. Peter won. He had 3 sons in this loveless marriage, while Ivan had 5 daughters in five years. Then Peter divorced her and married for love, and had 10 more children.
Alexis, his first born son in that first marriage, plotted to kill his father. Once Peter found out he had this son tortured and executed. What a dad!! There were several other dissident citizens that received this punishment throughout the book, too.
Lots of wars. Lots of turmoil. Lots of arranging marriages for his children.
Peter must have had a strong pain thresh0ld. He died of gangrene caused by inserting a catheter when he couldn't urinate. Ah! Ouch!! Just reading that gave me the willies!!
October 13, 2020
Having to read this in a week was not fun. Now on to writing a review paper.
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April 5, 2021Biografia
December 30, 2025
Excellent. Just the right amount of detail on the geopolitics and the carnivalesque
May 1, 2012
Fascinating story of a stark historical figure, and quite a tall one at that. Peter the Great was close to 7' tall! This was a must-read in anticipation of our upcoming trip to Russia.
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February 18, 2013School Reading
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews