Peter the Great

by Robert K. Massie

When the Kremlin finally fell, the Russians executed Dmitry, burned his body, primed a cannon on the Kremlin wall and fired his ashes back toward Poland.

Strange though it may seem, when this royal prince who was to become an emperor reached manhood, he was, in large part, a self-taught man. From his earliest years, he himself had chosen what he wished to learn. The mold which created Peter the Great was not made by any parent, tutor or counselor; it was cast by Peter himself.

Peter hated what he had seen: the maddened, undisciplined soldiery of the old medieval Russia running wild through the Kremlin; statesmen and nobles dragged from their private chambers and bloodily massacred; Moscow, the Kremlin, the royal family, the Tsar himself at the mercy of ignorant, rioting soldiers. The revolt helped create in Peter a revulsion against the Kremlin with its dark rooms and mazes of tiny apartments lit by flickering candles, its population of bearded priests and boyars, its pathetically secluded women. He extended his hatred to Moscow, the capital of the Orthodox tsars, and to the Orthodox Church, with its chanting priests, wafting incense and oppressive conservatism. He hated the ancient Muscovite pomp and ceremony which could call him “next to God” but could not protect him or his mother when the Streltsy turned against them.

From the beginning, Peter set this example, degrading the importance of birth, elevating the necessity for competence, instilling in the Russian nobility the concept that rank and prestige had to be earned anew by each generation.

his sister Natalya, alarmed by reports that he was exposing himself to enemy fire, wrote and begged him not to go near enemy cannonballs and bullets. Lightheartedly, Peter replied, “It is not I who go near to cannonballs and bullets, but they come near to me. Send orders for them to stop it.”

When the merchants of Moscow and other cities, feeling that their allocation of twelve ships was too much for them, petitioned the Tsar for a lighter burden, their share was increased to fourteen.

That very day, even as one grandee was elbowing the next aside to come closer to the Tsar, the warmth of their welcome was put to an extraordinary test. After passing among them and exchanging embraces, Peter suddenly produced a long, sharp barber’s razor and with his own hands began shaving off their beards.

In France, in 1613, the assassin of Henri IV was torn to pieces by four horses in the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville in front of a huge crowd of Parisians who brought their children and their picnic lunches.

The unexcelled momentum of the Swedish attack derived from two sources: religious fatalism and constant training. Each soldier was taught to share the King’s belief that “God would let no one be killed until his hour had come.”

Between 1704 and 1710, four Serbian leaders arrived in Moscow to stir the Russians to action. “We have no other tsar than the Most Orthodox Tsar Peter,” they said.

in the spring of 1711, the hour had struck. In the Kremlin ceremony before he left Moscow, Peter issued a proclamation, openly presenting himself as the liberator of the Balkan Christians. He called on all of them, Catholic as well as Orthodox, to rise against their Ottoman masters and ensure that “the descendants of the heathen Mohammed were driven out into their old homeland, the sands and steppes of Arabia.”

The Tsar surpassed himself during all this time. He neither belched, nor farted, nor picked his teeth—at

he hated everything his father had loved, especially everything French. Frederick William despised the people, the language, the culture and even the food of France. When criminals were hanged, the King first had them dressed in French clothes.

The patience of Sweden is great but not so great as to wish to become Russian.”

The Bastille was the most luxurious prison which has ever existed. Imprisonment there carried no dishonor. With rare exceptions, its occupants were aristocrats or gentlemen who were received and treated according to their rank.

“England,” said Stanhope, “has allowed the Tsar to make great conquests and establish himself on the Baltic and besides has sent her fleet and assisted his undertakings.” “England,” replied Veselovsky, “allowed His Majesty to make conquests because she had no means of preventing him, though she had no wish to aid him and from circumstances was obliged to remain neutral.

As Peter grew older and grasped the reins of government more firmly, he used the council little, and his opinion of it became openly contemptuous. In 1707, he ordered the council to keep minutes of its meetings, which were to be signed by all members. “No resolution shall be taken without this,” he instructed, “so that the stupidity of each shall be evident.”

Menshikov himself was criticized. “Inform me what merchandise you have, how much has been sold, when and where the money had gone,” commanded the anguished Tsar, “for we know no more about your government than about a foreign country.”

In frustration and despair, he wrote to Catherine, “I can’t manage with my left hand, so with my right hand alone I have to wield both the sword and the pen. How many there are to help me you know yourself.”

When the Emperor died, the state did not owe a kopek. Peter had fought twenty-one years of war, constructed a fleet, a new capital, new harbors and canals without the aid of a single foreign loan or subsidy