Peter the Great: His Life and World

by Robert K. Massie

Some of those selected were already married—Peter Tolstoy, the oldest of the students, was fifty-two when sent abroad—and they would be uprooted from wives and children and sent into the temptations of the Western world. Their parents feared the corrupting effect of Western religion, and their wives feared the seductive arts of Western women. And all had to travel at their own expense. But there was no recourse; they had to go. None returned to Russia to become distinguished admirals, but their years abroad were not wasted. Tolstoy employed his knowledge of the West and his facility in the Italian language to effective use as ambassador to Constantinople. Boris Kurakin became Peter’s leading ambassador in Western Europe. Yury Trubetskoy and Dmitry Golitsyn became senators, Golitsyn being regarded as one of the most erudite men in Peter’s Russia. And these fifty were but the first wave. In the years that followed, scores of Russian youths, commoners as well as noblemen, were routinely sent abroad for naval training.