M. S. Anderson - Peter the Great

First published 1978 by Thames and Hudson Limited

and Pearson Education Limited

Second edition 1995

Published 2014 by Routledge

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M.S. Anderson 1978, 1995

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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-43746-3 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Anderson, M. S. (Matthew Smith)

Peter the Great / M.S. Anderson.

p. cm. (Profiles in power)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-582-43746-6

1. Peter I, Emperor of Russia, 16721725. 2. RussiaKings and rulers
Biography. 3. RussiaHistoryPeter I, 1689-1725. I. Title. II. Series.

DK131 A49.2000

947.05092-dc21

[B]

00-061477

The complexities of Peter the Greats character and achievements, coupled with the immensity of the historical literature on every aspect of his reign, make the writing of a short biography of him a somewhat intimidating challenge. In meeting it I have been greatly helped by the encouragement and criticism provided by Professor Ragnhild Hatton, the editor of the Thames and Hudson series Men in Office in which the first edition of this book was published in 1978. I am also deeply indebted to Dr Isabel de Madariaga, whose careful and expert reading of the typescript has much improved and strengthened it. For the errors and inadequacies which must inevitably remain I alone am responsible. I also wish to thank Mrs N. E. Walsh for her skilful typing of the final draft, while it is a particular pleasure to acknowledge the help I have received, not merely in the preparation of this book but over the whole course of the last quarter-century, from the library of the London School of Economics.

It has seemed appropriate, in a book which hopes to reach a relatively wide and non-expert public, to give personal names frequently used in the text in their English rather than their Russian form, e.g. Alexis rather than Aleksey, and to refrain from italicizing a few Russian terms, e.g. boyar, which may be considered as to some extent familiar to the reading public.

M. S. Anderson
London School of Economics

The changes made for this edition have not been extensive. Apart from minor and purely verbal alterations I have expanded and amplified the text at a number of points to take advantage of work published since the first edition appeared. I have also recast the list of suggestions for further reading by limiting it to books and articles in the main west-European languages, particularly in English, and excluding the references, numerous in the first edition, to the enormous Russian literature. I hope that this may both keep the list within reasonable limits of length and make it more useful to the students and members of the general reading public for whom this book is primarily intended. I am grateful to Dr. Hamish Scott, of the University of St. Andrews, who first suggested the appearance of a second edition, and to Longmans, whose agreement to republish the book marks one more stage in a long and fruitful association.

M. S. Anderson
London

The Russia into which Peter was born, on 9 June 1672, was already in some ways a part of Europe, or rapidly becoming one. It differed radically, none the less, from the states and societies to be found further west. Though much smaller in terms of territory than it was to become under Peter and his successors, it already covered a huge area. In the west it was severed from the Baltic by Swedens possession of Finland, Ingria and Estonia. The great fortress-city of Smolensk, only 150 miles west of Moscow, bitterly contested for many years, had been finally wrested from the Poles as recently as 1654, and not until 1667 was the Polish Republic forced to surrender Kiev. Moreover, Russia had no outlet on the Black Sea, from which it was separated by hundreds of miles of largely uninhabited steppe as well as by the Moslem Nogais and Tatars of the Khanate of the Crimea, a vassal-state of the Ottoman empire since the later fifteenth century. Its only usable coastline, on the White Sea in the far north, where the new port of Archangel had been established at the end of the sixteenth century, was blocked by ice for much of the year. In the Caucasus, though its influence was growing, Russia as yet held no territory. It had nevertheless, in spite of these still restricted European frontiers, already shown both the desire and the capacity for territorial growth on a great scale. In the 1550s Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible) had made a gigantic forward step by conquering the Tatar khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan, thus gaining control of the whole course of the river Volga. From the 1580s onwards the exploration and conquest of Siberia had been pushed ahead with remarkable speed, so that by the 1630s Russian adventurers had already reached the shores of the north Pacific. Long before Peters birth, therefore, his country had become, in mere size, a giant who dwarfed all the states of Europe.