18d: Russia as European PowerPeter the Great had made Russia a full fledged European power. He had streamlined the Imperial bureaucracy, but even so, Russia was an enormous country. The farther out the Russian empire reached, the more likely the local nobility actually ruled. The military was strong and usually victorious - provided the lines of supply did not get too long, as usually happened when fighting the Ottoman Empire. It was also, already, very expensive to maintain whether or not it was being used. Most importantly, Russia was now economically and diplomatically a part of Western society. Through Peter's support, Russian industry was growing fast, even though it was geared almost completely to military production. To keep pace with the other European powers, Peter founded colleges devoted to navigation, to medicine, and to science. To educate the Russian upper classes of their nation's public affairs, Peter also established Russia's first newspaper. As the heart of this reoriented Russian empire he commissioned the building of the beautiful city of St. Petersburg.
Yet these advances had come at a cost. Since Peter insisted on looking West, Russia's Slavic traditions were all too often neglected. Peter had recreated the Russian upper classes in his own image, but they became literally too Western in their way for the Russian peasantry's liking. By moving the capital to Saint Petersburg, Peter literally turned his back on the physical center of the Third Rome. Both of these actions helped create the so-called "dual Russia" of the Westernized haves and of traditionally Russian have-nots. It was almost as though Russian society was evolving backward into the old Roman patrician-plebeian construct. Although Peter built universities, he also created a secret police which helped stifle intellectual growth in Russia. Finally, Peter did saw no reason to better the lot of the average Russian peasants in their communes. He depended on the local nobility to run his empire, and the local nobility depended on serf labor to stay solvent. Nor did Peter do anything much to better the practice of agriculture. By the beginning of the 1700s, some important advances had been made in the art of farming, but no effort was made to share them with the masses. He did, however, include the peasant masses in the "soul tax" he levied in 1618. As a nice touch, he charged the so-called "Old Believers" double, once more thumbing his nose at Russia's traditions. The Russian Orthodox Church was effectively converted into an arm of the Russian state, keeping the peasants docile through the practice of their faith, and promoting the Tsar's image as God-given ruler. Clergymen were not educated in anything beside basic church literature; no effort was made to attract the better educated people. Russians were to accept Orthodoxy unquestioningly as they accepted the Tsar's authority. They were almost one and the same.
Peter was the first Tsar to claim the old Roman title Imperator, signifying that Russia had truly arrived as an empire. The process had begun with Grand Prince Ivan I of Moscow in the mid 1300s. Bit by bit, "Moneybags" and his successors built the principality of Muscovy into Russia's leading city-state. After Ivan the Terrible was crowned Tsar in 1546, he proceeded to conquer the Tatar khanates of Kazan (1552) and Astrakhan (1556); he wisely allowed the inhabitants to keep their Muslim faith and they responded by becoming loyal subjects. However, Ivan's attempt to gain a Baltic seaport failed, and his antics during the Oprichnik days virtually invited neighbors like Sweden and the southern Tatars to invade Russia. The exploration of Siberia, which began during Ivan's reign, was almost an afterthought. Like their earlier Mongol overlords, the Russians had no desire to live on the conquered tundra. Instead, they wanted to extort tribute from the poor tribespeople who lived there. When the Russians reached the Amur river, they made their first contact with Manchu China, then nearing the peak of its power. Russia was too weak to fight a war so far away, so Peter's half sister, the Regent Sofya, signed the treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689. Although the Russians could now trade with Peking, they could no longer expand directly east. Although St. Petersburg was Peter's primary obsession, just before his death in 1725 he dispatched the Danish navigator Bering to explore the northeast corner of Asia. But Russia remained shut out of the fertile steppe lands to the south - in modern day Ukraine but then a part of the Ottoman Empire. Peter had made a promising start, building Russia's first navy to capture Azov from the Turks in 1696. In 1711, excited by his triumph over Sweden, He sent his veterans south to capture the Ottoman-owned parts of Ukraine. Unfortunately for Peter, the Turks played his own trick against him. They retreated until the Russian supply lines became too long and then attacking. To make peace, Peter had to give back all of the lands he had conquered in the Azov war, putting Russia back at square one.
Though Peter had been in ill health for some time prior to his death, he still neglected to designate a successor. Like Marcus Aurelius, Constantine, and Ivan the Terrible, he left a big mess after his death. Peter's Guards regiments proclaimed his second wife Catherine as empress; the actual government was left to Catherine's cronies until death in 1727. Peter's 12 year old grandson (son of the doomed Tsarevich Alexei) was then crowned as Peter II and ruled until his death in 1730. Next came Empress Anna, daughter of Peter the Great's half-brother Ivan. Anna's ten year rule was marked by excess of every sort and the dominance of Baltic barons over Russian nobles. intending to cut Peter the Great's descendants out of power, Anna designated as heir her great-nephew Ivan VI. In 1741, Princess Elizabeth, 32 year old daughter of Peter the Great by his second wife Catherine, seized control of the Russian state. Supposedly, Elizabeth launched her coup out of fear she would be banished to a convent - not an appealing fate for a daughter of Peter the Great. As a ruler, she was not great like her father, but neither was she terrible like her predecessor Ivan. Most importantly, Elizabeth advanced the Russian Empire by her choice of a successor - although Russia's next great ruler was not the successor Elizabeth had intended.
18a: Turn and Face the Strange
18b: Rise of the Romanovs
18c: Peter the Great
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18e: Conclusions
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