In what year was Peter 1 born? The reign of Peter I. The main achievements of Peter I

The last Tsar of All Rus' and the first Emperor of Russia - Peter the First- a truly great figure. It is not for nothing that this king was called “The Great” by Peter. He sought not only to expand the borders of the Russian state, but also to make life in it similar to what he saw in Europe. He learned a lot himself and taught others.

Brief biography of Peter the Great

Peter the Great belonged to the Romanov family, he was born June 9, 1672. His father is the king Alexey Mikhailovich. His mother is the second wife of Alexei Mikhailovich, Natalia Naryshkina. Peter I was the first child from the tsar’s second marriage and the fourteenth.

IN 1976 Peter Alekseevich’s father died and his eldest son ascended the throne - Fedor Alekseevich. He was sickly and reigned for about 6 years.

The death of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich and the accession of his eldest son Fyodor (from Tsarina Maria Ilyinichna, née Miloslavskaya) pushed Tsarina Natalya Kirillovna and her relatives, the Naryshkins, into the background.

Streletsky riot

After the death of Feodor III, the question arose: who should rule next? Peter's elder brother Ivan was a sickly child (he was also called weak-minded) and it was decided to place Peter on the throne.

However, the relatives of the first wife of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich did not like this - Miloslavsky. Having secured the support of 20 thousand archers who were dissatisfied at that time, the Miloslavskys staged a riot in 1682.

The consequence of this Streltsy revolt was the proclamation of Peter's sister, Sophia, as regent until Ivan and Peter grew up. Subsequently, Peter and Ivan were considered dual rulers of the Russian state until Ivan's death in 1686.

Queen Natalya was forced to go to the village of Preobrazhenskoye near Moscow with Peter.

"Amusing" troops of Peter

In the villages Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky Peter was engaged in far from childish games - he formed from his peers "funny" troops and learned to fight. Foreign officers helped him master military literacy.

Subsequently, these two battalions were formed Semenovsky and Preobrazhensky regiments- the basis of Peter's guard.

Beginning of independent rule

In 1689 On the advice of his mother, Peter got married. The daughter of a Moscow boyar was chosen as his bride Evdokia Lopukhina. After his marriage, 17-year-old Peter was considered an adult and could lay claim to independent rule.

Suppression of the riot

Princess Sophia immediately realized the danger she was in danger of. Not wanting to lose power, she persuaded the archers oppose Peter. Young Peter managed to gather an army loyal to him, and together with him he moved to Moscow.

The uprising was brutally suppressed, the instigators were executed, they were hanged, whipped, and burned with a hot iron. Sophia was sent to Novodevichy Convent.

Capture of Azov

Since 1696, after the death of Tsar Ivan V, Peter became sole ruler of Russia. A year earlier, he turned his gaze to the map. Advisers, among them the beloved Swiss Lefort, suggested that Russia needs access to the sea, it needs to build a fleet, it needs to move south.

The Azov campaigns began. Peter himself took part in battles and gained combat experience. On the second attempt they captured Azov, in a convenient bay of the Azov Sea Peter founded the city Taganrog.

Trip to Europe

Peter went “incognito”, he was called volunteer Peter Mikhailov,
sometimes captain of the Preobrazhensky regiment.

In England Peter the Great studied maritime affairs, in Germany- artillery, in Holland worked as a simple carpenter. But he had to return to Moscow prematurely - information about a new mutiny of the Streltsy reached him. After the brutal massacre of the archers and executions, Peter began preparing for war with Sweden.

Peter's war with Sweden

On Russia's allies - Poland and Denmark- the young Swedish king began to attack CharlesXII, determined to conquer all of northern Europe. Peter I decided to enter the war against Sweden.

Battle of Narva

First battle of Narva in 1700 was unsuccessful for the Russian troops. Having a multiple advantage over the Swedish army, the Russians were unable to take the Narva fortress and had to retreat.

Decisive action

Having attacked Poland, Charles XII was stuck in the war for a long time. Taking advantage of the ensuing respite, Peter announced a recruitment drive. He issued a decree according to which money and bells from churches began to be collected for the war against Sweden melted down for cannons, strengthened old fortresses, erected new ones.

St. Petersburg – the new capital of Russia

Peter the First personally participated in a combat sortie with two regiments of soldiers against Swedish ships blocking the exit to the Baltic Sea. The attack was a success, the ships were captured, and access to the sea became free.

On the banks of the Neva, Peter ordered the construction of a fortress in honor of Saints Peter and Paul, which was later named Petropavlovskaya. It was around this fortress that the city was formed Saint Petersburg- the new capital of Russia.

Battle of Poltava

The news of Peter's successful foray on the Neva forced the Swedish king to move his troops to Russia. He chose the south, where he waited for help from Turk and where is Ukrainian Hetman Mazepa promised to give him Cossacks.

The Battle of Poltava, where the Swedes and Russians gathered their troops, didn't last long.

Charles XII left the Cossacks brought by Mazepa in the convoy; they were not sufficiently trained and equipped. The Turks never came. Numerical superiority in troops was on the side of the Russians. And no matter how hard the Swedes tried to break through the ranks of the Russian troops, no matter how they reorganized their regiments, they failed to turn the tide of the battle in their favor.

A cannonball hit Karl's stretcher, he lost consciousness, and panic began among the Swedes. After the victorious battle, Peter arranged a feast at which treated captured Swedish generals and thanked them for their science.

Internal reforms of Peter the Great

Peter the Great, in addition to wars with other states, was actively involved in reforms within the country. He demanded that the courtiers take off their caftans and put on European dress, that they shave their beards, and go to the balls arranged for them.

Important reforms of Peter

Instead of the Boyar Duma, he established Senate, who was involved in solving important government issues, introduced a special Table of ranks, which determined the classes of military and civilian officials.

Started operating in St. Petersburg Marine Academy, opened in Moscow math school. Under him, it began to be published in the country first Russian newspaper. For Peter there were no titles or awards. If he saw a capable person, albeit of low origin, he would send him to study abroad.

Opponents of reforms

To many Peter's innovations didn't like it- starting from the highest ranks, ending with serfs. The Church called him a heretic, schismatics called him the Antichrist, and sent all kinds of blasphemy against him.

The peasants found themselves completely dependent on the landowners and the state. Increased tax burden 1.5-2 times, for many it turned out to be unbearable. Major uprisings occurred in Astrakhan, on the Don, in Ukraine, and the Volga region.

The breaking of the old way of life caused a negative reaction among the nobles. Peter's son, his heir Alexei, became an opponent of reforms and went against his father. He was accused of conspiracy and in 1718 sentenced to death.

Last year of reign

In the last years of Peter's reign was very sick, he had kidney problems. In the summer of 1724, his illness intensified; in September he felt better, but after a while the attacks intensified.

On January 28, 1725, he had such a bad time that he ordered a camp church to be erected in the room next to his bedroom, and on February 2 he confessed. Strength began to leave the patient, he no longer screamed, as before, from severe pain, but only moaned.

On February 7, all those sentenced to death or hard labor (excluding murderers and those convicted of repeated robbery) were amnestied. That same day, at the end of the second hour, Peter demanded paper and began to write, but the pen fell out of his hands, and only two words could be made out from what was written: "Give it all...".

At the beginning of six o'clock in the morning February 8, 1725 Peter the Great “the Great” died in terrible agony in his Winter Palace near the Winter Canal, according to the official version, from pneumonia. He was buried in Cathedral of the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg.

Peter I Alekseevich the Great - the first All-Russian Emperor, born on May 30, 1672, from the second marriage of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich with Natalya Kirillovna Naryshkina, a pupil of boyar A.S. Matveeva. Contrary to the legendary stories of Krekshin, the education of young Peter proceeded rather slowly. Tradition forces a three-year-old child to report to his father, with the rank of colonel; in fact, he was not yet weaned at two and a half years old. We do not know when N.M. began teaching him to read and write. Zotov, but it is known that in 1683 Peter had not yet finished learning the alphabet. For the rest of his life, he continued to ignore grammar and spelling. As a child he meets "exercises of the soldier formation" and adopts the art of beating the drum; this limited his military knowledge to military exercises in the village of Vorobyovo (1683). This fall, Peter is still playing wooden horses. All this did not go beyond the pattern of the then usual "fun" royal family. Deviations begin only when political circumstances throw Peter off track. With the death of Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich, the silent struggle of the Miloslavskys and Naryshkins turns into an open clash. On April 27, the crowd gathered in front of the red porch of the Kremlin Palace shouted Peter as Tsar, beating his elder brother John; On May 15, on the same porch, Peter stood in front of another crowd that threw Matveev and Dolgoruky onto the Streltsy spears.

The legend depicts calm on this day of rebellion; it is more likely that the impression was strong and that this is where Peter’s well-known nervousness and hatred of the archers originated. A week after the start of the rebellion (May 23), the victors demanded from the government that both brothers be appointed kings; a week later (on the 29th), at the new demand of the archers, due to the youth of the kings, the reign was handed over to Princess Sophia. Peter's party was excluded from all participation in state affairs; Throughout Sophia’s regency, Natalya Kirillovna came to Moscow only for a few winter months, spending the rest of her time in the village of Preobrazhenskoye near Moscow. A significant number of noble families were grouped around the young court, not daring to throw in their lot with the provisional government of Sophia.

Left to his own devices, Peter learned to endure any kind of constraint, to deny himself the fulfillment of any desire. Queen Natalia, woman "small mind", as her relative Prince Kurakin put it, cared, apparently, exclusively about the physical side of raising her son. From the very beginning we see Peter surrounded "young people of the first homes"; the former eventually prevailed, and "notable persons" were distant. It is very likely that the simple and noble playmates of Peter's childhood games equally deserved the nickname "mischievous" given to them by Sophia.

In 1683 - 1685, two regiments were organized from friends and volunteers, settled in the villages of Preobrazhenskoye and neighboring Semenovskoye. Little by little, Peter developed an interest in the technical side of military affairs, which forced him to look for new teachers and new knowledge. "For mathematics, fortification, turning and artificial lights" A foreign teacher, Franz Timmerman, appears under Peter. Peter's textbooks that have survived (from 1688) testify to his persistent efforts to master the applied side of arithmetic, astronomical and artillery wisdom; the same notebooks show that the foundations of all this wisdom remained a mystery to Peter. But turning and pyrotechnics have always been Peter’s favorite pastimes.

Peter I in foreign attire in front of his mother Tsarina Natalya, Patriarch Andrian and teacher Zotov. Nikolai Vasilyevich Nevrev (1830-1904)

The only major, and unsuccessful, intervention of the mother in the young man’s personal life was his marriage to E.O. Lopukhina, January 27, 1689, before Peter turned 17 years old. This was, however, more a political than a pedagogical measure. Sophia also married Tsar John immediately upon reaching the age of 17; but he only had daughters. The very choice of a bride for Peter was the product of a party struggle: noble adherents of his mother offered a bride from the princely family, but the Naryshkins, with Tikh, won. Streshnev was at the head, and the daughter of a small nobleman was chosen. Following her, numerous relatives flocked to the court ( "more than 30 persons" says Kurakin). Such a mass of new seekers of places who did not know, moreover, , "courtyard appeals", caused general irritation against the Lopukhins at court; Queen Natalia is coming soon “she hated her daughter-in-law and wanted to see her in disagreement with her husband more than in love”(Kurakin). This, as well as the dissimilarity of characters, explains that "a fair amount of love" Petra to his wife "only lasted for a year", - and then Peter began to prefer family life - camping, in the regimental hut of the Preobrazhensky Regiment. A new occupation - shipbuilding - distracted him even further; from Yauza he moved with his ships to Lake Pereyaslavl, and had fun there even in winter.

Peter's participation in state affairs was limited, during Sophia's regency, to his presence at ceremonies. As Peter grew up and expanded his military amusements, Sophia began to become more and more worried about her power and began to take measures to preserve it. On the night of August 8, 1689, Peter was awakened in Preobrazhenskoe by archers who brought news of a real or imaginary danger from the Kremlin. Peter fled to Trinity; his followers ordered the convening of a noble militia, demanded commanders and deputies from the Moscow troops and inflicted short reprisals on Sophia’s main supporters (see Prince V.V. Golitsyn, Sylvester, Shaklovity). Sophia was settled in a monastery, John ruled only nominally; in fact, power passed to Peter's party. At first, however, " "The royal majesty left his reign to his mother, and he himself spent his time in the amusements of military exercises."

The reign of Queen Natalya seemed to contemporaries as an era of reaction against Sophia's reform aspirations. Peter took advantage of the change in his position only to expand his amusements to grandiose proportions. Thus, the maneuvers of the new regiments ended in 1694 with the Kozhukhov campaigns (see), in which "Tsar Fyodor of Pleshburskaya"(Romodanovsky) smashed "Tsar Ivan Semenovsky"(Buturlina), leaving 24 real dead and 59 wounded on the amusing battlefield. The expansion of maritime fun prompted Peter to travel to the White Sea twice, and he was exposed to serious danger during his trip to the Solovetsky Islands.

Over the years, the center of Peter's wild life becomes the house of his new favorite, Lefort, in the German settlement. “Then debauchery began, drunkenness was so great that it is impossible to describe that for three days, locked in that house, they were drunk and that many people died as a result.”(Kurakin). In Lefort's house Peter “he began to deal with foreign houses, and Cupid began to be the first to visit a merchant’s daughter.”(see Mons, Anna). "From practice", at the Leforta balls, Peter "learned to dance in Polish"; the son of the Danish commissioner Butenant taught him fencing and horse riding, the Dutchman Vinius taught him the practice of the Dutch language; During a trip to Arkhangelsk, Peter changed into a Dutch sailor suit. In parallel with this assimilation of European appearance, there was a rapid destruction of the old court etiquette; ceremonial entrances to the cathedral church, public audiences and other events fell out of use "yard ceremonies". "Curses of noble persons" from the royal favorites and court jesters, as well as the establishment "the most humorous and most drunken cathedral", originate in the same era.

In 1694, Peter's mother died. Although now Peter “I myself was forced to take over the administration, but I did not want to endure the labor and left the entire government of my state to my ministers.”(Kurakin). It was difficult for him to give up the freedom to which years of involuntary retirement had taught him; and subsequently he did not like to bind himself to official duties, entrusting them to other persons (for example, Prince Caesar Romodanovsky, before whom Peter plays the role of a loyal subject), while he himself remained in the background. The government machine in the first years of Peter's own reign continues to move at its own pace; Peter intervenes in this move only if and to the extent that it turns out to be necessary for his naval amusements.

Very soon, however, "baby play" in soldiers and ships leads Peter to serious difficulties, to eliminate which it turns out to be necessary to significantly disturb the old state order. “We joked around Kozhukhov, and now we’re going to play around Azov”- this is what Peter F.M. reports. Apraksin, at the beginning of 1695 about the Azov campaign (see Azov, Azov flotilla). Already in the previous year, having become familiar with the inconveniences of the White Sea, Peter began to think about transferring his maritime activities to some other sea. He fluctuated between the Baltic and the Caspian; the course of Russian diplomacy prompted him to prefer war with Turkey and Crimea, and the secret goal of the campaign was Azov - the first step towards access to the Black Sea. The humorous tone soon disappears; Peter's letters become more laconic as the unpreparedness of the troops and generals for serious actions is revealed.

The failure of the first campaign forces Peter to make new efforts. The flotilla built in Voronezh, however, turns out to be of little use for military operations; the foreign engineers appointed by Peter are late; Azov surrenders in 1696 "for a treaty, not for military purposes". Peter noisily celebrates the victory, but clearly feels the insignificance of success and the insufficient strength to continue the fight. He invites the boyars to seize "Fortune for hair" and find funds to build a fleet to continue the war with "infidels" on the sea. The boyars entrusted the construction of ships to "communism" secular and spiritual landowners who had at least 10 households; the rest of the population had to help with money. Built "communism" The ships later turned out to be worthless, and this entire first fleet, which cost the population about 900 thousand rubles at that time, could not be used for any practical purposes.

Simultaneously with the device "kumpanstvo" and in view of the same goal, that is, war with Turkey, it was decided to equip an embassy abroad to consolidate the alliance against "infidels". "Bombardier" at the beginning of the Azov campaign and "captain" at the end, Peter is now attached to the embassy as "volunteer Peter Mikhailov", for the purpose of further study of shipbuilding. On March 9, 1697, the embassy set out from Moscow, with the intention of visiting Vienna, the kings of England and Denmark, the pope, the Dutch states, the Elector of Brandenburg and Venice.

Peter's first impressions abroad were, as he put it, "not pleasant": Riga commandant Dalberg took the tsar’s incognito too literally and did not allow him to inspect the fortifications: Peter later made of this incident case belli. The magnificent meeting in Mitau and the friendly reception of the Elector of Brandenburg in Konigsberg improved matters. From Kolberg, Peter went forward, by sea, to Lubeck and Hamburg, trying to quickly reach his goal - a minor Dutch shipyard in Saardam, recommended to him by one of his Moscow acquaintances. Here Peter stayed for 8 days, surprising the population of the small town with his extravagant behavior. The embassy arrived in Amsterdam in mid-August and remained there until mid-May 1698, although negotiations were completed already in November 1697. In January 1698, Peter went to England to expand his maritime knowledge and remained there for three and a half months, working mainly at the Deptford shipyard. The main goal of the embassy was not achieved, since the states resolutely refused to help Russia in the war with Turkey; but Peter used his time in Holland and England to acquire new knowledge, and the embassy was engaged in purchasing weapons and all kinds of ship supplies, hiring sailors, artisans, etc.

Peter impressed European observers as an inquisitive savage, interested mainly in crafts, applied knowledge and all sorts of curiosities and not sufficiently developed to be interested in the essential features of European political and cultural life. He is portrayed as an extremely hot-tempered and nervous person, quickly changing his mood and plans and unable to control himself in moments of anger, especially under the influence of wine. Peter experienced a new diplomatic setback here, since Europe was preparing for the War of the Spanish Succession and was busy trying to reconcile Austria with Turkey, and not about a war between them. Constrained in his habits by the strict etiquette of the Viennese court, finding no new attractions for curiosity, Peter hurried to leave Vienna for Venice, where he hoped to study the structure of galleys.

The news of the Streltsy revolt called him to Russia; On the way, he only managed to see the Polish king Augustus (in the town of Rave), and here, amid three days of continuous fun, the first idea flashed to replace the failed plan for an alliance against the Turks with another plan, the subject of which, instead of the Black Sea that had slipped from the hands of the Black Sea, would be the Baltic. First of all, it was necessary to put an end to the archers and the old order in general. Straight from the road, without seeing his family, Peter drove to Anna Mons, then to his Preobrazhensky yard.

The next morning, August 26, 1698, he personally began cutting the beards of the first dignitaries of the state. The archers had already been defeated by Shein at the Resurrection Monastery and the instigators of the riot were punished. Peter resumed the investigation into the riot, trying to find traces of the influence of Princess Sophia on the archers. Having found evidence of mutual sympathy rather than specific plans and actions, Peter nevertheless forced Sophia and her sister Martha to cut their hair. Peter took advantage of this same moment to forcibly tonsure his wife, who was not accused of any involvement in the rebellion. The king's brother, John, died back in 1696; no ties with the old no longer restrain Peter, and he indulges with his new favorites, among whom Menshikov comes first, in some kind of continuous bacchanalia, the picture of which Korb paints.

Feasts and drinking bouts give way to executions, in which the king himself sometimes plays the role of executioner; from the end of September to the end of October 1689, more than a thousand archers were executed. In February 1699, hundreds of archers were executed again. The Moscow Streltsy army ceased to exist. The decree of December 20, 1699 on a new calendar formally drew a line between the old and new times.

On November 11, 1699, a secret agreement was concluded between Peter and Augustus, by which Peter pledged to enter Ingria and Karelia immediately after the conclusion of peace with Turkey, no later than April 1700; According to Pitkul's plan, Augustus left Livonia and Estland to himself. Peace with Turkey was concluded only in August.

Peter took advantage of this period of time to create a new army, since "after the dissolution of the Streltsy, this state did not have any infantry". On November 17, 1699, a recruitment of new 27 regiments was announced, divided into 3 divisions, headed by the commanders of the Preobrazhensky, Lefortovo and Butyrsky regiments. The first two divisions (Golovin and Weide) were fully formed by mid-June 1700; together with some other troops, up to 40 thousand in total, they were moved to Swedish borders the next day after the promulgation of peace with Turkey (August 19).

To the displeasure of the allies, Peter sent his troops to Narva, taking which he could threaten Livonia and Estland. Only towards the end of September did the troops gather at Narva; Only at the end of October was fire opened on the city (see Narva, XX, 652). During this time, Charles XII managed to put an end to Denmark and, unexpectedly for Peter, landed in Estland. On the night of November 17–18, the Russians learned that Charles XII was approaching Narva. Peter left the camp, leaving command to Prince de Croix, unfamiliar with the soldiers and unknown to them - and the eight-thousand-strong army of Charles XII, tired and hungry, defeated Peter’s forty-thousand-strong army without any difficulty. The hopes aroused in Petra by the trip to Europe give way to disappointment. Charles XII does not consider it necessary to pursue such a weak enemy further and turns against Poland.

Peter himself characterizes his impression with the words: “Then captivity drove away laziness and forced me to work hard and to art day and night”. Indeed, from this moment Peter is transformed. The need for activity remains the same, but it finds a different, better application; All Peter’s thoughts are now aimed at defeating his opponent and gaining a foothold in the Baltic Sea. Over eight years, he recruits about 200,000 soldiers and, despite losses from the war and from military orders, increases the size of the army from 40 to 100 thousand.

The cost of this army cost him in 1709 almost twice as much as in 1701: 1,810,000 rubles instead of 982,000. In addition, about one and a half million subsidies were paid to the Polish king during the first 6 years of the war. If we add here the costs of the fleet, artillery, and maintenance, then the total expenditure caused by the war will be 2.3 million in 1701, 2.7 million in 1706 and 3.2 million in 1710. Already the first of These figures were too large in comparison with the funds that before Peter were delivered to the state by the population (about 1 1/2 million). It was necessary to look for additional sources of income.

At first, Peter cares little about this and simply takes for his own purposes from the old state institutions - not only their free remains, but even those amounts that were previously spent on another purpose; this disrupts the correct course of the state machine. And yet, large items of new expenses could not be covered by old funds, and Peter was forced to create a special state tax for each of them.

The army was supported from the main income of the state - customs and tavern duties, the collection of which was transferred to a new central institution, the town hall. To maintain the new cavalry recruited in 1701, it was necessary to impose a new tax ( "dragoon money"); exactly the same - for maintaining the fleet ( "ship"). Then a tax on the maintenance of workers for the construction of St. Petersburg is added here, "r cool", "household"; and when all these taxes become familiar and merge into the total amount of constants ( "salaries"), they are joined by new emergency fees ( "inquiry", "unpaid"). And these direct taxes, however, soon turned out to be insufficient, especially since they were collected rather slowly and a significant part remained in arrears.

Therefore, other sources of income were invented alongside them. The earliest invention of this kind - stamp paper introduced on the advice of Kurbatov - did not produce the profits expected from it. The damage to the coin was all the more important. Recoining a silver coin into a coin of lower denomination, at the same nominal price, gave 946 thousand in the first 3 years (1701 - 1703), 313 thousand in the next three; from here foreign subsidies were paid. However, soon all the metal was converted into a new coin, and its value in circulation fell by half; Thus, the benefit from deteriorating the coin was temporary and was accompanied by enormous harm, reducing the value of all treasury revenues in general (along with a decline in the value of the coin).

A new measure to increase government revenues was the re-signing, in 1704, of old quitrent articles and the transfer of new quitrents; all owner-owned fisheries, home baths, mills, and inns were subject to quitrent, and the total figure of government revenues under this article rose by 1708 from 300 to 670 thousand annually. Further, the treasury took control of the sale of salt, which brought it up to 300 thousand annual income, tobacco (this enterprise was unsuccessful), and a number of other raw products, which brought it up to 100 thousand annually. All these frequent events satisfied the main task - to somehow survive difficult times.

During these years, Peter could not devote a single minute of attention to the systematic reform of state institutions, since the preparation of means of struggle took all his time and required his presence in all parts of the state. Peter began to come to the old capital only on Christmastide; here the usual riotous life was resumed, but at the same time the most urgent state affairs were discussed and decided. The Poltava victory gave Peter the opportunity to breathe freely for the first time after the Narva defeat. The need to understand the mass of individual orders of the first years of the war became more and more urgent; both the means of payment of the population and the treasury resources were greatly depleted, and a further increase in military spending was expected ahead.

From this situation, Peter found the outcome that was already familiar to him: if there were not enough funds for everything, they had to be used for the most important thing, that is, for military affairs. Following this rule, Peter had previously simplified the financial management of the country, transferring taxes from individual localities directly into the hands of the generals for their expenses, and bypassing the central institutions where the money should have been received according to the old order. It was most convenient to apply this method in a newly conquered country - in Ingria, which was given to "government" Menshikov. The same method was extended to Kyiv and Smolensk - to put them in a defensive position against the invasion of Charles XII, to Kazan - to pacify unrest, to Voronezh and Azov - to build a fleet. Peter only summarizes these partial orders when he orders (December 18, 1707) “to paint the cities in parts, except for those that are 100 versts from Moscow - to Kyiv, Smolensk, Azov, Kazan, Arkhangelsk.” After the Poltava victory, this vague idea about the new administrative and financial structure of Russia received further development. The assignment of cities to central points, in order to collect any fees from them, presupposed a preliminary clarification of who should pay what in each city. To inform payers, a widespread census was appointed; To make payments known, it was ordered to collect information from previous financial institutions. The results of these preliminary works revealed that the state was experiencing a serious crisis.

The census of 1710 showed that, as a result of continuous recruitment and escape from taxes, the paying population of the state greatly decreased: instead of 791 thousand households listed in the 1678 census, the new census counted only 637 thousand; in the entire north of Russia, which bore the main part of the financial burden to Peter, the decline even reached 40%. In view of this unexpected fact, the government decided to ignore the figures of the new census, with the exception of places where they showed the income of the population (in the southeast and Siberia); in all other areas, it was decided to collect taxes in accordance with the old, fictitious figures of payers. And under this condition, however, it turned out that the payments did not cover the expenses: the first turned out to be 3 million 134 thousand, the last - 3 million 834 thousand rubles. About 200 thousand could be covered from the salt income; the remaining half a million was a constant deficit.

During the Christmas congresses of Peter's generals in 1709 and 1710, the cities of Russia were finally distributed among 8 governors; each in his own way "provinces" collected all taxes and directed them, first of all, to the maintenance of the army, navy, artillery and diplomacy. These "four seats" absorbed all the stated income of the state; how will they cover "provinces" other expenses, and above all our own, local ones - this question remained open.

The deficit was eliminated simply by cutting government spending by a corresponding amount. Since the maintenance of the army was the main goal during the introduction "province", then the further step of this new device was that each province was entrusted with the maintenance of certain regiments. For constant relations with them, the provinces assigned to their regiments "commissars". The most significant drawback of this arrangement, introduced in 1712, was that it actually abolished the old central institutions, but did not replace them with any others. The provinces were in direct contact with the army and with the highest military institutions, but there was no higher government office above them that could control and approve their functioning. The need for such a central institution was felt already in 1711, when Peter had to leave Russia for the Prut campaign.

"For your absences" Peter created the Senate. The provinces had to appoint their own commissioners to the Senate "for demand and adoption of decrees". But all this did not accurately determine the mutual relations of the Senate and the provinces. All attempts of the Senate to organize over the provinces the same control that was established in 1701 over the orders. "Near Office", ended in complete failure. The irresponsibility of the governors was a necessary consequence of the fact that the government itself constantly violated the rules of the provincial economy established in 1710 - 1712, took money from the governor for purposes other than those for which he was supposed to pay it according to the budget, freely disposed of provincial cash and demanded from the governors more and more new "devices", that is, increasing income, at least at the cost of oppressing the population.

The main reason for all these violations of the established order was that the budget of 1710 fixed the figures for the necessary expenses, but in reality they continued to grow and no longer fit within the budget. The growth of the army has now, however, slowed down somewhat; For this reason, expenses quickly increased on the Baltic fleet, on buildings in the new capital (where the government finally moved its residence in 1714), and on the defense of the southern border. We had to again find new, extra-budgetary resources. It was almost useless to impose new direct taxes, since the old ones were paid worse and worse as the population became impoverished.

Re-minting of coins and state monopolies also could not give more than what they had already given. In place of the provincial system, the question of restoring central institutions arises; chaos of old and new taxes: "salary", "everyday" and "request", necessitates the consolidation of direct taxes; the unsuccessful collection of taxes based on fictitious figures for 1678 leads to the question of a new census and a change in the tax unit; Finally, the abuse of the system of state monopolies raises the question of the benefits of free trade and industry for the state. The reform is entering its third and final phase: until 1710 it was reduced to the accumulation of random orders dictated by the need of the moment; in 1708 - 1712 attempts were made to bring these orders into some purely external, mechanical connection; Now there is a conscious, systematic desire to erect a completely new state structure on theoretical foundations.

The question to what extent Peter himself personally participated in the reforms of the last period remains still controversial. An archival study of the history of Peter has recently discovered a whole mass "reports" and projects in which almost the entire content of Peter’s government events was discussed. In these reports, presented by Russian and especially foreign advisers to Peter, voluntarily or at the direct call of the government, the state of affairs in the state and the most important measures necessary to improve it were examined in great detail, although not always on the basis of sufficient familiarity with the conditions of Russian reality. Peter himself read many of these projects and took from them everything that directly answered the questions that interested him at the moment - especially the question of increasing state revenues and the development of Russia's natural resources.

To solve more complex government problems, such as trade policy, financial and administrative reform, Peter did not have the necessary preparation; his participation here was limited to posing the question, mostly on the basis of verbal advice from someone around him, and developing the final version of the law; all intermediate work - collecting materials, developing them and designing appropriate measures - was assigned to more knowledgeable persons. In particular, in relation to trade policy, Peter himself “he complained more than once that of all government affairs, nothing is more difficult for him than commerce and that he could never form a clear idea about this matter in all its connections”(Fokkerodt). However, state necessity forced him to change the previous direction of Russian trade policy - and the advice of knowledgeable people played an important role in this.

Already in 1711 - 1713, a number of projects were presented to the government, which proved that the monopolization of trade and industry in the hands of the treasury ultimately harms the fiscal itself and that the only way to increase government revenues from trade is to restore freedom of commercial and industrial activity. Around 1715 the content of the projects became broader; foreigners take part in the discussion of issues, verbally and in writing instilling in the king and the government the ideas of European mercantilism - about the need for the country to have a favorable trade balance and about the way to achieve it by systematically patronizing national industry and trade, by opening factories and factories, concluding trade agreements and establishing trade consulates Abroad.

Once he has grasped this point of view, Peter, with his usual energy, implements it in many separate orders. He creates a new trading port (St. Petersburg) and forcibly transfers trade there from the old one (Arkhangelsk), begins to build the first artificial waterways to connect St. Petersburg with central Russia, takes great care to expand active trade with the East (after his attempts in the West were not very successful in this direction), gives privileges to the organizers of new factories, imports craftsmen from abroad, the best tools, the best breeds of livestock, etc.

He is less attentive to the idea of ​​financial reform. Although in this regard life itself shows the unsatisfactory nature of the current practice, and a number of projects presented to the government discuss various possible reforms, nevertheless, Peter is only interested here in the question of how to entrust the population with the maintenance of a new, standing army. Already during the establishment of the provinces, expecting, after the Poltava victory, a quick peace, Peter ordered the Senate to calculate how much it would cost to maintain a soldier and an officer, leaving the Senate itself to decide whether this expense should be covered with the help of a household tax, as it was before, or with the help of per capita, as various advised "informers".

The technical side of the future tax reform is being developed by Peter's government, and then he insists with all his energy on the speedy completion of the capitation census necessary for the reform and on the possible speedy implementation of the new tax. Indeed, the poll tax increases the figure for direct taxes from 1.8 to 4.6 million, accounting for more than half of the budget revenue (8 1/2 million).

The question of administrative reform interests Peter even less: here the very idea, its development, and its implementation belong to foreign advisers (especially Heinrich Fick), who suggested that Peter fill the lack of central institutions in Russia by introducing Swedish boards. To the question of what primarily interested Peter in his reformation activities, Vockerodt already gave an answer very close to the truth: "he especially and with all zeal tried to improve his military forces". Indeed, in his letter to his son, Peter emphasizes the idea that military affairs “we came from darkness to light, and (we), who were not known in the light, are now revered”.

“The wars that occupied Peter all his life, and the treaties concluded with foreign powers regarding these wars, forced him to also pay attention to foreign affairs, although here he relied mostly on his ministers and favorites... His most favorite and enjoyable occupation was shipbuilding and other matters related to navigation. It entertained him every day, and even the most important state affairs had to be ceded to him... internal improvements in the state - about legal proceedings, economy, income and trade - he cared little or not at all in the first thirty years of his reign, and was satisfied if only his admiralty and army were sufficiently supplied with money, firewood, recruits, sailors, provisions and ammunition."

Immediately after the Poltava victory, Russia's prestige abroad rose. From Poltava Peter goes straight to meetings with the Polish and Prussian kings; in mid-December 1709 he returned to Moscow, but in mid-February 1710 he left it again. He spends half the summer before the capture of Vyborg on the seaside, the rest of the year in St. Petersburg, dealing with its construction and the marriage alliances of his niece Anna Ioannovna with the Duke of Courland and his son Alexei with Princess Wolfenbüttel.

On April 17, 1711, Peter left St. Petersburg on the Prut campaign, then went straight to Carlsbad, for treatment with water, and to Torgau, to attend the marriage of Tsarevich Alexei. He returned to St. Petersburg only in the New Year. In June 1712, Peter again left St. Petersburg for almost a year; he goes to the Russian troops in Pomerania, in October he is treated in Karlsbad and Teplitz, in November, having visited Dresden and Berlin, he returns to the troops in Mecklenburg, at the beginning of the next 1713 he visits Hamburg and Rendsburg, passes through Hanover and Wolfenbüttel in February Berlin, for a meeting with the new king Frederick William, then returns to St. Petersburg. A month later he was already on a Finnish voyage and, returning in mid-August, continued to undertake sea trips until the end of November.

In mid-January 1714, Peter left for Revel and Riga for a month; On May 9, he again goes to the fleet, wins a victory with it at Gangeuda and returns to St. Petersburg on September 9. In 1715, from the beginning of July to the end of August, Peter was with the fleet on the Baltic Sea. At the beginning of 1716, Peter left Russia for almost two years; On January 24, he leaves for Danzig, for the wedding of Ekaterina Ivanovna’s niece with the Duke of Mecklenburg; from there, through Stettin, he goes to Pyrmont for treatment; in June he goes to Rostock to join the galley squadron, with which he appears near Copenhagen in July; in October, Peter goes to Mecklenburg, from there to Havelsberg, for a meeting with the Prussian king, in November - to Hamburg, in December - to Amsterdam, at the end of March next 1717 - to France.

In June we see him in Spa, on the waters, in mid-July - in Amsterdam, in September - in Berlin and Danzig; On October 10 he returns to St. Petersburg. For the next two months, Peter leads a fairly regular life, devoting his mornings to work at the Admiralty and then driving around the buildings of St. Petersburg. On December 15, he goes to Moscow, waits there for his son Alexei to be brought from abroad, and on March 18, 1718, leaves back to St. Petersburg.

On June 30 they were buried in the presence of Pyotr Alexei Petrovich; in early July, Peter left for the fleet and, after a demonstration near the Aland Islands, where peace negotiations were being held, he returned to St. Petersburg on September 3, after which he went to the seaside three more times and once to Shlisselburg. The following year, 1719, Peter left on January 19 for the Olonets waters, from where he returned on March 3. On May 1 he went to sea, and returned to St. Petersburg only on August 30. In 1720, Peter spent the month of March in the Olonets waters and factories: from July 20 to August 4, he sailed to the Finnish shores. In 1721 he traveled by sea to Riga and Revel (March 11 - June 19).

In September and October, Peter celebrated the Peace of Nystad in St. Petersburg, and in December in Moscow. In 1722, on May 15, Peter left Moscow for Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan and Astrakhan; On July 18, he set off from Astrakhan on a Persian campaign (to Derbent); from which he returned to Moscow only on December 11. Returning to St. Petersburg on March 3, 1723, Peter already left for the new Finnish border on March 30; in May and June he was engaged in equipping the fleet and then went to Revel and Rogerwick for a month, where he built a new harbor.

In 1724, Peter suffered greatly from ill health, but it did not force him to abandon the habits of a nomadic life, which accelerated his death. In February he goes to the Olonets waters for the third time; at the end of March he goes to Moscow for the coronation of the empress, from there he makes a trip to Millerovo Vody and on June 16 leaves for St. Petersburg; in the fall he travels to Shlisselburg, to the Ladoga Canal and Olonets factories, then to Novgorod and Saraya Rusa to inspect the salt factories: only when the autumn weather decisively prevents sailing along the Ilmen, Peter returns (October 27) to St. Petersburg. On October 28, he goes from lunch at Yaguzhinsky to a fire that happened on Vasilyevsky Island; On the 29th he goes by water to Sesterbek and, having met a boat that has run aground along the way, he helps remove soldiers from it waist-deep in water.

Fever and fever prevent him from traveling further; he spends the night in place and returns to St. Petersburg on November 2. On the 5th he invites himself to the wedding of a German baker, on the 16th he executes Mons, on the 24th he celebrates the betrothal of his daughter Anna to the Duke of Holstein. The fun resumes regarding the choice of a new prince-pope, on January 3 and 4, 1725. Busy life goes on as usual until the end of January, when, finally, it is necessary to resort to doctors, whom Peter until that time did not want to listen to. But time is lost and the disease is incurable; On January 22, an altar is erected near the patient’s room and communion is given to him, on the 26th "for health" he is released from the convicts' prison, and on January 28, at a quarter past six in the morning, Peter dies without having time to decide the fate of the state.

A simple list of all of Peter’s movements over the last 15 years of his life gives one a sense of how Peter’s time and attention were distributed between various types of activities. After the navy, army and foreign politics, Peter devoted the greatest part of his energy and his concerns to St. Petersburg. Petersburg is Peter’s personal business, carried out by him despite the obstacles of nature and the resistance of those around him. Tens of thousands of Russian workers fought with nature and died in this struggle, summoned to the deserted outskirts populated by foreigners; Peter himself dealt with the resistance of those around him, with orders and threats.

The opinions of Peter's contemporaries about this idea can be read from Fokerodt. Opinions about Peter's reform differed extremely during his lifetime. A small group of his closest collaborators held an opinion, which Lomonosov later formulated in the words: "he is your God, your God was, Russia". The masses, on the contrary, were ready to agree with the schismatics’ assertion that Peter was the Antichrist. Both proceeded from the general idea that Peter carried out a radical revolution and created a new Russia, unlike the old one. A new army, a navy, relations with Europe, and finally, a European appearance and European technology - all these were facts that caught the eye; Everyone recognized them, differing only fundamentally in their assessment.

What some considered useful, others recognized as harmful to Russian interests; what some considered a great service to the fatherland, others saw as a betrayal of their native traditions; finally, where some saw a necessary step forward on the path of progress, others recognized a simple deviation caused by the whim of a despot. Both views could provide factual evidence in their favor, since in Peter’s reform both elements were mixed - both necessity and chance. The element of chance came out more while the study of the history of Peter was limited to the external side of the reform and the personal activities of the reformer.

The history of the reform, written according to his decrees, should have seemed exclusively Peter’s personal matter. Other results should have been obtained by studying the same reform in connection with its precedents, as well as in connection with the conditions of contemporary reality. The study of the precedents of Peter's reform showed that in all areas of public and state life - in the development of institutions and classes, in the development of education, in the environment "private life"- long before Peter, the very tendencies that were brought to triumph by Peter’s reform were revealed.

Being thus prepared by the entire past development of Russia and constituting the logical result of this development, Peter’s reform, on the other hand, even under him, does not yet find sufficient ground in Russian reality, and therefore, even after Peter, in many ways remains formal and visible for a long time. New dress and "assemblies" do not lead to the assimilation of European social habits and decency; in the same way, the new institutions borrowed from Sweden are not based on the corresponding economic and legal development of the masses.

Russia is among the European powers, but for the first time only to become an instrument in the hands of European politics for almost half a century. Of the 42 digital provincial schools opened in 1716 - 1722, only 8 survive until the middle of the century; out of 2000 students recruited, mostly by force, by 1727 only 300 in all of Russia actually graduated. Higher education, despite the project "Academy", and the lowest, despite all the orders of Peter, remain a dream for a long time. On Peter's acceptance of the imperial title - Emperor; about Peter’s family relationships - Alexey Petrovich, Ekaterina I Alekseevna, Evdokia Fedorovna; about wars and foreign policy - the Northern War, the Turkish Wars, the Persian Wars; about the church policy of Peter - the Patriarchate in Russia, the Monastic Order, the Holy Synod, Stefan Yavorsky, Feofan Prokopovich; about the internal transformations of Peter - Provinces, Collegiums, City Magistrates, Senate, Landrat Council, Academy of Sciences, Primary Public Education (XX, 753); about books published by order of Peter - Russian literature.

It was in matters of the heart that “min hertz” was much less lucky than in other matters. The love of my life asked to marry... someone else, the first wife frankly did not understand and did not share any of the initiatives, the second, after more than 20 years of dating, was caught cheating.

Peter himself, however, according to surviving documents, did not particularly suffer from loyalty to his other halves. WITH it is read that among Peter the Great’s mistresses there were maids of honor, wives of associates, and foreigners.

There were some very unattractive people among them. Yes, n For example, Elena Mayorova’s book “The Personal Life of Peter the Great” mentions the friends of Peter’s sister Natalya – Varvara and Daria. One of the daughters of steward Arsenyev, Varvara, allegedly did not have an attractive appearance - she had a hump. One day, in front of witnesses, Peter complained that she would not know a man’s love. And then he hastened to correct this injustice. Menshikov was having fun with Daria. After this, the girls wrote letters to their lovers when the latter were in Narva, Shlisselburg and St. Petersburg, and “tearfully asked” them to return quickly and pay a visit.

Catherine, knowing her husband’s love of love, kept a whole staff of pretty, educated girls at court, whose duties, however, are not delicately described by historians. And yet you can name a few women who stand out from the background of endless mistresses.

Another youthful love of Peter. The future emperor met the daughter of a winemaker (according to other evidence, a goldsmith) Johann Mons when he once again arrived in a German settlement. The date of their first meeting is considered to be 1690, when the sovereign had already been married for about a year. But this circumstance did not prevent him from having an affair with a pretty German woman.

It’s difficult to call what happened between them love at first sight. Nevertheless, 18-year-old Anna, pushed by Peter’s friend Lefort and other well-wishers, actively pursued her goal. Result: the girl became the “Kukui queen” (after the second name of the German settlement - Kukui), received lands, the king’s favor and awe of herself. But she could not pretend to be a wife: it is unlikely that the Tsar’s mother, Natalya Naryshkina, would have allowed this, and Peter listened to her in many ways.

The sovereign’s relationship with his “official mistress” lasted about 10 years. The legal wife knew about the “monk,” but could not do anything because of her own, frankly speaking, low significance for Peter. The touching meetings between Peter and Mons ended because of the latter’s betrayal, noticed by pure chance. Thus, during the crossing in 1703, the Saxon envoy Koenigsek drowned in the Neva. In his things they found a portrait of Anna Mons, as well as many touching letters that she wrote to him. Peter, in a fit of anger, put her under house arrest.

The ruler, as they say, harbored a grudge against his first love all his life. According to evidence, when the Prussian envoy Georg-John von Keyserling asked for the girl’s hand in marriage, Peter and Menshikov pulled him down the stairs. The groom still managed to get the wedding, which took place in June 1711. Six months later, Anna’s husband died on the way to Berlin. She herself outlived him by three years.

Unloved, but still legal wife of the first Russian emperor. However, she reciprocated his feelings, not sharing any of the sovereign’s undertakings. Relatives received conflicting letters: either he was an uncouth man, or he was Petrusha’s beloved. No matter how the queen treated Peter Romanov, he sent her to a monastery in 1698 after nine years of marriage. Evdokia became nun Elena in Suzdal.

Let us note that she behaved quite freely. After some time, the monastic vestments finally took pride of place in the closet. The boyars often went to Evdokia to pay their respects, and in the evenings she herself carried on conversations with Elder Dosifei. At some point, her former neighbor, who, like the Lopukhins, lived on Solyanka, Stepan Glebov, came to visit the ruler’s first wife. According to some documents, if Tsarina Natalya had not considered Evdokia worthy of the Russian throne, the girl would have bore the surname Glebova, not Romanova, after her marriage. An affair broke out between a nun and a married Transfiguration officer. Soon Stepan lost interest in Evdokia: in vain she wrote to him “Dear friend, my sweetheart” and asked to inform him about his affairs.

Nevertheless, the fact of the affair was there. And the tender letters were found not by the addressee, but by captain-lieutenant of the Preobrazhensky regiment Grigory Skornyakov-Pisarev, who was sent by Peter in the case of the escape of his son Alexei. The monarch did not believe that the prince could independently come up with a scheme to return to the old order, and then promptly hide abroad. The Tsar blamed his ex-wife for imposing on their common son a rejection of all the transformations given to Peter with sweat and blood.

As a result, Evdokia was punished with a whip and exiled to Ladoga, to the Assumption Monastery, where conditions were much harsher than in Suzdal. She was able to return shortly before her death.

Glebov was tortured using methods that were not used even against murderers. So, if even a strong man, as a rule, received no more than 15 blows of the whip in “one pass” due to the risk of physically not being able to withstand more, then Lopukhina’s lover received 34. After that, hot coals were applied to Glebov’s open wounds. At the end of this torment he was tied to board studded with nails, where they kept him for three days. TO They executed a former military man and impaled him on a blunt stake. According to documents, he died at about 16 hours (A.I. Rakitin "Mysterious crimes of the past").

She is Ekaterina Alekseevna, she is the first empress, she is Catherine I - the laundress met by Peter in 1705. Before that, she was listed as the mistress of Field Marshal Boris Sheremetev and Alexander Menshikov. It would seem that Petra could not find a more faithful friend. She follows him on military campaigns, to negotiate with Turkey, and to relax on the waters. She even allegedly kept a detachment of girls for the king’s entertainment. In general, as a wife, the former laundress showed enviable qualities. Consider the fact that she went on one of the hikes in the last months of pregnancy. By the way, Martha Catherine gave birth to children tirelessly, but many babies died in infancy. Only two daughters celebrated their 18th birthday: Elizaveta and Anna.

But Martha, who seemed to be an ideal wife, was not distinguished by fidelity. Moreover, her lover was Anna Mons’s brother William, who ended up at court, despite, frankly speaking, the difficult relationship between her relative and Peter.

The queen was four years older than the young man. Having entered the service at the age of 20, he managed to take part in the battles of Lesnaya and Poltava. Gradually he became a confidant of the sovereign. Moreover, he was so trusted that his houses in Moscow, entire villages in the regions, golden statues and cavalry, which could almost compete with Peter’s, were “not noticed.” Even Menshikov, who was threatened with the chopping block or, at best, exile for taking bribes, went to him for advice. The “gift” then helped settle the issue.

The affair with Mons came to light, according to the old Russian tradition, suddenly. One of William’s close associates - according to various sources, Ivan Balakirev or Yegor Stoletov - told his friend about the existence of “dangerous letters”, which almost included a recipe for poison for the sovereign, mixed with declarations of love between young people. In November 1724, a denunciation from this “friend” was passed on to Peter’s lackey I . After this, Balakirev was sent to hard labor for three years, having previously been beaten with batogs. Stoletov was given 10 years of hard labor after being whipped. Matryona Balk, who knew about the novel, was sent to Siberia. Well, Mons paid for love with his own head. Officially, he was executed for embezzlement.

I feel sorry for you... I’m very sorry, but there’s nothing to do, I need to execute you! - allegedly said Peter, who came to personally say goodbye to Mons (Andrei Ilyin, “The Sovereign’s People”).

Peter's last passionate love I . The girl first saw him in 1711. Maria, unlike most of the ladies of the emperor's heart, is described as a fragile, well-educated girl who gravitated towards the exact sciences. Neither Maria nor her mother was enthusiastic about the idea of ​​constantly appearing at the assemblies, so the women said they were sick. Peter gathered a council of doctors who shook their heads. As a result, women had to go to all the evenings, since the idea of ​​“excusing themselves for health reasons” failed (Elena Mayorova, “Personal Life of Peter the Great”).

The romance broke out in 1721, when the girl was 21 years old. Soon the king began to appear in public with two women. In 1722, Peter set off on the Persian campaign (the Russian army and navy moved to the South-Eastern Transcaucasia and Dagestan, which then belonged to Persia). The sovereign was accompanied by Catherine and Maria. In Astrakhan, Kantemir was forced to stay. According to reports from the French consul in St. Petersburg, Lavi, and the plenipotentiary minister at the Russian court, Campredon, to their rulers, Peter’s mistress was pregnant, and childbirth was expected in the near future. It was further reported that the woman gave birth to a healthy boy, who was strangled by a man sent either by Catherine or Peter Tolstoy. The second version is doubtful, since Tolstoy contributed to the rapprochement between Mary and Peter.

One way or another, the royal lover to Cantemir lost interest after learning about the unsuccessful birth. The next time Mary corresponded with Peter took place shortly before the death of the sovereign, after the story of Catherine’s betrayal was revealed. The emperor asked the girl to return.

After the death of Peter the Great, she again fell out of favor with Catherine. Under Peter II moved to Moscow. Later she was a maid of honor. Towards the end of her life, Maria wanted to take monastic vows into a monastery, but her brother, Antiochus, dissuaded her from doing so. For unexplained reasons, the woman never got married, rejecting all those asking for her hand and heart.

In this material we are talking only about those who left at least some significant mark in the life of Peter the Great. In general, historians often mention that Peter the Great had crowds of mistresses. Among them are maids of honor, associates, and wives of associates. Some even talk about the men in this love nest. Note that the last statement does not find serious facts in its favor.

Peter I (Peter Alekseevich, First, Great) - the last Moscow Tsar and the first Russian Emperor. He was the youngest son of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov from his second wife, noblewoman Natalya Naryshkina. Born in 1672, May 30 (9) (June).

A short biography of Peter I is presented below (Peter 1 photo also).

Peter's father died when he was 4 years old, and his older brother, Tsar Fyodor Alekseevich, became his official guardian; a strong party of Miloslavsky boyars came to power in Moscow (Fyodor's mother was Alexei's first wife, Maria Miloslavskaya).

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Upbringing and education of Peter I

All historians are unanimous in their opinion about the education of the future emperor. They believe that it was as weak as possible. He was raised by his mother until he was one year old, and by nannies until he was 4 years old. Then clerk N. Zotov took charge of the boy’s education. The boy did not have the opportunity to study with the famous Simeon of Polotsk, who taught his older brothers, since the Patriarch of Moscow Joachim, who began the fight against “Latinization,” insisted on the removal of Polotsk and his students from the court. N. Zotov taught the tsar to read and write, the law of God and basic arithmetic. The prince wrote poorly, his vocabulary was meager. However, in the future Peter will fill in all the gaps in his education.

The struggle of the Miloslavskys and Naryshkins for power

Fyodor Alekseevich died in 1682 without leaving a male heir. The Naryshkin boyars, taking advantage of the turmoil that arose and the fact that Tsarevich Ivan Alekseevich, the next eldest brother, was mentally ill, elevated Peter to the throne, and made Natalya Kirillovna regent, while the Narashkin boyar Artamon Matveev, a close friend and relative of the Narashkins, was appointed guardian.

The Miloslavsky boyars, led by Princess Sophia, the eldest daughter of Alexei Mikhailovich, began to incite the archers, of whom there were about 20 thousand in Moscow, to revolt. And the riot happened; As a result, boyar A. Matveev, his supporter, boyar M. Dolgoruky, and many from the Naryshkin family were killed. Queen Natalya was sent into exile, and both Ivan and Peter were elevated to the throne (with Ivan being considered the eldest). Princess Sophia became their regent, having enlisted the support of the leaders of the Streltsy army.

Exile to Preobrazhenskoye, creation of amusing regiments

After the crowning ceremony, young Peter was sent to the village of Preobrazhenskoye. There he grew up without feeling any restrictions. Very soon, everyone around him became aware of the young prince’s interest in military affairs. From 1685 to 1688, Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky (after the name of the neighboring village of Preobrazhensky, Semenov) amusing regiments were created in the village, and “amusing” artillery was created.

At the same time, the prince became interested in maritime affairs and founded the first shipyard on Lake Pleshcheyevo near Pereslavl-Zalessky. Since there were no Russian boyars who knew marine science, the heir to the throne turned to foreigners, Germans and Dutch, who lived in the German settlement in Moscow. It was at this time that he met Timmerman, who taught him geometry and arithmetic, Brandt, who studied navigation with him, Gordon and Lefort, who in the future would become his closest associates and associates.

First marriage

In 1689, on the orders of his mother, Peter married Evdokia Lopukhina, a girl from a rich and noble boyar family. Tsarina Natalya pursued three goals: to connect her son with well-born Moscow boyars, who, if necessary, would provide him with political support, to announce the boy-tsar’s coming of age and, as a result, his ability to rule independently, and to distract his son from his German mistress, Anna Mons. The Tsarevich did not love his wife and very quickly left her alone, although from this marriage Tsarevich Alexei, the future heir of the emperor, was born.

The beginning of independent rule and the struggle with Sophia

In 1689, another conflict broke out between Sophia and Peter, who wanted to rule independently. At first, the archers, led by Fyodor Shaklovit, sided with Sophia, but Peter managed to turn the situation around and forced Sophia to retreat. She went to the monastery, Shaklovity was executed, and the elder brother Ivan fully recognized the younger brother’s right to the throne, although nominally, until his death in 1696, he remained a co-ruler. From 1689 to 1696 year Affairs in the state were handled by the government formed by Tsarina Natalia. The tsar himself completely “devoted himself” to his favorite activities - the creation of an army and navy.

The first independent years of reign and the final destruction of Sophia's supporters

Since 1696, Peter began to rule independently, choosing to continue the war with the Ottoman Empire as a priority. In 1695 and 1696, he undertook two campaigns with the goal of capturing the Turkish fortress of Azov on the Sea of ​​Azov (Peter deliberately abandoned campaigns in the Crimea, believing that his army was not yet strong enough). In 1695, it was not possible to take the fortress, but in 1696, after more thorough preparation and the creation of a river fleet, the fortress was taken. So Peter received the first port on the southern sea. In the same year, 1696, another fortress was founded on the Sea of ​​Azov, Taganrog, which would become an outpost for Russian forces preparing to attack Crimea from the sea.

However, an attack on Crimea meant war with the Ottomans, and the tsar understood that he still did not have enough strength for such a campaign. That is why he began to intensively search for allies who would support him in this war. For this purpose, he organized the so-called “Great Embassy” (1697-1698).

The official goal of the embassy, ​​which was headed by F. Lefort, was to establish connections with Europe and train minors, the unofficial goal was to conclude military alliances against the Omani Empire. The king also went with an embassy, ​​albeit incognito. He visited several German principalities, Holland, England and Austria. The official goals were achieved, but it was not possible to find allies for the war with the Ottomans.

Peter intended to visit Venice and the Vatican, but in 1698, an uprising of the Streltsy, incited by Sophia, began in Moscow, and Peter was forced to return to his homeland. The Streltsy uprising was brutally suppressed by him. Sophia was tonsured into a monastery. Peter also sent his wife, Evdokia Lopukhina, to a monastery in Suzdal, but she was not tonsured as a nun, since Patriarch Adrian opposed this.

Empire building. Northern War and expansion to the South

In 1698, Peter completely disbanded the Streltsy army and created 4 regular regiments, which became the basis of his new army. Such an army did not yet exist in Russia, but the tsar needed it, since he was going to start a war for access to the Baltic Sea. The Elector of Saxony, the ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Danish king proposed to Peter to fight Sweden, the then hegemon of Europe. They needed a weak Sweden, and Peter needed access to the sea and convenient harbors for building a fleet. The reason for the war was the alleged insult inflicted on the king in Riga.

First stage of the war

The beginning of the war cannot be called successful. On November 19 (30), 1700, the Russian army was defeated near Narva. Then Charles XII, king of Sweden, defeated the allies. Peter did not back down, drew conclusions and reorganized the army and rear, carrying out reforms according to the European model. They immediately bore fruit:

• 1702 – capture of Noteburg;
• 1703 - capture of Nyenskans; the beginning of construction of St. Petersburg and Kronstadt;
• 1704 – capture of Dorpat and Narva

In 1706 Charles XII, confident in his victory after strengthening the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, began to break through to the south of Russia, where he was promised support by the Hetman of Ukraine I. Mazepa. But the battle near the village of Lesnoy (the Russian army was led by Al. Menshikov) deprived the Swedish army of forage and ammunition. Most likely, it was this fact, as well as the leadership talent of Peter I, that led to the complete defeat of the Swedes near Poltava.

The Swedish king fled to Turkey, where he wanted to gain the support of the Turkish Sultan. Turkey intervened, and as a result of the unsuccessful Prut campaign (1711), Russia was forced to return Azov to Turkey and abandon Taganrog. The loss was difficult for Russia, but peace was concluded with Turkey. This was followed by victories in the Baltic:

• 1714 - victory at Cape Gangut (in 1718 Charles XII died and peace negotiations began);
• 1721 - victory at Grenham Island.

In 1721, the Peace of Nystadt was concluded, according to which Russia received:

• access to the Baltic;
• Karelia, Estland, Livonia, Ingria (but Russia had to give Sweden the conquered Finland).

In the same year, Peter the Great proclaimed Russia an Empire, and gave himself the title of Emperor (moreover, in a short time this new title of Peter I of Moscow Tsar was recognized by all European powers: who could challenge the decision made by the most powerful ruler of Europe at that time?).

In 1722 - 1723, Peter the Great undertook the Caspian Campaign, which ended with the signing of the Treaty of Constantinople with Turkey (1724), which recognized Russia's right to the western shores of the Caspian Sea. The same agreement was signed with Persia.

Domestic policy of Peter I. Reforms

From 1700 to 1725, Peter the Great carried out reforms that in one way or another affected every sphere of life of the Russian state. The most significant of them:

Finance and trade:

It can be said that it was Peter the Great who created the industry of Russia, opening state-owned and helping to create private manufactories throughout the country;

Army:

• 1696 - the beginning of the creation of the Russian fleet (Peter did everything to ensure that the Russian fleet became the strongest in the world in 20 years);
• 1705 - introduction of conscription (creation of a regular army);
• 1716 - creation of Military Regulations;

Church:

• 1721 – abolition of the patriarchate, creation of the Synod, creation of the Spiritual Regulations (the church in Russia was completely subordinate to the state);

Internal management:

Noble law:

• 1714 - decree on single inheritance (prohibition to split up noble estates, which led to the strengthening of noble land ownership).

Family and personal life

After his divorce from Evdokia Lopukhina, Peter married (in 1712) his longtime mistress Catherine (Martha Skavronskaya), with whom he had been in a relationship since 1702 and with whom he already had several children (including Anna, the mother of the future Emperor Peter III, and Elizabeth , the future Russian empress). He crowned her king, making her empress and co-ruler.

Peter had a difficult relationship with his eldest son, Tsarevich Alexei, which led to treason, abdication and the death of the former in 1718. In 1722, the emperor issues a decree on succession to the throne, which states that the emperor has the right to appoint his own heir. The only male heir in the direct line was the grandson of the emperor - Peter (son of Tsarevich Alexei). But who would take the throne after the death of Peter the Great remained unknown until the end of the emperor’s life.

Peter had a stern character and was quick-tempered, but the fact that he was a bright and extraordinary personality can be judged from photographs taken from the emperor’s lifetime portraits.

Almost all his life, Peter the Great suffered from kidney stones and uremia. From several attacks that occurred between 1711-1720, he could well have died.

In 1724-1725, the disease intensified and the emperor suffered from terrible attacks of pain. In the fall of 1724, Peter caught a bad cold (he stood in cold water for a long time, helping sailors save a stranded boat), and the pain became continuous. In January, the emperor fell ill, on the 22nd he confessed and took his last communion, and on the 28th, after a long and painful agony (the photo of Peter I taken from the painting “The Emperor on his Deathbed” proves this fact), Peter the Great died in the Winter Palace of St. -Petersburg.

Doctors diagnosed pneumonia, and after an autopsy it became clear that the emperor had developed gangrene after the urinary canal finally narrowed and became clogged with stones.

The emperor was buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg. His reign is over.

On January 28, with the support of A. Menshikov, Ekaterina Alekseevna, the second wife of Peter the Great, became empress.

The first years of the reign of Peter I.

Azov campaigns and the “Great Embassy”.

Industry.

Trade.

Agriculture.

Financial policy.

Reorganization of the public administration system.

The Church and the liquidation of the patriarchate.

Creation of a regular army and navy.

Streltsy uprising of 1698

“The Case of Tsarevich Alexei.”

Astrakhan uprising.

Uprising under the leadership of K. Bulavin.

The main directions of foreign policy in the era of Peter I and the Northern War.

Reforms in the field of education and culture.

The first years of the reign of Peter I.

After the August coup of 1689, power in the country passed to supporters of the seventeen-year-old Tsar Peter Alekseevich (who formally ruled until 1696 together with his brother Ivan) - P.K. Naryshkin, T.N. Streshnev, B.A. Golitsyn and others. A number of important government posts were also occupied by relatives of Peter’s first wife E.F. Lopukhina (the wedding took place in January 1689). Having given them the leadership of the country, the young tsar devoted all his energy to “Neptune and Mars fun”, for which he actively attracted “foreign servicemen” who lived in the German settlement (Kukue).

Peter surrounded himself with capable, energetic assistants and specialists, especially military ones. Among the foreigners, the following stood out: the tsar's closest friend F. Lefort, the experienced general P. Gordon, the talented engineer J. Bruce, and others. And among the Russians, a close-knit group of associates gradually formed, who subsequently made a brilliant political career: A.M. Golovin, G.I. Golovkin, brothers P.M. and F.M. Apraksin, A.D. Menshikov. With their help, Peter organized maneuvers of “amusing” troops (the future two guards regiments - Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky), which were held in the village of Preobrazhensky. Peter paid special attention to the development of the Russian navigator. Already in May 1692, his first “amusing” ship, built with the participation of the Tsar himself, was launched on Lake Pereslavl. In 1693-1694. The first Russian naval ship was built in Arkhangelsk and another one was ordered in Amsterdam. It was on board a Dutch-built ship in July 1694, during a real sea voyage organized by the Tsar, that the Russian red-blue-white flag was first raised.

Behind Peter’s “military amusements” there was a far-reaching goal: the struggle for Russia’s access to the sea. Due to the short winter navigation, the Arkhangelsk port could not provide year-round trade. Therefore, the bet was made on access to the Black Sea. Thus, Peter returned to the idea of ​​the Crimean campaigns, in which Prince V.V. failed. Golitsyn. After a three-month siege of Azov (spring - summer 1695), Peter was forced to retreat. Without a fleet, it was impossible to besiege the fortress from both land and sea. The first Azov campaign ended in failure. In the winter of 1695/96. Preparations for the second campaign began. Construction of the first Russian fleet began in Voronezh. By spring, 2 ships, 23 galleys, 4 fire ships and 1,300 plows were ready, on which the 40,000-strong Russian army again besieged Azov in May 1696. After a blockade from the sea on July 19, the Turkish fortress surrendered. The fleet found a convenient harbor in Taganrog and began building a port. But still, the forces to fight Turkey and Crimea were clearly not enough. Peter ordered the construction of new ships (52 ships in 2 years) at the expense of landowners and merchants.

At the same time, it was necessary to start looking for allies in Europe. Thus was born the idea of ​​the “Great Embassy” (March 1697-August 1698). Formally, it had the goal of visiting the capitals of a number of European states to conclude an alliance against Turkey. Admiral General F.Ya. was appointed as great ambassadors. Lefort, General F.A. Golovin, head of the Ambassadorial Prikaz, and Duma clerk P.B. Voznitsyn. The embassy included 280 people, including 35 volunteers who were traveling to learn crafts and military sciences, among whom, under the name of Peter Mikhailov, was Tsar Peter himself. The main task of the embassy was to familiarize itself with the political life of Europe, study foreign crafts, life, culture, military and other orders. During his one and a half year stay abroad, Peter and his embassy visited Courland, Brandenburg, Holland, England and Austria, met with sovereign princes and monarchs, studied shipbuilding and other crafts. Came in the summer of 1698. A message from Moscow about a new uprising of the archers forced the tsar to return to Russia.

International relations in Europe at this time were not in favor of continuing the war with Turkey, and soon (January 14, 1699), Russia, like other countries members of the “Holy League,” had to agree to a truce concluded in Karlovtsy. However, the “Great Embassy” became a true academy for Peter, and he used the experience gained in carrying out reforms in both domestic and foreign policy. For a long period, it determined the task of Russia’s struggle with Sweden for possession of the Baltic coast and access to the sea. Reorientation of Russian foreign policy by the beginning of the 18th century. from the southern direction to the northern coincided in time with enormous transformations that swept the country in all spheres of life, from priority diplomatic and military efforts to the Europeanization of life. Preparations for the war with Sweden served as an impetus for deep political and socio-economic reforms, which ultimately determined the appearance of the Peter the Great era. Some reforms took years, others were rushed. But on the whole, they formed a system of an extremely centralized absolutist state, headed by “an autocratic monarch who, as Peter himself wrote, should not give an answer to anyone in his affairs in his affairs.” The transformations were formalized by legislative decrees of the tsar, and their number in the first quarter of the 18th century. amounted to more than 2.5 thousand.

Industry.

During Peter’s accession, Russian industry, strictly speaking, did not exist and there was only one major merchant in Russia: the Tsar. During the duumvirate of Peter and John, a large reward was promised to the captain of a French ship for importing white paper, wine and some other goods into the country that were difficult to obtain in any other way. At the same time, the first Russian economist Pososhkov wrote a book - his “Testament”, where he proclaimed contempt for wealth. Twenty years later, the same author wrote, on white paper made in Russia, “A Discourse on Poverty and Wealth,” in which he tries to come up with ways to increase the wealth of the state and individuals and, before Smith and Turgot, explains the benefits of piecework over daily work. Peter did his job.

This is a very significant matter. Judging by the intensity of the efforts, the variety and ingenuity of the means used, the logical coherence of the guiding threads, despite some inconsistency, it deserves an honorable place in the history of the brilliant worker. To increase the well-being of individuals, while at the same time increasing state revenues, to simultaneously create new sources of taxation and new sources of production, to replace imported goods with products of domestic industry; to arouse the activity of the people and their spirit of enterprise; to force idle people, monks, nuns, and beggars to take places in the ranks of the working population; eliminate the indifference and even hostility of the administration towards the productive forces, introduce changes in unsatisfactory justice, eliminate the insufficient development of credit. lack of public safety, create a third estate, and finally introduce Russia into the modern economic movement.

The success of his enterprise was partly spoiled by an unfortunate coincidence and a fundamental mistake. Coincidentally, there was a war with its consequences and inevitable demands. She turned Peter, a staunch opponent of monopolies, into a creator of new monopolies, destroying with one hand what the other was doing. The mistake was his confidence in the ability to create a commercial and industrial life, to supply this creation with organs corresponding to its needs, to give it flesh and blood, then to control its movements, to turn it to the right and to the left, like regiments being created and commanded; by decrees and under the threat of the cane. Commercial and industrial companies made the first attempt of this kind in 1699. The Dutch were scared at first, but eventually they started laughing.

The war required money; the maintenance of standing troops gave impetus to the spirit of mercantilism in the West, and Peter is a zealous imitator of Colbert. True, Colbert also had no national covenants on his side. Already under Alexei Mikhailovich, perhaps even earlier, the right to import was paid for at Russian customs in Hungarian chervonets or Dutch thalers. Peter preserved, strengthening it, this system, which has survived to this day. He prohibited the export of precious metals, ignoring the warnings of Baudin and Childe about the dangers of such a practice. Having never read Klok, Schroeder or Decker, Pegr went further than them, forbidding his subjects to accept domestic coin as payment for their goods. According to Marperger, around 1723 Russia earned several barrels of gold annually in exchange with foreign countries. Peter also believed in the benefits of protectionism. The ruler of the country, which to this day has remained almost exclusively, in the sense of foreign trade, a producer of raw products, prohibited the export of some of these products, for example, flax, and so limited the right to export the rest that it was almost a prohibition. In anticipation of the opportunity to dress the entire army in locally produced cloth, he himself did not recognize otherwise for his dress and made it mandatory for liveries. When a Frenchman named Mamoron founded a stocking factory in Moscow, Muscovites were forbidden to buy them anywhere else. The industrialists, who were under the patronage of the tsar, hesitated to use the felt they produced for hats; a decree appeared that gave them courage: they were allowed to sell their goods only by releasing a certain number of hats of their production onto the market.

Such persistence of convictions, such an abundance of incentive and coercive measures, moral and monetary support, gradually did their job. Factories arose, some subsidized, others operated directly by the sovereign, others, finally, existing with their own funds. The Empress maintained a tulle factory and a starch factory in Yekateringof. Peter, who at first limited his activity to the production of items related to navigation: sailing cloth, saltpeter, sulfur, leather, weapons, gradually and partly against his will, also expanded its scope. We see him as a manufacturer of Kolomyanka in St. Petersburg, paper in Dudergof, cloth almost everywhere.

Unfortunately, all these institutions were far from thriving. It was in vain that the sovereign sold the Kolomyanka at a loss, giving five kopecks for an arshin of material that cost him fifteen. But, as usual, he continued to persist, even expanding the business, trying to introduce the production of luxury goods to his state. Russia produced carpets and tapestries without even having a paper spinning factory! And as always, the king did not limit himself to impulse, he struck from the shoulder. In 1718 The decree prescribed the use of lard instead of tar when processing yuft. A period of two years was given “to learn this, after which, if anyone makes yufti as before, he will be sent to hard labor and deprived of all his property.”

But, thus scattering himself in all directions, Peter finally stumbled upon grateful, directly productive, inexhaustibly rich soil, and immediately his impetuosity, ardor, and creative passion began to work miracles. He took up the mines. Already under Alexei Mikhailovich, the Dutch and the Dane mined ore and built factories in the vicinity of Moscow and cast cannons. With Peter's intervention, the matter assumed enormous proportions. Having ordered the establishment of ironworks in Verkhoture and Tobolsk by decree in 1697, the tsar had exclusively military purposes in mind: he needed cannons and rifles; but once it started, it went further and further, and the modern widespread development of the Russian mining industry owes its origin to it.

The sovereign began with the mining and processing of iron ore; , later he was seized by gold fever. He became even more interested, collecting all the instructions, exploring all the paths. True, numerous expeditions organized by him, Bekovich-Cherkassky to Persia in 1717, Likharev to Siberia in 1719, remained without results. Until 1720, the only silver mines were opened. But along the way, copper was found, again iron and, in 1722, coal. Thirty-six foundries were established in the Kazan province and thirty-nine in the Moscow province.

Private initiative - with the exception of the isolated case of Demidov - remained inactive for a long time. A decree issued in 1719 gives characteristic instructions in this regard: it declares free and publicly accessible the exploration and extraction of all kinds of metals on all lands without distinction. Owners of ore-bearing lands have only the right of primacy. So much the worse for them if they are slow to use it. “If they cannot or do not want it, then the right to build factories is given to others, with the payment to the landowner of 32 shares of the profit, so that God’s blessing does not remain underground in tuna.” Anyone who conceals ore or interferes with its mining is subject to corporal punishment and the death penalty. In 1723 the legislator took another step; he intended to finally end the system of the crown industrial monopoly. To the charter developed by the Manufactory Collegium, he added a manifesto inviting private individuals to replace the state in the operation of institutions of all kinds created by it, offering favorable conditions. And such versatile, persistent efforts did not remain fruitless; the creative movement of life grew, expanded, and domestic industry became a reality.

Trade.

The history of trade under Peter is almost entirely the history of domestic trade. Upon his accession to the throne, Peter had a strong desire to renounce his royal rights, which turned him into the largest and even the only major merchant of the state. But he had to submit to the law of war: he remained a merchant in order to earn money, and, without doing anything halfway, he increased the number of his affairs, monopolizing more than before, completely absorbing the entire domestic and foreign market. By creating new branches of trade, he only increased the list of monopolies. A wholesale buyer, a petty trader, he even sold Hungarian wine in Moscow! At one time, absorbed in the concerns of management and disappointed by the uncertainty of the income derived from trading enterprises, he decided to farm out the latter. Menshikov took Arkhangelsk fishing, blubber and seal skins. Then the hope for a near peace reduced the sovereign’s financial difficulties, and he returned to his natural, liberal aspirations. In 1717, trade in bread was declared free, and in 1719 all monopolies were destroyed. At the same time, the Trade Collegium, which had existed since 1715, began to show fruitful activity, engaging, among other things, in the commercial education of the trading class, sending dozens abroad, to Holland and Italy, of young people chosen from among the sons of large Moscow merchants, whose number was rapidly growing. increased. The sovereign's diplomacy, in turn, worked to expand international relations. The war had previously led to unfortunate compromises in this regard, for example, to the sale of emergency rights and privileges to the city of Lübeck in 1713 for thirty-odd thousand thalers, and to similar conditions with Danzig and Hamburg. Since 1717, Peter resolutely sought to put an end to these errors, and in the negotiations begun at that time with France, he no longer touched on such an issue, just as in the instructions given to the consulates established simultaneously in Toulon, Lisbon and London. Sometimes Peter still succumbed to the temptation to control rather arbitrarily the destinies of these nascent relations. Proof of this is the history of the St. Petersburg port, as well as the formal battles of the great man with foreign and Russian merchants who stubbornly preferred the Arkhangelsk port. When the king exhausted the means of peaceful persuasion; when he saw that neither the creation of the vast Gostiny Dvor, nor the special magistracy, composed mostly of foreigners, nor the efforts he spent to concentrate their favorite product, hemp, in his new capital, at cheap prices and in abundance, could attract them there , he resolutely resorted to the behests of his ancestors. He did not directly forcibly transport the Arkhangelsk residents to St. Petersburg, as Grand Duke Vasily did with the Pskovites, relocating them to Moscow; but he ordered the Arkhangelsk people from now on to buy or sell hemp no other way than in St. Petersburg.

The measure bore fruits that were to be expected. The new capital was still a disgusting warehouse. The canal system intended to connect the Volga with the Neva via Lake Ladoga was still in the project. The eminent English engineer Perry, who was entrusted with the execution of the work, dissatisfied with the ill-treatment he had to endure, abandoned it at the very beginning. The second canal, invented by Peter to avoid dangerous navigation on Lake Ladoga, remained unfinished until 1732. The third system, based on the use of connecting rivers, served only to enrich the miller Serdyukov, who offered and took advantage of the concession granted to him too hastily to build up the banks of the Una and Shlina mills and taverns that had nothing to do with the St. Petersburg port. Therefore, hemp, leather and other goods, since since 1717 two-thirds of all products were necessarily sent to St. Petersburg, were delivered with great difficulty, burdened with enormous transportation costs, and not finding buyers here, they were piled up in heaps, devalued due to the large accumulation, and finally spoiled, especially hemp.

By good or by force, Petersburg was to become a trading port. In 1714, only sixteen foreign ships arrived there, a year later fifty, one hundred nineteen in 1722, one hundred eighty in 1724. Peter laid the foundation for a system of water communications, which his successors, including Catherine II, tried to complete and improve, and which, connecting the Volga basin with the Neva and Dvina basins, i.e. the Caspian Sea with the Baltic and White Seas, contained in the space occupied by canals three hundred and two miles, seventy-six lakes and one hundred and six rivers. Here there was an enormous expenditure of wealth, labor and even human lives; but the strength of Russia and the secret of its fate have always, for the most part, consisted in the desire and ability not to think about sacrifices in order to achieve the intended goal. Long-suffering men, tens of thousands buried in the Finnish swamps, and this time they submitted rather resignedly.

Peter did not attach the same importance to the development of land communications, and did not pay any attention to them. He didn't build roads. This is still one of the weak points of Russia from an economic point of view, and the insufficient number of existing highways is solely the work of the engineers of the Institute of Railways, founded only in 1809. However, the great man treated with due care the caravan trade organized by his ancestors. He dealt with it himself, purchasing Tokaji grapes from Hungary; transporting the wine obtained from it to Moscow on hundreds of carts and sending the products of Siberia back to Hungary. While directing the greatest effort to the Baltic Sea and the west, he did not lose sight of his southeastern border and the commercial interests that required his intervention. It is possible that having reached Bukhara, he would subsequently establish trade with India. Separate caravans were already arriving in Astrakhan, bringing not only silk and paper fabrics produced in Bukhara, but also goods from India: precious stones, gold and silver items. In any case, Peter managed to take possession first of the course of the Irtysh, the possession of which protected the borders of Siberia from the Kalmyks and Kyrgyz, then of the Kolyvan Mountains, where treasures discovered later fulfilled the Greek fairy tale about gold mines guarded by gnomes. Having held out in Azov, Peter would also have continued, and perhaps would have achieved, the restoration of the ancient trade route of the Venetians and Genoese. Thrown back to the Caspian Sea, he, of course, made an attempt to move this route, directing it from Astrakhan to St. Petersburg. The great expedition of 1722, proposed, and the beginning of the foundation of a large city - a storage point - at the mouth of the Kura, where five thousand people of Tatars, Cheremis, Chuvash worked at the moment of the tsar’s death, apparently indicate the existence of such a thought. We can say that the plan was partly fantastic, even crazy, and there was absolutely no calculation of possibilities, distances, or transportation costs. But despite the disproportionate daring of the enterprise and the oblivion to which its immediate successors betrayed it, a certain result was achieved: the intended path to the markets of Persia and India forms part of the heritage, the colossal asset of which Russia continues to enjoy at the present time.

Agriculture.

Such a versatile, almost all-encompassing person could not help but be a farmer. And indeed, he was, and even passionate. In the history of Russian agriculture, the reign of Peter also constitutes an era. He was not content with teaching his peasants how to plant potatoes, as Frederick later did; With a sickle in his hands, he showed peasants near Moscow how to harvest grain; near St. Petersburg, how to weave bast shoes. He considered the peasants as students, and himself as a teacher, forbade them to wear soles lined with large nails, because this would spoil the floors, and determined the width of the rough canvas they wove on their hips. Having admired the garden of a rural priest in France, he immediately upon returning to Russia scolded his clergy: “Why don’t they start such gardens in their own country”! He was concerned with the selection of seeds for sowing, the raising of livestock, the fertilization of fields, and the use of implements and methods of improved farming; tried to grow grapes on the land of the Don Cossacks and took care of its more successful culture in the vicinity of Derbent, where he ordered to try Persian and Hungarian vines. In 1712 he established the first horse breeding farms; in 1706, the first herds of sheep were established in the present-day provinces of Kharkov, Poltava and Yekaterinoslav, where sheep are currently bred in huge numbers. Peter was also the first forester of his homeland. He was the first to defend the forests against the prevailing reckless destruction. To achieve this, however, he used methods that are hardly applicable at the present time even in Russia: along the banks of the Neva and the Gulf of Finland, at intervals of five miles, gallows were erected to edify the devastators. Even within the boundaries of present-day St. Petersburg, in the place now occupied by customs, there was a spruce forest then. Since the logging in it did not stop, Peter ordered a raid, hanged every tenth of the disobedient people caught and punished the rest with a whip. In general, on the basis of economic progress, the desire of the reformer encountered a double obstacle: a moral and a political one. Marked March 13, 1706, the decree addressed to the Senate punished with death local merchants who, following the habit they had acquired, about which their English customers strongly complained, mixed spoiled fiber or even stones into bales of hemp to increase weight. Raising the moral standard of commerce and industry nevertheless remained a task bequeathed to the future. At the end of the reign, the elements of commercial and industrial activity, created, called almost out of oblivion by the great creator, were still in a wild state. In 1722, Bestuzhev reported from Stockholm about the arrival there of several Russian merchants from Abo and Verel: “They brought a small amount of rough canvas, wooden spoons, nuts, and sell these goods along the streets in layers, cooking porridge for themselves in the open air; refuse to obey the demands of the police, get drunk, quarrel, fight and present a shameful spectacle of disgusting uncleanliness.”

Financial policy.

The political obstacle was finance. In the history of the great reign, financial policy is a dark spot. Of all the branches of Peter's creation, this branch, apparently, was most directly inspired and caused by the war, which was reflected in it. First of all, it does not have a transformative character at all; besides, she is almost always frank and disgusting.

The funds that Peter had at his accession to the throne cannot be put in direct parallel with the funds of other European states. According to Golikov, they did not exceed 1,750,000 rubles. Based on such a meager budget, the material existence of the Russian state would have taken on - even touching only the internal side, regardless of any efforts directed beyond its borders - the appearance of an insoluble riddle, if one did not take into account the very special conditions in which it then found itself. First of all, apart from maintaining the army, the state itself had almost no obligations. It did not pay its employees: they were obliged to serve it in return for the privileges it distributed, or they received their salaries indirectly, through “feeding”. It did not support roads, which did not exist then, and so on. Here, for example, is the expenditure budget of 1710. It is very instructive in this regard.

artillery........................ 221,799 rub.

fleet................................... 444,288 rub.

garrisons........................ 977,896 rub.

Recruitment costs................................... 30,000 rub.

purchase of weapons......................... 84,104 rub.

Other expenses (including salary

for feldzeichmisters .................................... 675,775 rub.

Before the accession of Peter in 1679, a very important beneficial measure was taken in this primitive organization, namely, the centralization of income into the Order of the Great Treasury, which was replaced in 1699 by the town hall. The great man, with his intervention, only destroyed everything that had been done. He was too pressed for time to follow a program that promised to give satisfactory results only over a long period of time. Needing big money immediately, he acted like the confused sons of rich parents. Instead of continuing to centralize and thus gradually destroy the individual in monetary terms). At the same time, high customs tariffs (up to 40% in foreign currency) reliably protected the domestic market. The growth of industrial production was accompanied by increased feudal exploitation, the widespread use of forced labor in factories: the use of serfs, purchased (possession) peasants, as well as the labor of the state (black-growing) peasantry, which was assigned to the plant as a constant source of labor. The decree of January 18, 1721 and subsequent laws (for example, of May 28, 1723) allowed private manufacturers to buy entire villages of peasants “without restrictions, so that those villages would always be inseparable from those factories.”