Peter The Great ( 1672-1725 )

Peter the Great was born to Tsar Alexis and grew up differently than many people of his time. “Peter proved a healthy child, lively and inquisitive. It is probably significant to his development that his mother’s former guardian, Artamon Sergeyevich Matveyev, had raised her in an atmosphere open to progressive influences from the West” (Britannica Academica). The fact that he grew up with a significant figure in his life who favored the west shaped his views in a major. Later in his reign, he focused on western civilization and how they thrived. Peter tried to implicate the same influences in Russia to further try and modernize and advance the culture, society, and government. Peter was a very lively and energetic child. “When Alexis died in 1676 Peter was only four years old. His elder half-brother, a sickly youth, then succeeded to the throne as Fyodor III” (Britannica

The greatest transformation that Witzenrath writes about is the seventieth century “explosive expansion of Russian trade and settlement across Siberia” (87 Witzenrath). The Cossacks and Peter the Great from the two readings fit into Witzenrath’s thesis. Both the Cossacks and Peter the Great impacted the expansion of Russian trade and the settlement across Siberia. However, the cossacks helped the settlement across Siberia more than the expansion of Russia. Contrastingly, Peter the Great supported the opposite.

During Peter the Great’s reign, Russia flourished. Peter accomplished many goals, making Russia one of the most powerful countries at the time. Peter the Great was a czar of Russia who ruled from 1682-1725. Before peter’s reign, Russia did not possess a stable economy as well as military. Russia was in a disorganized state.

Peter the Great ruled over Russia from the late 1600’s to the mid 1700’s. He influenced Russia in many ways and shaped It in to a westernized country. Russia became westernized when Peter the Great began to fear the Ottomans, because they were great fighters and they continuously ransacked Russia. Peter decided to travel to Western Europe in disguised in search for allies to help his country. His trips to the west led to extensive changes in Russia; he became intrigued with western Europe and constructed Russia to have similar customs.

Peter the Great the Tsar of Russia was the most influential absolute monarch for his time for changing Russia to a modernized country. At the beginning of Peter’s reign Russia was a poor country which had never experienced the renaissance. Russia also had no access to the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, or the Baltic Sea, which Peter made his main goal of his foreign policy. In 1596 Russia captured the Azov sea from the Turks after their first campaign failed. Then in 1697 Peter went to the Grand Embassy in western Europe to learn the conditions of the advanced countries, which helped Peter westernize Russia. These two events also help Peter build the Russian Navy. After the Northern War Peter sent nobles on Exploratory missions to the Central

Peter waged wars against the Ottoman Empire, turning out to be mainly unsuccessful. There was also a Great War with Sweden. With these wars came Peter’s prospect of expanding his empire through the acquisition of new territory and access to the Baltic Sea. Boyars - nobles with the highest rank besides a prince- played a part in Russian government, but soon Peter weakened them by using tactics such as taking away their traditions.

A war broke against the Swedish also, and Peter was threatened of losing both the Southern and Northern water way of Russia. This threat made Peter the Great seek the friendship of the world's most prolific naval empire. This was a time at which Peter the Great carefully chose his allies, joining the Freemasons alongside with “King William of Orange, Sir Isaac Newton, and Sir Christopher Wren, all of whom Peter met privately”(A. George and E. George, 8). Peter's adherence to the Freemasons was the key principle to all the actions he was about to take as an emperor. The reforms Peter had made during his lifetime were “influenced by Masonic percepts ... which influenced a moral life, good works, the search for truth, education, toleration, and in general the brotherhood and perfection of mankind”(A. George and E. George, 8). Once Peter returned to Russia he was convince of the need to overrun the societal model and practices of old Muscovy by transforming it into a modern society and a great

While he was not as horrid as Ivan The Terrible, many revolts occurred against Peter the Great as a result of his high taxes and cruelness towards his people. Despite his ruthless tendencies, he still managed to maintain a confident and stable reign in office. He transformed Russia into a great European nation and was very effective leader. While both Peter and Louis XIV were both similar in rule, Louis XIV was more absorbed with outward appearances, while Peter focused on reforming his

Peter claimed himself the emperor of Russia. He established a Senate as the highest government institution. He later then introduced a new poll tax, which gave him funding for a foreign policy and for increasing manufacturing trade. Peter was the great absolute ruler which helped him expand Russia. He allowed others to work with him but everything had to go his way.

Any revolts against the changes that Peter the Great put in motion were “dealt with swiftly and with great cruelty” (Sattler). Peter invaded both the Ottoman Empire and Sweden, this gained Russia access to the sea and its first “ice-free” port (Sattler). These moves put Russia into the game of European politics and war. The Western advisors that Peter brought back with him after his travels through Europe helped him improve

Peter the Great of Russia was a strong and absolute ruler. Czar Peter I used a form of absolute rule called autocratic rule. Meaning that he ruled with unlimited authority over his subjects and land. Many people tile Peter the Great as a modernizer of Russia (Mendrala, 41). Peter the Great is responsible for Russia’s westernization, he enforced Western ideas, technology, and culture. By attempting to cultivate the western European way of life Peter made Russia diplomatic, military, political, commercial, scholastic, literary, and industrial (Source #2). During his reign Peter the Great develops a number of policies, and he dramatically reforms his country. Like any ruler, Peter encounters a few problematic incidents, but is able to overcome

Any recorded biography or evaluation of an significant figure such as a ruler, will always be biased based on the author, who feels that the person contributed greatly to their country or stagnated the growth of their country through their wars, policies and their desire for power. One of the greatest debates of Russian history is concerned with Peter The Great’s rule as tsar. Many people feel tsar Peter greatly benefited Russia through his economic policies regarding governmental businesses handed over to private businesses, his expansion of trade through infrastructure projects and greatly improving Russia’s military through better weapons, better organization of soldiers and a stronger and advanced Navy. Others felt that Peter greatly

Peter the Great was a descendant of the Romanov family who started his co-rule with his brother since he was ten years old. When his brother died in 1896, only then did Peter become the sole tsar of Russia. However, at the time, Russia did not have a developed military, government, or technology as that of the other countries in Europe. At the start of the Peter’s reign as tsar, he had taken part in the conquest against the Ottoman Empire in an effort to gain land in order to secure a Russian port in the coast of the Black Sea. In Compared to Europe, Russia was much less advanced.

Peter The Great should be granted the title of "Most Absolute Monarch" because he created a strong navy, recognized his army according to Western standards, secularized schools, administrative and territorial divisions of the country. Peter focused on the development of science and recruited several experts to educate his people about technological advancements. He concentrated on developing commerce and industry and created a gentrified bourgeoisie population. Mirroring Western culture, he modernized the Russian alphabet, introduced the Julian calendar, and established the first Russian newspaper. Peter was a far-sighted and skillful diplomat who abolished Russia's archaic form of government and appointed a viable

Peter as a young man went to Sweden and built ships however when he returns with this skill of ships he was obliged to pull Russia into the modernizing world even when they felt they were just fine where they were. Peter went to the coast to develop ports and get trade route established, he created St. Petersburg. However he had always deep down never liked the city of Moscow, the nobles, urban life, the courts, and the Orthodox Church. He taxed everything from birth to death: births, marriages, and even caskets. His way of governing was mostly getting his country into the modern life style and progressing in all of the different way. He in some ways believed in equality because he didn’t really like how the nobles were different with their long beards so he cut them off. He also leaned towards the mercantilism aspect of capitalism because he wanted there to be ports so that they could start modernizing and exporting more than they actually