Changing Images of Russian Imperial Power:

Peter the Great, 1682-1725

1. First years: contradiction

and possibility (“culture
war”?)

2. Political Personality

3. Reform (“revolution from

above”?)
I. Peter’s first years: contradiction
and possibility (culture war)
- Co-tsars (half-brothers)
Ivan V and Peter I,
1682-96
- Regent Sophia (Ivan’s
sister), 1682-89
- Regent Natalia
Naryshkina (Peter’s
mother, Aleksei’s second
wife) 1689-94
Sophia Alexeevna
Regent Natalia
Naryshkina (Peter’s
mother) 1689-94
- Traditionalist
reaction
- Peter’s stance in
these power and
culture wars?
Pieter van der Werff,
portrait of Peter I, 1690
Ivan V and Peter I: two paths embodied (1690s)
II. Political Personality
1. Size and energy

V. Serov,
“Peter the
Great,”
1907
Obsession with physical work: making things
 Travel to Europe, 1697-98

Peter studying ship building

Peter as shipwright in Holland

“Joke portraits” of members of the
All-Joking, All-Drunken, Most-Foolish Assembly (Sobor)
(Всешутейший, Всепьянейший и Сумасброднейший Собор)
4. Violence and
cruelty
-”correctional
cudgel”
– Suppression of
Streltsy revolt,
1698
– Wars

Surikov, “Morning
after Streltsy
execution,” 1881
III. Reform/revolution from above?
1. War and imperial
expansion
Creation of modern army
and navy
2. Rationalize and centralize administration
– Colleges
– Senate, police, provinces, Holy Synod
3. Transform society
– Table of Ranks
– Western intellectual and cultural life

12 Colleges, built 1722-1741

IV. Interpreting Peter’s vision of progress
1. Technical:
modernization
rationalization
regularization

2. Power and
order

3. Cultural

Peter on Horseback, 1721

3. Cultural westernization

State Councillor Golovkin, 1720

4. St. Petersburg (Sankt Peterburg [Pieter
Burkh]: secular power, order, rationality

LeBlond’s 1717 proposal

St. Petersburg, 1720 map
Sts. Peter and Paul Cathedral, 1712-33
Summer Palace and Gardens, 1716-
12 Colleges, 1722-

Kunstkammer, 1718-