Peter's Reign

I've spent the morning taking notes on Prof. Davison's lecture on Peter the Great, and it reminds me how often history is, literally, his-story. Some larger-than-life individual comes to mesmerize an age, and to transport it's culture into an entirely new arena. Such was the case with Peter the Great. His reign from 1694 to 1725 is full of remarkable renovations and totally new creations.

His adventures abroad, in 1697-8 and then again in 1717, transformed him, and were manifested in a massive remodeling of Russia in a way never seen before. He electrified his world, edified it, and inundated it with projects, proposals, and new practices that seems to have left no stone unturned, nor monument untouched. Truly a remarkable individual, his legacy left Russia with a new stature that overshadowed that of his predecessors and overwhelmed that of his successors, much as his own seven-foot-presence dominated his contemporaries.

Yet Peter didn't start life as a powerhouse. It's true, he was in line for the throne as soon as he was born, but that was only because the more rightful heirs (older brothers and half-brothers) had already died or were sickly. Following the death of their father in 1675, elder (step-) brother Fyodor took over as Tsar. The sickly son of Aleksei's first wife Maria Miloslavskaia, Fyodor reigned until 1682. When he died, there were 2 heirs to the throne: Fyodor's younger brother, 15-year-old Ivan, and his half-brother, 9-year-old Peter. At first Peter was named tsar by the Patriarch of Moscow, but later the boyar duma declared Sophia Aleksevna regent over Ivan and Peter, who were named as co-rulers. A daughter of Aleksei, sister to Ivan and half-sister to Peter, she and her lover Vasilii Golitsyn (Prince Basis Golitsyn) guided Ivan while Peter and his mother Natalia were sent into seclusion 50 miles from Moscow. Thus, the early years of Peter's reign, from 1682 to 1694 (when Peter's mother died) were spent under a regent and as co-ruler, and foreshadowed little of what he was to become. In fact, when Ivan died in 1686, Peter had such little interest in ruling that he asked his mother Natalia to act as regent, which she did until her death in 1694.

During the early years spent in semi-secluded exile with his mother, miles from Moscow, Peter had only the playmates he created amongst the soldiers sent to "protect" him, men who later formed the famous Preobrazbenskii guards. Terrorized by the historical events taking place during the succession following the death of his older step-brother Ivan, 9-year-old Peter watched as his uncle, the brother of his mother, was murdered in his presence. The transition to power was rarely easy in Russian history, but it was also rarely as ugly as it was following the death of Ivan.

So - there you have the inauspicious background of the 18th century powerhouse, Peter the Great. His story reminds me so much of Atatürk's later emergence and influence. Rarely has one man done so much, and yet history is made by men such as these. Naturally, this is only his-story. Her-story is yet to be written!