Peter: Seizure of Power
This coup indirectly stemmed from the Eternal Peace itself. After the Poles and Habsburgs dealt a decisive defeat to the Turks at Vienna in 1683, the allies demanded that Russia launch an attack on the Crimea to ease the burden on the West. Under the supreme command of Golitsyn, Russian troops thereupon made two campaigns against the Crimean Tatars (in 1687 and 1689) and both times met with defeat. But in both cases Sofia—who needed success—suppressed the truth: to portray the military campaign as a victory, she lavished praise and gifts on Golitsyn and the returning troops. Her Eastern policy was no more successfuclass="underline" Russia established diplomatic relations with China (through the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689), but did so at the price of renouncing claims to the Amur region. The deception and disinformation generated growing tensions between Sofia and Peter, even to mutual suspicions of murder. Fearing a new Streltsy uprising, in August 1689 Peter fled to the Trinity-Sergius Monastery north of Moscow. The turning-point came in September when the troops came over to his side, enabling Peter to claim power in his own right and to place his half-sister under house arrest in Novodevichii Convent.
Although Peter had seized power, for the moment he changed nothing in his own life, as he himself continued to take more interest in sea travel than in state affairs. Nevertheless, the rebellious turbulence of the seventeenth century had come to an end; the Streltsy mutiny in 1698 was merely an epilogue. If one looks at the government of the great tsar in the light of the seventeenth century, it is clear that his reforms—which made so great an impression in the West—emerged directly from the traditions of the seventeenth century and hardly constituted a ‘revolution’. The seventeenth century had already signalled a major breakthrough—a self-conscious emancipation from the fetters of ‘Old Russia’.
4. The Petrine Era and After 1689–1740
JOHN T. ALEXANDER
Peter inaugurated an imperial, radically Europeanized period of Russian history. Building on seventeenth-century roots, he broadened reform to include virtually every dimension of the state and warfare, society, economy, and culture. His heirs, invariably invoking Peter as a secular icon to legitimize power and policies, continued (if less ambitiously) his efforts to remake medieval Muscovy into modern Russia.
PETER I is associated with many ‘firsts’ in Russian history. He was the first legitimate Muscovite ruler to have that name in Russian and European languages (Piter in Dutch), the first to use a Roman numeral after his name, the first to travel incessantly by land and water and to venture abroad, the first to be titled emperor and ‘the Great, Most Wise Father of the Fatherland’, the first to inspire radical change in diverse spheres of activity, the first to found urban sites sharing his name, the first to be buried in St Petersburg, and the first to imprint his name on an entire era encompassing the birth of modern Russia in an expanded, European context. His imperious personality impressed his world so emphatically that his impact remains vividly controversial even now. Inscribed ‘Great Hope of the Future’, the medal struck at his birth in the Kremlin on 30 May 1672 announced the dynastic sentiments vested in the huge baby, some thirty-three inches long. This label inaugurated a series pinned on Peter during his busy life (1672–1725) and long afterwards. Many lauded his personal attributes: warrior-tsar, artisan-tsar, tsar-transformer, Renaissance man, the great reformer who gave Russia a new ‘body’ primed for a new ‘soul’. Others deplored negative qualities: Anti-Christ, the ‘Bronze Horseman’, first Bolshevik, brutal despot, cult figure and personification of a totalitarian-style dictatorship bent on forcible expansion—a ruthless ruler likened to such melancholy fanatics as Ivan the Terrible, Lenin, and Stalin. His towering physique—six feet seven inches tall as an adult—overshadowed contemporaries much as his historical shade dominates modern Russian political and cultural discourse. His physiognomy and figure have been depicted in many media and languages over three centuries. Both his fame and notoriety have assumed legendary stature.
It is amazing that the initial offspring of Tsar Alexis by his second wife should have been so precocious and so long-lived in contrast to the sickly sons and multiple daughters of his first marriage. Indeed, this novelty proved crucial in the selection of 9-year-old Peter by an impromptu assemblage to succeed his half-brother Fedor on 27 April 1682. A mere figurehead for a regime of his Naryshkin relatives, Peter’s elevation evoked immediate resistance from his father’s first family, the Miloslavskiis, led by Sofia in defence of the dynastic seniority of Ivan, aged 16. Sofia and her Miloslavskii relatives exploited dissension among the Streltsy to channel animosity towards the Naryshkins; the result was the riot in May 1682, described in the previous chapter, as also are the events of Sofia’s regency.
Young Peter’s marriage to Evdokiia Lopukhina on 27 January 1689 forecast imminent maturity. Although the marriage was unhappy (the groom soon departed for nautical diversions on Lake Pleshcheevo), Evdokiia gave birth to the future tsarevich Alexis in February 1690—another blow to the Miloslavskiis’dynastic interests. Sofia, though styled ‘autocratrix’ on a par with her brothers, was never crowned officially, her authority waning as Peter’s partisans championed his cause anew. Who initiated the final showdown in August 1689 is uncertain, but Peter’s ‘party’ quickly gained greater armed support in ostensibly forestalling a new Streltsy conspiracy while Sofia had to yield Fedor Shaklovityi—her new favourite and head of the Streltsy—for interrogation under torture and execution. At the end of September she entered the Novodevichii Convent as a lay person. After another abortive Streltsy mutiny in 1698 she accepted political extinction by taking monastic vows and died in monastic seclusion in 1704.
Early Travels and the Azov Campaigns
Peter did not, however, immediately assume Sofia’s role in government, relinquishing the more prominent posts to his Naryshkin relatives and their friends, such as Boris Golitsyn, Tikhon Streshnev, and Fedor Romodanovskii. The tsar still resided at Preobrazhenskoe and in the autumn of 1690 participated in elaborate ‘play’ manœuvres featuring a scripted ‘defeat’ of the Streltsy by a combined force of noble cavalry, play regiments, and foreign-style troops. His shipbuilding and sailing on inland waters also continued, as did his fascination with fireworks in company with foreign mercenaries such as Franz Lefort and Patrick Gordon. He began to sign himself ‘Petrus’, to drink heavily, and to smoke tobacco. He ignored his deserted wife’s letters and openly pursued Anna Mons, the daughter of a German wine merchant in the Foreign Suburb. When Peter suffered bloody diarrhoea for two weeks in December 1692, fears of Sofia’s return to power fanned rampant rumours and, allegedly, plans for flight by Lefort and company.
Despite his mother’s misgivings, Peter left Moscow in July 1693 with a substantial entourage to spend seven weeks at Archangel. He became the first Muscovite ruler to see the far north and to sail the open sea. He also helped lay down a seagoing vessel for future voyages. His horizons were widening by the hour. His mother’s death in January 1694 only momentarily interrupted preparations for a longer sojourn at Archangel, from 18 May to 5 September. He made extended voyages; during one he barely survived a storm by landing on the island of Solovki where he planted a cross with a Dutch inscription and European-style date, ‘This Cross was made by Captain Piter anno Domini 1694’—evidence that he knew Dutch and already foresaw reforms in European terms. The budding fleet began using a white-blue-red flag based on the Dutch standard. Upon returning to Moscow, from 23 September to 18 October 1694 Peter organized grandiose military manœuvres involving over 7,000 men. A satirical pamphlet recorded the exercises along with exhibitions such as twenty-five dwarfs marching to military music. With the Streltsy again slated for defeat, ‘bombardier Peter Alekseev’ celebrated his last simulated engagement before real battle with Turks and Tatars. In concert with the Holy League of Austria, Poland-Lithuania, and Venice with financial backing from the papacy, the 22-year-old tsar aimed to mount the international stage by recouping Vasilii Golitsyn’s losses.