From the 1680s Russian rulers manipulated the political sphere in word, image, and artefact in ways that preceding rulers had not. Fedor Alekseevich had engravings made to commemorate his marriage and in 1678 minted coins in celebration of a military victory. Sofiia Alekseevna commissioned baroque portraits of herself in coronation garb, extolling in Latin and Russian her magnanimity, liberality, piety, prudence, chastity, justice, and hope in God; she had banquets given and medals cast to celebrate Prince V. V. Golitsyn's Crimean campaigns even though they were complete failures.
When Peter I came to power, he was convinced of Russia's need to emulate Europe to advance its geopolitical interests. That meant everything from reform of the military to entirely new social and cultural institutions. With a close circle of European and Ukrainian advisors, Peter oversaw the development of a powerful ideology of state and ruler, one that heightened what Viktor Zhivov and Boris Uspenskii have called the sacralization of the ruler at the same time as it secularized the goals of state and society and the media in which political ideas were expressed. Marc Raeff drew attention to the central role of the concept of "Polizeistaat" or "well-ordered police state" in Petrine ideology. This set of ideas, emanating most notably from Brandenburg-Prussia, reflected pietistic and early Enlightenment values of the late seventeenth century. It argued traditionally that monarchs were appointed by God, but construed the breadth and purpose of political power in a new way. It posited that rulers exist to create prosperous, well-run states composed of pious, disciplined individuals who served God all the more effectively by pursuing order, hard work, and public service. The Prussian vision of Polizeistaat construed a ruler's power as "absolute," but constrained by service, duty, and obligation. The monarch was "first servant of the state" and all social forces united to improve social welfare, state power, and social discipline. Such rulers pursued cameralist and mercantilist policies to improve the life of their people, promoting population growth, economic dynamism, and expansion.
Instrumentally, in Prussia, the vision was carried out by co-opting the nobility, empowering the bureaucracy, and reforming with law—decrees and ordinances regulated social life, public health and education, taxation, trade, and military organization. In Russia, the Polizeistaat vision was implicitly radical in that it implicitly embraced change and progress, in contrast to Muscovite ideology's focus on tradition and stability. In addition, it depended upon the cooperation of "intermediary bodies" in society—corporate groups such as nobility, bureaucracy, professionals, bourgeoisie, clerics, municipal leadership, guilds, and the like. Russia, by and large lacking such corporate groups, struggled to effect such social mobilization. In the realm of ideology, however, Polizeistaat secular theory complemented Orthodox traditions that political power was sanctioned by God and constituted a perhaps more instrumentalized version of late seventeenth-century Enlightenment pursuit of reason and social harmony through political power.
Central among Peter I's ideologues were Ukrainian-educated clerics, most notably, Feofan Prokopovich and Stefan Javorskij, who, as Zhivov argued, adapted these trends of European Enlightenment thinking to Orthodoxy's focus on the sacred origins of political power. Others, such as Petr Shafirev and European military advisors, contributed more decidedly secular writings and ideas. The result was an explosion of political themes and display to promote an energized vision of ruler, state, and empire. A panoply of genres—written and material—promoted this program: learned manifestos, probably primarily intended for the European audience; lawcodes and decrees annotated with narrative commentary to explain their purpose; sermons and panegyrics; the built environment; dress, festival, ritual; parodies of religious symbolism and belief. Petrine ideologists combined religious and secular justifications of power: Feofan Prokopovich, for example, in defending the new law of succession by appointment ("The Justice of the Monarch's Will," 1722), drew on Orthodox theology (political power is appointed by God), natural law, and Grotius' conservative reading of social contract. Petrine decrees explicitly broke with Muscovy's vision of society as a godly community and political power as intended to preserve tradition and achieve Edenic harmony; rather, they proclaimed the ruler's complete, secular power. The Military Articles of 1716 declared: "His Majesty is an autocratic monarch who is not obliged to answer for his acts to anyone in the world; but he holds the might and the power to administer his states and lands as a Christian monarch, in accordance with his wishes and best opinions." Prokopovich's manifesto on imperial succession confidently asserted, "For the monarch's statutes and laws are perfectly confirmed by the Power Above and require no aid from the reasoning of the teachers."
Peter I's ideologues promoted a more activist model of the ruler. They declared that the ruler was valued primarily for his achievements, and the political elite was to be celebrated for merit and achievement, not genealogy. Richard Wortman argues that they even transformed the basis of sovereign legitimacy—only a ruler who transforms his realm constantly is legitimate. Ubiquitous models of Petrine ideology became the martial power of Mars and the tempering justice, wisdom, and culture (as well as bravery) ofMinerva; their statues and images appear in buildings, parks, and rituals across Peter I's new capital (Figure 13.2).
Peter I also abandoned much of the religious court ritual that had occupied previous tsars (doing so, notably, only after his mother had died in 1694 in deference to her), replacing it with secular events such as triumphal processions through gates adorned with Roman gods and symbols. Court ritual followed a European model of banquets, weddings, and dances staged for a newly European- ized elite; engravings of such festivities were published in Russian and Dutch. Famously, Peter I abandoned traditional Russian dress for him and his men in favor of European coats, breeches, and boots, and mandated ball gowns with revealing decolletage and the latest in coiffeurs for women of the court. Even more famously, perhaps, with vicious parody and rituals of humiliation Peter undermined traditional authority figures (clerics, boyars) and forged a comraderie of boon companions dedicated to his transforming project. Peter, in other words, used all possible media to create his new state and elite.
In addition to statuary depicting Mars and Minerva, portraits of the ruler projected new images (Figure 13.3). Peter commissioned dozens of portraits of himself, some celebrating his imperial power or military victories, others depicting love and affection, implicitly undermining clan-based practices of marriage politics and foregrounding the individual. Like Tudor and Ottoman rulers a century earlier, Peter lavishly distributed miniatures of himself, which noblemen and women wore ostentatiously as brooches when they had their own portraits done.
Brashly emulating their European rivals, Peter and his advisors devised a new terminology of rule—after his victory in the Great Northern War, in 1721 Peter claimed Roman titles of "Father of the Fatherland" and "Emperor"; observing the king of Prussia being called "the Great," he had the Senate declare him the same. New imperial regalia were designed on the European model—thrones, orbs, scepters, and crowns.