Anisimov Time of Petrine reforms

Anisimov E.V. Time of Peter's reforms. L.: Lenizdat, 1989. S. 16-70.

Father of the Fatherland

CONTACTING early years life of an extraordinary king, you involuntarily strive to find early evidence of Peter's originality on the banks of the notorious river of time, and therefore you especially carefully examine his study books, first letters, and notes.

But nothing tells us about the coming genius. The boy, born on the day of Isaac of Dalmatia, May 30, 1672, was no different from his many brothers and sisters. The marriage of Alexei Mikhailovich with Natalya Kirillovna Naryshkina, concluded on January 22, 1671, was the second for the 40-year-old tsar. From a previous marriage, with Maria Ilinichnaya Miloslavskaya, 13 children were born, among whom were

Fedor, Ivan and Sophia. In 1676, Alexei Mikhailovich died, passing the throne to the eldest of his sons - Fedor Alekseevich, a sickly and frail young man. Fedor did not rule long - at the end of April 1682 he died. At the council of the highest dignitaries of the state, the fate of the throne is decided in favor of not the next oldest son of Alexei Mikhailovich - Ivan, but 10-year-old Peter. This unexpected decision was caused both by the active intrigues of the Naryshkins, who followed the young queen into the palace, and by the fact thata living, healthy boy won a lot in comparison with his older brother Ivan, who, as it were, bore the features of degeneration. It is possible that the realization of this fact, in addition to the political struggle, influenced the responsible decision of the Boyar Duma to break the tradition of transferring the throne in a direct male descending line from the eldest (Fedor) to the youngest (Ivan).

However, the Naryshkin group underestimated the enemy. The Miloslavskys, led by the imperious, ambitious Princess Sophia, managed to arouse the discontent of the archers and, with their help, on May 15, 1682, carry out a bloody coup d'état. A triumvirate was established on the throne: Ivan joined Peter, and co-ruler as regent was proclaimed

Sophia - the situation for Peter in the political sense is quite a dead end. The widowed Empress Natalya Kirillovna left the Kremlin Palace with all her household members and settled in Preobrazhensky, one of the suburban residences that surrounded what was then Moscow.

All these events, which took place independently of the will and desires of Peter, became, as it were, the background of the initial years of the life of the future reformer of Russia, and they also determined much of the extraordinary that subsequently made up his bright personality.

According to the magnificent books of Ivan Zabelin “The Life of the Moscow Tsars” and “The Life of the Moscow Queens”, we can quite realistically imagine the life of the court, the royal residence. In short, the Kremlin of the 17th century is a world of ceremonies and conventions, formed over centuries of stereotypes of behavior, a closed system sanctified by traditions, which on the whole contributed little to the development of individuality. Not a single public event with the participation of the king could not do without observing rather strict ceremonial conditions. The autocrat's trips outside the Kremlin - and these, as a rule, were charitable trips to the surrounding monasteries or churches - were perceived as events of national importance. Even the exit of the king on the ice of the Moscow River on January 6

rya to the “Jordan” - a ritual hole - on the traditional feast of the blessing of water was arranged as an important event and was called a “campaign”, and in the Kremlin - according to the terminology of those times “at the top” - there remained a special commission of boyars and other duma officials appointed by the tsar in order to during the absence of the king, the state "did not decrease and there was no loss."

By the force of political circumstances, Peter was, as it were, thrown out of this system. Of course, he appeared in the Kremlin on official holidays and audiences, but all this was alien to him and even, knowing the attitude of his paternal relatives towards him, hostile. Preobrazhenskoye, with its life as a summer royal dacha - a residence surrounded by fields, forests, gave him something that greatly contributed to the development of his abilities - the freedom to spend time with a minimum of compulsory classes and a maximum of games, which, as always happens with boys, were of a military nature, over the years, they became more complicated, and since their participants were not dolls, but living people, the educational and developing value of these games was enormous. Already here the natural data inherent in Peter appeared: liveliness of perception, restlessness and inexhaustible energy, passion and selfless enthusiasm for the game, imperceptibly turning into business. Thanks to this, the “amusing” soldiers and the English boat found in the barn did not remain only toys, but became the beginning of a future grandiose deed that transformed Russia.

Another circumstance is important. Very close to Preobrazhensky was the so-called German settlement - Kokuy, a settlement of foreigners who came to Russia from different European countries. According to the tradition of that time, this settlement of merchants, diplomats, landsknechts was separated from the city by a fence. Kokuy was a kind of model of Europe, where Catholics and Protestants, Germans and French, English and Scots lived side by side - just as closely as in Europe. This strange world of Kokui, unlike Moscow, occupied the inquisitive attention of Peter initially, probably as a rarity, a curiosity, attracted by its dissimilarity with the world of the Kremlin, Preobrazhensky. Acquaintance with foreigners - interesting, educated people Franz Lefort, Patrick Gordon, unusual things, customs, multilingualism, and then the first intimate impressions in the house of the wine merchant Mons, where his beautiful daughter lived

Anna, - all this made it easier for Peter (whose ancestors washed their hands from a silver jug ​​after the ceremony of “admission to the hand” of a foreign ambassador) to overcome the invisible, but lasting psychological barrier, dividing two worlds alien to each other - Orthodox Rus' and "God-opposing" Europe, a barrier that is still so difficult to overcome.

The coming to power of Peter in the summer of 1689 was the resolution of a political crisis that had long been ripening, caused by the unnatural state of the actual dual power. But, as in May 1682, in August 1689, Peter was to a large extent driven by the course of events, not directing them. Favorable circumstances contributed to the overthrow of Sophia and the almost bloodless transfer of power of the autocrat to him.

At that time, he did not yet need this power as a lever for reforms, their ideas had not yet matured in Peter's mind. That is why Russia's “real” 17th century lasted another ten years, exactly coinciding with the calendar century. But even this decade was not in vain for Peter - his genius matured so that at the end of this decade, on the verge of two centuries, he would throw out a whole stream of ideas that would transform the country.

It is necessary to single out three important events of those years that influenced the formation of Peter the reformer. Firstly, this is a trip to Arkhangelsk in 1693-1694. The usual "amusing" trip to the city on the White Sea, undoubtedly, became a major event in the life of the young tsar. For the first time he saw the real sea, real ships, made his first voyage in a restless and dangerous element, so unlike the expanse of ponds near Moscow and Lake Pleshcheyevo. This gave a powerful impetus to fantasy, a dream of the sea appeared for Russia, a genuine cult of the ship, the sea element, arose. From that Arkhangelsk time, as M. Bogoslovsky wrote, “the noise of the sea waves, the sea air, the sea element draws him to himself and over the years will become a necessary need for him. He will develop an organic longing for the sea.”

1 .

Indeed, how did it happen that the sea and ships took a special place in the life of this man, all of whose ancestors were born and died, seeing only the hilly expanses of the Great Russian Plain in front of them? Like a hen who has brought up a duckling that swims away from her, Peter's mother Natalya Kirillovna worried on the shore,

sending alarming letters to Arkhangelsk one after another: “Do, my light, mercy over me, come to us, our father, do not hesitate. Hey, my light, great is my sadness that I don’t see you, my light, joy. You wrote to me, my joy, that you want all the ships of the giver, and you, my light, saw which ones came before: why do you, my joy, those ... giver? Do not despise, father, my light, my prayer, about which I prayed above this. You wrote, my joy, to me that you were at sea, and you, my light, promised me that it was not to be bad...”

2 .

But nothing could be changed, the ships, the sea became the fate of Peter, they were with him in reality and even in a dream. The surviving records of dreams that the king made already in mature years, reflect this all-consuming passion of Peter: “1714, from November 9 to 10: I had a dream: [a ship] in green flags, in St. Petersburg ... I had a dream, while they entered Pomerania: that I was on a galliot, on which the masts with sails were not in proportion, on which the galliot went and turned it back on its side and the water choked, from which they fell and swam to the other side, and back to the house, and then drove off, and ordered to pour out the water ”

3 .

The experienced eye of the old sailor and shipbuilder could not fail to notice even in a dream the incorrect sailing equipment of the ship on which Morpheus placed it. After that, it becomes clear the respect that Peter felt for the painting of the Dutch marine painter Adam Stilo, who did not allow himself artistic liberties when depicting spars and rigging,

Peter's turner Andrey Nartov, in his memoirs, tells of the tsar's delight at the sight of the maneuvers of the English fleet in 1698:

that, as if from joy, without being ashamed, after this he told the commanding admiral, along with other naval officers, that in this case he prefers the title of English admiral to the title of Tsar of Russia. Toliko was in love with Tsar Peter in the naval service! But I know for sure, since I heard from the lips of the monarchs that he said this: “If I were not king, I would like to be a British admiral.”

English Captain D. Perry, who had already known Peter well in Russia, writes about the same thing: was in a cheerful mood, he often announced to his boyars that the life of an English admiral was incomparably happier life Russian Tsar"

4 .

He retained this enthusiastic attitude towards the sea and ships until the end of his days. Not a single descent of a ship or major sea voyages could do without his participation. He was bored, cut off from his beloved maritime business. In the spring of 1711, Peter went on the Prut campaign, from which he wrote to Menshikov, who informed him about the beginning of navigation in the Baltic: “I thank you for informing there about the successful start of spring and the withdrawal of the fleet, however, not without sadness, for I am deprived of both fleets.” In another letter, regarding the early start of navigation, he jokes: “Why did the Neva stand for only three months, then I think that Neptunus is very angry with me, that in my time he never pleased me with such a short winter, and although I wholeheartedly I always abide, but he is very averse to me ... "

5

I think that the passion for the sea is not an accident, not a whim, that there was some kind of elusive correspondence,

sound inner world Peter the image, the idea of ​​a moving ship - a symbol of the rational organization of the world - the one that Peter aspired to in his own ways, as well as the struggle against the resisting, blind and powerful element of will. A little lower I will dwell on this in more detail.

Second important event those years were the Azov campaigns

1695-1696 - war with Turkey for access to Sea of ​​Azov. Here, on the southern borders, in these years there was a dress rehearsal of those events that unfolded on a different, more grandiose and dramatic scale at the beginning of the 18th century already on the western borders. Initial failures with the capture of Azov, the construction of a fleet in Voronezh, finally military victory over a serious rival, the construction of a new city on the shores of the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov, different from traditional Russian cities - Taganrog - we then meet all this on the banks of the Neva and the Baltic. For Peter, the Azov campaigns were the first military school, which, although he subsequently evaluated it skeptically, nevertheless brought him undoubted benefit. The experience of leading a large army, the siege and assault of a strong fortress were not in vain for the military genius of Peter. No less important is the fact that here, under the walls of Azov, the idea of ​​his place, “position”, and role in the life of Russia entered into the mind of Peter. It was from the Azov campaigns, and not from the moment of accession, as the Soviet historian N.I. Pavlenko rightly noted. Peter subsequently counted his “service” on the throne 6 . It was the idea of ​​serving Russia, as he understood it, that became the main core of his life, filled for him with the highest meaning all his actions and deeds, even the most unseemly and dubious from the point of view of the then morality.

Finally, the third event that influenced the formation of the personality of the future reformer of Russia was his long trip abroad as part of the Great Embassy in 1696-1697. Peter rode not as a member of the delegation, but as an escort, among other nobles and servants. This gave him considerable freedom, allowed him to get acquainted in detail with many aspects of the life of Holland, England and other countries. And the point was, of course, not only in teaching the skills of a shipbuilder in the Dutch and English shipyards. For the first time, Peter saw Western European civilization in all its military and cultural power, felt its spirit, meaning and strength.

He brought from Europe not only knowledge, impressions, and labor corns, but also the idea that he formulated for himself with the utmost simplicity: in order to make Russia as strong as the great powers of Europe, it is necessary to adopt everything necessary from the West as soon as possible. It was then that Peter's orientation towards the Western European model of life finally took shape, and this automatically meant a denial of the life of old Russia, a consistent and sometimes bitter rejection, the destruction of the old, hated, that which was associated with enemies: Sophia, archers, boyars.

One curious piece of evidence dates back to the time of the Great Embassy - a letter from the Hanoverian Princess Sophia, in which she very naturally conveys her impressions of the meeting with the young Russian Tsar on August 11, 1697 in the city of Koppenbrück. This letter is a living document of its time - especially valuable because its author

free from bias and literary influences, which inevitably experienced a contemporary who met with Peter later, when the fame of his genius and victories spread widely throughout Europe.

“The king is a tall man with a beautiful face, well-built, with great quickness of mind, quick in answers and determinants, it’s only a pity that with such natural benefits he lacks complete secular refinement. We soon sat down at the table. Our chamberlain Koppenstein became a marshal and presented e.v. napkin. The tsar did not understand what this meant, because in Brandenburg they still use washstands and towels. E. in. sat down between me and my daughter, and next to us he seated an interpreter each. We were very cheerful, behaved freely, spoke freely, and soon became extremely friendly. My daughter and the tsar even exchanged snuffboxes: it bore the tsar's monogram, and my daughter cherishes it like a kleinod. True, we sat at the table for a very long time, but we spent the time extremely pleasantly, because the king was very cheerful and talked incessantly. My daughter made her Italians sing. The king liked it, but he noticed that he did not quite like this kind of music. I asked if the king likes hunting? He answered that his father was a passionate hunter, but from childhood he had acquired an irresistible passion for navigation and fireworks, and that he himself loved to build ships. He showed us his hands and let us feel how hardened they were from work. After dinner, the king ordered to call

their violinists and we began to dance. He taught us how to dance in Moscow, which is much nicer and more beautiful than the Polish dance. We danced until four o'clock in the morning... [Peter] is an absolutely extraordinary person. It cannot be described or imagined, but must be seen. He has a glorious heart and truly noble feelings. He didn’t drink at all with us, but his people are terrible, how we left.”

In the next letter, describing a new meeting with Peter and noting in it “a lot of good qualities and an abyss of mind”, the princess gives a funny detail: “But in the dances, they say, our corsets seemed to them bones, and the king seemed to say: “What damn strong bones at

German”” 7 .

In these letters, those traits of Peter's personality are noted, to pay attention to which later became a kind of textbook duty of memoirists, and then historians. However, wishing to give a complete picture, it is impossible to avoid further presentation of such notes, characteristics, observations, because they reflect the truly extraordinary features of this autocrat of the “weight of Rus'”, which are not at all inherent in his contemporaries - the crowned heads of the West.

The first thing that observers paid attention to and what struck them most about Peter was his extraordinary appearance, simplicity of lifestyle and democracy in dealing with people of different strata of society.

habits and traits, wrote: “His Royal Majesty is tall, slender

of build, with a somewhat swarthy complexion, he has regular and sharp features, which give him a majestic and cheerful appearance and show in him a fearless spirit. He likes to walk around in naturally curly hair and wears a small mustache, which is very fitting for him. His Majesty is usually in such a simple dress that if someone does not know him, he will in no way take the great sovereign for a post ... He does not tolerate a large retinue with him, and I often happened to see him accompanied by only one or two batmen, and sometimes without any servants” 8 .

He behaved in exactly the same way both abroad and at home. The Swedish diplomat Preis, who met with Peter in 1716-1717 in Amsterdam, among the special features of the king noted: “He is surrounded by completely simple people, including his Jewish cross-baptist and shipmaster, who eat with him at the same table. He often eats a lot. The wives and widows of the sailors who were in his service and did not receive the money following them constantly pursue him with their requests for payment ... ”

9 .

He could appear in any corner of St. Petersburg, go into any house, sit down at the table and not disdain the simplest food. He did not remain indifferent to folk entertainment and amusements. Here are just two excerpts from the diary of Berchholtz, chamber junker of the Duke of Holstein Karl-Friedrich, dated April 10 and November 5, 1724, illustrating the above quite well: swings that are arranged there for the common people on the occasion of the holiday, which had already happened once a few days before”; “A German baker who lives next door

of the Imperial Winter Palace, there was a wedding ... The emperor, probably in passing, having heard music and curious to see how the weddings of this class of foreigners are doing, quite unexpectedly entered the baker's house with some of his people, ordered two special tables to be laid there, one for himself , another for his retinue, and watched wedding ceremonies and dances for more than three hours. During all this time he was unusually cheerful.

One can imagine the astonishment of the foreign government

who had made a long journey to Russia and almost immediately met with an extraordinary ruler. On November 30, 1709, the Danish ambassador Just Yul recorded in his diary a meeting with Peter in Narva:

“As soon as I introduced myself to the king with due respect, he asked me, however, through the intermediary of the interpreter, about the health of my most merciful king, I answered him with a proper expression of gratitude. Then he inquired whether I had served in the Navy, to which I replied in the affirmative. Following this, he immediately sat down at the table, invited me to sit down beside him, and immediately began talking to me without an interpreter (in a report dated December 12, Just wrote that

Peter "began to talk about things in the marine part." - E.A. ), because he himself spoke Dutch so clearly that I could easily understand him: for his part, he understood that I was answering him. The king immediately entered into such a friendly conversation with me that it seemed that he was my equal and had known me for many years. Now the health of my most merciful sovereign and king was drunk. The king personally handed me a glass to drink this cup. Under him there was neither a chancellor, nor a vice-chancellor, nor any Privy Councilor, there was only a retinue of 8 or 10 people. In the same way, he did not carry with him any travel accessories - what to eat on, what to drink in and what to sleep on. He had several boyars and princes with him, whom he keeps as jesters. They yelled, shouted, blew, whistled, sang and smoked in the very room where the king was. And he talked first with me, then with someone else, ignoring their yelling and cries, although not infrequently they turned directly to him and shouted into his ears.

The king is very tall, wears his own short curly brown hair and rather large mustaches, is simple in dress and outward receptions, but very shrewd and intelligent. At dinner at the chief commandant's, the tsar had with him a sword taken from Field Marshal Reinshild in the Battle of Poltava. Speaking generally, the king, as Curtius' addendum on Alexander the Great says: "he asserted that anxious cares for his body befit women who have nothing more than this, but if he manages to acquire valor, then he will be handsome enough." He told me about the Battle of Poltava, about the plague in Prussia and Poland...”

10

A curious little-known testimony about Peter, which was left by Sergeant Nikita Kashin. Of course, the eyewitness account recorded many years later is smoothed over by time and erased by numerous repetitions, but nevertheless it quite accurately conveys the image, lifestyle, habits of Peter, noticed by a simple soldier who had seen the king very close for many years. This story is fully verified by other sources. The mention of the voice of Peter, which is not found anywhere else, is also curious - we are so used to it that the voices of people of the distant past are not heard to us through the thickness of the centuries, and history often seems dumb. “... During mass, the apostle himself read: his voice was hoarse and not loud. He was dark-skinned, somewhat round-shouldered in height. When I walked from the pier to the church (Trinity. - E. A.), then he was always visible from the people: only his giant tsarets was half a yard taller than him. On solemn days he came by rope, at the pier, in all attire, he waited for the argamak, which was led to the church. At the end of the service, the sovereign went with all the generals and ministers to the Piteysky house near the bridge at the Peter and Paul Gates. He himself drank anise vodka and regaled others. In the afternoon, at a certain hour, all ministers, generals and foreign residents gathered at the Post Office, where the sovereign

he treated me to dinner, and in the evening fiery fun with various images: this never happened in the palace.

Of particular interest is the section of Kashin's memoirs “The Home Life of Peter the Great” - a fairly complete story about the life of the tsar: “Sovereign Peter the Great got up every day two hours before dawn or more, judging by the time. He entered the turnery, sharpened various things made of bone and wood, and at the first hour of the day, that is, at dawn, he went out to

building inspections and more. Every day there was an order for carriages along the roads, and at the pier there was a boat and a rope, which waited until evening. Where the sovereign would go, no one knew about it. Especially in the Senate, he rarely spent a day, but he often said to petitioners:“Come, brothers, tomorrow to the Senate, we will consider the case there.” No one was allowed to enter his Majesty’s house either with a petition or with visits on simple or solemn days. Only Count Fyodor Matveevich Admiral Apraksin had access to him there, His Serene Highness Prince Menshikov and Chancellor Gavrila Ivanovich Golovkin. In food, the sovereign was moderate and loved hot food. The kitchen was in the palace against the wall with a dining room: a window was made in the wall into which food was served. After dinner, the sovereign drove off to rest on a yacht. From there for a walk went to St. Petersburg Island, walked along the rows in Gostiny Dvor, asked the price of goods, reviewed them so that everything was decent ... In summer and autumn, along the prospect (Nevsky Prospekt. - E. A.) and along other streets, Emperor Peter the Great went on foot: in summer in a caftan, in a black velvet cap, and in autumn - in a gray German cloth frock coat, in a white sheepskin Kalmyk hat turned inside out. did the same. And if someone stopped, the sovereign immediately approached him and, taking the floor, asked: “What are you doing?” Hearing that he stopped for his majesty, the sovereign hit him softly on the head with his hand, saying: “Do not stop, where are you going!" 11 .

Indeed, it is known that Peter deliberately avoided widespread manifestations of that special semi-divine reverence for the personality of the Russian tsar, which was surrounded from time immemorial by his predecessors on the throne. Moreover, it seems that Peter did it deliberately, defiantly violating the accepted

and time-honored etiquette. At the same time, it would be wrong to think that by such a disregard for customs, he sought to destroy the veneration of the supreme power, to question its fullness and sacredness for subjects. In his attitude to the greatness and significance of the power of the autocrat, there is a different approach based on the principles of rationalism, which will be discussed in detail below.

Peter's demeanor, so striking to observers, seemed to some to be a whim, a whim, to others - especially among the people - a sure sign of his "substitution", falsity. Meanwhile, the restless, active in his manifestations, the king chose the only convenient, natural way of life for him, impossible with the observance of traditional ritual norms. It is impossible to imagine Peter's communication with his subjects on the streets of St. Petersburg if, according to tradition, when he appeared, they would fall into the mud and be afraid to raise their heads.

A decree of 1722 has been preserved, which apparently served as an addition to the Military Charter. It said: “Though the subjects should pay respect to their sovereign, even more, they should pay ceremonies to him, but it’s not always necessary to repair ceremonies for him, but about others, ask whether to repair; others, in the case, should be set aside, as it should be: when he commands in the army and during the approach of the enemy under guard they will raise, with the banners of the hider and thereby let the enemy know about his person and so on, in this case Not only is it not convenient, but it is harmful to eat.” Listing other types of greetings for the emperor, Peter writes that it is necessary to ask him first, because “the performance of all the soldiers with a gun in the ranks is not always necessary, because sometimes he wants his passage to be not very loud, sometimes for the sake of frequent use, he will get bored”

12 .

In the history of our country, we know very few rulers who could ever be "bored" by the magnificent ritual of semi-divine veneration and worship. Of course, the extraordinary behavior of the king - "the worker on the throne" - could not but arouse deep sympathy for his personality from his descendants, who more often encountered just a different manner of behavior, a different way of life of later rulers, sometimes deprived of even a small fraction of genius,

inherent in Peter. But what is the essence, the meaning of such behavior of the king?

To begin with, let's not be unduly deceived by the democratism of the first emperor. Not everything is so simple and unambiguous. In the pre-war film "Peter the Great" there is one episode that is remarkable in its expressiveness. A foreign diplomat, who first came to the Peter's assembly, was amazed to see Peter at the table, surrounded by skippers and merchants. He asks P. P. Shafirov standing next to him: “They say the king is simple?” To this the Vice-Chancellor replies with a smile: “The Sovereign is simple in handling."

It is well known that at the court of Peter there existed, to put it in “high calm”, the cult of Bacchus, or, more simply, rather ugly drunkenness. Official, religious and other festivities were often accompanied by many days of drinking bouts, in which all the major figures of the state took part. "Serving Bacchus" was considered a kind of valor, which was customary to boast, waiting for the approval of the king. Here is one of the typical letters on this subject. Prince V.V. Dolgoruky in 1711 wrote from Thorn to the ill Peter: “On the day of Victoria of Levengaupt (that is, the victory at Lesnaya in 1708. - E.A.) your health drank so powerfully, everyone was drunk. Such were the fireworks, as if they had not seen ... And you, tea, are envious that you can’t be drunk on medicine, however, I remember, although not everyone, but someone was drunk. Feel free to describe it to us.”

13 .

Peter himself contributed a lot to such an attitude towards the ugly drinking bacchanalia, which became characteristic of the life of the court and was absolutely not characteristic of the life of the court of his successors, much less his predecessors, with the exception, perhaps, of the oprichny court of Ivan the Terrible, where ugly bacchanalia sometimes had a bloody tinge of drunken butchery.

* .

There are many explanations for this, regrettable by modern standards, phenomenon. These are the well-known traditions of karna-

__________________

* Of course, nothing like this happened under Peter. Curious is his letter to F. M. Apraksin, which he wrote on March 16, 1703, the day after a grand drinking bout in the admiral's house: I ask for this for everyone, if there is any kind of annoyance to anyone, forgiveness, and even more so from those who were at parting, and may not remember this every case.

rampant, Christmastide culture - sprees were still not commonplace, but for the most part they were associated with holidays, masquerades, this is not particularly high level everyday culture and ideas about recreation. But in this case, our attention is drawn to something else. Just Yul, who was forced to often attend such meetings and drink against his will, wrote: those who vomit. But the Tsar himself rarely drinks more than one or at most two bottles of wine, so I rarely saw him drunk as a skunk. Meanwhile, he forces the rest of the guests to get drunk to the point that they can’t see or hear anything, and then the king begins to chat with them, trying to find out what is on everyone’s mind. Quarrels and quarrels between drunks are also to the heart of the king, since from their mutual reproaches their theft, fraud, and cunning are revealed to him.

In another place, Yul noted: “The tsar willingly admits various people into his society, and it is the duty of jesters to get officers and other employees drunk in his presence, so that from their drunken conversations with each other and squabbles he can quietly learn about their fraudulent antics and then take away their ability to steal or punish them.”

Needless to say, such a manner of communication clearly does not fit into the behavior of the great king, known to us from other sources. I think there is no contradiction here. Peter was convinced that many moral norms could be neglected in the name of state goals. This was the basis for the institution of fiscal management and, more broadly, the culture of denunciations that flourished under Peter. Moreover, the morality of a private, "particular" person did not resemble, according to the king, the morality of a ruler who lives in the name of the highest goals of the state. The thoughts in Peter's notebook illustrate this. Peter commented on the expression “Do not repay the enemy when even slyness thinks, for conscience is more of a returner than retribution”: , for the fighter is due, and when he passes, do not repay. But this is due to particular persons, A

ruler in a very different way, for they must always take revenge and return the offended from

enemy to one's own country."

But this is only one side of Petrine democracy. Much more important is the other, which had far-reaching consequences. The same Yul wrote on December 10, 1709: “In the afternoon I went to the Admiralty shipyard to be present at the raising of the stems on a 50-gun ship, but that day one stem was raised, as the arrows were too weak to raise the stem. The king, as the chief shipmaster (a position for which he receives a salary), disposed of everything, participated with others in the work and, where necessary, chopped with an ax, which he wielded more skillfully than the weight of the other carpenters present there. The officers and other people who were at the shipyard were drinking and shouting every minute.

There was no shortage of boyars turned into jesters, on the contrary, a large number of them gathered here. It is noteworthy that, having made all the necessary orders to raise the stem, the tsar took off his hat in front of the Admiral General who was standing there, asked him whether to start, and only after receiving an affirmative answer put it on again, and then set to work. The tsar shows such respect and obedience not only to the admiral, but also to all senior persons in the service, for for the time being he himself is only a shautbenacht. Perhaps this may seem ridiculous, but, in my opinion, this course of action is based on a sound principle: the tsar, by his own example, wants to show other Russians how, in official matters, they should be respectful and obedient towards their superiors” 14.

Not only did Peter serve, he worked as a carpenter, he was also a “subject” of the clownish “Prince-Caesar” F. Yu. Romodanovsky, to whom he wrote petitions, petitions, addressed him as a subject to the ruler. We note right away that Romodanovsky and others perceived this unambiguously as a game, and Peter's letters of request were understood as royal decrees subject to mandatory execution. Here, of course, Simeon Bekbulatovich comes to mind - Vassal Khan of Kasimov, to whom Ivan the Terrible “transferred” the throne and wrote derogatory petitions under the name “Ivashki”. “Giving” the throne to the puppet, Ivan sought such

way to untie their hands for a new cycle of bloody reprisals against real and imaginary opponents.

Peter, although he respected Ivan, still played other games. Their essence was the performance of "service". “Service” for Peter is a synthetic concept that incorporates both a clear awareness of the duties of each to the state and the sovereign, and their zealous and honest fulfillment, even if it is fraught with a risk to health and life, and unconditional submission to the will of a superior boss (which Yul noted in the above excerpt), and the right to a reward for selfless labor or military feat (his letters to Romodanovsky with gratitude for appropriating next rank). Some perspicacious contemporaries were aware of this, correctly interpreting the behavior of the king as a method of educating his subjects, a method of promoting a new way of life.

The author of notes about Peter, secretary of the Prussian embassy I. Fokkerodt, wrote that the tsar himself “has no advantage over others, but like his comrades with a gun, even with a drum, he will be cured gradually: for this purpose, in this case, he laid down autocratic power into the hands of Prince Romodanovsky, who should promote him to the ranks on a par with other soldiers according to his merits and without the slightest connivance. So, while the aforementioned prince was alive, precisely until 1718, Peter played such a comedy that he received from him a promotion to generals and admirals, which positions he was pleased to assign to himself. This announcement had the effect that the nobles of the most noble families, although not abandoning the prejudice about the dignity of their origin ... nevertheless remained with him in the service and were ashamed to make such claims that could show that they thought they were better than their sovereign ".

Fokkerodt's observations are solid - back in 1705, the English ambassador C. Whitworth wrote: “The tsar, being with his army, is still not its chief, he is only the captain of a bombardment company and bears all the duties of this rank. This is probably done with the aim of setting an example for the higher nobility, so that they, too, would work hard to get acquainted with military affairs, not imagining, as they apparently imagined before, that

one can be born a commander, just as one is born a nobleman or a prince” 15 .

Practically the same is reported in his notes by A. Nartov. Describing Peter’s attitude towards Romodanovsky in public, he writes: “When leaving, Peter the Great sat in a carriage against the prince-caesar, and not next to him, showing his subjects an example of respect and obedience to the highest person. The rank of vice-admiral from the prince-caesar was announced to Tsar Peter Alekseevich, as if the former rear admiral, in the Senate, where the prince-caesar sat in the middle of all the senators on the path and gave an audience to the sovereign when reading the written report of his exploits, as an example, by the way, that the military virtues are obtained solely by merit, and not by breed and happiness” 16 .

It is fundamentally important to note that Peter understood service not simply as conscientious performance of duties and submission to a superior, but as service to the state. It was in this that he saw the meaning and main goal of his life and the life of his subjects. About the role of this factor in assessing the personality of Peter, perhaps, N. I. Pavlenko said better than others: The solidity of the image was given by the idea of ​​serving the state, in which the tsar deeply believed and to which he subordinated his activity, whether it manifested itself in the form of unbridled despotism or boundless selflessness, whether it took place in the military-diplomatic or civil sphere” 17 .

This observation allows us to give an explanation for those actions and actions of Peter, which sometimes, it would seem, clearly contradict his character as an impulsive, lively, impatient person. This was especially evident in diplomatic activity. Suffice it to recall the history of his relations with unfaithful allies - the Danish king Frederick IV, the Polish king and Elector of Saxony August II - the story in which Peter, an outstanding diplomat, showing rare patience, tact, curbing his impulses, managed to achieve the most important goal - to restore after 1706 Northern alliance against Sweden.

The Danish envoy K, who arrived in 1709). Yul sought to obtain help for Denmark from Russia.

these, for which he repeatedly negotiated with Peter. Let's give the floor to Just Yulu himself: “In view of the difficulties with which ... access to the king is sometimes associated, I took advantage of this dinner, at which I sat next to him, in order, according to the order of my most merciful sovereign and king, to talk with him about various things. During this conversation, the king listened to me very favorably and willingly and answered everything that I said to him. However, a well-known person who was with us warned me and assured me that he himself heard the tsar say in Russian to the admiral general that at the present time he really did not want to talk to me about business. But since the order of my king demanded that I communicate with the king without wasting time, I continued the conversation, and he again began to listen to me with the same concentration and attention. Here, knowing positively (having received assurances, as I said above) that at the given moment my speeches were bothering him, I was convinced with the greatest surprise to what extent he knew how to control his face and, no matter how the slightest mine, or even his methods, he betrayed his displeasure or boredom” 18 .

Probably, one should not be surprised at such behavior of the impulsive Peter: the tsar is all attention, since it concerns the interests of the state - what was above all for him.

An unusually capable, hardworking man, he enjoyed the work, especially the one that brought real results, was visible to everyone. In various fields of activity, he was noticeable. As John Perry, an Englishman in the Russian service, wrote, “we can say about him that he himself is quite a soldier and knows what is required of a drummer as well as a general. In addition, he is an engineer, a gunner, a maker of amusing fires, a shipbuilder, a turner, a boatswain, a gunsmith, a blacksmith, and so on; with all this, he himself often works with his own hands and himself observes that in the smallest things, as well as in more important orders, everything is carried out according to his thought” 19 .

Undoubtedly, the personal example of serving the state, which Peter selflessly demonstrated in front of thousands of people on the stocks of the shipyard, scaffolding, the bridge of the ship or on the battlefield, was unusually effective, contagious for some and obligatory for others. Peter was sincerely convinced that kingship was his

service to Russia, that by reigning, he is fulfilling his duty to the state. By his example, he called on all his subjects to fulfill their duties with the same selflessness. Nartov reports: “When he was in Olonets, while drinking martial waters, His Majesty, walking, said to the life doctor Areshkin: “I heal my body with waters, and my subjects with examples” 20 .

The theoretician of absolutism, Archbishop Feofan Prokopovich, put forward a whole concept of the “exemplary, supreme duty” of the tsar in his “service”. The autocrat, according to the idea of ​​Theophanes, is placed at the top of the “ranks”, is the highest “rank”, in which God himself appointed him, entrusting him with the difficult “service” of managing his subjects. Such a divine-bureaucratic concept fully corresponds to the ideas of the creator of the “Table of Ranks”. Reflecting on the “ranks” given by God, Feofan in the famous sermon “The Word on the Day of Alexander Nevsky” (1718) proceeds from general provisions about the service: “... every rank from God is... that most needful and God-pleasant thing, his rank requires: mine for me, yours for you, and tacos for others. Are you a king? Reign ubo, observing that there will be carelessness among the people, and justice in the authorities and how to save the fatherland from enemies. Are you a senator? Remain entirely in that, what useful advice and judgment is not mercenary, not seeing on faces, but pronounce direct and correct. Are you a warrior?..” - etc. 21

The duties of the monarch were set out in more detail in the well-known provisions of “The Truth of the Will of the Monarchs”: “There is a position of kings ... to keep their subjects in carelessness and provide them with every best instruction for piety and honest living, but there will be subjects in carelessness; the tsar should sing, let there be true justice in the state for the protection of the offended from offending subjects to himself; so let there be a strong and skillful army to protect the entire fatherland from enemies. And in order for there to be any better instruction, the king must see that there are skillful teachers, both spiritual and civil, in sufficient numbers. Sovereigns of teaching have a lot of such positions ... From these and other scriptures, there is clearly a royal dignity, if there is a duty to preserve, protect, contain, instruct and correct your subjects in any carelessness.

Peter clearly outlined his duties in a 1719 speech addressed to the nobility after the execution of Tsarevich Alexei: subjects through a speedy and righteous retribution to each in justice. The duty of the monarch himself is to lead his troops into battle and punish evil in the person of people who are the most highly placed by birth or wealth, just like in the person of the last peasant.

Of course, for the successful implementation of these basic duties of the monarch, he must, according to Theophanes, have absolute power, namely: “extremely real legislative power, extreme court wear ... but the most not subject to any law” 22 .

Attempts to justify the duties of the monarch and to formulate accurately enough the limits, or rather, the infinity of his power, are the result of new trends that affected the political culture of Russia in the late 17th - early 18th centuries.

Feofan's thoughts about the "service" and power of the monarch were not original, they were derived from the ideas that lived in the legal and philosophical thought of Western Europe at that time. This is what needs to be said in more detail.

Of the many familiar symbols of the Petrine era, it is necessary to highlight a ship under sail, with a skipper on the bridge - Pushkin immediately comes to mind:

This skipper was that glorious skipper,

By whom our earth moved,

Who gave a mighty sovereign run

Rudder of the native ship.

Why a ship? I think that for Peter it was also not only a vehicle for transporting goods on the water surface. The ship - Peter's eternal love - was for him a symbol of an organized structure calculated to the inch, the material embodiment of human thought, a complex movement at will reasonable person. Moreover, the ship for Peter is a kind of model of an ideal society, the best form of organization based on knowledge of the laws of nature in the eternal struggle of man with the blind elements.

Behind this symbol is a whole layer of culture, the world of intellectual values ​​of the era of rationalism, the European 17th century, the successor of the Renaissance of the 16th century and the predecessor of the Enlightenment of the 18th century. A galaxy of outstanding thinkers formed a circle of ideas, created an atmosphere that poets, artists, scientists, and statesmen breathed. Among the rulers of minds are Bacon, Spinoza, Locke, Gassendi, Hobbes, Leibniz. These ideas began to actively penetrate into Russia along with the reforms of Peter, and the names of the great philosophers of the age of rationalism were not alien to the Russian ear.

What are these ideas? Simplifying, we can highlight a few of the most important.

The man of the 17th century, as never before, felt the power of experimental knowledge, in which he saw a means of achieving dominance over nature. In this struggle, a special place was given to the organization human society more specifically, the state. It was conceived as an institution that arose at the will of free people who concluded, for their own safety, contract, by which they transferred their rights to the state. The state, therefore, turned out to be a purely human institution, a person could improve it depending on the general goals that he set for himself. The state, Hobbes believed, is built like a house (like a ship, we will add, following a given image). This idea was often repeated in different versions, because it was a weapon that supplanted the medieval idea of ​​the immutability and God-givenness of state forms.

A derivative of this idea was another - the state is an ideal tool, a universal institution for educating people, turning them into conscious, virtuous citizens useful to society. The levers of the state are laws and organization. Law, like the state itself, is a creation of man, and by improving the laws, achieving their implementation with the help of institutions, one can achieve prosperity, achieve universal happiness, the universal good - a vague goal, but always attracting people.

Mankind, emerging from the obscurantist twilight of the Middle Ages, seemed to have finally found the key to happiness - it is worth formulating laws correctly, improving organization, achieving unquestioning, universal and precise execution of state initiatives.

donations. (Let's note in parentheses that we feed on these illusions too, developing some “universal” laws like the “Law on Youth”.) It was no coincidence that the influence of dualism, a doctrine in which God was given the role of the first impulse, was strengthened in society. Further, dualists believed, nature and man develop according to their own, natural laws, which only have to be discovered and recorded. Hence this surprising for us optimistic naive faith of the people of the 17th-18th centuries in the unlimited forces of a rational person who builds according to the drawings, on the basis of experimental knowledge, his house, ship, city, state. This time had its own hero - Robinson Crusoe, not so much a literary image as a symbol of the age of rationalism, which showed the whole world that a person can overcome all hardships and misfortunes, believing in his own strength, relying on empirical knowledge.

It is also important to note that mechanism, or rather, mechanistic determinism, prevailed in the assessment of social phenomena and institutions. Outstanding achievements in mathematics and natural sciences created the illusion that it is possible to interpret life in all its manifestations as a mechanical process. With equal zeal, this approach was applied to physiology, psychology, society, the state, because, according to the teachings of Descartes on universal mathematics (mathesis universalis ), all sciences were considered as a kind of mathematics - the only reliable and, which seemed especially important then, devoid of mystic knowledge.

Without taking into account all these ideas, one can misunderstand both Peter's intentions and his life concept. Of course, it would be a great exaggeration to think that Peter possessed the entire sum of the philosophical knowledge of the era. He was not a philosopher, probably not even philosophically minded. But one cannot ignore the wide dissemination (even if in a popular, simplified form) of these ideas in the public consciousness, their role in the formation of the spiritual atmosphere in which thinking people of that time lived. We must not forget that Peter was familiar with Leibniz, perhaps with Locke, and finally, one must take into account the close interest that the reformer tsar showed in the works of lawyers and statesmen G. Grotius, S. Pufendorf. The book of the latter “On the position of a person and a citizen” was translated

dena under Peter into Russian and was highly valued by him. It is important that in these authoritative works the philosophical ideas of the age of rationalism were refracted in relation to the state. The correspondence between Leibniz and Peter is not accidental, where the problem of state reforms was touched upon and where Leibniz gives the image of the state in the form of a sentry. mechanism, all the wheels of which act in perfect engagement. There is no doubt that this image was close to the worldview of Peter, the true son of his age.

In his approach to life, to people, we see many features that were predominantly developed at that time: extreme rationalism, practicality. Peter was a typical technocrat. Showing interest in many branches of knowledge, he clearly preferred the exact sciences, in general, knowledge that had an applied, practical value. In addition to mathematics, mechanics, shipbuilding, Peter also knew other sciences: fortification, architecture, ballistics, drafting, etc., not to mention “handicrafts” - crafts. Many of these disciplines were part of a kind of "gentleman's set" of an educated person of the Peter the Great era, were mandatory for a nobleman in the same way as possession of a sword, pistol, horse. In the decree on the translation of books most needed in Russia, Peter lists those “arts” that require special attention. Mentioned among them are "mathematical", "mechanical", "botanical", "architecture militaris, civilis", as well as "anatomical" and "surgical" "art" 23 .

Peter enjoyed special respect for medicine, or rather, surgery. Peter was fond of her for a long time, observing, and then doing quite complex operations himself, the degree of risk of which could only be truly assessed by the patient himself. Peter's love for medicine, more than swimming in the unfaithful elements of the sea or the deafening roar of cannons tested by the king, trembled his entourage, for Peter considered himself an indisputable authority in this, as well as in others, branch of knowledge. He carefully monitored the health of his courtiers and relatives, immediately offering his services, especially since he always carried a case with surgical instruments with him, and neatly put the extracted teeth in a special bag. Noteworthy is the entry in Berchholtz's diary for November 1724: “Ger-

Princess of Mecklenburg (Ekaterina Ivanovna, Peter's niece.- E.A.) is in great fear that the emperor will soon take up her sore leg: it is known that he considers himself a great surgeon and willingly undertakes all kinds of operations on patients. So last year he personally and quite successfully did the aforementioned Tamsen (more precisely, Tammes.- E.A.) a major operation in the groin, and the patient was in mortal fear, because this operation was presented to him as very dangerous” 24 .

When the operation turned out to be unsuccessful, Peter, with no less knowledge of the matter, dissected the corpse of his patient in the anatomical theater, for he was a good pathologist. An example of this passion of Peter is the history of the Friedrich Ruysch collection, which is located in the Kunstkamera and still arouses the exalted interest of many guests of Leningrad.

Peter met this collection of the famous Dutch doctor and anatomist back in 1698 in Amsterdam and repeatedly tried to find out from the master the secret of the preparation of human organs he invented, in which they did not lose their natural appearance and color for a long time. However, Ruysch only agreed to give up his secret, along with the famous collection of freaks, for a huge sum. Only in 1717, Peter managed to acquire a collection for 30 thousand guilders and learn such an important secret for him.

Rationalism also manifested itself in the way Peter treated the translations of the necessary books. In a decree “to those who work in translating economic books” dated September 16, 1724, he wrote: “Because the Germans used to fill their books with many stories worthless only to make them seem great, which, apart from the deed itself and a short conversation before any prophetic, should not be translated, but also the above conversation, so that it was not idle for the sake of beauty, but for admonishment and instruction about that to the reader was, for which, for the sake of arable farming, I corrected the treatise, blackening out the unusable, and for example I send, so that according to this the books were translated without unnecessary razkazof, which only waste time and they take away the hunt from those who honor” 25 .

An example of Peter's rationalistic approach can, of course, be the alphabet corrected by his hand, from which everything was thrown out that seemed to Peter to complicate writing, that was outdated or was imperfect.

Peter also evaluated art from the standpoint of a technocrat. According to the king, works of art were supposed to serve either as decoration or as a symbol, a visual aid that gave people knowledge or instructive examples for their moral improvement. In other cases, Peter showed complete indifference to the artistic treasures of Paris, Dresden, Vienna, London. Probably just fireworks and all kinds of "fiery fun" were Peter's true aesthetic passion, perhaps in them he found a rare combination of beauty and usefulness. Perhaps one should believe the author of the well-known “Anecdotes about Peter the Great” J. Shtellin, who reported from the words of Mardefeld about how, looking at the fireworks, Peter said to the Prussian envoy: “I need to accustom my people to fire in battle with a joyful fire. I learned by experience that even in battle he is less afraid of fire, who is more accustomed to entertaining fires.

According to another story, Peter dreamed of arranging the Summer Garden in such a way that walkers would “find something instructive in it.” For this purpose, fountains were equipped with figures - characters of Aesop's fables, and next to each fountain they placed "a pillar with white tin, on which each fable with interpretation was written in clear Russian writing" 26 . Is it not in continuation of this tradition that tablets with explanations are fixed next to each sculpture of the Summer Garden, and the monument to Ivan Andreevich Krylov, so beloved by children, stands right here, where once Peter's contemporaries looked at fountains based on the fables of the great predecessor of the Russian fabulist?

The question of whether Peter was religious was repeatedly raised in literature. And most researchers did not come to a definite answer - the historical material that has come down to us is so contradictory. Indeed, on the one hand, we see - undoubted religious tolerance (excluding the traditional negative attitude towards Jews professing Judaism), friendship with various other faiths, interest in world religions, natural science problems, rejection of the ritual norms of ancient Russian “piety” as the most important feature of the autocrat, extremely negative attitude towards superstition, greed of churchmen, contempt for monasticism as a form of existence, blasphemous noise

the spirit of the most drunken councils; and, finally, and most importantly, the reform of the church, which led to its final subordination to the power of the state. All this created Peter a reputation among the broad masses of the people as a “tobacco atheist”, “Antichrist”, whose name was commemorated with a curse by many generations of Old Believers. Worthy of note is the story of the recent discovery in the taiga wilderness of Siberia of the settlement of the Old Believers Lykovs, who remembered and repeated from the whole history the names of only two of their sworn enemies - Nikon and Peter, about whom they spoke as if they had not died two and a half - three centuries ago but were their contemporaries.

On the other hand, reading thousands of Peter's letters, you can clearly see that the name of God in them is not a tribute to traditions or a habit that exists even now among atheists ("thank God", "God forbid ...", etc.), but evidence of an undeniable religious feeling. Of course, at the same time, I deliberately reject words, formulations, ritual

expressions used exclusively for propaganda, political purposes. Something else is more important. Peter's anti-church policy never became anti-religious. In his church policy there is not the slightest tendency towards Protestantism. It is impossible not to notice the complete passivity and evasiveness of Peter when the leaders of Catholicism suggested that he implement the old idea of ​​the Union of Florence about the unification of the churches. The Protestant bishops proposed the same. They knew what they were doing, because, in principle, this fully corresponded to the tsar's ideas about the speediest and closest rapprochement between Russia and the West.

For all Peter's penchant for buffoonery, religious grounds he by no means neglected the duties of an Orthodox Christian. The entry in his notebook is also noteworthy, which fixes one of the arguments of the dispute (possibly mental) of the king with atheists: “Against the atheists. Bude think, the laws are intelligent, then for what the animal eats one another, and we. Why such a disaster they created” 27 . Here, apparently, we are talking about a thesis that affirms the rational principle of nature. According to this thesis, its species arose in accordance with internal rational laws inherent in nature itself, which have nothing in common with divine laws. The argument against this widespread rationalistic thesis, Peter believes, is the incompatibility of rationality (“intelligence”, in the terminology of the king) of nature with the fierce struggle for survival reigning in it, which, according to Peter, destroys the extra-divine harmony of nature. It is this thought that serves as strong evidence for him.the wrongs of atheists who deny god - the creator and ruler of nature, who, in the concept of Peter, acts as a formidable Yahweh-despot in the image and likeness of which, perhaps, the king thought of himself.

I think that in general the king had no difficulties with God. He proceeded from a number of principles that reconciled his faith with reason. He believed that it makes no sense to starve soldiers on campaigns and not give them meat during fasting - they need strength for the victory of Russia, and hence Orthodoxy. It is known how suspicious Peter was of various kinds of miracles and relics. The decree of the Synod of January 1, 1723 has been preserved that “the silver ark with the image of the martyr Christopher, about which the Synod reported to His Majesty, should be poured into

a decent church vessel, and put the ivory contained in it under the name of relics into the synodal kunsht-chamber and write a treatise on it with such an announcement, as in advance of this when there was no spiritual inquisition, they were used with chintz (such.- E. A.) and similar superstitions (fakes.- E.A.), which were produced and brought from the Greeks coming to Russia, which are now exterminated by synodal vanity” 28 .

It is not difficult to imagine Peter's "maxims" to churchmen who kept ivory instead of the relics of a saint.

The story of Peter's excursion to the Luther Museum in Wittenberg is also noteworthy. Having inspected the burial place of the great reformer and his library, Peter and his attendants “were in his chamber where he lived, and drops of ink were indicated behind the seal on the wall in that chamber, and they said that when he, sitting in that chamber, wrote in that time the devil came to him, then it was as if he had thrown an inkwell at the devil, and that ink seemed to have remained here on the wall to this day, which the sovereign himself looked at and found that these ink stains were new and damp; then the spiritual people there asked that the sovereign sign something in that chamber with his hand in memory of his being, and at their request the sovereign signed this with chalk: the ink is new and this is completely untrue” 29 .

But, speaking of such manifestations of rationalism, quite characteristic of Peter, one should not go to extremes, exalt them as evidence of his atheism. Notable and not without credibility is Nartov's story about a visit to the Novgorod Cathedral of St. Sophia by Peter and Yakov Bruce - a famous scribe, more precisely, a warlock, an alchemist, whose unbelief and connection with the devil were talked about by many contemporaries. Standing with the king near the shrines of the saints, Bruce told Peter about the reasons for the incorruptibility of the bodies lying in them. Nartov writes: “But how did Bruce relate this to the climate, to the property of the land in which they were previously buried, to the embalming of bodies and to abstemious life, and dry eating or fasting (from the word “fasting” - E. A.), then Peter the Great, finally approaching the relics of St. Nikita, Archbishop of Novgorod, opened them, raised them from the shrine, seated them, spread his arms, folding them in packs, laid them down, then asked: “What do you say now. Yakov Danilovich?

Why does this happen, that the folds of the bones move in such a way, as if they were alive, and do not collapse, and that the appearance of the face, as if it had recently died?" Count Bruce, seeing this miracle, was very surprised and answered in amazement: but I know that God is all-powerful and all-wise."

Maybe Bruce was really a little confused and did not immediately find what to say to Peter, who, according to Nartov, at the same time remarked instructively: may he enlighten me in spirit” 30 .

Let us imagine this phantasmagoric situation, when, standing at the overturned sacred shrine with a dead man sitting in it, the All-Russian autocrat and the learned Feldzeugmeister General are having a philosophical conversation about the limits of knowledge of the world. And this scene is striking in its blasphemousness (for one must not forget that it takes place not in the Cabinet of Curiosities, but in one of the Orthodox shrines, near the incorruptible dust that generations of believers worship) and at the same time how accurately it reflects the faith of Peter, devoid of mysticism and superstition, the foundations which he is looking for precisely in the impotence of science to explain the phenomena, the source of which, therefore, according to Peter, can only be God.

The other side of the "rationalistic" faith of the king is also noteworthy. He clearly identified the concept of God, a higher being, with fate, “some force that controls us,” fate, which is pointless to fight. However, he is far from Christian humility. In a letter to the Georgian king Archil II dated May 20, 1711, reporting the death of his son Alexander, he deploys his argument as follows: “But what can help you in this irreparable damage? Tochi, as a reasonable husband, we present three things for joy, that is, generosity, reasoning and patience, for this offense is not from a person whom we can pay or celebrate, but from an almighty God, to whom this imperishable limit has set” 31 .

In general, one gets the impression that the structure of Peter’s thoughts was far from religious: the events that he observed and participated in caused him (in accordance with the language of European culture of the XVII century

centuries - the time of classicism) are not biblical, but ancient images, and the imagery of comparisons was not strained, but natural and accurate. So, in one of the letters from the victorious field near Poltava, he compares the death of the Swedish army with the death of the son of the sun god, Helios Phaeton, who became proud and did not manage the sun chariot, in another, he compares the enemy leaving him with the nymph Echo running from the pursuer.

Noteworthy are the dreams that the king remembered, which he immediately wrote down or ordered his secretary to write down. They, reflecting the liberated consciousness of this person, clearly show the especially symbolic warehouse of his thinking. These dreams consist, as it were, of blocks of allegories that were widely used in the culture of that time, and they could be used as a description of some kind of festive fireworks, an allegorical group sculpture intended for the next calendar holiday: “1715, January 28- on the 29th: being in Moscow, in the night I had a dream: Mr. Colonel (that is, Peter himself.- E.A.) walked on the shore, near the large river, and with him three fishermen, and the river was worried, and the big waves were beaten. And the wave comes, and retreated back, and the waves beat so much that it covered them. And retreated back, but they did not retreat. And so less did the water yield to its old state.”

And here is a dream of 1723: “His Majesty had a dream on the 26th of April: supposedly an eagle was sitting on a tree, and under it crawled or crawled some beast of no small size like a carcadilus or a dragon, on which the eagle immediately rushed and ate its head from the back of its head , but he literally ate half of the neck and killed it, and then, how many people came together to watch it, the same other beast crawled up, from which the same eagle ate off and completely had its head, and that would have been obviously everything ”32 . Can any modern reader remember such a vivid allegorical dream? - Cat hunting for mice does not count.

The idea of ​​rationalism extended to the full extent to the state, which had to obey, first of all, the action of the principles of reason, logic, and order. Peter, proceeding from these principles, lived, setting an example of service, service, and in accordance with the spirit of the times, he formulated the idea of ​​the duties of the monarch

ed subjects. This was especially clearly expressed in the manifesto on the invitation of foreigners to the Russian service of April 16, 1702. And although the manifesto remained unknown to Peter's Russian contemporary and was intended "for export", its ideas are remarkable for Peter's worldview. In short, they boil down to the following: God determined the king to possess the lands and the state and “thus govern, so that each and every one of our faithful subjects could feel what our common intention is for their well-being and increase diligently.” Therefore, Peter considered it his first duty to take care of the security of the state, the expansion of trade - the main source of prosperity. In addition to these duties for the ideal monarch, Peter “screwed” into the manifesto the idea closest to him at that time of a radical transformation of the country on European principles. It was this task of “composing the Russian people” that he considered the most important, devoting his entire self to solving it.

But, admiring the simplicity, efficiency, purposefulness and selflessness of Peter, so rare for a ruler, we must not forget two fundamental nuances: firstly, the terms of reference of the monarch for “serving” the people were determined by the monarch himself and varied at his discretion, not being anywhere in the legislation fixed; secondly, the “service” of the king and the service of his subjects differed significantly from each other. Indeed, for the latter, service to the state, regardless of their desire, merged with service to the tsar, more broadly - to the autocracy. In other words, with his daily work, Peter showed his subjects an example of how to serve him, the Russian autocrat. It is no coincidence that he once made a toast, so well remembered by an eyewitness: “Hello (that is, “Long live!” - E.A.) the one who loves God, me and the fatherland!” Another memoirist (Perry) emphasized: “The king pays special attention to the fact that his subjects become capable of serving him in all these matters. For this purpose, he spares no effort and constantly works among these people...” 33 .

Of course, this should not be oversimplified. Yes, serv-

the desire for the Fatherland, Russia, is the most important element of the political culture of the time of Peter the Great. It was nourished by the well-known traditions of the struggle for independence, for existence, unthinkable without national statehood. There are many examples of such a struggle in pre-Petrine history. Suffice it to recall the civil feat of Minin and Pozharsky, who came out to defend the “land” - a concept for a person medieval Rus' capacious and multi-valued, including the community, the city, and the state. The militias of 1611-1612 set themselves the goal “so that the Muscovite state would be built forward and be in peace and quiet, and we, the beginning, then all kinds of people, would be among ourselves all in advice and love” 34 . They acted not only in the name of the ruler - the Orthodox Tsar, whom they had yet to elect, but for the sake of "the Zemstvo cause." “Zemskaya” tradition is one of the most important in history Ancient Rus'. But in the pre-Petrine and especially in the times of Peter the Great, another tradition, also coming from antiquity, turned out to be the main, determining one - the identification of the power and personality of the tsar with the state. The development of this trend led to the merging of the idea of ​​statehood, the Fatherland - a concept sacred to every citizen and symbolizing independent national existence, with the idea of ​​the bearer of statehood - a completely real, living and, as a rule, far from sinless person, on whom (due to the them provisions) the norms of statehood were extended. IN recent history the identification of the personality of the ruler with the state, the Motherland and even the people manifested itself in the cult of Stalin. The words of the call “For the Motherland, for Stalin!” or songs: “Stalin is the people that goes to victories / On the tops of the subclouded slopes. / Stalin is our deeds, Stalin is the wings of an eagle, / Stalin is the will and mind of millions.”

For the political life of Russia, this had, as you know, the most sad consequences, because any speech against the holder of power, whoever he was - the supreme ruler or a petty official - could be interpreted as a speech against the statehood personified in his personality, Russia, the people, and therefore, could lead to accusations of treason, state

crime, recognition as an enemy. The idea of ​​identical responsibility for insulting the personality of the monarch and insulting the state was especially clear in the Council Code of 1649, the most important legal act of Russian history, which consolidated the system of autocracy and serfdom. The apotheosis of these ideas came under Peter, which was fully reflected in legal norms.

In the military oath, approved under Peter, there is no concept of Russia, Fatherland, land, but only the concept of “king-sovereign”, and the state itself is referred to as “his royal majesty the state and land”. But even these words are not in the oath of employees included in the General Regulations. The oath was given "to one's natural and true tsar and sovereign, the most illustrious and most powerful Peter the Great, the tsar and the All-Russian autocrat, and so on, and so on, and so on." Then there was an oath of allegiance to “high legitimate heirs, who, by the will and autocratic e.c. V. the authorities have been determined and will continue to be determined, and they will be honored with the perception of the throne, and e. c. Empress Empress Ekaterina Alekseevna, a faithful, kind and obedient slave and subject to be and that’s all, to a high e. c. V. rights and prerogatives (or advantages) that belong to autocracy, strength and power, legitimized and henceforth legitimized by extreme understanding, strength and ability to warn and defend, and in that case, do not spare your stomach” 35 . As we see, there is not a word about the duty to the Fatherland, Russia.

The completely traditional idea of ​​autocracy received new impulses under Peter, when an attempt was made to rationalistically justify the absolute power of one person over millions. The need for this was due to the fact that the society of Peter's time was no longer enough to recognize the God-givenness of royal power as the only argument for its veneration. Others were needed new, rationalistic principles of its substantiation. Therefore, Feofan Prokopovich introduced into Russian political culture concepts taken from the theory of contract law, according to which people, in order not to self-destruct, had to hand over themselves to the ruler, who was obliged to protect them, but in return received full power over them. In the conditions of Russia, which is undergoing fundamental transformations, as a production

On the basis of these concepts, a paternalistic idea was put forward, the image of a reasonable monarch, who sees beyond the distant horizons, was formulated - the father of the Fatherland, the people. In The Truth of the Will of the Monarchs, Feofan comes to a paradoxical at first glance, but logical for the system of paternalism, the conclusion that if the sovereign is the “father” of all his subjects, then he is “by the highest authority his” and his father “father”.

The turner of Peter A. Nartov curiously explains the frequent reprisals of the tsar with his guilty dignitaries: E.A.) regaled with a club, how after that they went out with a cheerful look to other rooms and from the side of the sovereign, so that outsiders would not notice this, they were honored to the table on the same day. And then the most important thing: “But all such correction was done not as from the emperor to the subject, but as from the father to the son: in one day he was punished and granted.” Close to this is the story of Shtsllin about how, on a broken bridge, the tsar beat with a club the chief police chief of St. Petersburg A. Devier, who was traveling with him in a one-wheeler, saying: look after it." “Meanwhile,” Shtellin continues, “the bridge was repaired, and the anger of the sovereign passed. He sat down in a odnokolka and said to the chief of police very graciously, no matter how anything happened between them: “Sit down, brother!” 36

Here it is necessary to make a small digression. The notion of a monarch, president, other ruler as the “father” of his subjects, fellow citizens is a phenomenon that is widespread among different peoples and at the break of time. M. Weber in his research on power introduced the concept of "charismatic leader" as an intermediate between traditional and democratic. The term "charisma", borrowed from early Christian literature and applied to Christ, God's chosen one, makes it possible to single out a number of elements and features of the power of such a figure. A charismatic leader is a statesman who has a number of qualities that make him stand out from the ordinary people and “are considered to be endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least exceptional abilities and qualities-

mi. They are inaccessible to an ordinary person, are considered as emanating from a deity or exemplary, and on their basis this individual is considered a leader.

Other features of a charismatic leader are also important. He, as a rule, neglects (at least initially) material interests, he is surrounded by associates who support the charisma of the leader and, as a rule, derive quite real advantages, power and wealth from this. “In the sphere In his claims, the charismatic leader rejects the past and in this sense is a specific revolutionary force. Finally, the title of "Father of the Fatherland", "Father of the Nation" is strictly individual, leadership of the charismatic type is not inherited, like the throne.

Peter certainly has many of the traits of a charismatic leader. His power is based not so much on the traditional God-givenness, but mainly on the recognition of the exclusivity of his qualities, their demonstratively pedagogical “exemplary” in the performance of his “position”. Theophanes, turning to the king, but looking at the huge crowd listening to the sermon, pathetically exclaimed: Many kings reign in such a way, as if the common people cannot find out that there is a royal affair. You alone showed the work of this high rank to be a collection of all the labors and cares, except that the superfluity of your title shows us in the king and just a warrior, and a busy craftsman, and a well-known worker? And wherever it is due to command your subjects, you precede and confirm your command with your own labors” 37 .

At the same time, Peter was unpretentious, simple in everyday life, living in a modest house, then - in the then, very unpretentious. Summer and Winter Palaces. Receiving the salary of a general and a ship's master, he did not eat at home from gold and even silver dishes, and his crowned wife diligently darned his stockings. Conveys the lifestyle of Peter and at the same time the performance of the role he has learned story Shtellin about how the tsar, having worked all day in the forge, received 18 altyns for the iron strips he had forged (without taking 18 gold

tyh offered by the owner of the forge). At the same time, he said: “With this money I will buy myself new shoes, which I now need.” “At the same time,” Shtellin notes, “e.v. pointed to his shoes, which had already been mended and trodden again, took 18 altyns, went to the ranks and actually bought himself new shoes. Wearing these shoes, he often showed them in meetings and at the same time usually said: “Here are the shoes that I worked out for myself with hard work” 38.

His negative attitude towards many traditional forms of honoring the autocrat, as well as his constant focus on reform, will be described in detail in the book. He was truly revolutionary. We know that revolutionary spirit can be different, the main thing is that it should contain a consistent and deep desire for transformation, for a radical breakdown of society. True, the question remains open about the purpose of the revolutionary break (recall the recent victory of Islamic revolutionary fundamentalism in Iran). In Petrine Russia, such a breakdown led, ultimately, to the consolidation and strengthening of feudal structures.

The chanting of the personality of the tsar-reformer, emphasizing his special personal merits is the most characteristic feature of the journalism of the time of Peter the Great. It inevitably entailed the creation of a genuine cult of the personality of the reformer of Russia, supposedly indebted only to him for everything achieved, erected only by his efforts on a previously inaccessible height. As a contemporary of Peter I. Neplyuev wrote, “whatever you look at in Russia, we have everything from its beginning, and no matter what is done in the future, they will draw from this source” 39 . Such a cult of the person of the monarch is a phenomenon unfamiliar to Russian political culture of previous times.

Peter's publicists (Feofan, Shafirov) emphatically glorified Peter's personal merits, especially noting that “it will not only appear in our current memory centuries, but lower in the histories of previous centuries, equal to His Majesty, in which a single portion of the monarch of the proper virtues would be collected and which would not have been in many years in his state, only many glorious deeds, not only began, but also from the most part into action he also made his people, who

who in such matters before his reign was partly little, partly not skilled at anything, not only taught, but also glorified. Already during his lifetime, Peter was compared with prominent figures in Russian and world history: Alexander Nevsky, Alexander the Great, Caesar, etc.

It is difficult to exalt a person who is already raised to an unattainable height by a crown. And the thoughts of ideologues turn to the experience of the Roman Empire. On October 30, 1721, on the day of the celebration of the Peace of Nystadt, the Senate submits a petition in which it emphasizes the special role of the king in the “work” Russia and asks to accept a new, unprecedented title in Russia: “Most Gracious Sovereign! More than the works of Your Majesty in the work of our fatherland and the subject of your all-Russian people known to the whole world, for that sake. although we know that in c., as an autocrat, all [power] belongs, however, as a testimony and a sign of our true recognition that the entire subject of your people is nothing but your single vigilant cares and labors about it, and with the detriment of your dearest health put on suchthe degree of well-being and glory produced is, we thought, with the butt of the ancients, especially the Roman and Greek peoples, the audacity to perceive, on the day of the triumph and announcement of the concluded by them. V. by the labors of all Russia only a glorious and prosperous world, after reading the treatise of Onago in the church, according to our most humble thanksgiving for the exodus of this world, to bring our petition to you publicly, so that you are pleased to accept from us, as from our faithful subjects, in thanksgiving the title Father of the Fatherland, Emperor of All Russia, Peter the Great, as usual from the Roman Senate for the noble deeds of emperors, their titles were publicly presented as a gift to them and signed on statues for memory in eternal years” 40 .

The appeal to the experience of Rome is not accidental. The orientation towards imperial Rome, towards Rome - the capital of the world in general, can be traced in the symbolism of imperial Russia, and even at an earlier stage. This is manifested, as G.V. Villinbakhov noted in his works, in the title new capital by the name of St. Peter - St. Petersburg, and in the name of the patronal cathedral, and in the coat of arms of the city,

repeating the crossed keys from the national flag of the Vatican.

It is important to note that in accordance with the principles of charisma, the title of “Father of the Fatherland” was the privilege of only Peter, and was not an obligatory attribute of Russian emperors. And although later the successors of the first emperor were praised for non-existent personal virtues and "generosity" to the Russian people, officially they did not have it. True, likening her great father, Elizabeth was called the “Mother of the Fatherland,” but this did not evoke any uplifting images and comparisons from her contemporaries.

Reforms, hard work in peaceful and war time were perceived by Peter as a constant study, a school in which the Russian people comprehended knowledge that was unknown to him before. In the manifesto of April 16, 1702, by which foreign specialists were invited to come to Russia, it was noted that one of the most important tasks of the autocracy was “to achieve a greater education of the people in order to establish so that our subjects as long as possible, only to any society and courtesy with all other Christian and in manners trained peoples could conveniently be composed” 41 .

The Northern War was also firmly associated with the concept of doctrine. Having received the news of the conclusion of the Nishtadt peace, Peter took this event as receiving a certificate of graduation (though belatedly) of a kind of school. In a letter to V.V. Dolgoruky regarding the conclusion of peace, he writes: “All students of science usually graduate at the age of seven, but our school is three times I was (21 years old), however, thank God, it ended so well, it’s impossible to be better” 42 . His expression “I am in the rank of those who teach and teach me I demand” is also known.

Indeed, the concept of life - study, education - is typical of a rationalistic perception of the world, it is also typical of Peter, an unusually inquisitive, active and capable person. But in the school, into which he turned the country, the place of the Teacher, who knows what the students need, he assigned to himself. In an atmosphere of turbulent transformations, when their goals, except for the most general ones, were not clearly visible and understandable to everyone and met

In the midst of open, and more often hidden resistance, the idea of ​​a reasonable Teacher, with whom he identified himself, and unreasonable, often stubborn and lazy child subjects, who can be accustomed to teaching and good deeds only with the help of violence, were strengthened in Peter's mind. - under sticks, because they do not understand another.

Peter talked about this more than once. Answering the duke of Holstein, who admired the turning “works” of Peter, the tsar, according to Berchholz, “assured that his office studies were a toy compared to the labors he had endured in the early years during the introduction of the regular army and especially when establishing the fleet, that then he should was to acquaint his subjects at once, who, according to him, had previously indulged, as you know, in idleness, and with science, and with courage, and with loyalty, and with honor, very little known to them.

Even more frankly, Peter expressed his thoughts in the decree of the Manufactory College on November 5, 1723, regarding the difficulties in spreading manufactory production in the country: like children of ignorance for the sake of, which will never be taken for the alphabet when from the master are not displeased, to whom it seems vexatious at first, but when they learn, then they give thanks, that obviously of all the current deeds not everything has been done involuntarily, and for many thanksgiving is already heard, from which the fruit has already come” 43.

The idea of ​​violence, coercion as a universal way to solve internal problems, as you know, is not new in the history of Russia. But Peter, perhaps, was the first who, with such consistency and systematic use of violence to achieve the highest state goals, as he understood them.

Among the short stories that make up the memoirs of Andrei Nartov, there is one that attracts Special attention. Nartov conveys the holistic concept of the power of the autocrat, as the tsar understood it: “Peter the Great, talking to Bruce and Osterman in the lathe, said to them with fervor: “Strangers say that I command slaves like slaves. I command subjects who obey my decrees. These decrees contain good, not harm to the state. English liberty is out of place here, like peas against a wall.

The people must know how to govern them. He who sees harm and invents good can speak directly to me without fear. Witnesses to that are you. I am glad to hear useful things from the last subject; hands, feet, tongue are not constrained. Access to me is free - so long as they do not burden me only with idleness and do not take time in vain, which every hour is dear to me. Non-profits and my villains and the fatherland cannot be satisfied: their bridle is the law. He is free who does no evil and is obedient good" 44 .

Although Nartov's "Anecdotes" contain much that is unreliable, this one is trustworthy, because it is confirmed by other documents and reflects the mindset of Peter.

The idea of ​​paternalism determines everything: he, Peter, is the only one who knows what the people need, and his decrees, as containing only unconditional goodness, are binding on all subjects. Dissatisfied with the laws issued by the tsar - "villains to me and to the fatherland." The tsar's conviction is also noteworthy that in Russia, unlike in England, such a way of bringing the country to good is the only one. Moreover, this hymn to the regime of autocracy (and in essence - a veiled tyranny, in which the law has the sole source of the will of the ruler) is justified by the same duties of the monarch listed above, called by God to power, and therefore having the right to command and knowing, by virtue of divine will, what is good.

As Berchholtz wrote in his diary, his master, Duke Karl-Friedrich, decided to please Peter during the days of celebrations on the occasion of the Peace of Nystad and built a triumphal arch, decorating it on the right side with the image of “Ivan Vasilyevich 1 (Ivan IV.- E.A.) in an ancient crown, which laid the foundation for the current greatness of Russia, with the inscription “Incepit " (began). On the left side, in the same size and in the new imperial crown, the current emperor, who raised Russia to the top of glory, was depicted, with the inscription “Pe rfecit "(improved)". Another courtier of the Duke of Holstein, Count Brummer (the future tutor of Peter III), told Shtellin about the very positive reaction of the king to the above analogy and historical connection. Peter allegedly said: “This sovereign (pointing to Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich) is my predecessor and example. I have always taken him as a model in prudence and courage, but I could not yet equal him. Only fools who do not know the circumstances of his time, the nature of his people and his great merits, call him a tyrant.” 45 .

I think that it is unlikely that memoirists deviate far from the truth when they touch on the political sympathies of the tsar. They are obvious and follow from his philosophy of power. The consideration that Peter knew little about his predecessor -

Ivan the Terrible - and therefore admired him, does not matter in this case: after all, we know that the deep knowledge about the bloody tyranny of Ivan, accumulated by generations of historians, could not shake the stable political sympathies for the medieval tyrant Stalin - this "murderer and peasant fighter ” of modern times.

The concept of coercion was based not only on the quite traditional idea of ​​paternalism, but, probably, on the characteristics of Peter's personality. In his attitude towards people there was a lot of what can be called cruelty, intolerance, mental deafness. A person with his weaknesses, problems, personality, individuality, as it were, did not exist for him. One gets the impression that he often looked at people as tools, material for publishing what he had conceived for the good of the state, the empire. I guess, that Peter should have been close to the thoughts of Ivan the Terrible, who reproached Kurbsky and his ilk for disobedience on the grounds that “God entrusted them [subjects] to work” to him, the autocrat 46 . Of course, it should be noted that for Ivan the concept of “work” is identical to the concept of “slavery”, and “workers”, all without exception, are subjects given into slavery. But at the same time, Peter and Ivan had much in common with regard to their subjects.

A rather strange joke and a dubious allegory are found in a letter from the tsar from near Shlisselburg dated April 1703 to T. Streshnev, who was in charge of recruiting soldiers into the army: addition, because at this school many students die, in order to it’s not good to scratch your head when your teeth are broken out of the comb” 47 .

The letter to Petrozavodsk about the illness of Peter's personal doctor Dr. Areskin, who for many years was part of the tsar's inner circle, seems very expressive. On December 2, 1718, Peter wrote to V. Gennin, the local chief: “Mr. Colonel. Your letter of November 25th reached us, in which you write that Dr. Areskin is already at the end of his life, which we deeply regret, and if (God forbid) his life has stopped, then announce to Dr. Polikal so that he will tear him apart and inwardly examined the members, what a great

Leznia was ill and was not given any kind of poison. And inspect, write to us. And then send his body here, to St. Petersburg. Peter" 48 .

The amazing foresight of the king is due to the fact that he suspected the poisoning of Areskin, a supporter of Jacob Stewart, a pretender to the English throne, who persuaded Peter to support the "Jacobites". It is quite possible that Peter thought of a conspiracy that threatened him in some way. But in this case, our attention is drawn to cold pragmatism, eerie efficiency in relation to a person close enough to him. With the same efficiency in 1709, he taught Apraksin how to interrogate a sick state criminal: If you have time, then if you please, take him to Moscow and, although you cannot torture him because of his illness, it is possible to torture him, and not raise him up, but in name, to beat him, spreading him with whips or batogs, and at the same time asking ”49.

It would be wrong to think about some kind of pathology of the king - Peter did not show executioner inclinations. He lived in a cruel age, whose children fled, as if on a holiday, to the scaffold, and the troops with difficulty held back the crowd, which sought to enjoy the spectacle of the painful execution of another criminal. Yes, the century was harsh, but, as the poet A. Kushner rightly said, “every century, then the age of iron”, and it is impossible not to notice that in Peter’s attitude towards people, a lot came from the personality itself, from the properties of the soul of this harsh, cruel and unceremonious to others.

Memoirists note how, for example, sitting next to the burgomaster of the free city of Gdansk at a solemn service given in honor of a distinguished guest in the central cathedral, Peter suddenly tore off the wig from the burgomaster's head and pulled it over his head. After the end of the service, he gratefully returned the wig to the stunned owner. Everything was extremely simple - it turns out that during the mass the king became cold from the drafts walking around the cathedral. And he did the same thing that he did more than once with his companions and servants 50 .

Undoubtedly, Peter was a man of strong feelings and in their manifestations - sharp, impetuous. These feelings sometimes covered him entirely. Even business letters sometimes

convey that passion. Here is just one example. On February 6, 1710, Peter received the long-awaited confirmation from Istanbul that the Turks had canceled military preparations against Russia and thus freed his hands for operations in the Baltic. On February 7, Peter writes to A. Kikin: “Yesterday from a long time ago with great thirst expected courier from Constantinople received ... and now in one direction we have eyes and thought

” 51 . And there are many such expressive, expressive letters in Peter's epistolary legacy.

After what has been said, it is not difficult to understand how terrible, knew no bounds, Peter's anger could be. It is noteworthy that in a state of strong irritation, he suddenly began to have a fit, leading those around him into a state of horror.

Here is how Just Yul describes such a case, who, together with Chancellor Golovkin, participated in January 1710 in the solemn ceremony of the entry of the Russian army - the winner at Poltava - to Moscow:

“We drove through a decent end in this way, when suddenly the king galloped past us at full speed. His face was extremely pale, distorted and ugly. He made various terrible grimaces and movements with his head, mouth, arms, shoulders, hands and feet.

Then we both got out of the carriage and saw how the tsar, riding up to one simple soldier who was carrying the Swedish banner, began to ruthlessly cut him with a naked sword and showered him with blows, perhaps because he did not go the way the tsar wanted. Then the tsar stopped his horse, but still continued to make the terrible grimaces described, twisted his head, twisted his mouth, turned his eyes, twitched his arms and shoulders, and jerked his legs back and forth. The most important dignitaries surrounding him at that moment were frightened by this, and no one dared to approach him, since they saw that the tsar was angry and annoyed with something ... The terrible movements and gestures of the tsar doctor described above are called convulsions. They happen to him often, mainly when he is angry, has received bad news, in general, when he is dissatisfied with something or is immersed in deep thought. Often such twitches

in the muscles of the hands they find him at the table when he eats, and if at the same time he holds a fork and a knife in his hands, he pokes them in the direction of his face, instilling fear in those present, lest he cut or prick his face. They say that convulsions occur in him from poison, which he allegedly swallowed once, but it is more correct and fair to assume that the cause of them

is a disease and acuteness of the blood, and that these terrible-looking movements - stomping, jerking and nodding - are caused by a certain attack akin to an apoplexy " 52 .

For the sake of completeness, we note the following. Nartov, who knew Peter's life well, gives another version of the causes of convulsive movements that struck the king from time to time. namely, heavy childhood memories of the horror of the Streltsy rebellion on May 15, 1682, when a ten-year-old boy witnessed a massacre with people close to him. Nart wrote:

“The sovereign once said about the riots of the archers: “From the memory of the rebellious archers, the hydras of the fatherland, all uds (members.- E. L.) they tremble in me, thinking about it, I can’t fall asleep. Such was the bloodthirsty locust!” The sovereign, in truth, sometimes had such convulsions in his body at night that he took Murzin's orderly with him, holding on to whose shoulders he fell asleep, which I myself saw. During the day, he often threw his head up ... " 53

The case of the massacre of a soldier in 1710 is quite typical. Ten years later, in 1720, at the next parade, another contemporary, V. A. Nashchokin, observed almost the same thing: to the fortress, and the senior captain of the Semyonovsky regiment, Peter Ivanov, the son of Velyaminov, intervened in that institution with his presentation, which the sovereign, for all that opportunity, beat with a cane ”

54 .

It would hardly be necessary to focus the reader's attention on these unsightly scenes of reprisals against people who cannot answer, if the stick were not a kind of symbol of the system of violence cultivated by Peter.

Probably, we can talk about the successes of “club” pedagogy

do not have to. Nartov recalled the tsar’s thoughts on this matter: “The sovereign, sharpening a human figure in a lathe machine and being cheerful that the work was going well, asked the mechanic Nartov: “What am I sharpening?” And when Nartov answered: “Good,” then his majesty said ( with a sigh, we would add in Nartov’s place. - E. A.): “That’s it, Andrey, I sharpen the bones with a chisel pretty well, but I can’t grind the stubborn with a club.” In another case, “sir,” writes Nartov, “on returning from the Senate and seeing a dog meeting and jumping around him, he sat down and stroked it, and at the same time said: “If only stubborn people were obedient in goodness, as Lisette (his beloved dog) is obedient to me, then I would not stroke them with a club. My the dog listens without a beating, to know in her more conjectures, and in those inveterate stubbornness ””

55 .

Peter's letters to officials and commanders are full of demands to show discipline, initiative, speed - what was needed at the moment for the good of the cause.

Almost every such demand was accompanied by a threat of violence, reprisals. I will give examples. Here is a typical decree on the construction of ships for the army on May 30, 1722: not only by will, but also by unwillingness to do, and those who disobey are to be fined, first with money, and at another time with punishment.”

In a letter to A. Menshikov dated February 6, 1711, he, dissatisfied and saddened by the red tape of the governors, promised at the same time to satisfy his sorrows in his usual way: whose deadline is Thursday in the first week, and then I will not with a word, but with hands to act with them

”.

A peculiar “threat formula” is often found in Peter’s decrees: “...then do not hesitate not only to give a cruel answer, but you will also be tortured

” 56 . Peter sent very harsh decrees to the senators, not particularly on ceremony with the highest dignitaries of Russia. And they knew that these threats would not remain on paper. Noteworthy in this sense is the decree to the Senate of July 2, 1713, in which all Peter is: “Gentlemen, the Senate! We have been informed that, according to the fiscal denunciations, you have not done a single main thing, but you are cheating time to time, forgetting God and your souls, for this last reason, I am writing to you about this. If there are five or shty main things, you will no longer have time (which the fiscals will inform you about) until November the firstdo not make numbers, and by a criminal (who spoil the interest of the state for their own benefit) do not commit the death penalty, sparing no one in this, and if you do otherwise in that, then this will be done to you. Peter ” 57 .

Numerous appeals and threats could not force people to do as Peter demanded: precisely, quickly, with initiative. Few of his associates felt confident when they had to act without the king's orders, on their own, at their own peril and risk. This was inevitable, because Peter, according to the exact words of V.O.

Klyuchevsky, “hoped by a storm of power to provoke amateur activity in an enslaved society and, through the slave-owning nobility, to establish in Russia a European

science, public education as a necessary condition for social initiative, wanted the slave, while remaining a slave, to act consciously and freely. The joint action of despotism and freedom, enlightenment and slavery is the political square of the circle, a riddle that has been resolved in our country since the time of Peter two centuries and hitherto unresolved”

58 .

Characteristic for many of Peter's associates was a feeling of helplessness, despair, when they did not have the exact orders of the tsar or, bending under the terrible burden of responsibility, did not receive his approval. Noteworthy is the letter of the President of the Admiralty Board F. M. Apraksin dated December 31, 1716 to the secretary: “In your hope, I ask for God not to leave us unknown, if you please be with us true in all matters we roam like the blind and we don’t know what to do, a great alignment began everywhere, but we don’t know where to resort and what to do in the future, they don’t bring money from anywhere, everything gets worse”

59 . And this is written by one of the most influential people of that time, a man endowed with the trust of a formidable king!

Reading such letters, Peter had every reason to believe that without him all things would fall into place and that he was the only one who knew how and what to do. Along with this feeling of exclusivity, Peter, far from narcissism and empty vanity, should have been possessed by another feeling - a feeling of loneliness, the consciousness that they are afraid of him.

, but they do not understand, they pretend that they are working, but they are waiting for him to turn away, to finally die. This was an inevitable and tragic consequence of any authoritarianism, violence, which naturally gave rise to the laziness of a slave, theft of an official, social dependency and immorality. As A. Yakovlev rightly noted, “after the reforms of Peter I, which laid the foundation for total statehood, taking from the state for many people - from a serf to a governor - became a matter of valor” 60 .

Don't care about public money

the word of honor does not sound for you

until a thick stick

the state does not knock on you

61 .

Towards the end of his life, having lost his son Peter - an heir and hope - the king could exclaim, as once in

a letter to Tsarevich Alexei, who was destroyed by him: “... for I am a man and am subject to death, then to whom will I leave the above-mentioned planting with the help of the highest and already some and returned?”

62

Yes, he was a mortal man, and fate was pleased to doom him to a grievous death. There was a lot of symbolism and obscurity in it, as well as in the fate of Russia, which had to live without Peter ...

However, let us first turn to the events of the Northern War, to the beginning of that cruel school of life, after which the young Russian Tsar became Emperor Peter the Great.

SOURCES AND LITERATURE

Abbreviations and conventions.

ALOII - Archive of the Leningrad Branch of the Institute of History of the USSR of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Bantysh-Kamensky - Bantysh-Kamensky N. N. Review of Russia's foreign relations (until 1800), parts 1-4. M., 1894-1902.

VI - the journal "Questions of History".

Golikov - Golikov I. I. Acts of Peter the Great, the wise reformer of Russia, vol. 1-13. M., 1837-1840.

DPR - journal "Ancient and New Russia".

DPS - Reports and sentences of the Governing Senate, vol. 1-6. SPb., 1880-1901.

Journal - Journal, or Daily note ... Peter the Great. SPb.

, 1770.

FOR - Legislative acts of Peter I. Prepared by N. A. Voskresensky. M.; L., 1945.

IZ - the journal "Historical Notes".

Narts - Nartov's stories about Peter the Great. Prepared by L. N. Maikov. SPb., 1891.

03 - magazine "Domestic Notes".

OR GPB - Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books of the State Public Library.

M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.

PBP - Letters and papers of Peter the Great, vol. 1-12. SPb., L.; M., 1887-1977.

I Complete collection of laws of the Russian Empire, vol. 2-7. St. Petersburg, 1838.

RA - Russian Archive magazine.

RIO is a collection of the Russian Imperial Historical Society.

Solovyov-Solovyov S. M. History of Russia since ancient times, book. VIII-IX, v. 15-18.

M., 1963.

UZIS - Scientific Notes of the Institute of Slavic Studies.

Ustryalov - Ustryalov N. G. History of the reign of Peter the Great, vol. 1-6. SPb., 1858-1859.

TsGADA - Central state archive ancient acts.

Thu. OIDR - journal "Readings of the Society of Russian History and Antiquities at Moscow University".

FATHER OF THE HOMELAND

Bogoslovsky M. M. Peter I, vol. I. M., 1945, p. 193. PBP. vol. I, p. 490. Semevsky M.I. Peter the Great in his dreams. - In the book: Word and deed. SPb., 1885, p. 273-276.

4 Narts, With. 10; Perry D. Narrative about Russia.- Thu. OIDR, 1871, book. 2, p. 105.

5 PBP. vol. 11, part I, p. 241, 230.

6 Pavlenko N.I. Peter I (To the study of socio-political views) .- In the book: Russia during the reforms of Peter I. M., 1973, p. 72-73.

7 Judgment of a lady about Peter the Great.- Lit. newspaper, 1841, No. 41, p. 163.

8 The judgment of a foreigner about Peter the Great in 1713. - OZ, 1844, vol. 3, p. 77-78.

9 Extract from the reports of the Swedish Commission Secretary Preis on the stay of Peter the Great in Holland in 1716 and 1717. - Thu. OIDR, 1877, v. 2, p. 4.

10 Berkhholz F.V. Notes of the chamber junker, part 4. M., 1860, p. 35, 101-102; YulYU. Notes. M., 1900, p. 91-92.

12 Russian soldier, telling about Peter the Great. - Russian Bulletin, 1808, part 4, pp. 39-44.

12 ALOII. f. 270, op. 1, d. 101, l. 712.

13 Ancient and New Russia, 1876, v. 1, p. 199.

14 Yul Yu. Notes, p. 94, 100-101.

15 Fokkerodt I. Russia under Peter the Great. M., 1874, p. 25; RIO, vol. 39, p. 58.

16 Narts, With. 58-59.

17 Pavlenko N.I. Decree. op., p. 41.

18 Yul Yu. Notes, p. 94.

19 Perry D. Narration, p. 179.

20 Narts. With. 35.

21 Prokopovich F. Words and speeches, vol. 1, part 2. St. Petersburg, 1761, p. 9-10.

22 Prokopovich F. The truth of the will of the monarchs ... St. Petersburg, 1722, p. 17-18, 26-27.

23 FOR, p. 115.

24 BerchholtzABOUT. IN. Notes, p. 101; Shubinsky S. N. Crowned surgeon. - In the book: Historical essays and stories. SPb., 1908, p. 38-42. 25 FOR, p. 148.26 ShtellinI. Genuine jokes about Peter the Great, part 2. M., 1820, p. 46; part 1, p. 210. 27 FOR, p. 69.28 ALOII, f. 270, d. 103, l. 1. 29 Journal, part 1, p. 344. 30 Narts, With. 89-90. 31 PBP, vol. 11, p. 241.32 Semevsky M.I. Decree. op., p. 273-276. 33 Narts, With. 35; Perry D. Narrative, p. 179. 34 P. G. Lyubomirov Essays on the history of the Nizhny Novgorod militia in 1611-1612. M., 1939, p. 239. 35 FOR, p. 483.36 Narts. With. 54.37 Prokopovich F. Words and speeches, p. 17-18. 38 ShtellinI. Decree. op. t. 1, p. 11-12. 39 Solovyov, v. 18, p. 553. 40 FOR, p. 155. 41 PBP, vol. 2, p. 45.42 Solovyov, v. 17, p. 61.43 Berkhholz F.V. Diary, part 2, p. 83 . 44 Narts, With. 82.45 Berchholtz F. IN. Diary, part 2, p. 60; Shtellin Ya. Decree. cit., part 2, p. 13-14. 46 Correspondence of Ivan the Terrible with A. Kurbsky. L., 1980, p. 7, 16, 18. 47 PBP, vol. 2, p. 153.48 ALOII, f. 270, op. 1, d. 88, l. 323. 49 PBP, vol. 9, part 1, p. 190-191. 50 ShtellinI. Decree. cit., vol. 1, p. 36-37. 51 Papers of Peter the Great / A. F. Bychkov. SPB., 1872, p. 18. 52 Yul Yu. Notes, p. 122-123. 53 Narts, With. 29.54 Nashchokin V.A. Notes. SPb., 1842, p. 8.55 Narts, With. 35, 43. 56 ALOII, f. 270, op. 1, d. 101, l. 169; PBP, vol. 11, part 2, p. 58.

57 Letters of Peter the Great, p. 250, 264. 58 Klyuchevsky V.ABOUT. Course of Russian history, part 4. M., 1958, p. 221.59 Materials for the history of the Russian fleet, vol. 3. St. Petersburg, 1872, p. 357.60 Yakovlev A. N. The answer is in ourselves. - Questions of Economics, 1989, No. 2, p. 6.61 SlutskyB. A drop of time. - Banner, 1989, No. 3, p. 79.62 Ustryalov, v. 6, p. 348.

The electronic version was made by Borokh A.V. Art. Faculty of Economics

Anisimov E. V.

A67 Time of Peter's reforms.- Ll Lenizdat,

1989. - 496 pp. - (Historical Library "Chronicle of Three Centuries: Petersburg - Petrograd - Leningrad").

1LVI 5-289-00262-6

The grandiose reforms of Peter the Great, which transformed Russia,

the bright, ambiguous personality of Peter 1, the characteristics of his associates and enemies, the breaking of consciousness, life, morals are the focus of the author of the book. It is based on historical sources, which, together with numerous illustrations, make it possible to convey to the reader the originality and color of the era of great transformations.

0603020200 - 294

Editor S. A. Prokhvagilova

Artist A. A. Vlasov

Evgeniy Viktorovich ANISIMOV

THE TIME OF PETER'S REFORM

Head of the Editorial Board V. F. Lvpvgyukin. Artistic editor

I. V. Zarubina. Technical editor I. V. Buedalva. Corrector

M. V. Ivanova.

Sd oz eo Rshvzyu I do o o IZZVE M Z6ZOT eoR zemyuzchi VT

fairy Gerde r Ie ofee Ude d 26.64 Ur r-o 26.62: h d

Chadzd,!21022,Lrd,eo e.62

zy1 Evgeny Anisimov, 1989

1ZV1Ch 6-289-00262-6

Nathan Yakovlevich EIDE "Darkness OA

“I COMPOSED OUT OF RUSSIA THE MOST METAMORPHOSIS, OR IMPLEMENTATION” - these words of P. P. Shafirov, Vice-Chancellor of Peter the Great, from his 1717 treatise “Discourses on the Causes of the Svean War” give an idea that contemporaries already clearly understood the significance of what was happening on their eyes of the transformation of Russia. The shock was especially strong because the "metamorphosis" was based on the will of a single person, who, like an ancient titan, lifted an unbearable weight. And this is undoubtedly, no matter what we say about the role of his associates, "productive forces", etc.

The grandiosity and inclusiveness of Peter's reforms is such that after one hundred and one hundred and fifty years they did not become only history, but continued to be a reality, a living life, entered the everyday life of people. M. P. Pogodin, a historian who lived in Pushkin's time, wrote in his essay “Peter the Great”: “We are waking up. What day is it? January 1, 1841 - Peter the Great ordered to count the years from the birth of Christ, Peter the Great ordered to count the months from January. It's time to get dressed - our dress is sewn according to the style given by Peter the Great, the uniform is according to his form. The cloth was woven in the factory he started. the wool is sheared from the sheep he bred. A book catches your eye - Peter the Great introduced this typeface and cut out the letters himself. You will begin to read it - this language under Peter the Great became written, literary, replacing the former. church. They bring newspapers - Peter the Great started them. You need to redeem different things - all of them, from a silk scarf to a shoe sole, will remind you of Peter the Great ... At dinner, from salted herring and potatoes, which he ordered to sow, to grape wine, diluted by him, all dishes will tell you about Peter the Great. After lunch, you go to visit - this is the assembly of Peter the Great. Meet the ladies there

Reviews about the book:

Innovative, revolutionary, talented - this is how the monograph was assessed twenty years ago. Since then, the ratings have changed little :) The case when the title fully reflects the content of the book. TIME. And the people in it. Content. "Composed from Russia the very metamorphosis, or implementation ..." 1. Father of the Fatherland. 2. Victoria at any cost. "Narva Confusion". "Look for the enemy to refute" Industrialization in the Petrine way. "It's hard for a man to understand and rule everything with his eyes." On the roads of war: from Narva to Poltava. Fracture: from Poltava to Gangut. 3. Birth of an empire. Realization of the state dream. Serf economy. "The work of a subject of the All-Russian people." "Correction of the Spiritual Order". "The police are the soul of citizenship." imperial idea. 3. "To whom shall I leave the plantation described above?" Sources and literature.

Khukhrov Igor 0

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The eighteenth century went down in history under the name of the “Century of Russia”. Two brilliant reigns symbolized this century: it began with the reign of Peter I, the Great, and ended with the activity of Catherine II, also called the Great. According to A.S. Pushkin, at the beginning of the XVIII century. "Russia entered Europe like a ship launched down the stocks - with the sound of an ax and the thunder of cannons."

In this century, Russia has become a European power, firmly taking its place in the alliance of other states and loudly declaring itself as a great and powerful country.

At the beginning of the century, St. Petersburg was founded, and in the middle of it, Moscow University was founded, ended with the victorious Italian and Swiss campaigns of A.V. Suvorov, when "the Russian bayonet broke through the Alps." The 18th century went down in history as a century of honor, duty, and the dawn of culture. This century passed the baton of glory and exploits to the 19th century.

18th century in the history of Russia - a period of many colors and many meanings.

It was not a time of revolutions, but reforms, and reforms carried out "from above". The Russian government continued undertakings along the path of progress. But if the changes under Mikhail Romanov, Alexei Mikhailovich, Fyodor Alekseevich, Princess Sophia were timid, then Peter's actions were sharp, often cruel, not always well prepared.

Based on the foregoing, it can be understood that the 18th century did not bring satisfaction to everyone, there were those to whom it brought disappointment, because the traditional foundations of Russia were destroyed, the identity of Russia was lost. It is the Slavophiles who are representatives of the liberal social movement the second quarter of the 19th century, they considered the reforms of Peter I evil for Russia, even during the life of Peter I, many called him "the king-antichrist."

In my work, I aim to prove that the reform activity of Peter I was an urgent need and contributed to the modernization of all aspects of public life.

The versatility, diversity of events and characters of the 18th century are easily evident, but it is unlikely that a school (and any other) textbook is able to reflect all the richness of colors and nuances of this time. When writing the work, I turned to anthologies, monographs, reference literature. These materials allowed me to see a century in the history of our country from different sides and different positions.

At the turn of the 17th - 18th centuries, having a vast territory (from the East European Plain to the expanses of Siberia), having an impressive reserve of natural resources, Russia, nevertheless, seriously lagged behind the leading European powers.

This lag was also manifested in the underdevelopment of capitalist relations (as evidenced by the small number of manufactories that used mainly the labor of serfs), and in the insufficiency of exploration and mining

(which led to the need to import products from them), and in the weak development of international trade due to the impossibility of access to the Baltic and Black Seas, and in the frequent military failures of Russia in the second half of the 17th century (due to the lack of a regular army and navy), and in low level of science and education

The technical and economic backwardness of Russia was the result of severe trials that fell to its lot. The Mongol-Tatar yoke slowed down its development for a long time, when historical development went with an eye to the east, and the country for centuries was cut off from natural communication with Europe. The situation was also aggravated by feudal-serf relations in the country.

However, already in the second half of the 17th century, the prerequisites for transformation appeared in Russia, which prepared the most important reforms. First of all, this is: an objective need for the development of industry and foreign trade, science and education, as well as the desire not only to defend their lands from the encroachments of Sweden, the Commonwealth, Turkey, but also to establish themselves in the rank of a strong European power.

The implementation of these ideas is connected with the activities of Peter I (1672-1725), the reformer and reformer tsar. Tsar Peter was born on May 30, 1672 from the second marriage of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich (with Natalya Naryshkina). Almost all of his childhood passed during a complex dynastic struggle for power between the Miloslavsky clans (of which the first wife of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich was) and the Naryshkins, which became especially aggravated after the death of his father (in 1676) and the short-lived brother Fyodor Alekseevich (died in 1682 while being childless).

In this struggle, the streltsy riots of the 80-90s of the 17th century were actively used. During this period of time in Russia, the archers represented the real military force and seriously influenced the alignment of political forces at the heights of power. In 1682, a streltsy uprising broke out in Moscow, which they managed to direct against the Naryshkins and their supporters. The Naryshkins were removed from power. The smart and energetic Princess Sophia, the daughter of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich from her first marriage, became the ruler, although her young brothers Ivan and Peter were formally proclaimed kings. Tsarina Natalya and Peter were removed to the village of Preobrazhenskoye near Moscow, where they underwent Peter's training and education, the formation of "amusing troops", which later became the elite Guards Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky regiments of the Russian army.

As Peter grew up and could already claim real power (Peter's formal co-ruler - his brother Ivan - was sickly and incapable of ruling), the relationship between him and Sophia became tense and even hostile. Supporters of Sophia tried to enlist the support of the archers in order to prevent the transfer of power to Peter. On the night of August 7 to 8, 1689, Peter received news of the gathering of archers in the Kremlin and allegedly of their intention to "exterminate" him. Frightened, Peter hurriedly leaves the Transfiguration Monastery under the protection of the walls of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery. At his call, his mother arrives there - Tsarina Natalya, boyars, "amusing regiments", serving foreigners and part of the archers. The preponderance of forces was clearly on the side of Peter, and Sophia, seeing her impotence, stopped the struggle for power. She was imprisoned in the Novodevichy Convent. Power again passed to the supporters of the Naryshkins, but Peter did not immediately begin to rule the state, because he had his own intentions, the implementation of which he took up (building a ship, the Azov campaigns of 1695-1696 and a trip abroad 1697-1698).

Peter's transformations in their grandiosity and scale are such that many years later they did not become only history, but entered the everyday life of people.

Time has shown the viability of many of the institutions created by Peter. The colleges existed until 1802, i.e. 80 years; the per capita system continued until 1887. The last recruitment took place 163 years later - in 1874. And the synodal administration of the Russian Orthodox Church lasted almost 200 years - from 1721 to 1918. It is difficult to find in the history of Russia examples of such longevity of institutions created consciously by the will of man. From here is the admiration that caused and continues to cause great reformer Russia.

But Peter's reforms are not only great achievements, brilliant military victories and familiarization with the European family of peoples. This is a colossal deprivation of the masses. This is a comprehensive system of control, fiscal and denunciation. This is fear, external and internal lack of freedom of the individual.

The idea of ​​a decisive break in the habitual foundations was formed by Peter and not immediately and, apparently, there was no clearly thought out plan of reforms. Although it cannot be said that they were built from scratch, for in the 17th century, under the grandfather, father and brother of Peter, reforms began in many areas. Regiments of a new ground formation appeared in the army (soldiers, reiters, dragoons), anticipating the regular army at the beginning of the 18th century.

Localism was abolished (1682) - an act that replaced the principle of nobility with the principle of abilities, which later found its completion in Peter's "table of ranks".

The initial incentive for the transformations was the extremely unfavorable circumstances in which the country found itself after the unsuccessful start of the Northern War. Applying emergency measures Peter in short term managed to achieve significant and impressive results. But this was achieved through violence, which is the essence of the extraordinary measures fixed in the laws laid down in the structure of the state apparatus of the administrative-repressive type.

Of course, not everything was easy. Peter's reforms had real roots in the past, in the tradition of power and subordination in Russia. Peter forced Russia to make a giant leap through several stages of development at once, which it would have gone through sooner or later.

Sometimes Peter I is called a revolutionary on the throne, and his reforms are “revolutions from above”, but the whole revolutionary nature of the tsar was generally, paradoxically, conservative in nature, the modernization of the state for the sake of preserving the fundamental principles of the autocratic-feudal system - that turned out to be the ultimate goal. In other words, Peter's reforms did not so much contribute to rapid development Russia in the direction of capitalism, how much cemented the feudal foundations. The traditional historiography of the Petrine era does not, as a rule, go beyond the framework of two points of view on Peter, established in the 18th century and existing to the present day: supporters and opponents of his transformations. Peter is a great statesman, the creator of a powerful empire, a man thanks to whom Russia followed the path of world civilization. This view was defended by Russian historians V.N. Tatishchev, M.V. Lomonosov, N.G. Ustryalov, S.M. Solovyov. Peter is the destroyer of Russian national foundations, his reforms were a "brilliant mistake". This is how his activities were characterized by at least famous historians M.M. Shcherbatov, N.M. Karamzin, as well as the Slavophiles of the XIX (K.S. Aksakov, A.S. Khomyakov). Not so sharply negative, but very critical of Peter, historians late XIX- the beginning of the 20th century (V.O. Klyuchevsky, P.N. Milyukov, N.P. Pavlov-Silvansky, S.F. Platonov), considering the harsh methods of providing for Peter the Great's reforms unjustified. Many of the efforts of Peter I, in their opinion, turned out to be not only fruitless, but also harmful, in particular, social measures made it difficult for Russia's already difficult path to a free civil society.

After the revolutionary domestic historiography, dedicated to Peter I and his era, mainly emphasized the generally progressive nature of Peter's transformations in accordance with the class assessments of the historical past of our country and emphasized the validity of the revolutionary repressive measures to provide for reforms, though not forgetting that everything was done this was within the framework of the feudal-serfdom system and was aimed at its modernization. this can be traced in the works of L.G. Beskrovny, V.I. Buganova, N.N. Molchanova, N.I. Pavlenko, E.V. Tarle and others.

Somewhat apart are the works of modern historians E.V. Anisimov, which, in our opinion, most adequately reflects the essence of Peter's reforms. The great reforms, in his opinion, gave rise to social stagnation, laid a contradiction in social development, fraught with powerful social explosions. And, perhaps, his statements that Peter created a “totalitarian state” and was a “typical technocrat” will cause rejection and controversy, but they will make you think and arouse interest. In general, the controversy about Peter and his reforms, apparently, is not completed and will continue, projected onto the current stage of Russia's development.

Northern War and military reforms

The Northern War of 1700-21 became a significant catalyst for the overdue transformations. Russia urgently needed access to the Baltic Sea for the development of foreign trade. Peter decides to go to war against Sweden in alliance with Denmark, Poland and (which then owned almost the entire Baltic coast) Saxony. The very first serious military clash between Russian and Swedish troops takes place in November 1700 near Narva, where the Russian army suffers a severe defeat. The Swedish king Charles XII, a young and energetic commander, after Narva was faced with a choice: either go deep into Russia, having a Saxon army behind him much more combat-ready than the Russian one, or oppose Augustus II. Charles XII chose the latter and "stuck" for quite a long time in Poland. Only in 1706. He was able to force Augustus to make peace and withdraw from the alliance with Russia.

Meanwhile, Peter very successfully used this respite to reform the army and continue the transformation. The fact is that the defeat at Narva from the Swedes at the beginning of the northern war was on a par with the defeats that pursued the Russian army in the second half of the 17th century. (failures in the Russian-Turkish wars - the Crimean and Azov campaigns, etc.). Peter understood the reason for the chronic defeats of the army and decided to change the foundation on which the military organization was built. basis Russian army in the 17th century it was a local army, when a serviceman, a landowner, came to the war armed and with his serfs, as they wrote then “horse, crowd, arms”. The same system also applied to the "navomanir" regiments (regiments of the new system, that is, trained in the European way of warfare and starting in 1630), because they also served from the land, enjoyed local rights, were landowners. In the second half of the XVI century. The local form of land tenure, under the influence of many factors, and above all the development of serfdom, evolved, as mentioned earlier, towards the convergence of the estate (temporary holding for a certain service) with the patrimony (clan, hereditary property). The development of this trend culminated in the economic and legislative merger of the patrimony and estate into inalienable landlord property.

In a military sense, it meant the loss of the local system as the main type of support for military labor, which led to a corresponding decline in the armed forces. Therefore, Peter takes measures to form a regular army. The signal for this was the dissolution of the archery regiments in 1699, after the suppression of the rebellion.

Initially, two methods were used to create regular regiments: the admission of everyone (“volunteers”, as they said then) to the “freemen”, except for the peasants who paid state taxes; a set of "data", i.e. those peasants whom the landowner was obliged to supply in accordance with the established proportions.

In 1705, the government of Peter the Great took the next step - the admission to the “freemen” was stopped and recruitment was announced for the so-called “recruits” directly from the peasant population. Thus, a stable system was created that provided the armed forces with people, which lasted until 1874.

The reason for this stability was that the recruiting system fully corresponded to the peculiarities of the social and economic structure of the country. Recruitment and serfdom are two sides of the same coin. In total, from 1699 to 1725, 53 recruiting was carried out. They gave more than 284 thousand people to the army and navy.

Recruitment kits were produced annually; only the taxable estate and only the Great Russian provinces were subject to them. A certain number of courts, and later individuals, were obliged to put up one recruit aged 20 to 30 years, not defiled by a crime and "not a fool."

... The soldiers received portions and fodder in kind, the officers received money. The method of allowance established by Peter was a big step forward compared to what it was before 1707. Abuses, however, even here opened up wide scope.

There were also new military regulations. To replace the "Teaching and Cunning of the Military System" by Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich at the beginning of the 18th century. Came the "Charter of the military", "Standing position", "Establishment for battle." A new uniform army uniform, orders and medals, promotions were introduced. The first officer schools were organized to train command personnel.

Peter paid special attention to the creation of the fleet, which was a natural continuation of the work begun by his father, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, during which the first Russian ship Oryol was launched in Dedinovo on the Oka. The construction of the Peter's fleet began in Voronezh in 1695-1699. Here, after the failure of the first Azov campaign, shipbuilders from Holland, England and Venice, Russian carpenters and workers were assembled who were able to build a large number of ships in a short time.

Peter recruited the people he needed everywhere, without disassembling the rank and origin, and they came to him from different sides and from all sorts of conditions: who came as a cabin boy on a Portuguese ship, as the police chief of the new capital Devier.

Happy Birthday Russian fleet historians believe May 3, 1696, when Peter I set sail from Voronezh in the Principium galley at the head of a detachment of eight galleys. In total, on the Voronezh ropes until 1702. 28 ships, 23 galleys and many small vessels were built.

The results of this activity appeared very quickly - from the end of 1701. The Russian army began to beat the Swedish in parts. In 1702 Peter stormed the Oreshek fortress, renaming it the city of Shlisselburg.

In 1703 St. Petersburg was founded, and the next year Narva and Derpt (Yuriev) were captured. In 1705 the uprising in Astrakhan was severely suppressed, and in 1707-1708. - the uprising of K. Bulavin.

Meanwhile, the army of Charles XII returned to Russia, and the fighting continued in Ukraine, but already unsuccessfully for the Swedes. September 28, 1708 a detachment under the command of Peter at the village of Lesnaya attacked and defeated the 16,000-strong corps of the Swedish general Levengaupt, who was coming from Livonia to join Karl. The Swedes lost all artillery and convoy. Peter I called this victory "the mother of the Poltava battle."

In the spring of 1709 The Swedish army approached Poltava. Charles had at his disposal a 30,000-strong army, although weakened, but quite combat-ready and formidable. The Poltava garrison heroically withstood a more than two-month siege, which made it possible for the main forces of the Russian army led by Peter to approach. It was decided to give a general battle on June 27, 1709. The Swedish king's plan was for the infantry to capture the Russian redoubts, and the cavalry to complete the job. She had to move between the redoubts, defeat the Russian cavalry and take possession of the guns. But the plans of Charles XII never materialized. Having launched an offensive, the Swedes captured part of the Russian fortifications, but they failed to develop further success, as our artillery met them with fire. Retreating into the forest and regrouping forces, the enemy again went on the offensive for a short time. The troops met in a fierce battle. After two and a half hours of fierce fighting, the Swedish army, which lost more than 9 thousand people, was defeated, and the Swedish king with the remnants of his forces was forced to hide in Turkish possessions. In the Northern War comes a turning point in favor of Russia.

In 1710 Russian troops occupied Vyborg, Riga and Revel. And this meant the accession of Estonia and Livonia to Russia.

The Turkish government, fearing the further strengthening of Russia, in the autumn of 1710. declares war on her. The Russian army entered the territory of the oppressed Turkish principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, but the general uprising of Christians, as Peter expected, did not happen, and the Russian army soon found itself in a difficult situation on the Prut River in the summer of 1711. The Russians entered into negotiations, and a peace was concluded, according to which Russia pledged to return the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov to the Turks.

Having suffered a heavy setback in the south, Peter continued the war with Sweden with redoubled energy. In 1712-1714. Russian troops fought in Finland and northern Germany. The fleet built by Peter was also active (on June 27, 1714, the Russians captured 10 Swedish ships off Cape Gangut). In 1718-1719. peace talks between Russia and Sweden took place on the Åland Islands in the Baltic Sea. December 1718. Charles XII was killed in Norway, and the negotiations were terminated. But offensive fighting The Russian army at sea and on land forced Sweden to resume peace negotiations again. As a result, on August 30, 1721. in the Finnish town of Nishtadt, a peace treaty was signed, according to which Estonia, Livonia, Ingria, part of Karelia, as well as a number of islands in the Baltic Sea departed Russia. All this not only created the necessary conditions for accelerating the development of the country, but also contributed to strengthening its position in the world.

Reforms of PeterIin the economic, social and state-administrative spheres of society

The reforms in the army and the military successes of Russia were based on an economic foundation. In the first quarter of the XVIII century. There was a sharp leap in the development of the manufacturing industry in the country. Peter was especially concerned about the development of the mining business and the planting of a large factory industry. The Tula Arms Plant supplied the large Russian army with weapons. On the shore of Lake Onega in 1703. iron foundries and ironworks were built, which became the foundation of the city of Petrozavodsk. Mining developed widely in the Urals. In 1699 Peter built ironworks on the Neiva River, in the Verkhogurovsky district, and in 1702. handed them over to the former Tula blacksmith Nikita Demidov. By the end of Peter's reign, there were 9 state-owned and 12 private factories in the Yekaterinburg district.

In addition to metallurgical plants, many different factories arose under Peter - linen, sailing, cloth - for the needs of the army. There were also many manufactories that produced goods for the consumption of the civilian population.

For 1695 - 1725 at least 200 manufactories of various profiles arose, i.e. 10 times more than they were at the end of the 17th century, and this with a huge increase in production. In other words, industrialization was carried out in the state in the style of Peter the Great.

The peculiarity of the economic boom of this period in Russia was the decisive role of the state in the economy, its total penetration into all spheres of economic life. At the same time, Peter actively pursued a policy of mercantilism and protectionism, aimed at encouraging the industry that produces goods primarily for the foreign market.

Successes regarding material well-being could not but rejoice Peter. Despite all the obstacles, inexperience in doing business and spending money in private pockets, government revenues increased. To eliminate abuses in the census of households, a poll tax was introduced, which went to the maintenance of a permanent army. The peasants of the palace, monastery and landlords paid 74 kopecks each. from the soul, state 1.14 kopecks. and were exempted from all previous monetary and grain taxes and carts; merchants and guilds paid 1.20 kopecks each.

The ideas of coercion in economic policy coincided with the general ideas of "forced progress" that Peter practiced in the course of his reforms. The nature, pace and specifics of the industrial breakthrough predetermined Russia's participation in the Northern War. Therefore, the emphasis was placed on manufactories that produce products for strategic and defense purposes.

The state combined the creation of its own industry with the organization of its own trade - for this purpose, a monopoly was introduced on the procurement and sale of certain goods. One of the first, from January 1, 1705, was introduced a monopoly on salt and tobacco. Among the goods taken into state trade were also: flax, bread, resin, caviar, lard, wax, sailcloth, iron, etc.

The participation of the treasury in trade acquires a huge scope under Peter. It inevitably led to the restriction and regulation of the activities of Russian merchants and resulted in the strangulation of freedoms based on the market conditions of entrepreneurs.

The Petrine era was generally the hardest time for the domestic merchant class. Monopoly, services, duties, forced migrations, artificial restrictions on trading activities - all this was not in vain: historical materials testify to the significant ruin of the wealthiest group of merchants. According to N.I. Pavlenko by 1715 Of the 226 most wealthy families of the XVII century. only 104 retained trading and crafts, and 17 representatives of the top of the trading world changed their class affiliation: some ended up in batmen, others in clerks, five ended up as soldiers, and 6 people found shelter in monastic cells. All this speaks of the difficult situation of this class, and sometimes the assertions about the flourishing of trade and support for the merchants during the period of Peter the Great's reforms are not entirely correct.

Manufactories founded at the beginning of the Petrine era were provided with labor.

There were also hired workers - walking, runaway, homeless, indigent, people who had left their familiar environment. Quite a few among them were otkhodniks from serfs; landowners released their subjects in order to receive quitrent payments from them (often in an increased amount). These were also “affiliated peasants”, who, living in nearby areas, had to work out the tax laid on them by the state at the manufactory.

On January 18, 1721, Peter signed a decree on "possession" (bought) peasants, according to which the owners of manufactories were allowed to buy serfs to their factories. This had very serious consequences for the Russian economy, for it meant a decisive step towards the transformation of industrial enterprises, in which the capitalist way of life was born, into enterprises of a feudal economy, a kind of feudal property.

The victory of forced labor in industry determined, to a large extent, Russia's economic lag behind the developed European powers.

The feudal policy in industry also deformed the formation of the Russian bourgeoisie. The owners of manufactories retained serf skills and supported absolutism, and did not defend their rights and did not seek to influence state policy (as was the case in England and the Netherlands). Russian entrepreneurs had a different desire (to turn into aristocrats, as evidenced by the examples of the Stroganovs and Demidovs).

Industrial construction under Peter led to two main results: to the creation of a powerful economic base necessary for a developing nation, and, at the same time, to a significant suspension of the tendencies of the capitalist development of the country, the path that other European peoples had long been following.

In this regard, the economic transformations of Peter the Great cannot be unambiguously characterized as progressive, most likely they were of a contradictory nature.

Among the works of contemporaries there are authors. Which, recognizing the transformations as a whole, nevertheless expressed either wishes or criticisms. Among such publicists is F. Saltykov. In 1711 he was sent abroad by Per to purchase naval ships. During his stay in England, Saltykov sent two reports to Peter: "Propositions" (suggestions) and "Statements profitable to the state."

Saltykov's notes were imitative. By his own admission, he borrowed from English legislation everything that, in his opinion, "befits only autocracy."

He advocated the expansion of noble privileges and the preservation of the monopoly right of the nobles to own serfs.

The development of industry and trade should be under the tutelage of the state, it is obliged to take the initiative in creating companies for the construction of manufactories. Industrial development ensure the independence of the state and the wealth of the people. Saltykov proposed to intensify the search for minerals and send merchant children abroad for education. "All these changes will turn Russia into a powerful state, in a short time they will eliminate her backwardness."

An outstanding publicist of the time of Peter the Great was Ivan Tikhonovich Pososhkov. His writings are the fruit of his own reflections of an observable and thinking person who passionately loves his homeland and cares about its future. Most interesting are Pososhkov's judgments on the development of industry and trade. Here, a talented self-taught person expresses ideas, the implementation of which was supposed to turn Russia into an economically independent and wealthy country. He believes that the state should encourage the development of trade and industry by issuing a court, and transferring state-owned factories to private ownership. The government had to take care of providing enterprises with labor: it was necessary to catch vagabonds and beggars and transfer them to manufacturers. The government should also surround the merchants with care, for "every kingdom is enriched by the merchants, and without the merchants no small state can exist." According to Pososhkov, only merchants could engage in trade, and no one else.

Pososhkov paid great attention to foreign trade. He recommended the organization of merchants engaged in foreign trade in companies, which would allow Russian merchants to compete more successfully with foreign merchants. In the interests of social industry, it was necessary to limit the import of foreign goods into Russia. In particular, Pososhkov protested against the importation into Russia of "trinkets", that is, luxury goods.

The “Book of Poverty and Wealth” was intended for Peter, but whether he got acquainted with its contents remained unknown. Pososhkov himself died at the age of 73 in the dungeons of the secret office, and his work was first published in 1842.

The reformism of Peter I led to a change in the social structure of society.

The nobility, as the Russian nobility began to be called in the Polish manner, was the main object of the monarch's cares and awards. The introduction of a new service criterion played a huge role in changing the status of the class of service people. The principle of descent was replaced by the principle of personal seniority. To replace the old division of the nobles into duma ranks (boyars, roundabouts, duma nobles, duma clerks. All of them sat in the Boyar Duma - the highest deliberative body under the tsar), metropolitan (stewards, sleeping bags, etc., up to Moscow nobles) and provincial (nobles and boyar children in cities, i.e. in counties) a new hierarchical division came. It was finally recorded in the "Table of Ranks" and made public on January 24, 1722. All ranks were divided into 4 categories: military (including land, guards, artillery), naval, civilian and courtiers, divided into 14 classes. Having received the rank of 8th class, everyone became a nobleman along with his descendants. The ranks of 14-9 classes also gave the nobility, but only personal, not hereditary. At the same time, this structure made it possible for representatives of other classes to make a career.

Even earlier, in accordance with the Petrine decree on uniform inheritance of 1714, an important acquisition for the nobility was the final legal alignment of the estates, which they owned on a conditional right (subject to bearing public service), and estates, unconditional hereditary possessions.

With a great deal of certainty, therefore, it can be stated that the Peter the Great reforms completed the process of the formation of the nobility.

In 1723-24. a new class was formed - the state peasants, which included the single-palaces of the South, the black-mossed peasants of the Volga region and Siberia, etc. They united according to the draft principle and accounted for about 20% of the taxable population. Moreover, this action of Peter bore a typical fiscal-police character. All these small estate groups were not serfs, so the state decided to unify the motley collection of free people, turning them into a single estate controlled from above.

The entire burden of the war and the reforms of Peter the Great was borne by the Russian peasantry. In the first quarter of the XVIII century. further developed the system of serfdom. This was reflected in the introduction of a new system of population registration and taxation. In 1718-1724. the poll tax was introduced, the meaning of which is that instead of dozens of various small taxes and duties, a single direct cash tax was introduced, which goes directly to the needs of the army. This poll tax was collected from all “male” souls recorded in “fairy tales” (the so-called special books where taxpayers were rewritten). According to the idea of ​​the reformer, taken from the Swedish practice of providing the army in a peacetime period, the regiments were placed directly among the very peasants from whom taxes were levied for the maintenance of soldiers and officers. This made it possible to significantly shorten the path of money from the pockets of the peasants to the regimental cash desks, because a number of intermediate links were destroyed.

At the same time, Peter eliminated the institution of servility that had existed in Rus' since time immemorial. There was a merger into a single estate of serfs and serfs, this was due to the introduction of a poll tax, which they also began to pay.

Peter also unified the social structure of the city, transferring Western European institutions to it: magistrates, guilds, workshops, etc.

Peter's reforms, due to changes in other spheres of society's life, could not but affect the sphere of state-administrative relations.

The tsar had been hatching the idea of ​​creating a perfect state apparatus for a long time, but only when there was no doubt about the victory over Sweden, he decided to start implementing it.

An example for the intended state reform Peter chose the Swedish state system. The Swedish state system was built on the principles of cameralism - the doctrine of bureaucratic management, which became widespread in Europe in the 16th-17th centuries. His characteristic features were: the creation of institutions specializing in any area (for example, financial, military administration or justice), as well as the organization of institutions on the basis of collegiality, clear regulation of the duties of officials, the establishment of uniform staffing and salaries.

Prior to that, in Russia there was a medieval apparatus of control - orders. Here observation was carried out, there was no specialization and clear distribution of functions, there was a disparity in the duties of officials.

The Senate, established in the spring of 1711, occupied a key position in the Petrine state system. disappear into the stream of time; no decree on its liquidation has been preserved. Apparently, he didn't exist. Peter simply stopped salaries in the Duma ranks. Information about the meetings of the Duma breaks off somewhere around 1704, although already from 1702 its functions as the highest government body began to be performed by the so-called "Concil of Ministers" - the council of heads of the most important government departments.

Subsequently, Peter decided to establish the Senate as the supreme governing body, where judicial, administrative and legislative functions were concentrated.

The next link in reforming the system government controlled was the replacement of the old mandative administrative structures with new ones - collegiums. A group of collegiums of the military and foreign affairs departments was immediately identified. The Collegium of Foreign Affairs was engaged in relations with other states and took the place of the Ambassadorial Order.

The Military Collegium replaced many orders related to armed forces: Streltsy order, Pushkarsky, Reitarsky, etc. Now the recruitment, armament of the army was concentrated in the hands of one institution.

A new institution that had no predecessors in the 17th century was the Admiralty Board. Its emergence is associated with the transformation of Russia into a maritime power, with the creation of the navy.

Three collegiums were in charge of the country's finances. Responsibilities were distributed among them as follows: the chamber board was in charge of income. She was engaged in the collection of direct and indirect taxes. The poll tax was a direct tax. Under indirect taxes meant proceeds from the sale of goods, the trade of which was in the monopoly possession of the state. Only the treasury could sell salt, wine, tobacco. Therefore, drinking establishments, as well as shops selling salt and tobacco, were under the jurisdiction of the Chamber College.

The commercial and industrial colleges played an important role in the structure of the central institutions. Ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy was supervised by the Berg Collegium. The manufactory board supervised the activities of light industry enterprises: sailing and linen, cloth, silk, and other industries.

Instead of the Local Order, which was in charge in the 17th century. land affairs, the Votchina Collegium was organized, but it was no longer engaged in the distribution of land for service, but in land disputes, cases of land inheritance, etc.

In 1720, the Chief Magistrate appeared among the central institutions, whose main responsibility was to manage cities. As a collegium, there was also a Synod - a body that manages the affairs of the church. Back in October 1700, the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Andrian. Elections of a new head were not made, and the post of locum tenens of the patriarchal throne, by decision of the tsar, was taken by the Metropolitan of Ryazan and Murom Stefan Yavorsky, who had no real power. In 1701, the Monastic order was restored, which decided everything in church affairs. Peter, busy with the formation of colleges, from January 1720 established the Theological College, later renamed the Holy Synod. This meant complete subordination of religious authority to the king. A special place was occupied by the Preobrazhensky Order and the Secret Office that replaced it. This is a punitive body of political investigation, where various kinds of state crimes were investigated (from disapproving reviews about the king to participation in armed protests against the existing order).

The boards became the basis of the central management system. Their Practical activities was built on the basis of regulations specially developed with the participation of the king. The General Regulations (1719-1724) were even created, containing the general principles of the activity of the bureaucratic apparatus of all state institutions. The ideology of Peter's state reform was based on the desire to transfer military principles to the sphere civil life, government controlled. The king was characterized by the attitude towards government agency as to a military unit, to the regulations as to a military charter, and to officials as to military personnel.

The activities of the boards were controlled by the prosecutor's office, headed by the prosecutor general. At the same time, this institution of explicit control was duplicated by a system of secret supervision - fiscal, highly encouraged under Peter. The institutions of the Prosecutor's Office and the Fiscal were firmly connected: the Fiscals reported cases to the prosecutors and the Fiscal General, who was subordinate to the Prosecutor General.

Along with the reforms of the central government, earlier in time (in 1707-1715) Peter carried out a reform of local government.

December 17, 1707 A decree was issued on the formation of provinces. The essence of the new provincial administration system was the transfer of some of the functions of central institutions by the governor, the concentration of information about the population, finances, etc. in them.

One of the final elements of the reform Russian society was the proclamation of Russia as an empire and the final approval of the absolute monarchy (autocracy). The king got the opportunity to unlimitedly and uncontrollably govern the country with the help of officials completely dependent on him. The unlimited power of the monarch found legislative expression in the 20th article of the military regulations and the Spiritual Regulations, which noted that “His Majesty is an autocratic monarch who should not give an answer to anyone in the world about his affairs ...”

On October 22, 1721, St. Petersburg solemnly celebrated the conclusion of the Treaty of Nystad, which drew a line under the Northern War and gave Russia a long-awaited access to the Baltic Sea. In the Trinity Cathedral, in the presence of the highest nobility, officials and generals, the Senate announced that Peter had been awarded the titles "Emperor", "Father of the Fatherland", "Great".

The apotheosis of absolutism was Peter's decree on succession to the throne (February 5, 1722), which destroyed the tradition when the throne passed through the male line from father to son and then to grandson. Now the successor was appointed at his own request, which subsequently, after the death of Peter in 1725, became the basis of palace coups.

In general, the Petrine reforms of the first quarter of the 18th century, carried out consciously and guided by the hand of the reformers, moved Russia forward and brought it closer to European standards, although in the end they led to the consolidation and strengthening of serfdom and political structures derived from the system of serfdom.

Transformations in the field of culture and life

The reforms of Peter I in the socio-economic and political spheres could not lead to the transformation of culture and life.

The changes in culture that took place in the era of Peter have a number of features. First of all, they are distinguished by the wide intervention of state power in the spiritual and cultural sphere, as well as the Europeanization of Russian orders.

Under Peter I, emphasis was placed on the creation of the Soviet school, and the problems of education became part of state policy. The conduct of large-scale wars required knowledgeable and educated people.

In 1707, the first Soviet educational institution was opened - the School of Navigational Sciences, on the basis of which the Maritime Academy arose in 1715.

A little later, the Artillery, Engineering, and Medical schools were founded. At the Olonets and Ural plants, on the initiative of V.N. Tatishchev, mining schools were organized to train qualified personnel in the manufacturing industry.

The children of the provincial nobles and officials studied in digital schools. A network of schools in the center and locally contributed to the spread of literacy, although education was predominantly class-based and covered primarily the children of the nobility and the clergy. The bulk of the population - the peasantry - was not accepted into schools.

Expansion of the network of schools and vocational educational institutions required the publication of educational literature. Textbooks appeared on various branches of knowledge: mechanics, geometry, astronomy, fortification, navigation, etc.

In the initial period of the reforms, the first Russian printed newspaper, Vedomosti, was founded, or, as the newspaper’s title page later stated, “Vedomosti on military and other affairs is worthy of knowledge and memory of what happened in the Moscow state and in other surrounding countries.” The first two issues of Vedomosti appeared in December 1702. The newspaper was printed first at the Moscow Printing Yard, and then (for the most part) in St. Petersburg. Vedomosti was published regularly, 1-3 times a month, with a circulation of 100 to 3,000 copies, depending on the importance of the reported events. This first domestic newspaper existed until 1728, when a new edition, Saint Petersburg Vedomosti, began to appear on its basis.

On the initiative of Peter in St. Petersburg was founded in 1714. a collection of interesting exhibits - the Kunstkamera. The basis of the museum was originally the personal collection of the king, which consisted of anatomical monsters and other rarities. Replenished with other domestic and foreign exhibits, the Kunstkamera became part of the Academy of Sciences and turned into a complex museum that still exists. Throughout his reign, Peter hatched the idea of ​​organizing the Academy of Sciences, but he took the first steps towards its implementation in June 1718. His resolution on one of the documents read: “Create an academy. And now to look for among the Russians who are learned and have a penchant for that. Also start translating books: jurisprudence and the like. This is to be done this year of the beginning. However, the creation of the Academy was delayed. Partly due to the fact that Peter was busy with more urgent matters, partly due to the difficulty of attracting foreign scientists to work in it. The tsar insisted that not scientists in general, but the largest scientists in Europe, be invited to the St. Petersburg Academy, and they did not dare to go to the distant northern capital.

On January 22, 1724, a meeting of the Senate was held, which was attended by the tsar Peter, after discussion, approved the draft charter of the academy. The draft said: "It is impossible to follow the accepted image in other states here." Thus, a negative attitude was expressed towards the organization of such institutions in countries Western Europe. The peculiarity of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences was that it was called upon to unite three institutions that act independently, namely, the university, which meant "a meeting of learned people" who were obliged to teach young men medicine, philosophy and law; a gymnasium that prepared students for a course at the university; own academy, that is, "a collection of scientists and skilled people."

The opening of the Academy of Sciences took place after the death of Peter, in 1725, when the first conference of academicians took place.

The physiologist and mathematician D. Bernoulli and the astronomer and geographer Delisle and others were invited.

In the field of literature, the time of Peter is the heyday of the story ("History"). The "History of the Russian sailor Vasily Koriotsky and the beautiful princess Heraclius of the Florentine land" received wide popularity. This is a kind of literary symbol of the era (by far, by the way, not the only one).

Priest Feofan Prokopovich (1681-1736), who not only glorified the tsar and his activities (“The History of Emperor Peter the Great from His Birth to the Battle of Poltava” - 1713), was the greatest ideologue of absolutism, a leading publicist, and a passionate propagandist of Peter the Great’s reforms. but he also theoretically substantiated the right of the monarch to unlimited power, the priority of secular power over church power, in his works “The Word on the Power and Honor of the Tsar” (1718), “The Truth of the Monarch’s Will” (1722).

On May 16, 1703, at the mouth of the Neva River, on a site that had just been recaptured from the Swedes, the construction of the Peter and Paul Fortress began. This was the beginning of St. Petersburg, which was built according to a special plan. A specially created "office from buildings" was engaged in this. The leading role in the construction was played by foreign architects - Domenico Trezzini (1670 - 1734), according to whose designs such structures as the Peter and Paul Cathedral, the building of the Twelve Collegia, the Gostiny (Mytny) courtyard, etc., and Jean Baptiste Leblon (1679- 1719), who in 1718 developed a plan for the layout of St. Petersburg in the form of a huge ellipse, inside which squares and systems of mutually perpendicular streets were outlined.

The construction of a new type of residential premises is connected with the change in the life of the nobility. The poorly lit boyar mansions are replaced by vast palaces with broken landscape parks. For example, Moscow in 1697-1699. designed by architect D.V. Aksamitov built the Lefortovo Palace with an adjacent park.

Peter assessed art (in terms of modern terminology) as a technocrat. Works of art, in his opinion, should have served either as an ornament or as a symbol, a visual aid that gives people knowledge or edifying examples for their moral improvement.

This was especially evident in the fine arts of the first quarter of the 18th century. At this time, a new type of fine art appeared for Russia - engraving. It was mainly used for the design and illustration of books, and was also represented by independent sheets. They were dominated by battle scenes and urban landscapes reflecting military events or the construction of St. Petersburg. Initially, engravings were made in Holland (Andrian Schkhonebek and others), but then domestic engravings became famous (brothers Alexei and Ivan Zubov, Alexei Rostovtsev).

The leading genre in painting is the portrait. The most significant artist of this trend was Ivan Nikitich Nikitin (1690-1742), the author of many portraits of Peter's associates (for example, a portrait of Chancellor G.I. Golovin) and the famous painting "Peter I on his deathbed". Of the foreign artists invited to work to Russia by Peter, it should be noted Johann Gottfried Tannauer and Louis Caravaque, who painted ceremonial portraits of Peter, members of his family of state dignitaries.

Another one new form fine arts - painting on finift (enamel), represented by a portrait miniature, in which Grigory Semenovich Musikiy (1671-1739) was an unsurpassed master.

The introduction of new phenomena into the Russian cultural and everyday life also falls on the Petrine era.

By decree of Peter, a reform of the calendar was carried out and the chronology was introduced, according to which the European states lived. Earlier New Year began on September 1, and the years were counted from the opening of the world, which was believed to have occurred 5508 years before the appearance of Christ. Therefore, according to the innovation, the day after December 31, 7208 was prescribed to be considered January 1, 1700. "from the birth of Christ"

New European clothing was introduced (camisoles, stockings, shoes, hats, ties) and a new form of communication for the upper classes-assemblies. The tops of the society went through a school of secular education. Assembly, the tsar explained in a decree of 1713, the word is French, it means a certain number of people who have gathered together for their amusement or for friendly discussions and conversations. But both ease, and fun, and the ability to conduct secular conversation and dance did not come immediately. And yet there were secular balls and receptions that took root in Russia.

Peter paid great attention to teaching the gallant behavior and etiquette of the offspring of nobles, senior officials and officers. Under him, a collection of rules for decent behavior "An honest mirror for youth, or an indication for worldly behavior" was published three times and was widely popular. The unknown compiler of this work used several foreign works. Of these, he translated those parts that set out the rules and were considered useful to the Russian people. "The Honest Mirror of Youth" contained the rules for commanding young people in the family, at a party, in public places and in the service. It inspired the young men with modesty, diligence, obedience, courtesy and prudence. In general, the cultural transformations in the era of Peter the Great were very significant; they brought Russia closer to Europe. But one should not forget the assessments of A.S. Pushkin. The poet believed that Peter, who enlightened Russia, at the same time sharply increased both lack of freedom in general and the subordination of the individual to the state in particular.

Speaking about the results of Peter's reforms, it should be noted that all the innovations of the first quarter of the 18th century. can be divided into two groups.

Some of them arose and gradually warmed back in the 17th century, and the role of Peter here was that he, having seen the tasks facing the country, accelerated their solution.

Other innovations did not have deep roots in the Russian past, and they owed their manifestation to the initiative of the tsar and his enormous energy in putting them into practice.

Conclusion

Reforms of the first quarter of the XVIII century. are inseparable from the personality of Peter I - an outstanding commander and statesman. Undoubtedly, Peter I was endowed with the traits of a charismatic (endowed with unique personality traits) leader. In his decisions, he relied on the then level of knowledge about society, guided by the ideas of "common benefit", " public interest", most fully realized in the doctrine of the absolutist state. In the conditions of feudal Russia, he implemented these ideas assertively, on a grand scale, sometimes ignoring the personal interests of his subjects. The tsar was always on the move - he created a fleet and a regular army, reformed the apparatus of power, shaved his beard and created scientific centers, led military operations.

In the first quarter of the 18th century, Russia eliminated the backlog from the advanced countries of Europe in the economy, the manufacturing industry increased sharply, new industries were created, and domestic and foreign trade developed widely. There was an improvement in the state apparatus, an absolute monarchy took shape. Great changes have taken place in cultural life. The transformations were accompanied by a sharp increase in the tax burden, increased serfdom, serfdom, and huge sacrifices. Peter continued the reforms begun in the 17th century, but carried them out more energetically and consistently, and much more radically. The reforms completely changed the face of the country and its culture. From this moment, a split begins between the privileged and educated part of society - the nobility with the broad masses of the people, bearers of traditional culture.

The transformations did not change the socio-economic, political system of Russia. But Peter's efforts led to the creation of a state that can be described as autocratic, military-bureaucratic and police. And it will remain so for several hundred years...

Moritz of Saxony called Peter the greatest man his century
-N. I. Pavlenko believed that Peter's transformations were a major step towards progress (albeit within the framework of feudalism). Outstanding Soviet historians, such as E. V. Tarle, N. N. Molchanov, and V. I. Buganov, agree with him in many respects, considering the reforms from the point of view of Marxist theory. Voltaire wrote repeatedly about Peter. By the end of 1759 he published the first volume, and in April 1763 the second volume of "The History of the Russian Empire under Peter the Great" was published. Main value Petrine reforms Voltaire determines the progress that the Russians have achieved in 50 years, other nations cannot achieve this even in 500. Peter I, his reforms, their significance became the object of the dispute between Voltaire and Rousseau.

In general, Peter's reforms were aimed at strengthening the Russian state and familiarizing the ruling stratum with European culture while strengthening the absolute monarchy. By the end of the reign of Peter the Great, a powerful Russian empire was created, headed by the emperor, who had absolute power. In the course of the reforms, the technical and economic backwardness of Russia from European states was overcome, access to the Baltic Sea was won, and transformations were carried out in all spheres of life in Russian society.

The reformation of Russia under Peter I was distinguished by a certain feverishness and even inconsistency. This was largely due to the tense war with Sweden. The reforms largely served to strengthen the absolute power of the monarch. At the end of the reign of Peter I, the state structure was already strikingly different from the structure of Muscovite Rus'. In many respects following Western European images. In Russia, an absolute monarchy is finally taking shape - a system of power in which its entirety belongs indefinitely to one person at the head of the state - the tsar (emperor, king).

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