The Reforms of Peter the Great

The reign of Peter the Great (1682–1725) is often used to illustrate the prime importance of leadership in the development of nations; another much quoted example is the Emperor Meiji of Japan (1867– 1912). Although few would question the influence of their personalities in effecting internal changes, there is inevitably a conflict of interpretation as to the precise nature of their achievements. Peter the Great has been the subject of particular controversy among Russian historians. On the one hand, he is seen as a revolutionary, comparable in his measures with the Bolsheviks. Berdyaev, for example, believed that ‘Peter's methods were absolutely bolshevik. He wanted to destroy the old Muscovite Russia, to tear up by the roots those feelings which lay in the very foundation of its life.’ To Berdyaev the Petrine and Bolshevik Revolutions showed ‘the same barbarity, violence, forcible application of certain principles from above downwards, the same rupture of organic development and repudiation of tradition…the same desire sharply and radically to change the type of civilization’. ¹ By other historians Peter has been projected as the personification of Russian evolutionary progress. Soloviev believed that Peter's personality and achievements directed the flow of Russian history into a more advanced stage of its evolution and made possible future modernization and progress. ‘No people had ever equalled the heroic feat performed by the Russians during the first quarter of the eighteenth century.. The man who led the people in this feat can justly be called the greatest leader in history, for no one can claim a place of higher significance in the history of civilization.’ ²