ABSTRACT
Peter was born in 1672, the first son of the second wife of Tsar Alexis. In the 1680s, when Sophia was in charge, Peter had been shunted off to a village outside Moscow called Preobrazhenskoe, where he was largely left to his own devices. Peter greatly changed Russian society but not Russian foreign policy. In recognition of his success Peter was given the tides Great and Emperor, and from that time on the tsarist state was known as the Russian empire. Though not a philosopher or theoretician, Peter the Great had a practical sense of the sort of state and society he was trying to shape. The most important rebellion against Peter broke out in southeastern Russia, centered on the city of Astrakhan, in 1705. Peter was then heavily engaged in the Great Northern War and could ill afford troops to send against the rebels.
