ABSTRACT
I spent several years gathering material for studies of Russian women in the first half of the eighteenth century, particularly focusing on evidence about Russian noblewomen, as they would have been more affected than other women by Peter’s legislative efforts to revamp Russian society. I planned a prosopographical study of Peter the Great’s female contemporaries and women of court circles who were born during his reign. I have identified numerous women for such a study, but evidence for the details of their lives remains elusive and difficult to uncover. I suspect that, rather than freeing women from the subjugation of the terem,2 Peter harnessed them to the needs of building his modern Russian state, for as long as he needed them, and that women’s lives returned to normal-paternal or spousal control-after a brief period during which Peter’s personal, patriarchal control allowed a certain sort of initiative to Russian noblewomen who were savvy enough to recognize the opportunity.
