ABSTRACT
Peter the Great’s life ended in 1725, but his life in historiography had only just begun. Debate will never end concerning the role and significance of Peter and his reforms, and likewise debate about Russia’s fate and her place in the world. It is hardly worthwhile to get involved in the age-old debate and to calculate, like the late eighteenth-century historian, Prince M.M. Shcherbatov, how many centuries our country would have needed to arrive at its present state if the great reformer had not entered its history…. 1
