ABSTRACT
The demands of the army and navy were the driving force behind much of the effort, often unsuccessful, to foster Russia's industrial strength which marked Peter's reign. The war and the demands it generated were the mainspring of much of Peter's innovating and creative activity in Russia. The war with Sweden and Peter's ambitious plans for the strengthening of Russia produced intensified demands not merely for labour and services of many kinds but also for money and industrial products, in other words for economic growth. Peter supported the forcible or semi-forcible conversion to Orthodoxy of the non-Christian peoples of east and south Russia, partly at least because this transformed relatively free tribesmen into tax-paying Russian subjects. For a long time Peter's efforts to improve the machinery of administration were tentative and experimental. Peter's desire to create a system of government which was impersonal and regulated by law was genuine.
