ABSTRACT
Emotional rejection of foreign models and influences, genuine fear of the implications for Orthodoxy of many of Peter's policies, desperation engendered by the suffering resulting from the tsar's demands: all these generated opposition. In the extreme form of active revolt this showed itself relatively rarely. At the top, as at the bottom of Russian society, Peter imposed new burdens and affronted old prejudices. The unprecedented decision to send young nobles and gentry abroad in 1696 for naval training aroused only grumbling and ineffective complaints; and though members of two important families, the Sokovnins and the Pushkins, were involved in the Zickler conspiracy of 1697, this reflected their personal feelings rather than any general attitude of the Russian nobility. The supreme illustration of both the strength and the pervasiveness of conservative opposition to Peter and of the ruthlessness with which it was crushed is the tragic story of the Tsarevich Alexis.
