ABSTRACT
Russia under Peter the Great can thus be regarded as undergoing, in the main, a process of forced and greatly accelerated evolution rather than of true revolution. Peter lacked almost completely the intellectual equipment of a modern revolutionary. The erection in August 1782, in the Senate Square in St Petersburg, of the great statue of Peter by the French sculptor Falconet was merely the most striking physical symbol of her efforts to appear to be continuing and fulfilling the Petrine tradition. It is now a truism to say that the view of Peter's reign as marking a sharp transition from darkness to light, from barbarism to civilization, is untenable. Throughout much of Europe, notably in Poland and Sweden, the news of Peter's death was greeted with relief, indeed pleasure. By the middle of the century adulation of the great tsar had become a distinct strain in the Russian literature which was then rapidly growing.
