long, the carriage-sleigh became a moving cocoon from which the traveler emerged only at the journey's end. As Weber described such travel:
It would be impossible for a traveler to bear the immense cold in Russia, were it not for the convenient contrivance of their sleds. The upper part of the sled is so closely shut and covered that not the least air can enter. On both- sides are small windows and two shelves to hold provisions and books taken along for pastime. Overhead hangs a lantem with wax candles to be lighted when night comes. In the lower part of the sled lies the bedding with which the traveler is covered night and day, having at his feet warm stones, or a pewter case filled with warm water to keep the sled warm and to preserve the adjoining box in which wine and brandy are kept against the frost. Notwithstanding all such precautions, the strongest liquors very often freeze and are spoiled. In this movable apartment a man is carried along night and day without stepping out, except in case of necessity.
In this kind of sled, Peter, by frequent changing of horses, sometimes covered as much as one hundred miles a day.
Carriage, horseback, sled, river barge and boat—these were the means by which Peter traveled across Russia. 'He has,' wrote Perry, 'traveled twenty times more than ever any prince in the world did before him.' Despite his restlessness, he did not travel for the love of travel; instead, it was his method of governing. Always, he wanted to see what was happening and whether his orders were being carried out. Accordingly, he came, inspected, issued new orders and moved on. Riding in carriages—bouncing on inadequate springs—across roads filled with holes and ruts, his body never at ease, his backbone constantly swaying against the seat, his head bumping the leather walls when he dozed, his arms and elbows jostling against his companions, the grating noise of the wheels, the shouts of the coachmen—this was Peter's life, hour after hour, day after day, week after week. No wonder he traveled by water whenever he could. What a relief it must have been to glide along by barge or yacht, standing quietly on deck and watching villages, fields and forests slip past.
* * *
Peter's constant movement made administration of his government confused and difficult. The Tsar was rarely in his capital. Many of the laws of Russia were decrees written by his hand on brown paper either in his carriage or in the inn or house in which he passed the night. Whenever he set himself to work seriously at civic administration, either the war or an urgent desire to see his ships pulled him away. Meanwhile, in Moscow, the nominal seat of government until Poltava, the bureaucracy of the central government lumbered along, and gradually a number of changes in the structure of government were made. The old official hierarchy of boyars and lesser nobles was fading in importance; the men closest to Peter—Menshikov, for example—had not been made boyars at all. Menshikov was a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire and bore that title in Russia. Peter's other companions were given the Western titles of Count and Baron; indeed, boyars like Sheremetev and Golovin now preferred to be called Count Sheremetev and Count Golovin. Government officials received new Western bureaucratic titles, such as chancellor, vice chancellor and privy councilor.
Along with the titles, the men who held them were changing. When Fedor Golovin, who had succeeded Lefort as General-Admiral and also served as Chancellor (Foreign Minister), died of fever in 1706 at the age of fifty-five, the Tsar divided his titles and duties among three men: Fedor Apraxin who became General-Admiral, Gavril Golovkin who took over the foreign ministry and was appointed Chancellor after Poltava, and Peter Shafirov who became Vice Chancellor. Apraxin was well connected: he was descended from an old boyar family and he was also the brother of the Tsaritsa Martha, Tsar Fedor's wife. He was a bluff, hearty, blue-eyed man, enormously proud, who accepted insults from no one, not even the Tsar. Apraxin served Peter in many ways: as a general, a governor, a senator, but his real love—rare among Peter's subjects—was the navy. He became the first Russian admiral and commanded the new fleet at its first major victory, the Battle of Hango.
Golovkin was a more prudent, calculating man, but he too served Peter faithfully all his life. The son of a high official of Tsar Alexis, he was a page at court and became, at seventeen, one of five-year-old Peter's gentlemen of the bedchamber. At the Battle of Narva, Golovkin displayed great bravery and was awarded the Order of St. Andrew. Most correspondence to and from Russian diplomats abroad was addressed to him and signed by him (although Peter often read and corrected the outgoing instructions.) Golovkin's portrait shows a handsome, intelligent face, encased in an elegant wig; it cannot show the personal stinginess for which he was widely famous.
The most interesting of these three senior lieutenants was Peter Shafirov, raised from obscurity to become, in 1710, Russia's first baron. Shafirov was from a Jewish family that lived in the Polish frontier region around Smolensk, but his father had converted to Orthodoxy and found work as a translator in the Russian foreign office.* Peter Shafirov followed the same path, serving as a translator for Fedor Golovin whom he accompanied on the Great Embassy. His knowledge of Western languages included Latin and his skill at drafting diplomatic documents brought him promotion to private secretary in 1704, director of the foreign office under Golovkin in 1706, the Vice Chancellorship in 1709, then a barony, and the Order of St. Andrew in 1719. Shafirov was a large, double-chinned man with a contented smile and wise and watchful eyes. Over the years, Shafirov's relationship with Golovkin degenerated into mutual hatred, although Peter, needing both men, forced each to remain at his post. Foreign diplomats respected Shafirov. 'It is true, he had a very hot temper,' said one, 'but one could always rely fully upon his word.'
In addition, the names of the offices themselves were changing. There was a new Department of the Navy, a Department of Artillery and a Department of Mines. The heads of these departments, now called ministers, managed the routine business of government. Most petitions formerly addressed to the Tsar, were now addressed to the specific department or minister concerned. Peter discovered that when he was away from Moscow, the members of the old boyar council, now called the Privy Council, frequently failed to attend meetings. If, later, the Tsar criticized council decisions, these men avoided blame by saying that they had not been present. Thus, Peter demanded punctual attendance at all meetings and decreed that all decisions be signed by every member present. These papers, along with minutes of all meetings and other important papers, were sent by courier to Peter wherever he might be.
To handle these documents, Peter kept with him at all times a mobile personal chancery headed by his Cabinet Secretary, Alexis Makarov. A talented and modest man from the north, Makarov had risen on merit from a minor post in the provincial civil service to this key position in Peter's government. It was his duty not to offer advice but to see that all matters were brought to the Tsar's attention in the right sequence and at the most appropriate time.
*Ivan the Terrible had banned all Jews from Russia. However, Jews who renounced their religion were free to rise in society and government in Imperial Russia.
In this role, which required enormous tact and afforded enormous power, Makarov was assisted by a young German, Andrew Osterman. The son of a Lutheran pastor, Osterman was employed to translate correspondence between the Tsar and foreign courts. With the passing of time, Osterman's role was to become far greater.
Most of the business of Peter's government in those years concerned the war and taxes. Peter's decrees, like his constant traveling through the country, almost invariably dealt with the enrollment of recruits or the collection of revenues. The Tsar's demands for money were insatiable. In one attempt to uncover new sources of income, Peter in 1708 created a service of revenue officers, men whose duty it was to devise new ways of taxing the people. Called by the foreign name 'fiscals,' they were commanded 'to sit and make income for the Sovereign Lord.' The leader and most successful was Alexis Kurbatov, a former serf of Boris Sheremetev who had already attracted Peter's attention with his proposal for requiring that government-stamped paper be used for all legal documents. Under Kurbatov and his ingenious, fervently hated colleagues, new taxes were levied on a wide range of human activities. There was a tax on births, on marriages, on funerals and on the registration of wills. There was a tax on wheat and tallow. Horses were taxed, and horse hides and horse collars. There was a hat tax and a tax on the wearing of leather boots. The beard tax was systematized and enforced, and a tax on mustaches was added. Ten percent was collected from all cab fares. Houses in Moscow were taxed, and beehives throughout Russia. There was a bed tax, a bath tax, an inn tax, a tax on kitchen chimneys and on the firewood that burned in them. Nuts, melons, cucumbers, were taxed. There was even a tax on drinking water.
Money also came from an increasing number of state monopolies. This arrangement, whereby the state took control of the production and sale of a commodity, setting any price it wished, was applied to alcohol, resin, tar, fish, oil, chalk, potash, rhubarb, dice, chessmen, playing cards, and the skins of Siberian foxes, ermines and sables. The flax monopoly granted to English merchants was taken back by the Russian government. The tobacco monopoly given by Peter to Lord Carmarthen in England in 1698 was abolished. The solid-oak coffins in which wealthy
