Peter as Emperor of Russia. Other states delayed, chiefly because they were unwilling to antagonize the Holy Roman Emperor, who was jealous of the uniqueness of his ancient title. Sweden, however, recognized Peter as emperor in 1723, and the Ottoman Empire recognized Empress Anne in 1739. King George I always refused to give his old enemy Peter the imperial title, and English recognition waited until 1742, fifteen years after the King's death. In this same year, the Hapsburg Emperor recognized his Russian counterpart as an equal. France and Spain accepted the imperial title in 1745 and Poland in 1764.
The imperial title remained in use from Peter's proclamation in 1721 until the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II in 1917.
Inside and outside the church, the crowd roared, trumpets sounded and drums beat, echoed by the clanging and thundering of all the church bells and cannon in St. Petersburg. When the tumult subsided, Peter responded, 'By our deeds in war we have emerged from darkness into the light of the world, and those whom we did not know in the light now respect us. I wish our entire nation to recognize the direct hand of God in our favor during the last war and in the conclusion of this peace. It becomes us to thank God with all our might, but while hoping for peace, we must not grow weaker in military matters, so as not to have the fate of the Greek monarchy [the Eastern empire of Constantinople]. We must make efforts for the general good and profit which may God grant us at home and abroad and from which the nation will receive advantage.'
Leaving the church, Peter led a procession to the Senate palace, where tables for a thousand guests were set in a large hall. There he was congratulated by Duke Charles Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp and the foreign ambassadors. A banquet was followed by another ball and by fireworks which Peter himself had designed. Again the cannon boomed and the ships on the river were illuminated. In the hall, an enormous basin of wine—'a true cup of grief,' one participant called it—was passed among the guests, carried on the shoulders of two soldiers. Outside, fountains of wine burbled at the street corners and whole oxen were roasted on a platform. Peter came out and carved the first pieces with his own hands, distributing them among the crowd. He ate some himself and then lifted his cup to drink the health of the Russian people.
RUSSIA
IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE
Peter had been sitting at dinner one night in 1717 surrounded by friends and lieutenants when the talk turned to Tsar Alexis and the achievements and disappointments of his reign. Peter had mentioned his father's wars against Poland and his struggle with the Patriarch Nikon, when Count Ivan Musin-Pushkin suddenly declared that none of Tsar Alexis' accomplishments had measured up to Peter's and that most of Alexis' successes had actually been due to the work of his ministers. Peter's reaction was icy. 'Your disparagement of my father's achievements and your praise of mine are more than I can listen to,' he said. The Tsar got up and walked over to the seventy- eight-year-old Prince Jacob Dolgoruky, sometimes called the Russian Cato. 'You criticize me more than anybody else and plague me with your arguments until I sometimes feel I could lose my temper with you,' said Peter. 'But I know that you are sincerely devoted to me and to the state and that you always speak the truth, for which I am deeply grateful. Now, tell me how you estimate my father's achievements and what you think of mine.'
Dolgoruky looked up and said, 'Pray be seated, Sire, while I think a moment.' Peter sat down and Dolgoruky was quiet for a while, stroking his long mustache. Then he replied, 'It is impossible to give a short answer to your question since you and your father were occupied with different matters. A tsar has three' main duties to perform. The most important is the administration of the country and the dispensation of justice. Your father had enough time to attend to this, while you have had none, which is why your father accomplished more than you. It is impossible that when you do give some thought to this matter—and it is time you did—you will do more than your father.
'A tsar's second duty is to the organization of the army. Here again, your father is to be praised because he laid the foundations of a regular army, thereby showing you the way. Unfortunately, certain misguided men undid all his work, so that you had to start all over again, and I must admit that you have done very well.
Even so, I still do not know which of you has done better; we will only know that when the war is over.
'And, finally, we come to a tsar's third duty, which is building a fleet, making treaties and determining our relationship with foreign countries. Here, and I hope you will agree with me, you have served the country well and have achieved more than your father. For this, you deserve much praise. Somebody tonight said that a tsar's work depends on his ministers. I disagree and think the opposite, since a wise monarch will choose wise counselors who know their worth. Therefore, a wise monarch will not tolerate stupid counselors because he will know their quality and be able to distinguish good advice from bad.'
When Dolgoruky finished, Peter stood up and said, 'Faithful, honest friend,' and embraced Dolgoruky.
The 'administration of the country and the dispensation of justice' were much on Peter's mind during these later years. Victory at Poltava had given him more time and freedom to consider domestic matters; his actions were no longer hasty improvisations made under the threat of imminent invasion. In the years after Poltava, Peter turned his attention from organizing armies and building fleets to a basic remodeling of the structure of civil and church administration, to modernizing and changing the economic and social patterns of the nation, and even to rechanneling the age-old trade routes of the Russia he had inherited. It was in the second half of the reign, the years between 1711 and 1725, that the fundamental Petrine reforms were fashioned. Alexander. Pushkin, Russia's greatest poet, compared the later fundamental reforms with the early wartime decrees: 'The permanent laws were created by a broad mind, full of wisdom and kindness; the earlier decrees were mostly cruel and self-willed and seemed to have been written with a knout.'
The nature and sequence of Peter's early reforms were dictated by war and the need for money to pay for it. For a while, as Pushkin wrote, the state was ruled primarily on the basis of Peter's decrees, hastily scribbled on pieces of paper. Traditionally in Russia, the tsar had ruled with the advice of an ancient, consultive council of boyars, and beneath it, the administration of the laws was carried out by a number of government offices, or prikazi. For the first two decades of Peter's reign, 1689-1708, there had been no change in this structure. The youthful Tsar attended meetings when he was in Moscow and delegated power when he was absent—thus, when Peter went abroad in 1697-1698, he made Prince Fedor Romodanovsky president of the council and ordered other members to accept his leadership. As Peter grew older and grasped the reins of government more firmly, he used the council little, and his opinion of it became openly contemptuous. In 1707, he ordered the council to keep minutes of its meetings, which were to be signed by all members. 'No resolution shall be taken without this,' he instructed, 'so that the stupidity of each shall be evident.'
In 1708, when Charles XII was marching on Russia, the central government had seemed unable to cope with the crisis. To raise money and find recruits, both desperately needed, Peter ordered a sweeping decentralization of government administration. The nation was divided into eight huge provinces or governments— Moscow, Ingermanland (later called St. Petersburg), Keiv, Smolensk, Archangel, Kazan, Azov and Siberia—endowed with wide powers, especially in the areas of revenue collection and army recruiting. To underline the importance of these new regional governments, Peter had assigned his most senior lieutenants as governors. But this new system did not work. Most of the governors lived in St. Petersburg, too far from the regions they supposedly governed to control them effectively. Some of the governors, such as Menshikov and Apraxin, had more pressing duties with the army or the fleet. In February 1711, Peter was ready to admit defeat. He wrote to Menshikov, 'Up to now, God knows in what grief I am, for the Governors follow the example of crabs in transacting their business. Therefore, I shall not deal with them with words, but with hands.' Menshikov himself was criticized. 'Inform me what merchandise you have, how much has been sold, when and where the money had gone,' commanded the anguished Tsar, 'for we know no more about your government than about a foreign country.'
The failure of the provincial governments left only Peter at the center of government along with the crumbling boyar council and the increasingly ineffective, overlapping administrative offices. Although Peter attempted to overcome inefficiency and inertia by his own enormous energy, often even he had not enough. In frustration and despair, he wrote to Catherine, 'I can't manage with my left hand, so with my right hand alone I have to wield both the sword and the pen. How many there are to help me you know yourself.'
In time, Peter realized that he himself was part of the problem. All power was concentrated in his person, which, as he was so often on the move, made administration difficult. Further, he was completely absorbed by military affairs and foreign policy and had no time for domestic matters. To discover what laws were necessary, to formulate the legislation, to administer the laws and government and to judge violations, Peter needed a new institution more powerful and more efficient than the boyar council.
