Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Vassiliev, Alexei. (1993). Russian Policy in the Middle East: From Messianism to Pragmatism. Reading, UK: Ithaca Press.
(1793-1826), a leader of the Decembrist movement.
Pavel Ivanovich Pestel, the son of Ivan Boriso-vich Pestel and Elisaveta Ivanovna von Krok, was born in Moscow into a family of German and Lutheran background. He was sent to Dresden at the age of twelve to be educated, and on his return four years later he joined the Corps of Pages in St. Petersburg, where he began to study political science. On graduating Pestel entered the army and in
1167
time joined several secret societies. The most important of these was the Society of Salvation, founded in 1817 and later renamed the Society of Welfare. Several of Pestel’s fellow officers had been in Paris and Western Europe during the war against Napoleon, and from them he became familiar with the ideas of the French Revolution. Transferred to the southern Russia in 1818, Pestel organized a local branch of the Society of Welfare, where he and his friends discussed such ideas as constitutional monarchy and republican government, as well as the means by which the imperial family might be coerced into accepting the former or made to abdicate in favor of the latter.
Pestel left two unfinished works, Russkaia Pravda (Russian Truth) and Prakticheskie nachala politicheskoy ekonomy (Practical Principles of Political Economy). The first outlines a program for political reform in Russia; the second, a rambling essay on economics, expresses admiration for the prosperity made possible by political freedom in the United States. Pestel’s ideas, especially in their tendency to favor radical solutions to the problem of Russia’s political backwardness, relied heavily on the ideas of the French writer Antoine Louis Claude Destutt de Tracy, but they had other French and German sources as well.
When Alexander I died in December 1825 there was some confusion about the succession. There was also confusion among those who were plotting a revolt. The more radical revolutionaries were in the south under Pestel’s leadership. Betrayed by informants in the Southern Society, Pestel was arrested on December 13, the same day that three thousand soldiers demonstrated in Senate Square in St. Petersburg on behalf of Alexander I’s brother, Constantine, who had already given up his claim to the throne in favor of his brother, Nicholas. Pes-tel’s colleague Sergei Muraviev-Apostol attempted to lead a revolt, but it was crushed by imperial troops. Pestel was found guilty of treason and executed in 1826 with four of his fellow revolutionaries, Muraviev-Apostol, Peter Kakhovsky, Mikhail Bestuzhev-Ryumin, and Kondraty Ryleyev. See also: DECEMBRIST MOVEMENT AND REBELLION; RYLEYEV, KONDRATY FYODOROVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mazour, Anatole G. (1937). The First Russian Revolution, 1825: The Decembrist Movement: Its Origins, Development, and Significance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Walsh, Warren B. (1968). Russia and the Soviet Union: A Modern History. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
(1672-1725), known as Peter the Great, tsar and emperor of Russia, 1682-1725.
The reign of Peter I is generally regarded as a watershed in Russian history, during which Russia expanded westward, became a leading player in European affairs, and underwent major reforms of its government, economy, religious affairs, and culture. Peter is regarded as a “modernizer” or “westernizer,” who forced changes upon his often reluctant subjects. In 1846 the Russian historian Nikolai Pogodin wrote: “The Russia of today, that is to say, European Russia, diplomatic, political, military, commercial, industrial, scholastic, literary- is the creation of Peter the Great. Everywhere we look, we encounter this colossal figure, who casts a long shadow over our entire past.” Writers before and after agreed that Peter made a mark on the course of Russian history, although there has always been disagreement about whether his influence was positive or negative.
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
The only son of the second marriage of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich of Russia (r. 1645-1676) to Nathalie Kirillovna Naryshkina, Peter succeeded his half-brother Tsar Fyodor Alexeyevich (1676-1682) in May 1682. In June, following the bloody rebellion of the Moscow musketeers, in which members of his mother’s family and government officials were massacred, he was crowned second tsar jointly with his elder, but severely handicapped, half-brother Ivan V. Kept out of government during the regency of his half-sister Sophia Alexeyevna (r. 1682-1689), Peter pursued personal interests that later fed into his public activities; these included meeting foreigners, learning to sail, and forming “play” troops under the command of foreign officers, which became the Preobrazhensky and Se- menovsky guards. On Tsar Ivan’s death in 1696, Peter found himself sole ruler and enjoyed his first military victory, the capture of the Turkish fortress at Azov, a success which was facilitated by a newly created fleet on the Don river. From 1697 to 1698 he made an unprecedented tour of Western Europe
1168
with the Grand Embassy, the official aim of which was to revive the Holy League against the Ottomans, which Russia had entered in 1686. Peter traveled incognito, devoting much of his time to visiting major sites and institutions in his search for knowledge. He was particularly impressed with the Dutch Republic and England, where he studied shipbuilding. On his return, he forced his boyars to shave off their beards and adopt Western dress. In 1700 he discarded the old Byzantine creation calendar in favor of dating years in the Western manner from the birth of Christ. These symbolic acts set the agenda for cultural change.
After making peace with the Ottoman Empire in 1700, Peter declared war on Sweden with the aim of regaining a foothold on the Baltic, in alliance with Denmark and King Augustus II of Poland. After some early defeats, notably at Narva in 1700, and the loss of its allies, Russia eventually gained the upper hand over the Swedes. After Narva, King Charles XII abandoned his Russian campaign to pursue Augustus into Poland and Saxony, allowing Russia to advance in Ingria and Livonia. When he eventually invaded Russia via Ukraine in 1707-1708, Charles found his troops overextended, under-provisioned, and confronted by a much improved Russian army. Victory at Poltava in Ukraine in 1709 allowed Peter to stage a successful assault on Sweden’s eastern Baltic ports, including Viborg, Riga, and Reval (Tallinn) in 1710. Defeat by the Turks on the river Pruth in 1711 forced him to return Azov (ratified in the 1713 Treaty of Adri-anople), but did not prevent him pursuing the Swedish war both at the negotiating table and on campaign, for instance, in Finland in 1713-1714 and against Sweden’s remaining possessions in northern Germany and the Swedish mainland. The Treaty of Nystadt (1721) ratified Russian possession of Livonia, Estonia, and Ingria. During the celebrations the Senate awarded Peter the titles Emperor, the Great, and Father of the Fatherland. In 1722-1723 Peter conducted a campaign against Persia on the Caspian, capturing the ports of Baku and Derbent. Russia’s military successes were achieved chiefly by intensive recruitment, which allowed Peter to keep armies in the field over several decades; training by foreign officers; home production of weapons, especially artillery; and well-organized provisioning. The task was made easier by the availability of a servile peasant population and the obstacles which the Russian terrain and cli Peter I in battle at Poltava. © THE STATE RUSSIAN MUSEUM/CORBIS mate posed for the invading Swedes. The navy, staffed mainly by foreign officers on both home-built and purchased ships, provided an auxiliary force in the latter stages of the Northern War, although Peter’s personal involvement in naval affairs has led some historians to exaggerate the fleet’s importance. The galley fleet was particularly effective, as exemplified at Hango in 1714.
DOMESTIC REFORMS
Many historians have argued that the demands of war were the driving force behind all Peter’s reforms. He created the Senate in 1711, for example, to rule in his absence during the Turkish campaign. Among the ten new Swedish-inspired government departments, created between 1717 and 1720 and known as Colleges or collegiate boards, the Colleges of War, Admiralty, and Foreign Affairs consumed the bulk of state revenues, while the Colleges
