extent even of the middle classes, particularly in the two leading cities, were shaven and wore foreign dress. Other Western innovations also generally succeeded in winning more adherents with time. It might be added in passing that the criticism frequently levied at Peter the Great that he split Russian society in two appears to miss the point. The reformer had no choice, for he could not bring Western culture to all of his subjects at the same time. The gap between the Westernized segment of the population and the masses had to be bridged by his successors, if at all.
The conflict between old Muscovy and new imperial Russia was played out in the sovereign's own family. Both Peter the Great's mother and his first wife Eudoxia, whom he forced to become a nun in 1698, belonged to the unreformed. In 1690 Eudoxia gave Peter a son, Alexis. The boy lived with his mother until her seclusion and later with aunts, in the old Muscovite palace. The emperor had little time for his son and never established rapport with him. Instead Alexis became the hope of the opponents of the new order and their rallying point. In 1711 Peter the Great married Alexis to a German princess. In 1712 the emperor himself married for the second time, taking as his wife a Lithuanian woman of low origin named Catherine, whom he had found in Menshikov's household, with whom he had been living happily for a few years, and by whom he had had children. It might be added that, because of her understanding and energy, Catherine proved on the whole to be a good companion to the emperor, whom she accompanied even in his campaigns. In 1715 Alexis's wife died after giving birth to a son, Peter.
At that point Peter the Great demanded that Alexis either endorse Peter's reforms and become a worthy successor to his father or renounce his rights to the throne. With characteristically passive resistance, Alexis agreed to give up his rights. Soon after that, in 1716, when Peter the Great, then in Denmark, called for his son, Alexis used the opportunity to escape to Austria and ask the protection of Emperor Charles VI, who had married a sister of Alexis's late wife. The following year, however, Peter the Great's emissary persuaded Alexis to return to Russia. He arrived in Moscow in 1718 and received pardon from his father on condition that he renounce his rights to the throne and name those who had urged him to escape. The last point led to an investigation, which, although it failed to
discover an actual plot against the emperor, brought to light a great deal of opposition to and hatred of the new order, as well as some scandals. The pardon of Alexis was withdrawn as a result of the investigation and a trial set. Over a hundred high dignitaries of the state acted as the special court that condemned Alexis to death. But before the execution could be carried out Alexis expired in the fortress of Peter and Paul in the summer of 1718, probably from shock and also torture used during the questioning. Nine of his associates were executed, nine sentenced to hard labor, while many others received milder punishments.
Peter the Great's several sons born to Catherine died at an early age. Possible heirs, therefore, included the emperor's grandson Peter, the emperor's daughters and those of his half-brother Tsar Ivan V, and the emperor's wife Catherine. In 1722 Peter the Great passed a law of succession which disregarded the principle of hereditary seniority and proclaimed instead that the sovereign could appoint his successor. Once more position was to be determined by merit! But the emperor never used his new law. His powerful organism worn out by disease, strain, and an irregular life, he died on February 8, 1725, without designating a successor to his gloriously victorious, multinational, modernizing, and exhausted empire.
Peter the Great hit Muscovy with a tremendous impact. To many of his contemporaries he appeared as either a virtually superhuman hero or the Antichrist. It was the person of the emperor that drove Russia forward in war and reform and inspired the greatest effort and utmost devotion. It was also against Peter the Great that the streltsy, the Bashkirs, the inhabitants of Astrakhan, and the motley followers of Bulavin staged their rebellions, while uncounted others, Old Believers and Orthodox, fled to the borderlands and into the forests to escape his reach. Rumor spread and legends grew that the reformer was not a son of Tsar Alexis, but a foreigner who substituted himself for the true tsar during the latter's journey abroad, that he was an imposter, a usurper, indeed the Antichrist. Peter himself contributed much to this polarization of opinion. He too saw things in black and white, hating old Muscovy and believing himself to be the creator of a new Russia. Intolerance, violence, and compulsion became the distinguishing traits of the new regime, and St. Petersburg - built in the extreme northwestern corner of the country, in almost inaccessible swamps at a cost in lives far exceeding that of Poltava - became its fitting symbol. The emperor's very size, strength, energy, and temperament intensified his popular image.
So the matter stood for about one hundred and fifty years, or roughly
until the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Peter the Great was revered and eulogized by the liberals, who envisaged him as a champion of light against darkness, and also by the imperial government and its ideologists, for, after all, that government was the first emperor's creature. Those who hated the reformer and his work included, in addition to the Old Believers and some other members of the inarticulate masses, such quixotic romantic intellectuals as the Slavophiles, who fancied to have discovered in pre-Petrine Russia the true principles and way of life of their people and who regarded the emperor as a supreme perverter and destroyer. It took a sensitive writer like Pushkin to draw a balance, emphasizing the necessity and the greatness of Peter's reforms and state, while at the same time lamenting their human cost. And Pushkin too was, in fact, overwhelmed by the image of Peter the Great.
Finally, with the work of S. Soloviev, himself a great admirer of the reformer, and other nineteenth-century historians the picture began gradually to change. Scholarly investigations of the last hundred years, together with large-scale publication of materials on the reformer's reign, undertaken by a number of men from Golikov to Bogoslovsky, have established beyond question many close connections between Peter the Great and the Muscovite past. Entire major aspects of the reformer's reign, for example, foreign policy and social relations and legislation, testified to a remarkable continuity with the preceding period. Even the reformer's desire to curb and control ecclesiastical landholding had excellent Muscovite precedents. The central issue itself, the process of Westernization, had begun long before the reformer and had gathered momentum rapidly in the seventeenth century. In the words of a modern scholar, Peter the Great simply marked Russia's transition from an unconscious to a conscious following of her historical path.
Although in the perspective of Russian history Peter the Great appears human rather than superhuman, the reformer is still of enormous importance. Quite possibly Russia was destined to be Westernized, but Peter the Great cannot be denied the role of the chief executor of this fate. At the very least the emperor's reign brought a tremendous speeding up of the irreversible process of Westernization, and it established state policy and control, where formerly individual choice and chance prevailed.
Since Peter the Great was practical, and a utilitarian, it may be better to conclude this discussion on a more mundane note than historical destiny. Long ago Pogodin, a historian, a Right-wing intellectual, and one of the many admirers of the emperor, wrote:
Yes, Peter the Great did much for Russia. One looks and one does not believe it, one keeps adding and one cannot reach the sum. We cannot open our eyes, cannot make a move, cannot turn in any direction without
encountering him everywhere, at home, in the streets, in church, in school, in court, in the regiment, at a promenade - it is always he, always he, every day, every minute, at every step!
We wake up. What day is it today? January 1, 1841 - Peter the Great ordered us to count years from the birth of Christ; Peter the Great ordered us to count the months from January.
It is time to dress - our clothing is made according to the fashion established by Peter the First, our uniform according to his model. The cloth is woven in a factory which he created; the wool is shorn from the sheep which he started to raise.
A book strikes our eyes - Peter the Great introduced this script and himself cut out the letters. You begin to read it - this language became a written language, a literary language, at the time of Peter the First, superseding the earlier church language.
Newspapers are brought in - Peter the Great introduced them.
You must buy different things - they all, from the silk neckerchief to the sole of your shoe, will remind you of Peter the Great; some were ordered by him, others were brought into use or improved by him, carried on his ships, into his harbors, on his canals, on his roads.
At dinner, all the courses, from salted herring, through potatoes which he ordered grown, to wine made from
