Peter the Great (136 page)

"By your tireless labors and leadership alone, we your loyal subjects have stepped from the darkness of ignorance into the theater of fame of the whole world, and, so to speak, have moved from non-existence to existence, and have joined in the society of political peoples. For that and for winning a peace so renowned and so rewarding, how can we render our proper gratitude? And so that we may not be with shame before the whole world, we take it upon ourselves in the name of the Russian nation and of all ranks of the subjects of Your Majesty, humbly to pray you to be gracious to us and agree, as a small mark of our acknowledgement of the great blessings that you have brought to us and to the whole nation, to take the title: Father of the Fatherland, Peter the Great, Emperor of All Russia."

With a brief nod of his head, Peter indicated that he would accept the titles.* "Vivat! Vivat! Vivat!'* shouted the senators.

*The idea of awarding the title of emperor to the Tsar was not, of course, wholly spontaneous on the part of the Senate. Four years earlier, in 1717, when Michael Shafirov, brother of the Vice Chancellor, was rummaging among old records and papers in the archives, he found a letter written in 1514 by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian to Tsar Vasily Ivanovich (father of Ivan the Terrible). In the letter, Maximilian, urging Vasily to join him in an alliance against the King of Poland and Grand Prince of Lithuania, addressed the Tsar as "Great Lord, Vasily, Emperor and Dominator of All the Russians." When Shafirov showed Peter the letter, which was written in German, the Tsar immediately had it translated into all languages and gave copies to all foreign ambassadors in St. Petersburg. Simultaneously, through Russian diplomats and agents, he had the letter published in newspapers throughout Western Europe along with the notice, "This letter will serve to maintain without contestation the said title to the monarchs of all Russia, which high title was
given them many years past and ought to be valued so much the more because it was written by an emperor who by his rank was one of the first monarchs of the world."

In Europe, acceptance of the Russian title came only in stages. Holland and Prussia immediately recognized 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.

Part Five

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 th
e nation, and even to rechannel
ing 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.

The Senate was created in February 1711, on the eve of Peter's departure for the disastrous campaign on the Pruth, and was intended as a temporary institution to govern during the months he was away. The short decree establishing the Senate was specific on this point: "We appoint the governing Senate to administer in our absence." Because the new body of nine senators would rule in place of the Tsar, it was granted wide powers: It was to oversee the provincial governments, act as the highest court of justice, take charge of all state expenditures and, above all, "to collect money as much as possible, for money is the artery of war." Another decree proclaimed that all officials, civil and clerical, and all institutions were under pain of death to obey the Senate as they would the Tsar.

When Peter returned from the Pruth, the Senate did not disappear but gradually became the chief executive and legislative organ of the central government of Russia. Nothing could be done without the command or consent of the Senate; in the absence of the Tsar, it
was
the government of Russia. Yet, for all Peter's effort to enchance its power, no one was fooled. The Senate's power was mostly hollow, its grandeur mostly
facade
.
In fact, the Senate remained a body for transmitting and administering the will of the autocrat and had no independent will of its own. It was an instrument, its powers were those of an agent, its jurisdiction touched only on domestic matters—all questions of foreign policy and peace or war were reserved to the Tsar. The Senate helped Peter by interpreting and clarifying his hastily, cryptically written instructions and transforming them into legislation. But in the eyes of the people and in its own mind, the Senate knew it was the creature and servant of an unchallengeable master.

The subordinate status was made plainer by the fact that none of Peter's principal lieutenants—Menshikov, Apraxin, Golovkin, Sheremetev—was included in the Senate. These "Supreme Lords" or "Principals," as they were called, could send the Senate instructions "by order of His Majesty." And yet, at the same time, Peter instructed Menshikov that he and the others must obey the Senate. In fact, Peter wanted both the assistance of his powerful, loyal lieutenants and the aid of a powerful, central administrative body. He would not choose one definitely over the other, and therefore he left the situation confused, with opposing methods and systems of government functioning in contradiction to each other. Inevitably, the "Supreme Lords" and "Principals" bridled and refused to accept the authority of this fledgling body.