Lev LIVSHITS
Crowned with useless glory,
Brave Karl glides over the abyss.
A.S. Pushkin. "Poltava"
“Which of you, my brothers, even dreamed about 30 years ago,” as Tsar Peter I began, “that we would be carpenters here, by the Baltic Sea, in a country conquered from them by our labors and courage? , the city in which we now live, that we will see such brave and victorious soldiers and sailors... For now, I advise you to remember the Latin proverb - “Pray and work!”
“We are pushing the Swedes army after army”
With his labors and courage, the soldier occupies a special place in history. Northern War the victorious Battle of Poltava on the banks of the Vorskla River near the village of Malye Budishchi, where on June 27, 1709, the Swedish army led by King Charles XII met with Russian troops under the command of Peter I. Over the famous Swedish king, who had never known defeat in the fields of European countries (in including nine years before the defeat of the Russian army near Narva), after a fierce battle a decisive victory was won. Of the 30,000-strong army, the Swedes lost over 9,000 killed and 18,000 captured; all the guns and convoys were captured. Russian losses were 1,345 killed and 390 wounded. As a result of the Battle of Poltava, the military power of Sweden was completely undermined and a turning point in the war occurred in favor of Russia.
A particularly striking moment of the Battle of Poltava was the rapid attack of the Russian cavalry under the command of Menshikov in the Budishchi forest, when the cavalry of generals Schlippenbach and Ross was defeated.
Who was he, Alexander Danilovich Menshikov, the favorite of Peter the Great, who had extraordinary military and administrative abilities, who ruled a huge country in the absence of the Tsar, the organizer of the construction of St. Petersburg and Kronstadt, the governor of Ingria, Karelia and Estland?
In one of his lectures, historian V.O. Klyuchevsky cites the opinion of his contemporary Prince Boris Kurakin about Menshikov: “A man of dark origin, of the lowest breed, below the nobility, who could not even sign his name.” The TSB says that he is the son of a court groom; in the old Russian encyclopedia of the late 19th century it is written: “It is difficult to establish his origin, but most likely he was from the common people, in any case he did not receive any education. Around 1686 he entered Lefort as a boy, where the tsar noticed him.” The main thing is clear - Menshikov was one of talented people, whom Tsar Peter recruited without considering rank or origin, he knew how to recognize people and rarely made mistakes in his choice, correctly guessing who was good for what! Perhaps Peter I’s brother-in-law, Prince Kurakin, was right about Menshikov’s origins, but this “illiterate” generalissimo won victories over the best commanders Europe (including General Schlippenbach) and successfully supervised the work of the builder of Kronstadt and the Ladoga Canal B. Minich, the architect Trezzini during the construction of St. Petersburg and managed all the lands conquered from the Swedes.
However, Danilych did not forget his very selfish interests, which is also impossible without knowledge and skill.
"The glory of their banners is darkening"
House on north side Lossi parade ground with a second-floor balcony on Doric columns belonged to Wolmar Anton von Schlippenbach at the end of the 17th - beginning of the 18th centuries. And it is unlikely that the brave Swedish general could even have thought on June 27, 1709, when the cavalry he led at the Budishchi forest near Poltava was defeated by the Russian cavalry, that two and a half years later the Russian Tsar Peter I himself, to whom he had then surrendered, would be a guest in his Revel house at the mercy of the winner.
A memorial plaque on the wall of house No. 4 on Lossie Platz reported that Peter I stayed here in 1711, having first arrived in Revel with Catherine for Christmas. The Tsar was greeted with unusual solemnity: a deputation of noble citizens of the Estonian nobles of Toompea and burghers came to meet him Lower City. At the Swedish Market (as Town Hall Square was then called), triumphal arches were erected at the entrance to the Lossi parade ground. Along the route of the motorcade, Christmas trees were stuck into the snow, the city was brightly illuminated, decorated with carpets and garlands. Then there were Christmas balls, receptions, fireworks.
The knighthood of Toompea and the burghers of the Lower Town hoped that the king would fulfill the promises - the conditions of Revel's surrender in September 1710. They tried not in vain. Peter did not like flattery and was unlikely to believe the “loyal” outpourings of the Revelites, but he needed a reliable rear in the war with Sweden. Having stayed in Reval for two weeks, he left the city on December 27 and already in February of the following year, 1712, Peter I signed the letter:
“We, Peter the Great, by God's grace tsar and autocrat of all Russia, and so on and so forth... We hereby declare that since Revel, the capital of Estonia, succumbed to us and came under our power, for the sake of their ancient privileges, blessed rights, liberties, justice and customs, as they were from ancient times and from the government before the government, until now, acquired and had, confirmed and will be supported... for this reason, we, out of the Caesar’s mercy, in their constant all-submissive loyalty and position to us and our Caesar’s heirs, are very much in hope, we confirm this, and by the force of this, all of them from ancient times and from government to government, blessed privileges, liberties, justice and customs, as they have acquired names until now. We also promise them with the greatest mercy that they and their offspring will always be supported and protected...
For the sake of your testimony and firm content, we signed this with our own hand, and ordered it to be strengthened with our Caesar’s seal.
It was also committed in St. Petersburg on February 13, 1712. PETER"
About ideals and principles
It was not in vain that the hospitable owner of the Vyshgorod house tried. Having transferred to Russian service in 1715, Wolmar Anton von Schlippenbach received the title of baron, was promoted to lieutenant general and became a member of the Military Collegium under Peter I.
The Russian Tsar converted more than one Swedish general to his “faith.” It was no coincidence that the local nobility and burghers, on his next visit in 1721, presented the emperor with a welcoming address with vulgar and pompous verses:
And the hail depleted by the wound
He sees the radiance of two luminaries at once.
Brother stretched out God over them
The generosity of your good deeds.
You are the sun, you are the father of the Fatherland
And the guardian of these shores,
And our small city, finally,
The monastery has found peace.
This is what it means to change your ideals and principles in time!
The Estonian peasants assessed this time quite differently, through whose fields and farmsteads the destructive wave of the Swedish-Russian war swept through. Today we can evaluate the events of three hundred years ago differently. War is a terrible and merciless phenomenon, wherever, whenever and with whomever it happens.
Today, local historians present everything connected with Tsar Peter in a black light. Looking through the twelfth volume of the tsar’s letters and documents, I came across his letter dated March 5, 1712 to the commander of the Olonetsky regiment, Prince A. Volkonsky: “The Estonian lansrators beat with their foreheads that the dragoons of your regiment are far from standing still. At a great loss, why do you need to look? And upon receipt of this decree, firmly find out and punish the guilty without mercy.”
There is no doubt that the perpetrators were found and punished. So not everything was clear in the distant past. Peter I, in a conversation with mechanic Nartov, said: “I command my subjects by my decrees; these decrees contain benefits, and not harm to the state... Access to me is free, as long as they do not waste my time with idleness. Ignorance and stubbornness have attacked me from the moment I decided to introduce useful changes... By establishing order in citizenship, justice must condemn the villain. Let anger slander: my conscience is clear. God is my judge! Wrong rumors are carried by the wind.”
1. Which of the following is characteristic of the economic development of Russia in the 17th century?
1) manufacturing
2) the beginning of the industrial revolution
3) agricultural overpopulation
4) the formation of a capitalist structure in industry
2. Which of the following persons are among Peter’s companions?
A) V.V. Golitsyn
B)D.M. Pozharsky
B)F.Ya. Lefort
G) B.P. Sheremetev
D) A.G. Orlov
E) A.D. Menshikov
3. What were the names of the central government institutions created by Peter I?
1) orders
2) collegiums
3) ministries
4) assemblies
4. What was the name of what was created in the first quarter of the 18th century? the highest legislative and judicial institution for the affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church?
1) Synod
2) By order of secret affairs
3) Senate
4) Supreme Privy Council
5. Which of these concepts refers to the reforms of Peter I?
1) capitation tax
2) redemption payments
3) three-day corvee
4) sharecropping
1) sudden change progress of the Northern War
2) the collapse of the Northern Union
3) the loss of Riga and Revel by Russian troops
4) the loss of Narva by Russian troops
7. What was the name of the civil servant who supervised the activities during the reign of Peter I government agencies and officials?
1) fiscal
2) supreme
3) governor
4) governor
8. As a result of government and administrative reforms Peter I in Russia...
1) the absolute power of the monarch was established
2) the role of Zemsky Sobors has increased
3) the role of the Boyar Duma increased
4) the role of the Supreme Privy Council was established
9. In 1722, Peter I adopted the Decree on Succession to the Throne, as a result of which the sovereign received the right...
1) transfer the throne strictly by inheritance
2) choose an heir together with the Senate
3) personally select and appoint an heir
4) transfer the throne only through the male line
10. Read an excerpt from the work of historian V.O. Klyuchevsky and indicate to whom this characteristic applies.
“A man of dark origin, “of the lowest breed, below the nobility,” in the words of Prince B. Kurakin, who barely knew how to sign for a salary and draw his name and surname, almost the same age as Peter, a companion of his military fun in Preobrazhenskoye and ship training in the Dutch shipyards , he, according to the same Kurakin, was in favor with the king “to such a degree that he ruled the entire state, almost, and was such a strong favorite that you can hardly find it in Roman histories.” He knew the tsar very well, quickly grasped his thoughts, carried out his most varied orders, even in engineering, which he did not understand at all, and was something like a chief commander.”
1) Andrey Kurbsky
2) Ivan Shuvalov
3) Alexander Menshikov
4) Grigory Potemkin
11. Secularization is
1) service policy economic assistance entrepreneurs
2) active government intervention in economic life
3) state policy aimed at supporting domestic production
4) conversion by the state of church property into state property
12. In which series are the dates associated with the transformations of Peter I in the field of public administration?
1) 1613, 1653
2) 1711, 1718
3) 1741, 1767
4) 1802, 1810
13. To what century does the proclamation of Russia as an empire date back?
14. Why is 1703 significant in the history of Russia?
1) the founding of St. Petersburg
2) victory in the Battle of Poltava
3) the beginning of the reign of Peter I
4) opening of Moscow University
15. Which of the above refers to the reforms of Peter I in the field of culture?
1) the beginning of printing
2) foundation of the Kunstkamera
3) foundation of Moscow University
4) foundation of lyceums
Answers: 1-1),2-3),3-2),4-1),5-1),6-1),7-1),8-1),9-3),10-3 ),11-4), 12-2), 13-3),14-1), 15-2)
We are accustomed to imagining Peter the Great as more of a businessman than a thinker. This is how his contemporaries usually saw him. Peter’s life developed in such a way that it gave him little leisure to think ahead and leisurely about a plan of action, and his temperament inspired little desire to do so. The haste of things, the inability, and sometimes the inability to wait, the mobility of the mind, the unusually quick observation - all this taught Peter to think without hesitation, to decide without hesitation, to think about the matter in the midst of the matter itself and, sensitively guessing the demands of the moment, to figure out the means of execution on the fly. In Peter’s activity, all these moments, so clearly distinguishable by idle reflection and as if crumbling during reflection, went together together, as if growing one from the other, with organically vital inseparability and consistency. Peter appears before the observer in an eternal stream of various affairs, in constant business communication with many people, amid a continuous change of impressions and enterprises; It is most difficult to imagine him alone with himself, in a secluded office, and not in a crowded and noisy workshop.
This does not mean that Peter did not have those general guiding concepts that make up a person’s way of thinking; only in Peter this way of thinking was expressed somewhat in its own way, not as a carefully thought-out plan of action or a stock of ready-made answers to all sorts of life’s demands, but was a random improvisation, an instant flash of constantly excited thought, every minute ready to respond to every request of life at the first meeting with him . His thoughts were developed on small details, current issues of practical activity, workshop, military, government. He had neither leisure nor the habit of systematically thinking about abstract subjects, and his upbringing did not develop in him an inclination for this. But when, among current affairs, he encountered such an object, with his direct and healthy thought he made a judgment about it as easily and simply as his keen eye grasped the structure and purpose of the machine he first encountered. But he always had two foundations ready for his way of thinking and acting, firmly laid down in early years under influences that are elusive to us: this is an unrelenting sense of duty and an ever-intense thought about the common good of the fatherland, in the service of which this duty consists. His view of his royal power, which was completely unusual, rested on these foundations. ancient Russian society, but was the initial, starting point of his activity and at the same time its main regulator. In this regard, ancient Russian political consciousness experienced a sharp turning point, a decisive crisis, in the person of Peter the Great.
Peter's closest predecessors, the Moscow kings of the new dynasty, the founder of which sat on the Moscow throne not by his father's will, but by popular election, of course, could not see in the state they ruled only their patrimony, as the rulers of the previous dynasty looked at it. That dynasty built a state from its private inheritance and could think that the state existed for it, and not it for the state, just as a house exists for the owner, and not vice versa. The selective origin of the new dynasty did not allow such a specific view of the state, which formed the basis of the political consciousness of the rulers of the Kalitin tribe. The conciliar election gave the kings of the new house a new basis and a new character of their power. The Zemsky Sobor asked Michael for the kingdom, and it was not Mikhail who asked the Zemsky Sobor for the kingdom. Consequently, the king is necessary for the state, and although the state does not exist for the sovereign, it cannot exist without him. The idea of power as the basis public order, the sum of powers arising from this source exhausted the entire political content of the concept of a sovereign. Power fulfills its purpose unless it is inactive, regardless of the quality of the action. The purpose of power is to rule, and to rule means to command and exact. How to execute a decree is a matter for the executors, who are responsible to the authorities for execution. The tsar can ask advice from the closest executors, his advisers, even from the council people of the whole earth, from the Zemsky Sobor. This is his good will and much, much a requirement of government custom or political decency. Giving advice, giving an opinion about a matter when asked is not the political right of the Boyar Duma or the Zemsky Sobor, but their loyal duty. This is how the first kings of the new dynasty understood and practiced their power, at least this is how the second of them, Tsar Alexei, understood and practiced it, who did not even repeat those vague, never made public and politically unsecured obligations on which he kissed the cross to the boyars - only to the boyars, and not to the Zemsky Sobor, is his father. And from 1613 to 1682 never in the Boyar Duma, nor in Zemsky Cathedral there was no question about the limits of the supreme power, because all political relations were established on the basis laid down by the electoral council of 1613. They themselves asked for the kingdom, and we ourselves will give the means to reign - this is the main note in the letters of the newly elected Tsar Michael to the council.
Of course, both in terms of the origin of the new royal house and in terms of the general significance of power in Christian society, Christian thought was also part of the Moscow autocracy of the 17th century. could find the idea of the king’s duty as a guardian of the common good and the idea of, if not legal, then his moral responsibility not only to God, but also to the earth; A common sense pointed out that power cannot be its own goal or justification and it becomes incomprehensible how soon it ceases to fulfill its purpose - to serve the people's good. The Moscow tsars of the 17th century probably felt all this, especially such a complacent and pious bearer of power as Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. But they weakly made their subjects feel all this, surrounded in their palace by heavy ceremonial pomp with the then, to put it mildly, harsh morals and methods of government, appearing before the people as earthly gods in the unearthly grandeur of some Assyrian kings. The same benevolent Tsar Alexei, perhaps, was aware of the one-sided establishment of his power, but he did not have the strength to break through the thickness of conventional concepts and rituals that had accumulated over centuries and tightly enveloped him in order to clearly show the people the other, reverse side of power. This deprived the Moscow sovereigns of the 17th century. that moral and educational influence on the governed society, which constitutes the best purpose and highest quality of power. By their way of government, the feelings that they inspired in the governed, they significantly disciplined their behavior, imparted to them some outward restraint, but weakly softened their morals and even weaker clarified their political and social concepts.
In the activities of Peter the Great, precisely these popular educational properties of power, which barely flickered and often completely extinguished in his predecessors, were clearly manifested for the first time. It is difficult to say under what outside influences or what internal process Peter's thoughts managed to turn the political consciousness of the sovereign inside out; only he, as part of the supreme power, most clearly understood and especially vividly felt the “duties”, the duties of the king, which, in his words, boil down to “two necessary matters of government”: to order, internal improvement, and defense, external security of the state. This is the good of the fatherland, the common good native land, the Russian people or state - concepts that Peter was almost the first to learn from us and express with all the clarity of the primary, simplest foundations public order. Autocracy is a means to achieve these goals. Nowhere and never did the thought of the fatherland leave Peter: in joyful and sorrowful moments it encouraged him and directed his actions, and he spoke about his duty to serve the fatherland in whatever way he could simply, without pathos, as a serious matter, but natural and necessary. In 1704, Russian troops took Narva, washing away the shame of the first defeat. To rejoice, Peter told his son Alexei, who was on the campaign, how necessary it was for him, the heir, to follow his father’s example, to not be afraid of labor or danger, in order to ensure triumph over the enemy. “You must love everything that serves the good and honor of the fatherland, spare no labor for the common good; and if my advice is carried away by the wind, I will not recognize you as my son.” Subsequently, when there was a danger of fulfilling this threat, Peter wrote to the prince: “For my fatherland and my people, I have not and do not regret my life; how can I feel sorry for you indecent? You hate my deeds, which I did for the people of my people, not sparing my health I do my own." One day, some noble gentleman smiled, seeing with what zeal Peter, loving the oak tree as a ship’s tree, planted acorns along the Peterhof road. “Stupid man,” Peter said to him, noticing his smile and guessing its meaning, “do you think I won’t live to see the mature oak trees? But I’m not working for myself, but for the future benefit of the state.” At the end of his life, going sick to bad weather to inspect the work on the Ladoga Canal and, having intensified the illness with this trip, he said to his physician Blumentrost: “The disease is stubborn, nature knows its business; but we must also take care of the benefit of the state while we have the strength.” According to the nature of the power, its environment also changed: instead of the Kremlin chambers, magnificent court rituals and outfits - a poor house in Preobrazhenskoye and small palaces in the new capital; a simple carriage, in which, according to an eyewitness, not every merchant would dare to appear on a capital street; in fact - a simple caftan made of Russian cloth, often worn-out shoes with darned stockings - the whole dress, in the words of Prince Shcherbatov, a writer of Catherine's century, "was so simple that even the poorest man today would not wear it."
To live for the benefit and glory of the state and fatherland, not to spare health and life itself for the common good - such a combination of concepts was not entirely clear to the ordinary consciousness of the ancient Russian man and was not very familiar to his everyday everyday practice. He understood service to the state and society as service assigned by the government or by secular choice, and looked at it as a duty or as a means for establishing personal and family well-being. He knew that the word of God commands to love your neighbor as yourself, to lay down your life for your friends. But by neighbors he meant, first of all, his family and relatives as the closest of his neighbors, and he considered, perhaps, all people as his friends, but only as individuals, and not as the societies into which they are connected. In moments of national calamity, when danger threatened everyone, he understood the duty and could feel within himself the readiness to die for the fatherland, because, while defending everyone, he defended himself, just as each of everyone, defending himself, defended him too. He understood the common good as the private interest of each, and not as the common interest to which the private interest of each must be sacrificed. But Peter precisely did not understand private interest, which did not coincide with the general one, did not understand the possibility of being confined to the circle of private, household affairs. “What are you doing at home?” he sometimes asked those around him in bewilderment. “I don’t know how to be idle at home,” that is, without social, state affairs. “It’s sad for us! He doesn’t know our needs,” people complained about him in response to this, tired of his official demands, which constantly took them away from household chores, “as if he took a good look at his house and saw that either there was not enough firewood, or something else, he would have found out what we were doing at home.” It was this concept of the common good, difficult for the ancient Russian mind, that Peter the Great tried to clarify with his example, his view of power and its relationship to the people and the state.
This look served common basis legislation of Peter and was expressed publicly in decrees and charters as the guiding rule of his activities. But Peter especially loved to express his views and guiding ideas in frank conversation with those close to him, in the company of his “friends,” as he called them. The closest executors should have known before and better than others what kind of manager they were dealing with and what he expected and demanded from them. It was a company of employees so memorable in our history, whom the converter had chosen for himself - a rather motley society, which included both Russians and foreigners, noble and honorable people, even rootless people, very smart and gifted and the most ordinary, but loyal and dutiful . Many of them, even the majority and, moreover, the most prominent and honored businessmen, were long-term and closest employees of Peter: Prince F.Yu. Romodanovsky, Prince M.M. Golitsyn, T. Streshnev, Prince Ya.F. Dolgoruky, Prince Menshikov, Counts Golovin, Sheremetev, P. Tolstoy, Bruce, Apraksin. He started his business with them, they followed him until the last years of the Swedish war, others survived the Peace of Nystadt and the transformer himself. Others, like Count Yaguzhinsky, Baron Shafirov, Baron Osterman, Volynsky, Tatishchev, Neplyuev, Minikh, gradually joined the thinning ranks in place of the previously retired Prince B. Golitsyn, Count F.A. Golovin, Shein, Lefort, Gordon. Peter recruited the people he needed everywhere, without distinguishing rank or origin, and they came to him from different sides and from all sorts of conditions: some came as a cabin boy on a Portuguese ship, as the police chief general of the new capital Devier, who herded pigs in Lithuania, as they said about the first Prosecutor General of the Senate Yaguzhinsky, who was a sitter in a shop, like Vice-Chancellor Shafirov, who was one of the Russian courtyard people, like the Arkhangelsk vice-governor, the inventor of stamp paper Kurbatov, who, like Osterman, was the son of a Westphalian pastor; and all these people, together with Prince Menshikov, who once, as rumor had it, sold pies on the streets of Moscow, met in the company of Peter with the remnants of the Russian boyar nobility. Foreigners and new Russian people, understanding Peter's work or not, did it without entering into his assessment, to the best of their ability and zeal, out of personal devotion to the transformer or out of calculation. Of the well-born people, the majority did not sympathize with either himself or his cause. They were also people of a transformative direction, but not the same as Peter gave to the reform. They wanted the reform to proceed as it was led by Tsars Alexei, Fedor and Princess Sophia, when, in the words of Prince B. Kurakin, Petrov’s brother-in-law, “politeness was restored to the great nobility and other courtiers in the Polish manner both in carriages and in the house structure, and in the decorations, and in the tables", with the sciences of Greek and Latin language, with rhetoric and sacred philosophy, with the learned Kyiv elders. Instead, they saw politeness in the manner of the Dutch, sailors, with non-gentry sciences - artillery, nautics, fortification, with foreign engineers, mechanics and with the illiterate and rootless Menshikov, who commands all of them, pedigree boyars, whom even Field Marshal B.P. Sheremetev is forced to write searchingly: “As before I received all mercy through you, so now I ask for mercy from you.” It was not easy to reconcile such a diverse set of characters into a friendly company for general activities. Peter had the difficult task of not only finding fit people for the execution of their enterprises, but also to educate the performers themselves. Neplyuev subsequently told Catherine II: “We, Peter the Great’s disciples, were led by him through fire and water.” But in this harsh school, not only harsh educational methods were used. Through early and direct communication Peter acquired great skill recognize people even by their appearance, rarely make a mistake in their choice, and correctly guess who is good for what. But with the exception of foreigners, and even then not all of them, the people he selected for his business did not take the places indicated by him as ready-made businessmen. It was good quality, but raw material that needed careful processing. Like their leader, they learned as they went along, in the midst of the action. They had to show them everything, explain it with clear experience, their own example, look after everyone, check everyone, encourage others, give others a good edge, so that they would not doze off, but keep their eyes open.
Moreover, Peter needed to tame them to himself, to establish a simple and direct relationship with them, in order to draw them into this relationship with his personal closeness moral sense , at least a feeling of some modesty, at least only in front of him alone, and thus gain the opportunity to act not only on the feeling of official fear of the official servant, but also on conscience as not an unnecessary support for civic duty or at least public decency. In this regard, as far as duty and decency are concerned, the majority of Peter’s Russian collaborators came from the old Russian way of life with great shortcomings, and in Western European culture, when they first became acquainted with it, they most liked its last applied part, which caressed the senses and aroused appetites. From this meeting of old vices with new temptations came such a moral turmoil that forced many unscrupulous people to think that the reform only brought the collapse of good old customs and could not bring anything better. This disorder was especially evident in abuses in the service. Peter's brother-in-law, Prince B. Kurakin, in notes about the first years of his reign, says that after the seven-year reign of Princess Sophia, conducted “in all order and justice,” when “people's contentment triumphed,” the “dishonorable” reign of Queen Natalya Kirillovna began, and then began “Great bribery and state theft, which to this day (written in 1727) continues with multiplication, and it is difficult to remove this ulcer.” Peter fought this plague cruelly and unsuccessfully. Many of the prominent businessmen with Menshikov in front were put on trial for this and punished with monetary penalties. The Siberian governor, Prince Gagarin, was hanged, the St. Petersburg vice-governor Korsakov was tortured and publicly flogged, two senators were also publicly punished, the vice-chancellor Baron Shafirov was removed from the scaffold and sent into exile, one investigator in cases of embezzlement was shot. About Prince Yakov Dolgorukov himself, a senator who was considered an example of incorruptibility, Peter said that Prince Yakov Fedorovich was “not without reason.” Peter became embittered, seeing how around him they were playing at the law, as he put it, like playing cards, and from all sides they were undermining “the fortress of truth.” There is news that once in the Senate, driven out of patience by this general dishonesty, he wanted to issue a decree to hang any official who stole even enough to buy rope. Then the guardian of the law, “the eye of the sovereign,” Prosecutor General Yaguzhinsky stood up and said: “Does your Majesty want to reign alone, without servants and without subjects? We all steal, only one is larger and more noticeable than the other.” A condescending, benevolent and trusting person, Peter in such an environment began to become imbued with distrust of people and acquired a tendency to think that they could be curbed only by “cruelty.” He repeated David’s word more than once that every person is a lie, saying: “There is little truth in people, but there is a lot of deceit.” This view was reflected in his legislation, which was so generous with cruel threats. However, you cannot transfer bad people. Once in the Kunstkammer he told his physician Areskin: “I ordered the governors to collect monsters (monsters) and send them to you; order cabinets to be prepared. If I wanted to send you human monsters not by the appearance of their bodies, but by their ugly morals, you There wouldn’t be enough space for them; let them hang around in the national cabinet of curiosities: they are more noticeable among people.” Peter himself realized how difficult it was to cleanse such a corrupted atmosphere with just the threat of the law, no matter how harsh it was, and was often forced to resort to more direct and shorter methods of action. In a letter to his invincible, stubborn son, he wrote: “How many times have I scolded you, and not only scolded you, but also beaten you!” The same “fatherly punishment,” as called in the manifesto on the abdication of the prince from the throne, this method of correction, in contrast to “affection and reproachful reprimand,” Peter applied to his associates. To the sluggish governors who “will follow the strictest guidelines” in the conduct of their affairs, he appointed deadline with the threat that later it will become “not with words, but with hands.” In this manual political pedagogy, his famous club, which was remembered for so long and talked about so much, often appeared in the hands of Peter. personal experience or from the words of the Russian people of the 18th century who experienced it. Peter recognized great things in her pedagogical abilities and considered her his constant assistant in the political education of his employees, although he knew how difficult her task was given the intractability of the available educational material. Returning from the Senate, probably after a big explanation with the senators, and stroking his beloved dog Lizeta, who was curling up next to him, he said: “If stubborn people obeyed me in a good deed as much as Lizeta obeys me, I would not stroke them with a club; the dog is smarter.” obeys them without beatings, but in those there is seasoned stubbornness." This stubbornness, like a spoke in the eye, gave Peter no rest. While working in the lathe and satisfied with his work, he asked his turner Nartov: “How do I turn?” - “Okay, Your Majesty!” - “So, Andrei, I sharpen bones with a chisel pretty well, but I can’t sharpen stubborn people with a club.”
His Serene Highness Prince Menshikov was also intimately familiar with the royal club, even, perhaps, closer than Peter’s other associates. This gifted businessman occupied a completely exceptional position in the circle of the converter’s employees. A man of dark origin, “of the lowest breed, below the nobility,” in the words of Prince B. Kurakin, who barely knew how to sign for a salary and draw his name and surname, almost the same age as Peter, a companion of his military fun in Preobrazhenskoye and ship training in the Dutch shipyards, Menshikov, according to the same Kurakin, in the Tsar’s favor “had risen to such a degree that he literally ruled the entire state, and was such a strong favorite that you can hardly find it in Roman histories.” He knew the Tsar very well, quickly grasped his thoughts, carried out his most varied orders, even in the engineering department, which he did not understand at all, was something like his chief of staff, and successfully, sometimes brilliantly, commanded in battles. Brave, dexterous and self-confident, he enjoyed the full confidence of the tsar and unparalleled powers, canceled the orders of his field marshals, was not afraid to contradict him himself, and rendered services to Peter that he never forgot. But none of his employees upset him more than this “mein lipste frint” (my beloved friend) or “mein Herzbruder” (my dear brother), as Peter called him in his letters to him. Danilych loved money, and he needed a lot of money. Accounts have been preserved according to which from the end of 1709 to 1711 he personally spent 45 thousand rubles on himself, i.e. about 400 thousand with our money. And he was not shy about his means of raising money, as the news of his numerous abuses shows: the poor Preobrazhensky sergeant subsequently had a fortune, which his contemporaries estimated at 150 thousand rubles. land income (about 1300 thousand in our money), not counting precious stones worth 1V2 million rubles. (about 13 million) and multi-million dollar deposits in foreign banks. Peter was not stingy for his well-deserved favorite, but such wealth could hardly have consisted of royal bounties alone and the profits of the White Sea walrus fishing company, in which the prince was a shareholder. “I earnestly ask,” Peter wrote to him in 1711 regarding his petty thefts in Poland, “I earnestly ask that you do not lose your fame and credit with such small profits.” Menshikov tried to fulfill this request of the tsar, only too literally: he avoided “small profits”, preferring large ones. A few years later, the investigative commission in the case of the prince’s abuses accounted for more than 1 million rubles. (about 10 million with our money). Peter added up a significant part of this account. But such impurity brought him out of patience. The king warned the prince: “Don’t forget who you were and what I made you from what you are now.” At the end of his life, forgiving him for the newly discovered thefts, he said to his ever-present intercessor, the Empress: “Menshikov was conceived in iniquity, his mother gave birth to sins, and he will die in fraud; if he does not correct himself, he will be without a head.” In addition to merit, sincere repentance and Catherine’s intercession, in such cases Menshikov was rescued from trouble by the royal club, which covered the sin of the punished with oblivion. But the royal club is also double-edged: while correcting the sinner with one end, with the other it brought him down in the opinion of society. Peter needed businessmen with authority, who would be respected and obeyed by their subordinates, and what kind of respect could a boss who had been beaten by the Tsar inspire? Peter hoped to eliminate this demoralizing effect of his correctional baton by making it strictly private for use in his lathe. Nartov says that he often saw how here the sovereign of noble ranks treated people to guilt with a club, as they after that with looking cheerful they went out into other rooms and on the same day were invited to the sovereign’s table, so that strangers would not notice anything. Not every guilty person was awarded a baton: it was a sign of a certain closeness and trust in the person being punished. Therefore, those who experienced such punishment remembered it without bitterness, as a mercy, even when they considered themselves undeservedly punished. A.P. Volynsky later told how, during the Persian campaign on the Caspian Sea, Peter, at the slander of his enemies, beat him, who was then the governor of Astrakhan, with a cane, which replaced a club in her absence, and only the empress “mercifully did not deign to bring him to a big beating.” “But,” the narrator added, “the sovereign deigned to punish me, like a merciful father of his son, with his own hand, and the next day he himself most mercifully deigned to understand that it was not my fault, being merciful, he repented and again deigned to accept me into his former high mercy ". Peter punished in this way only those whom he valued and whom he hoped to correct with this means. To a report about one selfish act of the same Menshikov, Peter replied: “The guilt is not small, but previous merits are greater than it,” subjected the prince to a monetary penalty, and in the turning shop he beat him with a club in the presence of Nartov alone and sent him out with the words: “For the last time, a club; From now on, watch out, Alexander!
But when a conscientious businessman made a mistake, made an involuntary mistake and waited for a thunderstorm, Peter hastened to console him, as one consoles in misfortune, belittling the failure. In 1705, B. Sheremetev spoiled the task entrusted to him strategic operation in Courland against Levengaupt and was in despair. Peter looked at the matter simply as “some unfortunate incident,” and wrote to the field marshal: “If you please, do not be sad about the past misfortune, since the constant success of many people led to destruction, but forget and, moreover, encourage people.”
Peter did not have time to completely shake off the ancient Russian man with his morals and concepts even when he fought with them. This was reflected not only in the fatherly reprisal against people of noble ranks, but also in other cases, for example, in the hope of eradicating delusions among the people, driving out demons from those falsely possessed with a whip - “the tail of a whip is longer than the tail of a demon” - or in the method of treating a wife’s teeth his valet Poluboyarov. The valet complained to Peter that his wife was unkind to him, citing toothache. "Okay, I'll fly her." Considering himself quite experienced in operative surgery, Peter took a dental instrument and went to the valet in the absence of his husband. “I heard you have a toothache?” - “No, sir, I’m healthy.” - “It’s not true, you’re a coward.” She, timidly, admitted that she had an illness, and Peter pulled out her healthy tooth, saying: “Remember that a wife should be afraid of her husband, otherwise she will have no teeth.” "Cure!" - he remarked to his husband with a grin, returning to the palace.
Given Peter’s ability to deal with people when necessary, authoritatively or simply, like a king or like a father, his cell teachings, together with long-term communication in labors, sorrows and joys, established a certain closeness of relations between him and his colleagues, and sympathetic the simplicity with which he entered into the private affairs of close people gave this closeness the imprint of sincere brevity. After daytime work, in the idle evening hours, when Peter, as usual, either went on a visit or received guests at home, he was cheerful, courteous, talkative , loved to see cheerful interlocutors around them, to hear a relaxed, intelligent conversation and could not tolerate anything that upset such a conversation, no malice, antics, barbs, and especially quarrels and abuse; the offender was immediately punished, forced to drink a fine - empty three glasses of wine or one eagle ( big ladle), so that “he doesn’t lie and bully too much.” P. Tolstoy remembered for a long time how he was once forced to drink a fine for starting to praise Italy too carelessly. Another time he had to drink a fine, only this time for being too careful. Once, in 1682, as an agent of Princess Sophia and Ivan Miloslavsky, he was heavily involved in the Streltsy riot and could barely keep his head on his shoulders, but he repented in time, received forgiveness, entered into favor with his intelligence and merits and became a prominent businessman, whom Peter valued very much . Once, at a party at the shipwrights', having had a good time and having become despondent, the guests began to easily tell the king what lay at the bottom of everyone's soul. Tolstoy, who had quietly avoided the glasses, sat down by the fireplace, dozed off as if drunk, lowered his head and even took off his wig, and meanwhile, swaying, listened carefully to the frank chatter of the Tsar’s interlocutors. Peter, who was habitually walking back and forth around the room, noticed the trick of the sly man and, pointing to him to those present, said: “Look, his head hangs down - as if it wouldn’t fall off his shoulders.” “Don’t be afraid, Your Majesty,” answered Tolstoy, who suddenly woke up, “she is faithful to you and is firm on me.” “Ah! so he just pretended to be drunk,” continued Peter, “bring him three glasses of good flin (warmed beer with cognac and lemon juice), so he will catch up with us and will also chatter like a magpie.” And, hitting his bald head with his palm, he continued: “Head, head! If you weren’t so smart, I would have ordered you to be chopped off long ago.” Touchy subjects, of course, were avoided, although the ease that prevailed in Peter's society encouraged careless or overly straightforward people to express whatever came to mind. Peter loved and valued naval lieutenant Mishukov very much for his knowledge of maritime affairs, and he was the first Russian to entrust an entire frigate. Once - this was even before the affair of Tsarevich Alexei - at a feast in Kronstadt, sitting at the table near the sovereign, Mishukov, who had already drunk quite a bit, became thoughtful and suddenly began to cry. The surprised sovereign asked with sympathy what was wrong with him. Mishukov openly and publicly explained the reason for his tears: the place where they were sitting, the new capital built near him, Baltic fleet, many Russian sailors, and finally, he himself, Lieutenant Mishukov, the commander of the frigate, who feels, deeply feels the mercy of the sovereign - all this is the creation of his sovereign hands; As he remembered all this, and thought that his health, the sovereign, was weakening, he could not restrain himself from tears. “Who will you leave us with?” he added. “As for whom?” Peter objected, “I have an heir - a prince.” - “Oh, but he’s stupid, he’ll upset everything.” Peter liked the sailor’s frankness, which sounded bitterly true, but the rudeness of the expression and the inappropriateness of the careless confession were subject to punishment. “Fool!” Peter remarked to him with a grin, hitting him on the head, “they don’t say that in front of everyone.”
The participants in these idle, friendly conversations claim that the autocratic sovereign then seemed to disappear into a cheerful guest or a hospitable host, although we, knowing the stories about Peter’s temper, are more inclined to think that his complacent interlocutors must have felt like travelers admiring the views from the top of Vesuvius , in every minute expectation of ash and lava. There were, especially in youth, menacing outbreaks. In 1698, at a feast at Lefort, Peter almost stabbed General Shein with his sword, having flared up at him for trading in officer positions in his regiment. Lefort, who restrained the irritated king, paid for it with a wound. However, despite such cases, it is clear that the guests at these meetings still felt cheerful and at ease; ship masters and naval officers, encouraged by the cordial regaling from the hands of the amused Peter, easily hugged him, swore to him their love and zeal, for which they received corresponding expressions of gratitude. Private, non-official dealings with Peter were made easier by one piece of news that had been brought up during the fun in Preobrazhenskoe and, together with all the fun, had imperceptibly turned into a direct matter. True to the early learned rule that a leader must know the business in which he leads them before and better than those led, and at the same time wanting to show by his own example how to serve, Peter, regularly starting an army and navy, himself served in land and naval service from the lower levels. ranks: he was a drummer in Lefort's company, a bombardier and a captain, and rose to the rank of lieutenant general and even full general. At the same time, he allowed himself to be promoted to higher ranks only for actual merit, for participation in affairs. Promotion to these ranks was the right of the amusing king, Prince Caesar F. Yu. Romodanovsky. Contemporaries describe Peter's solemn promotion to vice admiral for naval victory at Gangut in 1714, where he, with the rank of rear admiral, commanded the vanguard and captured the commander of the Swedish squadron, Ehrenschild, with his frigate and several galleys. Among the full assembly of the Senate, Prince Caesar sat on the throne. The rear admiral was called, from whom Prince Caesar received a written report on the victory. The report was read to the entire Senate. Followed oral questions the winner and other participants in the victory. Then the senators held council. In conclusion, the rear admiral, “considered to have faithfully rendered and brave service to the fatherland,” was unanimously proclaimed vice admiral. Once, to the request of several military men to increase their ranks, Peter answered seriously: “I will try, only as Prince Caesar pleases. You see, I don’t dare ask for myself, although I served the fatherland faithfully with you; we must choose a convenient time so that His Majesty does not anger; but no matter what happens, I am an intercessor for you, even if he gets angry; let us pray to God first, maybe the matter will work out.” To an outside observer, all this might seem like a parody, a joke, if not buffoonery. Peter loved to mix a joke with a serious one, business with idleness, but with him it usually turned out that idleness turned into business, and not vice versa. He also has regular army imperceptibly grew out of the comic regiments in which he played in Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky. Bearing the ranks of the army and navy, he actually served, as if he performed official duties and enjoyed official rights, received and signed for the receipt of the salary assigned to his rank, and used to say: “This money is my own; I earned it and can use it as I want; but with government money.” I must deal with my income carefully: I must give an account of it to God.” Peter's service in the army and navy, with its Caesarian rank order, created a form of address that simplified and facilitated the king's relationship with others. In a dinner party, in private, off-duty matters, they addressed a colleague, a comrade in a regiment or frigate, a “bass” (ship master) or captain Pyotr Mikhailov, as the tsar was called in his naval service. Trusting intimacy without familiarity became possible. The discipline did not waver; on the contrary, it received support from an impressive example: it was dangerous to joke about service when Pyotr Mikhailov himself did not joke about it.
In his military instructions, Peter ordered the captain and the soldiers to “not have brotherhood,” not to fraternize: this would lead to indulgence and licentiousness. Peter's own treatment of those around him could not lead to such a danger: he had too much of a king in him for that. Proximity to him simplified dealing with him, could teach a conscientious and understanding person a lot, but it did not pamper, but obliged, and increased the responsibility of the close one. He highly valued talent and merit and forgave many sins of gifted and honored employees. But he did not weaken the demands of duty for any talents or merits; on the contrary, the higher he valued the businessman, the more exacting he was towards him and the more trusting he relied on him, demanding not only the exact execution of his orders, but, where necessary, also acting at his own peril, according to his own consideration and initiative, strictly ordering that in the reports were by no means as usual to him as you please. He did not respect any of his employees more than the Erestfer and Gumelshof winner of the Swedes - B. Sheremetev; he met and saw off him, in the words of an eyewitness, not as a subject, but as a guest-hero, but even he bore the brunt of his official duty. Having prescribed an accelerated march to the cautious and slow, and not entirely healthy, field marshal in 1704, Peter haunts him with his letters, insistently demanding: “Go day and night, and if you don’t do this, don’t blame me in the future.” Peter's co-workers well understood the meaning of such a warning. Then, when Sheremetev, not knowing what to do for lack of instructions, responded to the king’s request that, according to the decree, he did not dare to go anywhere, Peter wrote to him with reproachful irony that he was like a servant who, seeing that his master was drowning , does not dare to save him until he finds out whether it is written in his rental contract to pull the drowning owner out of the water. In case of malfunction, Peter addressed other generals without any irony, with stern directness. In 1705, having planned an attack on Riga, he forbade the passage of Dvina goods there. Prince Repnin, through a misunderstanding, missed the forest and received a letter from Peter with the following words: “No, today I received information about your such a bad act, for which you can pay with your neck; from now on, if a single chip passes, I swear to God, you will be without a head.” .
But Peter knew how to value his companions. He respected their talents and merits as much as their moral qualities, especially loyalty, and he considered this respect one of the primary duties of a sovereign. For yours dining table he toasted “to the health of those who love God, change the fatherland,” and charged his son with an indispensable duty to love faithful advisers and servants, whether they be his own or strangers. Prince F.Yu. Romodanovsky, the terrible chief of the secret police, the “prince Caesar” in the comic sociable hierarchy, “with his appearance like a monster, his disposition evil tyrant“, according to contemporaries, or simply a “beast,” as Peter himself called him in moments of dissatisfaction with him, was not distinguished by particularly outstanding abilities, only “he loved to drink constantly and give others drink and swear,” but he was devoted to Peter like no one else, and for that he enjoyed his immense trust and, along with Field Marshal B.P. Sheremetev, had the right to enter Peter’s office without a report - an advantage that even the “semi-sovereign ruler” Menshikov himself did not always have. Respect for the merits of his employees was sometimes received from Peter sincerely - warm expression. Once, in a conversation with his best generals Sheremetev, M. Golitsyn and Repnin about the glorious commanders of France, he said with animation: “Thank God, I lived to see my Turennes, but I don’t see Syully yet.” The generals bowed and kissed the tsar's hand, and he kissed their foreheads. Peter did not forget his companions even in foreign lands. In 1717, inspecting the fortifications of Namur in the company of officers who had distinguished themselves in the war for Spanish inheritance, Peter was extremely pleased with their conversation, he himself told them about the sieges and battles in which he participated, and with a face beaming with joy he said to the commandant: “It’s as if I am now in the fatherland among my friends and officers.” Having once remembered the late Sheremetev (died in 1719), Peter, sighing, said to those around him with a sad foreboding: “Boris Petrovich is no longer here, soon we will be no more; but his courage and faithful service will not die and will always be remembered in Russia.” Shortly before his death, he dreamed of building monuments to his late military associates - Lefort, Shein, Gordon, Shepemetev, saying about them: “These men are eternal monuments in Russia due to their loyalty and merit.” He wanted to erect these monuments in the Alexander Nevsky Monastery under the shade of the ancient holy prince, the Nevsky hero. The drawings of the monuments had already been sent to Rome to the best sculptors, but after the death of the emperor the matter did not take place.
Educating his businessmen through the very manner in which he treated them, the demands of official discipline, his own example, and finally, respect for talent and merit, Peter wanted his employees to clearly see in the name of why he demanded such efforts from them, and to understand both himself and himself well. and the work that was carried out according to his instructions - at least they only understood, if they could not sympathize in their souls with either him or his cause. And this very matter was so serious in itself and touched everyone so sensitively that it involuntarily forced them to think about it. “The three-time cruel school,” as Peter called the Swedish war that lasted three school years, taught all its students, like the teacher himself, not for a minute to lose sight of the difficult tasks that she put on the line, to be aware of the progress of affairs, count the successes achieved, remember and reflect on the lessons learned and mistakes made. In leisure hours, sometimes at the banquet table, in an excited and elevated mood on the occasion of some joyful event, in the company of Peter, conversations began about such subjects that are rarely addressed in moments of rest. busy people. Contemporaries recorded almost only the monologues of the tsar himself, who usually started these conversations. But hardly anywhere else can one find a more clear expression of what Peter wanted to make people think about and how to set up their society. The content of the conversations was quite varied: they talked about the Bible, about relics, about atheists, about popular superstitions, Charles XII, about foreign orders. Sometimes the interlocutors started talking about subjects that were closer to them, practical ones, about the beginning and significance of the work they were doing, about plans for the future, about what they still had to do. It was here that the hidden spiritual power was expressed in Peter, which supported his activities and to the charm of which his employees, willy-nilly, obeyed. We see how the war and the reform it aroused raised them, strained their thoughts, and educated their political consciousness.
Peter, especially towards the end of his reign, was very interested in the past of his fatherland, took care of collecting and preserving historical monuments, told the scientist Feofan Prokopovich: “When will we see the complete history of Russia,” and repeatedly ordered the writing of a publicly accessible guide to Russian history. Occasionally, in passing, he recalled in conversations how his activities began, and once in these memories an ancient Russian chronicle flashed. It would seem, what participation could this chronicle take in his activities? But in Peter’s business mind, every acquired knowledge, every impression received practical processing.
He began this activity under the weight of two observations that he made from his acquaintance with the situation in Russia, as soon as he began to understand it. He saw that Russia was deprived of those means of external strength and internal prosperity that knowledge and art give to enlightened Europe; I also saw that the Swedes and Turks and Tatars were depriving her of the very opportunity to borrow these funds, cutting her off from the European seas. “To reasonable eyes,” as he wrote to his son, “to our lack of curiosity, the curtains were drawn and communication with the whole world was stopped.” Lead Russia out of this double predicament, make its way to the European sea and establish direct communication with the educated world, to pull away from the Russian eyes the veil thrown over them by the enemy, preventing them from seeing what they want to see - this was Peter’s first, well-clarified and firmly set goal.
Once in the presence of gr. Sheremetev and Admiral General Apraksin, Peter said that in his early youth he read the chronicle of Nestor and from there he learned how Oleg sent an army on ships to Constantinople. From then on, he had a desire to do the same against the enemies of Christianity, the treacherous Turks, and to take revenge on them for the insults that they, together with the Tatars, inflicted on Russia. This idea became stronger in him when, during a trip to Voronezh in 1694, a year before the first Azov campaign, surveying the flow of the Don, he saw that this river, having taken Azov, could reach the Black Sea, and decided to start a shipbuilding. In the same way, his first visit to the city of Arkhangelsk gave rise to a desire to start building ships there for trade and maritime industries. “And now,” he continued, “when, with God’s help, we have Kronstadt and St. Petersburg, and Riga, Revel and others have been conquered by your courage seaside towns, with the ships we are building we can defend ourselves from the Swedes and others sea powers. That is why, my friends, it is useful for a sovereign to travel around his land and notice what can serve the benefit and glory of the state." At the end of his life, inspecting the work on the Ladoga Canal and being pleased with their progress, he told the builders: "We see how they go to the Neva we have ships from Europe; and when we finish this canal, we will see how the Asians will come to trade our Volga in St. Petersburg." The plan for the sewerage of Russia was one of Peter's early and brilliant ideas, when this matter was still news in the West. He dreamed, using the river network of Russia, connect all the seas adjacent to the Russian plain, and thus make Russia a commercial and cultural intermediary between two worlds, West and East, Europe and Asia. The Vyshnevolotsk system, remarkable for the ingenious selection of rivers and lakes included in it, remained the only completed experiment under Peter implementation of the conceived grandiose plan. He looked even further, beyond the Russian plain, beyond the Caspian Sea, where he sent the expedition of Prince Bekovich-Cherkassky, among other things, with the goal of exploring and describing the dry and water, especially water, route to India; a few days before his death he remembered his old thought about finding a road to China and India Arctic Ocean. Already suffering from death throes, he hurried to write instructions Kamchatka expedition Bering, which was supposed to investigate whether Asia in the northeast is connected to America - a question to which Petra Leibniz had long and persistently drawn attention. Handing the document to Apraksin, he said: “Ill health forced me to sit at home; the other day I remembered something that I had been thinking about for a long time, but which other things got in the way of - about the road to China and India. On my last trip abroad learned people they told me that it was possible to find this road. But will we be happier than the British and Dutch? Give orders for me, Fyodor Matveevich, to carry out everything point by point, as written in this instruction.”
To be a skillful mediator between Asia and Europe, Russia, naturally, had to not only know the former, but also possess the knowledge and arts of the latter. During the conversations, of course, they also talked about the attitude towards Europe, towards foreigners who came from there to Russia. This question has occupied Russian society for a long time, almost the entire 17th century.
From the first years of his reign after the overthrow of Sophia, Peter was strongly condemned for his attachment to foreign customs and to the foreigners themselves. In Moscow and the German settlement there was a lot of talk about the honors with which Peter buried Gordon and Lefort in 1699. He visited the sick Gordon every day, who provided him with great services in the Azov campaigns and in the Second Streltsy mutiny 1697, he himself closed the dead man’s eyes and kissed his forehead; During the burial, throwing earth onto the coffin lowered into the grave, Peter said to those present: “I give him only a handful of earth, but he gave me the whole space with Azov.” Peter Lefort was buried with even greater sorrow: he himself followed his coffin, shed tears, listening to the funeral sermon of the Reformed pastor, praising the merits of the late admiral, and said goodbye to him for the last time with contrition, which caused extreme surprise to the foreigners present, and at the funeral dinner he made a kiss stage for the Russian boyars. They did not particularly mourn the death of the Tsar’s favorite, and some of them, taking advantage of the Tsar’s momentary absence while they were setting the funeral table, hurried to get out of the house, but on the porch they came across Peter returning. He became angry and, turning them back into the hall, greeted them with a speech in which he said that he understood their escape, that they were afraid to give themselves away, not hoping to withstand feigned sadness at the table. "What haters! But I will teach you to honor worthy people. The loyalty of Franz Yakovlevich will remain in my heart as long as I live, and after death I will take it with me to the grave!" But Gordon and Lefort were exceptional foreigners, Peter valued them for their devotion and merits, just as he later valued Osterman for his talents and knowledge. With Lefort He was also connected by personal friendship and exaggerated the merits of the “French brawler,” as Prince B. Kurakin called him, and was even ready to recognize him as the founder of his military reform. “He started, and we completed,” Peter used to say about him later (but and a rumor spread among the people that Peter was the son of “Lafert and the lawless German woman”, planted on Tsarina Natalia). them as instructors, knowledgeable people, which he did not find among his own, but at the first opportunity he tried to replace them with Russians. Already in the manifesto of 1705, he directly admits that with expensive hired officers “they could not achieve what they wanted,” and prescribes more stringent conditions for admission them into Russian service. Patkul was imprisoned in the fortress for embezzlement of money allocated for Russian army, and with the hired Austrian field marshal Ogilvy, a businesslike man, but “daring and annoying,” as Peter called him, he ended up ordering him to be arrested and then sent back “with hostility.”
Peter’s attitude towards foreign customs was just as prudent, as it was reflected in his conversations. Once, during a playful clash with Prince Caesar over the long beshmet in which Romodanovsky arrived in Preobrazhenskoye, Peter said, addressing the guards and noble gentlemen present: “The long dress interfered with the dexterity of the archers’ hands and feet; they could not work well with a gun, For this reason, I ordered Lefort to first cut off the zipuns and sleeves, and then make new uniforms according to European custom. Old clothes more similar to the Tatar than to the light Slavic one that is akin to us; It is not suitable to appear for service in a sleeping dress." And Peter was also credited with saying words about barber shaving addressed to the boyars, which corresponded to the usual tone of his speech and way of thinking: "Our old people, out of ignorance, think that without a beard they will not enter the kingdom of heaven, although it is open for all honest people, whether they have beards or without beards, with wigs or bald." Peter saw only a matter of decency, convenience or superstition in what the old Russian society attached to the significance of the religious-national issue, and he took up arms not so much against the very customs of Russian antiquity , how much against the superstitious ideas associated with them, and the stubbornness with which they were defended.
This old Russian society, which so fiercely accused Peter of replacing good old customs with bad new ones, considered him a selfless Westerner who prefers everything Western European to Russian, not because it is better than Russian, but because it is not Russian, but Western European. Hobbies were attributed to him that were so little akin to his reasonable character. On the occasion of the establishment of assemblies in St. Petersburg, regular entertainment gatherings in noble houses, someone in the sovereign’s presence began to praise Parisian customs and manners of social behavior. Peter, who had seen Paris, objected: “It’s good to adopt science and art from the French, and I would like to see this in myself; but other than that, Paris stinks.” He knew what was good in Europe, but he was never seduced by it, and the good that he managed to adopt from there, he considered not its benevolent gift, but the grace of Providence. In one hand-written anniversary celebration program Peace of Nystadt he ordered to express the idea as strongly as possible that foreigners tried in every possible way to prevent us from seeing the light of reason, but they overlooked it, as if their eyes were dim, and he recognized this as a miracle of God performed for the Russian people. “This must be explained at length,” the program said, “and so that the sense (meaning) is sufficient.” The legend conveys an echo of one of Peter’s conversations with those close to him about Russia’s attitude towards Western Europe, when he allegedly said: “We need Europe for a few more decades, and then we can turn our backs on it.”
What is the essence of the reform, what has it done and what remains to be done? These questions occupied Peter more and more as the severity of the Swedish war eased. Military dangers most accelerated the movement of reform. Therefore, her main business was military, “by which we came from darkness to light and who were previously unknown in the world have now become revered,” as Peter wrote to his son in 1715. And what next? At one conversation, vividly depicting the relationship of Peter to his employees and employees to each other, the prince had to answer this question. Ya.F. Dolgoruky, the most truthful lawyer of his time, who often boldly argued with Peter in the Senate. For these disputes, Peter was sometimes annoyed with Dolgoruky, but always respected him. Once, returning from the Senate, he spoke about the prince: “Prince Yakov is my direct assistant in the Senate: he judges efficiently and does not indulge me, without eloquence he cuts straight to the truth, despite his face.” In 1717, hope finally flashed for a quick end to the difficult war, which Peter impatiently desired: preliminary peace negotiations with Sweden opened in Holland, and a congress was appointed on the Åland Islands. This year, once, sitting at the table, at a feast with many noble people, Peter began talking about his father, about his affairs in Poland, about the difficulties that Patriarch Nikon had caused him. Musin-Pushkin began to praise his son and humiliate his father, saying that Tsar Alexei himself did little, but Morozov and other great ministers did more; it’s all about the ministers: as the sovereign’s ministers are, so are his affairs. The Emperor was annoyed by these speeches; he stood up from the table and said to Musin-Pushkin: “In your censure of my father’s deeds and in your praise of mine, there is more abuse of me than I can bear.” Then, approaching Prince Ya.F. Dolgoruky and standing behind his chair, said to him: “You scold me more than anyone else and annoy me so painfully with your arguments that I often almost lose patience; and when I judge, I’ll see that you sincerely love me and the state and the truth.” "You say, for which I am inwardly grateful to you. And now I will ask you what you think about the affairs of my father and mine, and I am sure that you will tell me the truth without hypocrisy." Dolgoruky answered: “Please, sir, sit down, and I’ll think about it.” Peter sat down next to him, and he, out of habit, began to smooth out his long mustache. Everyone looked at him and waited for what he would say. After a short silence, the prince began like this: “Your question cannot be answered briefly, because you and your father have different affairs: in one you deserve more praise and gratitude, in the other - your father. Three main affairs for kings: first - internal violence and justice; that is your main business. For this, your father had more leisure, but you also did not have time to think about it, and therefore your father did more than you in this. But when you do this, maybe you will do more than your father. And it’s time for you to think about it. Another thing is military. With this deed, your father earned a lot of praise and brought great benefit to the state; he showed you the way with the organization of regular troops, but after him, foolish people upset all his undertakings, so you almost started everything again and in best condition brought. However, although I have thought about it a lot, I still don’t know which of you to give preference in this matter; the end of your war will show us this directly. The third issue is the structure of the fleet, external alliances, relations with foreign states. In this you brought much more benefit to the state and deserved honor for yourself than your father, which I hope you yourself will agree with. And what they say is that as the ministers of sovereigns are, such are their deeds, so I think quite the opposite, that wise sovereigns know how to choose smart advisers and observe their loyalty. Therefore, a wise sovereign cannot have stupid ministers, for he can judge the dignity of everyone and distinguish right advice." Peter listened to everything patiently and, kissing Dolgoruky, said: "Good faithful servant, you were faithful to me in prayer, I will put you over many ". “Menshikov and others found this very regrettable,” Tatishchev ends his story, “and they tried by all means to embitter him to the sovereign, but they did not manage to do anything.”
A convenient opportunity soon presented itself. In 1718, the investigative case about the prince revealed reprehensible relations with him of one of the princes Dolgoruky and bold words him about the king. The misfortune of losing a good name threatened the surname. But the energetic letter of exculpation from the eldest in the family, Prince Yakov, to Peter, respected by the tsar, helped the offender get rid of the search, and the surname from being dishonored to bear the title of “villainous family.”
Peter was not interested in rivalry with his father, nor in settling accounts with the past, but in the results of the present, in evaluating his activities. He approved of everything said at the feast by Prince Yakov and agreed that the next priority for reform was organizing internal justice and ensuring justice. Giving preference to his father in this matter, Prince Dolgoruky had in mind his legislation, especially the Code. As a practical lawyer, he understood better than many both the significance of this monument for his time and its obsolescence in many respects for the present. But Peter, no worse than Dolgoruky, realized this and himself raised the question of this long before the conversation of 1717, already in 1700 he ordered to revise and supplement the Code with newly published laws, and then in 1718, soon after the conversation described, he ordered the consolidation of the Russian Code with Swedish. But he did not succeed in this matter, just as he did not succeed for a whole century after him. Prince Dolgoruky did not finish speaking; he did not say everything that, in Peter’s opinion, was necessary. Legislation is only part of the work ahead. The revision of the Code forced us to turn to Swedish legislation in the hope of finding there ready-made norms developed by science and the experience of the European people. This was the case in everything: to satisfy household needs, they rushed to use the works of knowledge and experience European peoples, the finished fruits of someone else's work. But it’s not all about taking the ready-made fruits of someone else’s knowledge and experience, theory and technology, what Peter called “sciences and arts.” This would mean living forever in someone else’s mind, “like looking into a young bird’s mouth,” as Peter put it. It is necessary to transplant the very roots onto your own soil so that they produce their fruits at home, to seize the sources and means of the spiritual and material strength of the European peoples. This was Peter’s constant thought, the main and most fruitful thought of his reform. She never left his head anywhere. Looking around the “stinking” Paris, he thought about how he could see the same flourishing of sciences and arts in his own country; Considering the project of his Academy of Sciences, he, under Blumentrost, Bruce and Osterman, said to Nartov, who was drawing up the project of the Academy of Arts: “Moreover, there should be a department of arts, and especially a mechanical one; my desire is to plant handicrafts, science and art in general in this capital.”
The war prevented a decisive move to implement this idea. And this very war was undertaken with the aim of opening direct and free routes to the same sources and means. This thought grew in Peter’s mind as the desired end of the war began to glow before his eyes. Handing over to Apraksin at the beginning of January 1725 the instructions for the Kamchatka expedition, written with an already weakening hand, he admitted that it was his long-standing thought that, “while protecting the fatherland with security from the enemy, one should try to find glory for the state through art and science.” Worried about the future, often talking about his illnesses and the possibility of imminent death, Peter hardly hoped to live two lives in order to complete this second great task after the end of the war. But he believed that it would be done, if not by him, then by his successors, and he expressed this faith both in words - if they were spoken - about several decades of Russian need in Western Europe, and on another occasion. In 1724, physician Blumentrost asked Tatishchev, who was going to Sweden on behalf of Peter, to look for scientists there for the Academy of Sciences, the opening of which he was preparing as its future president. “You are looking in vain for seeds,” Tatishchev objected, “when the soil itself for sowing has not yet been prepared.” Having listened to this conversation, Peter, according to whose thoughts the Academy was founded, answered Tatishchev with the following parable. A certain nobleman wanted to build a mill in his village, but he had no water. Then, seeing the lakes and swamps of his neighbors abundant in water, he began, with their consent, to dig a canal into his village and prepare material for the mill, and although during his lifetime he did not manage to bring this to an end, the children, sparing their father’s expenses, involuntarily continued and completed the work father. This strong faith was supported in Peter and from the outside, by such glorious scientists as Leibniz, who had long proposed to him the establishment of a higher scientific college in St. Petersburg with complex scientific and practical tasks, and the study of the borders between Asia and America, and broad plans for the establishment of sciences and arts in Russia with a network of academies, universities, gymnasiums spread throughout the country and, most importantly, with the hope of complete success this matter. In Leibniz's opinion, it does not matter that there was a lack of either scientific traditions and skills, or teaching aids and auxiliary institutions, that Russia in this regard is a blank sheet of paper, as the philosopher puts it, or an untouched field where everything must be started again. This is even better, because by starting everything again, you can avoid the shortcomings and mistakes that Europe made, because when erecting a new building, you can achieve perfection more quickly than when correcting and rebuilding an old one.
It is difficult to say who inspired or how the idea of the cycle of sciences, closely connected with his educational thoughts, arose in Peter’s mind. This idea was expressed in a postscript to the draft letter that Leibniz wrote to Peter in 1712, but in the letter sent to the Tsar, this postscript was omitted. “Providence,” the philosopher wrote in this postscript, “apparently wants science to go around the whole Earth and now it has moved to Scythia, and therefore your Majesty has chosen it as an instrument, since you can take the best from both Europe and Asia and improve what has been done in both parts of the world." Perhaps Leibniz expressed this idea to Peter in a personal conversation with him Something similar to the same idea was expressed casually in one essay by the Slavic patriot Yuri Krizhanich: after many peoples of the ancient and new worlds had worked in the field of science, it was finally the turn of the Slavs. But this is an essay written in Siberia during the reign of Tsar Alexei , was hardly known to Peter.
Be that as it may, in one excellent conversation with his colleagues, Peter expressed the same idea in his own way, incidentally using it to make some of his interlocutors feel that he heard whispers going around him not about the benefits, not even about the uselessness of sciences, but about their direct harm. In 1714, celebrating the launch of a warship in St. Petersburg, the tsar was in the most cheerful mood and at a table on the deck among the high society invited to the feast, he spoke a lot about the successful progress of Russian shipbuilding. By the way, he addressed whole speech straight to the old boyars sitting near him, who saw little use in the experience and knowledge acquired by Russian ministers and generals, sincerely devoted to reform. It must be borne in mind that the speech was presented by a German who was at the celebration, the Brunswick resident Weber, who arrived in St. Petersburg only about two months ago and was hardly able to grasp and accurately convey its shades, although he calls it the most profound and witty of all the speeches, they heard from the king. Reading his presentation, it is easy to notice that he gave his own coloring and his own interpretation to some of the king’s thoughts.
“Which of you, my brothers, even dreamed about 30 years ago,” the king began, “that you and I here, by the Baltic Sea, would be carpenters in the clothes of the Germans, in the clothes we had won from them through our labors and courage? country, we will build the city in which you live, that we will live to see such brave and victorious soldiers and sailors of Russian blood, such sons who have visited foreign countries and returned home so smart, that we will see such a multitude of foreign artists and artisans , will we live to see that foreign sovereigns will respect you and me so much? Historians believe that the cradle of all knowledge was in Greece, from where, due to the vicissitudes of times, it was expelled, moved to Italy, and then spread throughout all the Austrian lands, but due to the ignorance of our ancestors it was suspended and did not penetrate further than Poland; and the Poles, as well as all Germans, remained in the same impenetrable darkness of ignorance in which we remain until now, and only through the exorbitant labors of their rulers did they open their eyes and assimilate the former Greek arts, sciences and way of life. Now it is our turn, if only you will support me in my important undertakings, will obey without any excuses, and will become accustomed to freely recognize and study good and evil. I equate this movement of sciences with the circulation of blood in the human body, and it seems to me that over time they will leave their current location in England, France and Germany, will last several centuries with us and then return again to true fatherland his - to Greece. For now, I advise you to remember the Latin proverb: Ora et labora (pray and work) and firmly hope that perhaps in our lifetime you will put other educated countries to shame and raise the glory of the Russian name to the highest degree."
Yes, yes, it's true! - the old boyars answered the tsar, listening to his words in deep silence, and, declaring to him that they were ready and would do whatever he commanded them, they again grabbed the glasses they loved with both hands, leaving the tsar to judge in the depths of his own thoughts how much He managed to convince them and, as far as he could hope to achieve the ultimate goal of his great enterprises.
The narrator gave this conversation an ironic epilogue. Peter would have been upset, and even, perhaps, would have told the boyars a different, less exalted and affectionate speech, if he had noticed that they reacted to his words so indifferently, in their own minds, as the foreigner imagined. He knew how his reform was judged in Russia and abroad, and these judgments resonated painfully in his soul. He knew that here and there many people saw his reform as a violent undertaking, which he could only carry out using his unlimited and cruel power and the habit of the people to blindly obey it. Therefore, he is not a European sovereign, but an Asian despot, commanding slaves, not citizens. Such a look offends him, like an undeserved insult. He did so much to give his power the character of duty, and not arbitrariness; I thought that his activities could not be looked at differently as serving the common good of the people, and not as tyranny. He so diligently eliminated everything humiliating to human dignity in the relationship of a subject to the sovereign; at the very beginning of the century he forbade writing diminutive names, fall on their knees before the king, take off their hats in front of the palace in winter, reasoning about it this way: “Why humiliate the title, disgrace human dignity? Less baseness, more zeal for service and loyalty to me and the state - such is the honor befitting a king.” He established so many hospitals, almshouses and schools, “trained his people in many military and civil sciences,” in the Military Articles he forbade beating a soldier, wrote instructions to everyone belonging to the Russian army, “no matter what faith or people they are, Christian love among themselves.” to have”, inspired “to act with meekness and reason according to the Apostle with the opponents of the church, and not as now, with cruel words and alienation,” said that the Lord gave kings power over the nations, but Christ alone has power over the conscience of people - and he is the first in Rus' he began to write and say this, but he was considered a cruel tyrant, an Asian despot. He spoke about this more than once with those close to him and spoke with fervor, with impetuous frankness: “I know that I am considered a tyrant. Foreigners say that I command slaves. This is not true: they do not know all the circumstances. I command subjects who obey my decrees; These decrees contain benefits, and not harm to the state. You need to know how to govern the people. English liberty is out of place here, like peas against a wall. An honest and reasonable person, who has seen something harmful or come up with something useful, can tell me directly without fear. You yourself are witnesses to this. I am glad to hear useful things from the last subject. Access to me is free, as long as they do not waste my time with idleness. Of course, my ill-will and the fatherland are dissatisfied with me. Ignorance and stubbornness have always taken up arms against me with that pores, how I decided to introduce useful changes and correct rude morals. These are the real tyrants, not I. I do not aggravate slavery by curbing the mischief of the stubborn, softening oak hearts, I am not cruel, dressing my subjects in new clothes, establishing order in the army and in citizenship and accustoming to humanity, I do not tyrannize when justice condemns the villain to death. Let anger slander: my conscience is clear. God is my judge! Wrong rumors in the world are carried by the wind."
Defending the tsar from accusations of cruelty, his beloved turner Nartov writes: “Oh, if many knew what we know, they would be amazed at his condescension. If a philosopher ever happened to sort through the archive of his secret affairs, he would tremble with horror, what was done against this monarch." This “archive” is already being sorted out and reveals more and more clearly the hot ground on which Peter walked while carrying out the reform with his collaborators. Everything around him grumbled against him, and this grumbling, starting in the palace, in the tsar’s family, spread widely from there throughout Rus', throughout all classes of society, penetrating deep into the masses. The son complained that his father was surrounded evil people, he himself is very cruel, does not spare human blood, wanted his father to die, and his confessor forgave him this sinful desire. The sister, Princess Marya, cried at the endless war, at the great taxes, at the ruin of the people, and “her merciful heart was consumed by sadness from the sighs of the people.” Rostov Bishop Dosifei, defrocked in the case of former queen Evdokia, spoke to the bishops at the council: “Look what’s in everyone’s hearts, if you please let your ears open to the people, what the people are saying.” And the people said about the tsar that he was an enemy of the people, a worldly fool, a foundling, the Antichrist, and God knows what they didn’t say about him. Those who grumbled lived in hope, perhaps either the king would soon die, or the people would rise up against him; The prince himself admitted that he was ready to join in a conspiracy against his father. Peter heard this murmur, knew the rumors and intrigues directed against him, and said: “I suffer, but everything is for the fatherland; I wish it good, but my enemies do demonic dirty tricks to me.” He also knew what there was and what to complain about: the people’s hardships were increasing, tens of thousands of workers were dying from hunger and disease at work in St. Petersburg, Kronshlot, on the Ladoga Canal, the troops were in great need, everything was becoming more expensive, trade was falling. For weeks at a time, Peter walked gloomily, revealing more and more abuses and failures. He understood that he was straining the people’s forces to the utmost, to the point of pain, but reflection did not slow things down; sparing no one, least of all himself, he kept moving towards his goal, seeing in it the people's good: just like a surgeon, reluctantly, subjects his patient to a painful operation in order to save his life. But after the end of the Swedish war, the first thing Peter spoke about with the senators who asked him to accept the title of emperor was “to strive for the common good, from which the people will receive relief.” Getting to know people and things as they are, getting used to fractional detailed work over major matters, following everything himself and teaching everyone by his own example, he developed in himself, together with a quick eye, a subtle sense of the natural, real connection of things and relationships, a living practical understanding of how things are done in the world, by what forces and with what efforts turns the heavy wheel of history, now raising and now lowering human destinies. That is why failure did not make him despondent, and success did not inspire arrogance. This, when necessary, encouraged and sometimes sobered the employees. They said that after the defeat near Narva he said: “I know that the Swedes will still beat us; let them beat us; but they will teach us to beat them ourselves; when will the training be done without losses and grief?” He was not flattered by successes or hopes. IN last years life, being treated with Olonets healing waters, he said to his physician: “I heal my body with waters, and my subjects with examples; in both, I see slow healing; time will decide everything.” He clearly saw all the difficulties of his position, in which out of 13 rulers 12 would give up, and in the most difficult time of his life, during the investigation of the prince, he described the fate of Tolstoy with the compassionate imagery of an outside observer: “Hardly any of the sovereigns endured "There are so many troubles and misfortunes like me. From my sister (Sophia) I was persecuted to death: she was cunning and evil. The nun (first wife) is intolerable: she is stupid. My son hates me: he is stubborn." But Peter acted in politics as at sea. All his vigorous activity, as if in miniature, was depicted in one episode from his naval service. In July 1714, a few days before the victory at Gangut, while cruising with his squadron between Helsingfors and the Åland Islands, he was caught in a terrible storm on a dark night. Everyone became desperate, not knowing where the shore was. Peter and several sailors rushed into the boat, not listening to the officers, who on their knees begged him not to expose themselves to such danger, he himself took the helm in the fight against the waves, shook the rowers who had given up their hands with a menacing shout: “What are you afraid of? You’re taking the Tsar! God is with us! ", safely reached the shore, lit a fire to show the way to the squadron, warmed the half-dead oarsmen with a bunch, and he himself, all wet, lay down and, covered with canvas, fell asleep by the fire under a tree.
An unflagging sense of duty, the idea that this duty is to unswervingly serve the common good of the state and the people, the selfless courage with which this service is appropriate - these are the basic rules of that school, which led its students through fire and water, about which Neplyuev spoke to Catherine II. This school was capable of instilling not only the fear of formidable power, but also the charm of moral greatness. The stories of contemporaries give only a vague sense of how this was done, but it seems to have been done quite simply, as if by itself, by the action of elusive impressions. Neplyuev tells how he and his comrades in 1720, after completing their training abroad, took an exam in front of the Tsar himself, in full meeting Admiralty Collegium. Neplyuev waited for presentation to the Tsar as if it were the Last Judgment. When it was his turn to take the exam, Peter himself approached him and asked: “Have you learned everything for which you were sent?” He replied that he tried his best, but could not boast that he had learned everything, and, saying this, he knelt down. “You have to work,” the king said to this, and turning his palm towards him right hand, added: “You see, brother, I am a king, but I have calluses on my hands, and all this is to show you an example and at least in your old age to see yourself as worthy helpers and servants of the fatherland.” Stand up, brother, and give an answer to what they ask you, just don’t be timid; what you know, say, and what you don’t know, say so.” The Tsar was satisfied with Neplyuev’s answers and then, having gotten to know him better at the ship construction, spoke about him: “In this little way there will be a way.” Peter noticed diplomatic abilities in the 27-year-old lieutenant of the galley fleet and the next year directly appointed him to the difficult post of resident in Constantinople. During his vacation to Turkey, Peter picked up Neplyuev, who had fallen at his feet with tears, and said: “Don’t bow, brother! I am your guardian from God, and my duty is to ensure that you do not give to the unworthy, and do not take away from the worthy. If you serve well, you will not do good to me, but rather to yourself and the fatherland, and if it is bad, then I am the plaintiff, for God will demand this from me for all of you, so as not to give the evil and stupid a place to do harm. Serve faithfully; first God, and according to him, I will have to not leave. Sorry, brother! - the king added, kissing Neplyuev on the forehead. - Will God bring you to meet? “They never saw each other again. This intelligent and incorruptible, but stern and even tough campaigner, having received the news of Peter’s death in Constantinople, noted in his notes:
“Hey, I’m not lying, I was unconscious for more than a day; otherwise I would have been sinful: this monarch compared our fatherland with others, taught us to recognize that we are people.” Afterwards, having survived six reigns and lived to see the seventh, he, according to the review of his friend Golikov, did not cease to maintain boundless reverence for the memory of Peter the Great and pronounced his name only as sacred and almost always with tears.
The impression that Peter made on those around him with his address, his daily judgments about current affairs, his view of his power and his attitude towards his subjects, his plans and concerns for the future of his people, the very difficulties and dangers with which he had to fight - with all his activity and his entire way of thinking, it is difficult to convey more expressively than how Nartov conveyed it. “We, the former servants of this great sovereign, sigh and shed tears, sometimes hearing reproaches for his hardness of heart, which was not in him. If many knew what he endured, what he endured and what sorrows we were wounded by, they would be horrified at how much he indulged in weaknesses human and forgave crimes that did not deserve mercy; and although Peter the Great is no longer with us, his spirit lives in our souls, and we, who had the good fortune to be with this monarch, will die faithful to him and bury our ardent love for the earthly god with us "We speak about our father without fear because we learned noble fearlessness and truth from him."
Nartov, like Neplyuev, like close person, stood under the direct influence of Peter. But the activity of the reformer so captured everyone’s attention, her motives were so open and so morally convincing that her impression from the close circle of those close to her made its way into the depths of society, forcing even simple and sinful, but unprejudiced souls to understand and feel what she taught, and to fear the king , in the apt expression of Feofan Prokopovich, not only for his anger, but also for his conscience. Peter hardly ever heard judgments about himself similar to those expressed by Nartov: he did not like it. But he should have been deeply consoled by the dying letter of a certain Ivan Kokoshkin, which he received in 1714 and was preserved in his papers. Lying on his deathbed, this Kokoshkin is afraid to appear before the face of God, without bringing pure repentance to the blessed monarch, while the sinful soul was not yet separated from the body, and without receiving forgiveness for his sins in his service: he was part of the recruitment in Tver and from those recruits sets took bribes, who brought what; Yes, he, Ivan Kokoshkin, is guilty of him, the sovereign: he gave a man accused of theft as a recruit for his peasants. It is a great reward for a sovereign to become the dying judge in absentia of the conscience of his subject. Peter the Great fully deserved this award.
Klyuchevsky Vasily Osipovich (1841 - 1911). Russian historian, academician (1900), honorary academician (1908) of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
1. Which of the following is characteristic of the economic development of Russia in the 17th century?
1) manufacturing
2) the beginning of the industrial revolution
3) agricultural overpopulation
4) the formation of a capitalist structure in industry
2. Which of the following persons are among Peter’s companions?
A) V.V. Golitsyn
B)D.M. Pozharsky
B)F.Ya. Lefort
G) B.P. Sheremetev
D) A.G. Orlov
E) A.D. Menshikov
2) GD
3) HEV
4) WHERE
3. What were the names of the central government institutions created by Peter I?
1) orders
2) collegiums
3) ministries
4) assemblies
4. What was the name of what was created in the first quarter of the 18th century? the highest legislative and judicial institution for the affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church?
1) Synod
2) By order of secret affairs
3) Senate
4) Supreme Privy Council
5. Which of these concepts refers to the reforms of Peter I?
1) capitation tax
2) redemption payments
3) three-day corvee
4) sharecropping
1) a sharp change in the course of the Northern War
2) the collapse of the Northern Union
3) the loss of Riga and Revel by Russian troops
4) the loss of Narva by Russian troops
7. During the reign of Peter I, what was the name of the civil servant who supervised the activities of state institutions and officials?
1) fiscal
2) supreme
3) governor
4) governor
8. As a result of the state and administrative reforms of Peter I in Russia...
1) the absolute power of the monarch was established
2) the role of Zemsky Sobors has increased
3) the role of the Boyar Duma increased
4) the role of the Supreme Privy Council was established
9. In 1722, Peter I adopted the Decree on Succession to the Throne, as a result of which the sovereign received the right...
1) transfer the throne strictly by inheritance
2) choose an heir together with the Senate
3) personally select and appoint an heir
4) transfer the throne only through the male line
10. Read an excerpt from the work of historian V.O. Klyuchevsky and indicate to whom this characteristic applies.
“A man of dark origin, “of the lowest breed, below the nobility,” in the words of Prince B. Kurakin, who barely knew how to sign for a salary and draw his name and surname, almost the same age as Peter, a companion of his military fun in Preobrazhenskoye and ship training in the Dutch shipyards , he, according to the same Kurakin, was in favor with the king “to such a degree that he ruled the entire state, almost, and was such a strong favorite that you can hardly find it in Roman histories.” He knew the tsar very well, quickly grasped his thoughts, carried out his most varied orders, even in engineering, which he did not understand at all, and was something like a chief commander.”
1) Andrey Kurbsky
2) Ivan Shuvalov
3) Alexander Menshikov
4) Grigory Potemkin
11. Secularization is
1) policy of providing economic assistance to entrepreneurs
2) active government intervention in economic life
3) state policy aimed at supporting domestic production
4) conversion by the state of church property into state property
12. In which series are the dates associated with the transformations of Peter I in the field of public administration?
1) 1613, 1653
2) 1711, 1718
3) 1741, 1767
4) 1802, 1810
13. To what century does the proclamation of Russia as an empire date back?
1) XVI
2) XVII
3) XVIII
4) XIX
14. Why is 1703 significant in the history of Russia?
1) the founding of St. Petersburg
2) victory in the Battle of Poltava
3) the beginning of the reign of Peter I
4) opening of Moscow University
15. Which of the above refers to the reforms of Peter I in the field of culture?
1) the beginning of printing
2) foundation of the Kunstkamera
3) foundation of Moscow University
4) foundation of lyceums
Answers: 1-1),2-3),3-2),4-1),5-1),6-1),7-1),8-1),9-3),10-3 ),11-4), 12-2), 13-3),14-1), 15-2)
Prince A. D. Menshikov
His Serene Highness Prince Menshikov was also intimately familiar with the royal club, even, perhaps, closer than Peter’s other associates. This gifted businessman occupied a completely exceptional position in the circle of the converter’s employees. A man of dark origin, “of the lowest breed, below the nobility,” in the words of Prince B. Kurakin, who barely knew how to sign for a salary and draw his name and surname, almost the same age as Peter, a companion of his military fun in Preobrazhenskoye and ship training in the Dutch shipyards, Menshikov, according to the same Kurakin, in the Tsar’s favor “had risen to such a degree that he literally ruled the entire state, and was such a strong favorite that you can hardly find it in Roman histories.” He knew the tsar very well, quickly grasped his thoughts, carried out his most varied orders, even in the engineering department, which he did not understand at all, was something like his chief of staff, and successfully, sometimes brilliantly, commanded in battles. Brave, dexterous and self-confident, he enjoyed the full confidence of the tsar and unparalleled powers, canceled the orders of his field marshals, was not afraid to contradict him himself, and rendered services to Peter that he never forgot. But none of his employees upset him more than this “mein lipste frint” (my beloved friend) or “mein Herzbruder” (my dear brother), as Peter called him in his letters to him. Danilych loved money, and he needed a lot of money. Accounts have been preserved according to which from the end of 1709 to 1711 he personally spent 45 thousand rubles on himself, i.e. about 400 thousand in our money. And he was not shy about his means of obtaining money, as the news of his numerous abuses shows. The poor Preobrazhensky sergeant subsequently had a fortune that his contemporaries estimated at 150 thousand rubles. land income (about 1,300 thousand in our money), not counting precious stones worth 1 1/2 million rubles. (about 13 million) and multi-million dollar deposits in foreign banks. Peter was not stingy for his well-deserved favorite. But such wealth could hardly have come from the royal bounty alone and from the profits of the White Sea walrus fishing company, in which the prince was a shareholder.
A.P. Volynsky
“I earnestly ask,” Peter wrote to him in 1711 regarding his petty thefts in Poland, “I earnestly ask that you do not lose your fame and credit with such small profits.” Menshikov tried to fulfill this request of the tsar, only too literally: he avoided “small profits”, preferring large ones.
A few years later, the investigative commission in the case of the prince’s abuses accounted for more than 1 million rubles. (about 10 million with our money). Peter added up a significant part of this account. But such impurity brought him out of patience. The king warned the prince: “Don’t forget who you were and what I made you from what you are now.” At the end of his life, forgiving him for the newly discovered thefts, he said to his ever-present intercessor, the Empress: “Menshikov was conceived in iniquity, his mother gave birth to sins, and he will die in fraud; if he does not correct himself, he will be without a head.” In addition to merit, sincere repentance and Catherine’s petition, in such cases Menshikov was rescued from trouble by the royal club, which covered the sin of the punished with oblivion.
But the royal club is also double-edged: while correcting the sinner with one end, with the other it brought him down in the opinion of society. Peter needed businessmen with authority who would be respected and obeyed by their subordinates; and what kind of respect could a boss beaten by the Tsar inspire? Peter hoped to eliminate this demoralizing effect of his correctional baton by making it strictly private for use in his lathe. Nartov says that he often saw how the sovereign regaled people of noble ranks with a club for their wines, how they then went out into other rooms with a cheerful look and on the same day were invited to the sovereign’s table so that strangers would not notice anything. Not every guilty person was awarded a baton: it was a sign of a certain closeness and trust in the person being punished. Therefore, those who experienced such punishment remembered it without bitterness, as a mercy, even when they considered themselves undeservedly punished.
A.P. Volynsky later told how during the Persian campaign, on the Caspian Sea, Peter, at the slander of his enemies, beat him, who was then the governor of Astrakhan, with a cane, which replaced a club in her absence, and only the empress “mercifully did not deign to bring him to a great beating.” ". “But,” the narrator added, “the sovereign deigned to punish me, like a merciful father of his son, with his little hand, and the next day he himself most mercifully deigned to realize that it was not my fault, being merciful, he repented and again deigned to accept me into his former high place.” mercy." Peter punished in this way only those whom he valued and whom he hoped to correct with this means. To a report about one selfish act of the same Menshikov, Peter replied: “The guilt is not small, but previous merits are greater than it,” subjected the prince to a monetary penalty, and in the turning shop he beat him with a club in the presence of Nartov alone and sent him out with the words: “For the last time, a club; From now on, watch out, Alexander!
But when a conscientious businessman made a mistake, made an involuntary mistake and waited for a thunderstorm, Peter hastened to console him, as one consoles in misfortune, belittling the failure. In 1705, B. Sheremetev ruined the strategic operation entrusted to him in Courland against Levengaupt and was in despair. Peter looked at the matter simply as “some unfortunate incident,” and wrote to the field marshal: “If you please, do not be sad about the past misfortune, since the constant success of many people led to destruction, but forget and, moreover, encourage people.”
B.P. Sheremetev
Peter did not have time to completely shake off the ancient Russian man with his morals and concepts even when he fought with them. This was reflected not only in the fatherly reprisal against people of noble ranks, but also in other cases, for example, in the hope of eradicating delusions among the people, driving out demons from those falsely possessed with a whip - “the tail of a whip is longer than the tail of a demon,” or in the method of treating a wife’s teeth his valet Poluboyarov. The valet complained to Peter that his wife was unkind to him, citing toothache. - “Okay, I’ll fly her.” Considering himself quite experienced in operative surgery, Peter took a dental instrument and went to the valet in the absence of his husband. “I heard you have a toothache?” - “No, sir, I’m healthy.” - “It’s not true, you’re a coward.” She, timidly, admitted that she had an illness, and Peter pulled out her healthy tooth, saying: “Remember that a wife should be afraid of her husband, otherwise she will have no teeth.” - “He cured!” – he remarked to his husband with a grin, returning to the palace.
P.A. Tolstoy
Given Peter’s ability to deal with people when necessary, authoritatively or simply, royally or fatherly, cell teachings, together with long-term communication in labors, sorrows and joys, established a certain closeness of relations between him and his colleagues. And the sympathetic simplicity with which he entered into the private affairs of close people gave this closeness the imprint of sincere brevity. After the day's work, in the idle evening hours, when Peter, as usual, either went on a visit or received guests at home, he was cheerful, courteous, and talkative. He also loved to see cheerful interlocutors around him, to hear a relaxed, intelligent conversation and could not tolerate anything that upset such a conversation, no malice, antics, barbs, and even more so - quarrels and abuse. The offender was immediately punished, forced to drink a fine - empty three glasses of wine or one “eagle” (large ladle), so that “he would not lie or bully too much.”
P. Tolstoy remembered for a long time how he was once forced to drink a fine for starting to praise Italy too carelessly. Another time he had to drink a fine, only this time for being too careful. Once, in 1682, as an agent of Princess Sophia and Ivan Miloslavsky, he was heavily involved in the Streltsy riot and could barely keep his head on his shoulders, but he repented in time, received forgiveness, entered into favor with his intelligence and merits and became a prominent businessman, whom Peter valued very much . Once, at a party at the shipwrights', having had a good time and having become despondent, the guests began to easily tell the king what lay at the bottom of everyone's soul. Tolstoy, who had quietly avoided the glasses, sat down by the fireplace, dozed off as if drunk, lowered his head and even took off his wig, and meanwhile, swaying, listened carefully to the frank chatter of the Tsar’s interlocutors. Peter, who was habitually walking back and forth around the room, noticed the trick of the sly man and, pointing to him to those present, said: “Look, his head is hanging - as if it wouldn’t fall off his shoulders.” “Don’t be afraid, Your Majesty,” answered Tolstoy, who suddenly woke up, “she is faithful to you and is firm on me.” - “Ah! So he just pretended to be drunk,” continued Peter, “bring him three glasses of good flin (warmed beer with cognac and lemon juice), - so he will catch up with us and will also chatter like a magpie.” And, hitting his bald head with his palm, he continued: “Head, head! If you weren’t so smart, I would have ordered you to be cut off long ago.”