Peter I, known as the Great 1672-1725
Tsar and Emperor of Russia

He was born in Moscow, the fourth son of the Tsar Alexis I Mikhailovich by his second wife. He was made co-tsar in 1682 jointly with his mentally disabled half-brother Ivan V (1666-96) on the death of their elder brother, Fyodor III, and under the regency of their sister, the Grandduchess Sophia (d.1704). He became emperor in 1721. An energetic military enthusiast and contemptuous of political and religious ceremony, in 1689 he had his sister arrested and immured in a convent, and ruled on his own with his brother as a figurehead. In 1689 he married Eudoxia (1669-1731), the pious daughter of a boyar, by whom he had a son in 1690, the tsarevitch Alexis (father of the future Peter II). In 1695 he served as a humble bombardier in war against the Turks, in 1696 he captured the vital sea-port of Azov, and in 1697 he set off on a tour of Europe, travelling incognito in a 'Grand Embassy' whose main official purpose was to secure allies against the Turks. In the course of the 16th-month journey he amassed knowledge of western technology and hired thousands of craftsmen and military personnel to take back to Russia. He returned to Russia in the summer of 1698 to repress a revolt of the streltsy (regiments of musketeers), with the help of a Scottish general, Patrick Gordon. Eudoxia, accused of conspiracy, was divorced and sent to a convent. Peter, often brutally and against the wishes of his people, set about the westernization of Russia. In 1700, in alliance with Denmark and Augustus II, the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, he launched the Great Northern War against Sweden (1700-21). Initially defeated, Peter ordered the church bells in Moscow to be melted down to make new cannons, and by refusing to permit the election of a new patriarch was able to divert ecclesiastical revenues to the war effort. He triumphed over the Swedish army in 1709 at the Battle of Poltava in the Ukraine, and the 1721 Peace of Nystadt saw Sweden cede parts of Finland plus Ingria, Estonia and Latvia. In 1703 Peter had begun the construction of the new city and port of St Petersburg, which was designated as the capital of the empire. In 1712 he married his Lithuanian mistress, Catherine (the future Catherine I). In 1718 his son Alexis was imprisoned for suspected treason and died after torture. In 1722 the Act of Succession gave the ruling sovereign liberty to choose his or her successor, and in the following year Peter had Catherine crowned empress. The move was unpopular, but at his death she succeeded him without opposition. Peter had achieved during his reign a kind of cultural revolution that made Russia part of the general European state system for the first time in its history, and established it as a major power.

Bibliography: M S Anderson, Peter the Great (1978)