Peter the Great

Names
	Peter Alekseyevich Romanov

Peter I
Peter I
	1717 portrait
Emperor of Russia
Reign	2 November 1721 – 8 February 1725
Predecessor	Himself as Tsar of Russia
Successor	Catherine I
Tsar of all Russia
Reign	7 May 1682 – 2 November 1721
Coronation	25 June 1682
Predecessor	Feodor III
Successor	Himself as Emperor of Russia
Co-monarch	Ivan V (1682–1696)
Regent	Sophia Alekseyevna (1682–1689)
Born	9 June 1672; Moscow
Died	8 February 1725 (aged 52); Saint Petersburg
Burial	Peter and Paul Cathedral
Spouses	; Eudoxia Lopukhina (m. 1689; div. 1698) ; Marta Skowrońska (later Catherine I) (m. 1707)
Issue; Detail	Alexei Petrovich, Tsarevich of Russia; Anna, Duchess of Holstein-Gottorp; Elizabeth, Empress of Russia; Grand Duchess Natalia Petrovna;
Names
Names
	Peter Alekseyevich Romanov
House	Romanov
Father	Alexis of Russia
Mother	Natalya Naryshkina
Religion	Russian Orthodoxy
Signature
Military career
Battles/wars	Azov campaigns; Battle of Poltava; Pruth River Campaign; Persian campaign; Ingrian campaign;

Peter I (Russian: Пётр I Алексеевич, romanized: Pyotr I Alekseyevich,^{[note 1]} IPA: [ˈpʲɵtr ɐlʲɪˈksʲejɪvʲɪtɕ]; 9 June [O.S. 30 May] 1672 – 8 February [O.S. 28 January] 1725), commonly known as Peter the Great,^{[note 2]} was Tsar of all Russia from 1682, and the first Emperor of all Russia from 1721 until his death in 1725. He reigned jointly with his half-brother Ivan V until 1696. From this year, Peter was an absolute monarch, an autocrat who remained the ultimate authority and organized a well-ordered police state.^[2]^[3]

Most of Peter's reign was consumed by long wars against the Ottoman and Swedish Empires. Despite initial difficulties, the wars were ultimately successful and led to expansion to the Sea of Azov and the Baltic Sea, thus laying the groundwork for the Imperial Russian Navy. His victory in the Great Northern War ended Sweden's era as a great power and its domination of the Baltic region while elevating Russia's standing to the extent it came to be acknowledged as an empire. Peter led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political systems with ones that were modern, scientific, Westernized, and based on radical Enlightenment.^[4]^[5]

In December 1699, he introduced the Julian calendar,^[6] which replaced the Byzantine calendar that was long used in Russia,^[7] but the Russian Orthodox Church was particularly resistant to this change.^[8] In 1703, he introduced the first Russian newspaper, Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti, and ordered the civil script, a reform of Russian orthography largely designed by himself. On the shores of the Neva River, he founded Saint Petersburg, a city famously dubbed by Alexander Pushkin as the "window to the West". In 1714, Peter relocated the capital from Moscow, a status it retained until 1918.

Peter had a great interest in plants, animals and minerals, in malformed creatures or exceptions to the law of nature for his cabinet of curiosities. He encouraged research of deformities, all along trying to debunk the superstitious fear of monsters.^[9] He promoted industrialization in the Russian Empire and higher education. The Russian Academy of Sciences and the Saint Petersburg State University were founded in 1724, and invited Christian Wolff and Willem 's Gravesande.

Peter is primarily credited with the modernization of the country, quickly transforming it into a major European power. His administrative reforms, creating a Governing Senate in 1711, the Collegium in 1717 and the Table of Ranks in 1722 had a lasting impact on Russia, and many institutions of the Russian government trace their origins to his reign.

^ Cite error: The named reference A was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ Kollmann N. (2012) Peter the Great and spectacles of suffering. In: Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Russia. New Studies in European History, pp. 403-415. Cambridge University Press.
^ Kostetskaya E. V., Suslova L. N., Aksenova V. A. Investigation in the case of Prince M. P. Gagarin in the context of the development of the state control system in the first quarter of the XVIII century. Scientific dialogue. 2023;12(7):346-373. https://doi.org/10.24224/2227-1295-2023-12-7-346-373
^ Cracraft 2003.
^ Driessen, p. 264
^ https://www.prlib.ru/en/news/1284185
^ Cracraft 2003, p. 124.
^ https://brewminate.com/peter-the-great-and-the-new-year-in-russia/
^ Driessen van het Reve, Jozien J. (2006). De Kunstkamera van Peter de Grote. De Hollandse inbreng, gereconstrueerd uit brieven van Albert Seba en Johann Daniel Schumacher uit de jaren 1711–1752 (in Dutch). Hilversum: Verloren. p. 336. ISBN 978-90-6550-927-7.

Cite error: There are <ref group=note> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=note}} template (see the help page).

[A-1] Cite error: The named reference A was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[4] Kollmann N. (2012) Peter the Great and spectacles of suffering. In: Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Russia. New Studies in European History, pp. 403-415. Cambridge University Press.

[5] Kostetskaya E. V., Suslova L. N., Aksenova V. A. Investigation in the case of Prince M. P. Gagarin in the context of the development of the state control system in the first quarter of the XVIII century. Scientific dialogue. 2023;12(7):346-373. https://doi.org/10.24224/2227-1295-2023-12-7-346-373

[FOOTNOTECracraft2003-6] Cracraft 2003.

[7] Driessen, p. 264

[8] ttps://www.prlib.ru/en/news/1284185

[FOOTNOTECracraft2003124-9] Cracraft 2003, p. 124.

[10] ttps://brewminate.com/peter-the-great-and-the-new-year-in-russia/

[11] Driessen van het Reve, Jozien J. (2006). De Kunstkamera van Peter de Grote. De Hollandse inbreng, gereconstrueerd uit brieven van Albert Seba en Johann Daniel Schumacher uit de jaren 1711–1752 (in Dutch). Hilversum: Verloren. p. 336. ISBN 978-90-6550-927-7.

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