Peter the Great, visionary giant
Carrying such a project could only be the fruit of the thought and dream of an extraordinary man. Peter the Great is extraordinary, beyond what one can imagine. A sovereign who is very real, but who seems to have emerged from an epic fiction. A legendary character who made history. Appointed tsar at the age of 10, he did not really take office until 1694, at the age of 22. A legendary giant of Russia measuring 2.04 m, carried by a will and a robustness capable of overturning everything in his path, he seems to have adapted his ambitions to his size and the dimensions of his country, which he made the most powerful in Europe.
Academician Henri Troyat, born in Russia and a refugee in France after the revolution of 1917, says of him in his reference biography (Pierre le Grand
, Flammarion, 1979): "[...] he fell on his country like a tornado. With incredible energy and ferocity [...] There is in Peter the Great a mixture of genius and madness, buffoonery and pride. "He is a visionary who lives and does everything excessively: he likes to feast and drink for days and nights, he is enlisted in his army and goes to fight in second class, he learns 14 manual trades, pushes aside the old nobility and the omnipresent Orthodox Church to awaken the country from its medieval torpor
. As a young man in Moscow, he had frequented the sons of the German, Dutch and British aristocracy, and from this he drew a fascination for engineering and a deep conviction that his country was lagging far behind, that it had not experienced the revival brought by the Renaissance and that it needed to open up to Western Europe, thoroughly reform its administration and become a leading naval power. All these aspirations will be embodied in a project that no one had ever dared to imagine: to create a new modern capital, a symbol of Russia's revival, on a vast expanse of the Baltic Sea marshlands.To change the era of Russia
A convinced supporter of experimentation, and although he was already a tsar, he travelled for almost a year and a half to the countries of Western Europe, most of the time incognito (under the name of Pierre Mikhailov), in order to learn and acquire the know-how they considered necessary for the realization of the great projects he had for his country: artillery, shipbuilding (he does not hesitate to work as a simple worker for the Dutch East India Company), arts and architecture, customs of the Western courts... He takes advantage of this to enlist and bring to Russia the experts capable of accelerating his great leap forward towards modernity and excellence.
This enlightened despot with very modernist ideas is capable of appointing a prefect of police, marrying a former laundress for a second time and making his most faithful servant of Menchikov who, before becoming prince of the Russian Empire, would have been a street vendor of pies.
It was he who profoundly reformed the administration and society by westernizing it. He applied a tax on beards (which Russian nobles wore well flowered) in order to modernize their appearance and aligned the Russian calendar with the Roman calendar, which scandalized the Orthodox Church.
Following a military and naval victory over the Swedes, he founded St. Petersburg in 1703. It was his life's work and it would change the destiny of Russia for centuries to come. A work that he completed by making this city the capital at the expense of Moscow. He governed throughout his reign, with firmness and a spirit of reform. Historians agree that he was one of the most outstanding European rulers of our era.Conquering the sea
Making Russia an empire open to the sea is the obsession and guiding thread of Peter the Great's reign. Defending himself against the Turkish invaders in the south and the Swedish invaders in the Baltic is another constant in his reign, which will enable him to achieve the goals he set himself. As soon as he came to power in 1694, he had to face the Russian-Turkish war that had been raging for 8 years. With a skilful manoeuvre, he attacks the Crimean Tatars, who have been the unfailing allies of the Turks in the region for several centuries; this creates a diversion and a scattering of the Ottoman troops who are defeated at Azov, thanks in particular to the contribution of a flotilla of more than 1,000 boats hastily built at the initiative of the Tsar. This is the birth certificate of the Russian Imperial Navy and allows Russia to control the Sea of Azov, which flows into the Black Sea. The Treaty of Constantinople (1700) puts an end to the war and recognizes the Russian corridor to the Black Sea. With the south secured, it is towards the north that Peter the Great looks and projects his great ambitions.
Building a modern maritime power requires a piece of the Baltic Sea. The Swedes had taken possession of the Russian coast on this sea 50 years ago. In order to wash away this affront and build this maritime space open to Europe, Peter the Great spent his entire term of office fighting against Sweden. It was the Great Northern War which lasted from 1700 to 1721 and at the end of which he succeeded in regaining possession of the Russian territories on the Baltic, but also in taking the region of Karelia, Estonia and Latvia from his Swedish rival.The city of Pierre, gateway to maritime paradise
. He set his sights on Enisaari Island, immediately renamed Zayatchi Island (Hare Island), at the mouth of the Neva River, facing the Gulf of Finland. Contrary to popular belief, the city of St. Petersburg is not named after Tsar Peter the Great, but after the founding apostle of the Christian church. It has been a long time since the Tsar chose the name of this new port which, like the guardian of the key to paradise, is to open the key to the sea and Europe. He has now found the place where his vision would come true. The first stone of the military edifice that is the Pierre and Paul Fortress was laid on 16 May 1703, the anniversary of the birth of the city. A few days later, not far from the construction site, the first dwelling in the city of St. Petersburg was built: the residence of the Tsar, a simple wooden hut.Against all odds
Many foreign visitors, diplomats and businessmen remain speechless when they learn that the "Tsar of All Russia" is living so modestly. Peter the Great had his work cut out for him: he had to build a fortress as a matter of urgency (the war for the northern territories was still going on) and keep a closer eye on all the work. The construction of the fortress, in a marshy area, swept by the Baltic winds and difficult to supply, cost the lives of thousands of soldiers and peasants, forcibly enlisted in this adventure. "The word of the Czar is creative, they say. Yes: it animates the stones, but it does so by killing men," wrote the Marquis de Custine (Russia in 1839
). One of the greatest oddities of the city is that the fortress never took part in any combat!The new inhabitants of this uninhabitable place were surprised, in August 1703, by one of the scourges of the future city: a gigantic flood. Military strategy, however, demanded that the Russians settle permanently in this place. This they do, while the situation pushes them to flee. For the first few years, this forced settlement consisted of a small town concentrated around the fortress, but by 1712 it had grown sufficiently and the small town it had become was declared the capital of the Empire.
On the other bank of the river, Pierre erected the Admiralty complex, a vast shipyard reflecting the passion of the Tsar, who was not very Russian, for the navy. The ships that come out of it contribute greatly to the Russian victory in the Northern War. If the Nevsky prospect is named after the national hero, Prince Alexander, who shoved the Swedish invaders out of Russia at the Battle of the Neva in 1240 (already!), which earned him the nickname Alexander Nevsky (Alexander of the Neva), many street names echo the naval industry, the first in St. Petersburg: the Liteïny perspective pays homage to the foundry, the Smolny district to the tar
... Although broken with a Spartan way of life, the Tsar nevertheless built a summer palace on the banks of the Neva and, later, a winter palace. As there was no bridge yet, the inhabitants moved from one island to another by boat, giving the city its nickname of Venice of the North. Peter the Great gradually endowed Saint Petersburg with all the attributes of a European city: palaces, but also Western-style ministries, museums, university, hospitals, libraries..Capital of the new empire
enchikov Palace, the Twelve Colleges and the nearby Kikin House are among the witnesses of the city's appearance of that foundation period. But Russia has definitely changed its face. As a sign of the westernization of his country, Peter the Great forced the boyars (Russian aristocrats) to cut off their beards and wear European clothes. The Moscow boyars, who were pushed aside and left out of the decisions, considered Peter I as the hypostasis of the Antichrist! How, indeed, how else to explain that he transferred the capital to Saint Petersburg, that he ordered men of rank to shave their beards and wear fancy European clothes, that he called on foreigners to build his city and his army and that he made commoners his favourites, that he repudiated his first wife and remarried a former Catholic peasant woman who was the mistress of his friend Menchikov, gave him 7 children and became empress? On his order, all stone construction work on the immense territory of Russia was stopped, and they even went so far as to dismantle the foundations of the churches, in order to build the city of the Antichrist?Nothing will be like before
Under his reign, boyars disappeared from the body of the State, replaced by civil servants. Having become emperor of all Russia following his definitive victory over Sweden, Peter I remains the symbol of the tsar who sought inspiration in the Western model to advance Russia willingly or unwillingly, with the aim of making it the leading European power. He thus gave impetus to a new direction, that of the West, which marks the entire rest of the country's history, because the leaders who succeeded him were to extend his policy. And St. Petersburg will continue to develop.
