Russia. A History

Despite constant losses from accident, inferior workmanship, poor maintenance, and difficult harbours, the navy grew swiftly, with 34 ships of the line mounting between 46 and 96 cannon, 15 frigates, 4 prams, 10 snows, and almost 100 smaller vessels and galleys deploying 2,226 cannon with crews and troops totalling 28,000 men by 1724. Ship names reflected victories and territorial gains: Standart (banner or rallying-point),

Kronshlot, Triumf, Derpt, Narva, Fligel′-de-Fam (Dutch Flying Fame). The first ship of the line launched in 1710 was called Vyborg,

and Alexander Menshikov presented Peter with the Dutch-built frigate Sv. Samson (St Samson) in honour of the Poltava victory. Peter personally launched the 54–gun

Poltava at St Petersburg on 15 June 1712, while the Hangö victory of 1714 was celebrated in 1719 by the huge 96–gun Gangut.

Exceeding 174,000 men by 1711 and totalling almost 304,000 in 1725, the armed forces engulfed 90 per cent of the state budget in the former year and still 73 per cent in the latter, a time of peace. Service was essentially lifelong for officers and enlisted men alike. Military service enshrined the principle of merit as explicated in the Table of Ranks, the system of fourteen grades (thirteen in practice) applied to all three branches of state service—military, civil, and court. Military ranks enjoyed preference over civil, and all thirteen in the military conferred noble status as opposed to only the top eight in the civil service. Squabbles over precedence and place-seeking did not end, however; the concept of merit involved ambiguous notions of time in grade, individual achievement, education, and potential. Predictably, the great majority of officers came from noble backgrounds, and the two guards regiments constituted specially privileged preserves. An exception was Alexander Menshikov’s Ingermanlandskii Regiment, a unit close in status to the two guards regiments with the highest proportion of non-noble officers (18 of 56). Menshikov, longtime crony of the tsar and energetic soldier-administrator-entrepreneur, came from dubious origins and fabricated a fanciful noble genealogy. Unable to write more than his name, he was promoted to aristocratic rank (Peter obtained for him the honorific title of prince of the Holy Roman Empire) and busily accumulated immense wealth. Having already abolished the rank of boyar and aware that Russian noble titles were devalued by the practice of equal inheritance, Peter introduced two European titles, count and baron, but conferred them infrequently and only for meritorious service. Baron Peter Shafirov, for example, gained his title in 1710; Baron Andrei Osterman obtained his in 1721 for negotiating peace with Sweden.

State service proved burdensome for nobles and their families, as Peter strove to ensure that military service take precedence over civil and that young noblemen fulfil their service obligations. When established in 1711, the Senate was ordered to hunt down and register noble boys as young as 10 so that they could be sent to school before beginning service at 15. Relatives were to denounce those in hiding; in 1722 such youths were outlawed as if bandits. But enforcing these prescriptions in distant provinces was problematical at best; towards the end of Peter’s reign, Ivan Pososhkov decried the ease with which provincial nobles evaded service and concealed fugitives. Efforts to recover deserters oscillated between blandishments and threats, neither achieving much success.

The peasantry furnished the bulk of all recruits, whether for the armed forces, the ‘manufactories’, naval yards, or construction sites. They also provided most of the tax revenues. To guarantee the flow of revenue for the armed forces, the country was divided into huge provinces each of which was to support different regiments. Continual mobilization peaked in the Swedish invasion of 1708–9, by which time the central government had largely disintegrated. The country consisted of satrapies like Ingermanland presided over by Menshikov in St Petersburg; virtually all Peter’s energies focused on the showdown with Sweden.