Russia. A History

The Scientific Revolution had enthralled Peter even before his first journey abroad, and his early acquaintance with foreign and native scholars reinforced ventures in the sciences, arts, and technology. Peter corresponded for more than twenty years with G. W. von Leibniz, whom he put on the payroll in 1711 and ultimately in 1724, founded the Imperial Academy of Sciences and Arts in St Petersburg as the centre of state-organized research in the new Russian Empire. This multi-purpose institution combined research, teaching, and museum functions; it utilized a broad definition of ‘sciences’ encompassing secular knowledge that included arts and crafts, history and literature.

St Petersburg as the New Capital and Renewed Dynastic Disarray

As befitted a new European sovereign, Peter spent much time outside Muscovy’s old borders: a total of almost nineteen months in the years 1711–13 that spanned the disastrous Pruth campaign, two extended visits to Carlsbad for water cures and to witness Alexis’s wedding, and meetings with Leibniz at Torgau, Teplitz, and Carlsbad in 1711. The tsar’s ‘Paradise’ at St Petersburg became the new capital in about 1713 with the transfer of the court and higher government.

In microcosm the city advertised many Petrine ideals. It was European in concept, name, and style—the style synonymous with the newly popular term arkhitektura.

Its name and layout, the fortress and cathedral of Peter and Paul and the city crest all pointed to parallels with imperial Rome. Planned for commercial and economic efficiency (Peter even contemplated centring the city on the island of Kotlin in the Gulf of Finland!), security from fire (but not flood), and impressive splendour, the ‘Residenz-Stadt’ grew rapidly thanks to forced labour and forced resettlement in combination with vigorous state patronage and flourishing foreign trade carried in foreign vessels. With the arrival of the court and many state agencies, the state’s presence in the guise of the huge Admiralty establishment, armoury facilities at nearby Sestroretsk, and the army and guards regiments fuelled a boom in local construction. Following the formation of the collegiate system of central administration after 1715, the city’s chief architect, Domenico Trezzini, began in 1722 a huge unitary corpus for the eleven administrative colleges on Vasilevskii Island, a grandiose project only completed ten years later. By 1725 St Petersburg had a population of about 50,000 (with large seasonal fluctuations, as peasant labourers congregated during the spring-to-autumn shipping season), and featured several impressive palaces (Menshikov’s in particular) with even more opulent estates flanking the approaches. The Summer Garden boasted abundant statuary and Peter’s small Summer Palace, but his attempt to organize a zoo complete with elephant and polar bears faltered when the animals died.

Moscow remained the old capital and largest city, but after 1710 Peter visited it sparingly. Much of 1713–14 he passed on board ship co-ordinating the land and sea conquest of Finland, highlighted by the naval victory of Hangö—a nautical Poltava—on 27 July 1714. The European sojourns and campaigns culminated in a second triumphal tour, this time accompanied by Catherine except to France, for twenty months in 1716–17. Off Copenhagen in October 1716 Peter was named honorary admiral of the combined Danish, Dutch, English, and Russian fleets—pleasing recognition of Russia’s new maritime might. Yet the ageing tsar was often mentally distraught, as hinted by twelve nocturnal dreams he recorded in 1714–16. Seriously ill in Holland for a month in early 1717, he later took the waters at Pyrmont and Spa. Both consorts grieved for the baby boy lost four hours after birth at Wesel in Holland on 2 January 1717.

Dynastic distress ensued even earlier with the death of Alexis’s wife in October 1715 shortly after having borne a son (and first grandson), Peter Alekseevich, followed soon by Catherine’s delivery of a son, Peter Petrovich. Peter and Catherine had been privately married in Moscow in March 1711, a ceremony repeated publicly in St Petersburg on 19 February 1712, the tsar joking that ‘it was a fruitful wedding, for they had already had five children’. This tardy marriage to a foreign commoner struck the English envoy as ‘one of the surprising events of this wonderfull age’. Catherine quickly became the focus of a European-type court largely Germanic in cultural terms. At Moscow in February 1722 and St Petersburg the next year Catherine and her ladies donned Amazon costumes to celebrate Shrovetide.