Shipyards, a New Capital and a Tax on Beards: How Peter the Great Remade Russia

Peter the Great reformed almost every part of Russian life: he rebuilt the army and founded a navy, created new government bodies such as the Governing Senate, the colleges and the Table of Ranks, changed the calendar and the alphabet, opened schools, pushed industry, founded Saint Petersburg as a new capital and even taxed men who refused to shave their beards. He was tsar of all Russia from 1682 and, from 1721 until his death in 1725, its first emperor, and he is mainly credited with modernising the country and turning it quickly into a major European power. His methods were often brutal, though, and Russians still argue about what his revolution cost.

A boy tsar in a dangerous court

Peter was born on 9 June 1672, the son of Tsar Alexei. When his half-brother Feodor III died in 1682 without children, two branches of the family fought over the throne. The nobles first chose ten-year-old Peter, but a revolt of the streltsy, Russia's elite musketeers, led by his half-sister Sophia, forced a compromise: Peter and his half-brother Ivan V became joint tsars, and Sophia ruled as regent. During the uprising some of Peter's relatives and friends were murdered, and he witnessed some of the violence himself.

Pushed away from power, the young Peter spent his time on hobbies that would shape his reign. At sixteen he found an old English boat on an estate, had it restored and learned to sail; he studied arithmetic, geometry and fortification and drilled a "toy army" of boys in mock battles. He was often in Moscow's German Quarter, where foreigners lived, and learned from Dutch carpenters and other experts. In 1689 he overthrew Sophia and sent her to a convent, and after his mother died in 1694 and Ivan in 1696 he ruled alone. He also grew to be extremely tall for his time, and contemporaries compared him to Goliath.

The tsar who worked as a ship's carpenter

In March 1697 Peter set out on an 18-month journey through Western Europe with a large delegation, the so-called Grand Embassy, becoming the first tsar to leave Russia in more than a hundred years. He travelled under a false name, but because he was so much taller than everyone else, he fooled nobody. In Amsterdam he spent four months gaining practical experience in a Dutch East India Company shipyard and helped build a ship laid down especially for him; in England he visited dockyards, the Royal Mint and the Greenwich Observatory. Along the way he hired many skilled workers, from shipwrights to fortress builders, to bring back to Russia.

The trip ended abruptly in 1698 when news came of another streltsy rebellion. It had already been crushed, but Peter punished the rebels with great cruelty: around 1,182 were tortured and executed and their bodies displayed as a warning, and the streltsy were disbanded. This mixture of curiosity about the West and ruthlessness at home runs through his whole reign.

Beards, clothes and calendars

Peter came home convinced that in several ways European customs were better than Russian traditions. He ordered his courtiers and officials to wear European clothes instead of long caftans and to cut off their beards, which deeply upset the nobles and the Old Believers, for whom the beard had religious meaning. In 1698 he introduced a beard tax: men who wanted to keep their beards had to pay, and police were allowed to shave those who refused, publicly and by force.

The amount depended on social status. Courtiers, soldiers and officials paid 60 rubles a year, wealthy merchants 100 rubles, ordinary Muscovites 30 rubles, and peasants paid a small coin every time they entered a city. Those who paid carried a "beard token", a copper or silver coin showing a nose, mouth and beard; a later version bore the phrase "the beard is a superfluous burden". As a money-maker the tax was a failure, because relatively few people refused to shave and the state struggled to collect it, but it was not formally abolished until Catherine the Great repealed it in 1772.

The calendar changed too. In 1699 Peter moved New Year's Day from 1 September to 1 January and ordered that years be counted from the birth of Christ instead of from the supposed creation of the world, so the year 7207 of the old calendar was followed by 1700. He replaced Cyrillic numerals with Arabic numerals, introduced a simplified "civil script" for printing, and in 1703 launched Russia's first newspaper.

War with Sweden and a window to the West

Peter wanted Russia to be a sea power, but its only major port was Arkhangelsk on the White Sea, and Sweden controlled the Baltic. So he went to war with Sweden in the Great Northern War. It began with a disaster at Narva in 1700, when the young Swedish king Charles XII attacked in a blinding snowstorm and routed the Russians. Peter used the time Charles spent fighting in Poland to rebuild his army, and in 1709 he won a decisive victory at Poltava, in Ukraine, defeating what was considered one of the best armies in the world.

Even before Poltava, on 29 June 1703, Peter founded Saint Petersburg on an island at the mouth of the Neva River. To get it built fast, he forbade stone construction anywhere else in Russia so that all stonemasons would work on the new city. The Italian writer Francesco Algarotti later called it the "window to the West", and in 1712 Peter moved the capital there from Moscow; it stayed the capital until 1918. When peace with Sweden finally came, Russia had gained a large part of the eastern Baltic coast, and in 1721 Peter was proclaimed Emperor of All Russia.

A new state machine

Peter also rebuilt the government itself. In 1711 he created the Governing Senate to supervise justice, finance and administration; from 1718 he replaced the old offices with colleges for areas such as foreign affairs, war and the navy; and in 1722 he introduced the Table of Ranks. The Table of Ranks was a big change: instead of birth deciding a noble's status, rank was to depend on merit and service to the ruler, and the system lasted until the monarchy fell in 1917. He also ordered basic mathematics education for the children of nobles and officials, and the Russian Academy of Sciences was founded in 1724.

A divided legacy

Peter died on 8 February 1725, at the age of 52, after a long illness of the bladder. His reputation has always split opinion. For the Old Believers he was the Antichrist because of the calendar change and the poll tax, while his supporters compared him to Moses and Solomon. Some historians see him as the founder of Russia's greatness; others, like Evgeny Anisimov, call him the creator of a command system and "the true ancestor of Stalin". Both views agree on one thing: after Peter, Russia was a European great power, and there was no going back.

Learn with Peter the Great: English phrases

Phrase	Meaning	Example
a window to the world	a way to see and connect with other places	Learning English is my window to the world.
to learn the ropes	to learn how to do a job	Peter learned the ropes in a Dutch shipyard.
to turn over a new leaf	to start again and change your habits	Russia turned over a new leaf in 1700.
with an iron fist	in a strict, harsh way	He ruled with an iron fist.
to break with tradition	to stop following old customs	Shaving beards broke with tradition.

Try this: Write three English sentences about a big change in your life, using "learn the ropes" and "turn over a new leaf".