Peter the Great: The Struggle for Power, 1671-1725

by Paul Bushkovitch

A new narrative of the fifty years of political struggles at the Russian court, 1671-1725. This book shows how Peter the Great was not the all-powerful tsar working alone to reform Russia, but that he colluded with powerful and contentious aristocrats in order to achieve his goals. After the early victory of Peter's boyar supporters in the 1690s, Peter turned against them and tried to rule through favourites - an experiment which ended in the establishment of a decentralised 'aristocratic' administration, followed by an equally aristocratic Senate in 1711. The aristocrats' hegemony came to an end in the wake of the affair of Peter's son, tsarevich Aleksei, in 1718. After that moment Peter ruled through a complex group of favourites, a few aristocrats, and appointees promoted through merit, and carried out his most long-lasting reforms. The outcome was a new balance of power at the centre and a new, European, conception of politics.

Genres: History, Russia

498 pages, Unknown Binding

Published May 14, 2014

Reviews

[Benjamin Akers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Contains a lot of rich content on Peter I, although in true Russian literary fashion goes on many tangents that are treated as important as any other piece of information. While I do love reading about what some irrelevant noble thought about Peter’s actions and their entire family lineage, it took away from the overarching narrative of Peter’s life.

[Andrii · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book covers a relatively long period of Russian history, addressing events from late Alexei Mikhailovich's reign untill the death of Peter the Great. The author walks the reader through a tumultuous period of struggle among various Russian elite factions, which resumed in the last years of Alexei Mikhailovich reign. Unlike the majority of works covering the reign of Peter the Great, this one focuses not on the monarch himself, but on his favourites and informal structures of power. Paul Bushkovitch argues that Russian foreign and domestic policy was determined not by the unilateral decisions of an autocrat, but by the existing constellation of factional power in the Kremlin.
Although the title of the book focuses on Peter the Great, the monarch is not a key subject of the study. In fact, Bushkovitch skillfully demonstrates the process of painful transformation of the old mechanism of government in Russia. Favourites upset the old status-quo which was formed after the Time of Troubles. Each following monarch had several favorites, further undermining the old way of governing the state. Offices were given to clients of the favourites, with wealth and power siphoned away from old elites. Apart from negative consequences, the appearance of powerful favourites led to an infusion of active and talented individuals, which could be promoted and attain power due to personal merits.
This process reached its culmination under Peter the Great. Though in the initial years of Peter’s reign he repeated the fate of Fyodor and excessively depended on Naryshkin faction and favourites of his family, having returned from Europe Peter embarked on an independent and bold domestic and foreign policy. The monarch welcomed initiative and capable individuals regardless of their origin. Franz Lefort and Patrick Gordon were foreigners, Alexander Menshikov was a stable boy and favored drinking companion. “Play” regiments became a forge of cadres for the new state apparatus.
To realize his reforms, Peter dismantled old power structures, refusing to participate in old court ceremonies, stopping to appoint aristocrats to Duma. Instead of the old and inert institutions, Peter preferred more flexible informal structures. This lead to further centralization of the government. Bushkovitch indicates that prior to the Northern war foreign diplomats reported that no more than three or four persons, including the Tsar, were running the state. Peter used his favorites as crisis managers, special supervisors for issues designated as important by the Tsar. While this could produce some result in terms of swift fulfilment of orders, it had its own drawbacks. The most lucid example is heightened factional struggle. Now factions were built not only around boyar clans but around client networks of the favorites. As before this led to internal struggle and instability of the government. The excessive power vested in favorites also led to enormous corruption, as the case of Alexander Menshikov demonstrated. Even Peter himself was shocked as he didn’t expect theft to reach such shocking amounts. The case of tsarevich Alexei might be seen as a final culmination of inter-faction struggle that undermined the stability of the state.