Peter the Great

by Derek Wilson

There has never been a more remarkable national leader in modern history than Peter the Great (1672–1725). He was a giant in every way. In physical stature, willpower, enthusiasm, energy, libertinism, and refusal to accept old conventions, he stood head and shoulders above his contemporaries. He grew up in an atmosphere of fear, suspicion, and court rivalries that often assumed violent forms. He only gained power, at the age of seventeen, by ousting his half sister, Sophia, and shutting her up in a nunnery. As a product of the system, Peter was, of necessity, ruthless and tyrannical, personally carrying out the execution of defeated rebels and even effecting the death of his own son. But there his identification with Russia’s past ends. For what has earned Peter his place in history is his tearing his country, kicking and screaming, from its traditional, oriental customs and beliefs and integrating it into the life of Europe. He removed the privileges of the medieval aristocracy, brought the church under state control, and rejected the old Russian calendar in favor of the dating system used in Europe. He even ordered his courtiers and officials to shave their traditional beards and adopt Western dress codes. He avidly studied the latest scientific and technological advances and employed them to build a modern army and to create from scratch a Russian navy. These tools he used to devastating effect by destroying the Swedish Empire and making Russia (with its brand-new capital, St. Petersburg) master of the Baltic. European leaders did not know what to make of this eccentric, unsophisticated tsar who loathed pomp and ceremony, served as a junior officer in his own armed forces, and indulged in rowdy, boorish behavior. Yet, by the end of his remarkable reign, this man, who had made a servant girl his own wife and empress, had married members of his family into the royal houses of Europe. Thanks to Peter the Great, Russia was profoundly changed. So was Europe. Derek Wilson tells his extraordinary story with a verve and atmospheric detail that emphasizes vividly the impact this one man made not only in Russia, but in the wider world. Peter the Great created a new Europe in which, for good or ill, Russia was to play a crucial part. His contemporaries were obliged to come to terms with him. And today, it is perhaps even more important for us to understand the historical context and the pivotal role Peter played in the creation of a whole new order.

Genres: History, Biography, Russian History, Russia, Nonfiction, European History

256 pages, Hardcover

First published February 5, 2009

About the author

Derek Wilson has been a writer of historical fiction and non-fiction for 50 years. His much acclaimed prize-winning works have largely centred on 16th and 17th century Europe. He has used various pen names for his fiction, his current Thomas Treviot Tudor crime series being written under the name D.K. Wilson. The first 2 books in this series - The First Horseman and The Traitor's Mark are based on real unsolved Tudor mysteries and have received enthusiastic plaudits. Readers have favourably compared this innovative series with the books of C.J. Sansom and S.J. Parris.
Recent non-fiction triumphs include The Plantagenets, Holbein: Portrait of an Unknown Man, and Charlemagne: a Biography.
Derek Wilson graduated from Cambridge and spent several years travelling and teaching in Africa before becoming a full-time writer and broadcaster in 1971. He has frequently written and appeared on radio and television and is popular as a public speaker having appeared at several literary festivals,British Museum, Hampton Court Palace, The British Library and other prestigious venues.

Reviews

[Olive Fellows (abookolive) · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writing isn't bad, but you absolutely cannot cram the enormous life of Peter into a book that has a little over 200 pages. It's incredibly hard to follow a narrative of his life that is jumping from subject to subject at warp speed.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Lenin was asked what he thought of the French Revolution, his answer was, "It's too early to tell." Even though Peter I, Tsar of Russia, died almost 300 years ago, it is still difficult to determine whether he was a tyrant or a benefactor, or both. His accomplishments are legendary, yet he failed to completely remake a conservative agrarian society in a Western European look-alike, and he never would. At the same time he was establishing an Academy of Sciences, building a new capital city, and creating a standing army and navy, he had his son and heir murdered and, when his wife was suspected of a relationship with a handsome young courtier, he had the courtier's head delivered to her in a bottle.

What Peter the Great tried to accomplish was perhaps not possible in a single lifetime, perhaps not even in a century or a thousand years. Even with absolute power, one cannot radically change a culture for all time. Even when he was doing great things, Peter was not loved by his people. He was grudgingly and sullenly respected, but he was most certainly feared and hated. Russia did not like being dragged into a present-day European modernity at the cost of its soul.

The author of several other biographies, Derek Wilson did a creditable job with this one. It was interesting to think that Peter's great enemy for most of his adult life was Charles XII of Sweden. We do not think of Sweden as ever having been a real military threat, but it was. One has only to glance at Voltaire's biography of Charles XII to show us how much we have collectively forgotten.

[Robin Fox]

Took some getting into, but quite enjoyed it when I did

[Carlos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having been amazed by Wilson’s biography of Charlemagne, I was thrilled to find this book. Wilson manages to convey with full honesty the life of a pivotal figure in Russian history. He starts by giving the reader all the context they would ever need, from the sequelae of Mongol domination in the Russian monarchy to the traumatic childhood experienced by Peter. In this way he starts to build a cohesive picture of the life, aims and character of Peter the Great. While he does not hide Peter’s many faults he does try to put his murderous reputation in the context of the bloodbaths being generated elsewhere in Europe at any monarch’s whim over religious differences. Wilson is also quite effective in conveying the aims towards government reform that dominated Peter’s life after the Great Northern War as well as his tumultuous family life. Yet, what blew me away in this book was Wilson’s decision to follow the historiography of Peter through the subsequent ages. It was simply illuminating to see the same historical figured transfigured into a god or a devil depending whose interest it was meant to fulfill whether Catherine the Great or the Soviet Politburo. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, if only as a model of what a great biography can accomplish.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an excellent presentation of a topic almost as huge as the land from which its subject comes. I'm sure volumes more can and will be written on this amazing, controversial man, but this book strikes what seems to me an ideal balance between broad synopsis and intricate detail.

Most impressive to me, though, was how well Wilson presents the reader with the wide range of opinion and differing analyses of the Great Man's life and actions -- and how the closest one can come to calling a consensus view has (and continues to) mutate(d) over time.

It's a dense read, not nearly as short as its page numbers imply, but I was never, ever bored, and came away from it with what feels like just the right degree of familiarity with the outlines of a truly epic life -- albeit one that will undoubtedly be probed deeper and deeper over centuries to come.

[Matthew Whalen · Rating 3 out of 5]

While Peter may have been (slightly) ahead of his time, and perhaps more so from a Russian perspective, the political machinations of royalty seems fairly standard for that age.

[Tyler Windham · Rating 5 out of 5]

"‘The Swede from here will be frightened;
Here a great city will be wrought
To spite our neighborhood conceited.
From here by Nature we’re destined
To cut a door to Europe wide,
To step with a strong foot by waters.
Here, by the new for them sea-paths,
Ships of all flags will come to us –
And on all seas our great feast opens.’"
-"The Bronze Horsemen" by Aleksandr Pushkin

Peter the Great was one of the most interesting human beings ever to grace the stage of life, in fact Voltaire insisted that he was one of the only historical figures that were really "worthy" of being studied in any detail, and any book about him is well worth the read though Derek Wilson's is a more pithy and casual read. He was a man of both great exuberance and eccentricity to the point of being a hedonistic reveler who spurned the tradition and orthodoxy of his backward kingdom and loved the enlightenment and modernity. He was a military strategist with what one might call on-the-job training, a genius-drunk, a shipwright and an admiral, a carpenter and an emperor. He was a sovereign who builds a palace that marvels Versailles in opulence and grandeur and prefers to live in a manner house modeled after that of a Dutch merchant, a king--a Caesar--who made it his life work to wake his people from their archaic slumber and bring them into the enlightenment as a seafaring nation but saw fit to condemn his own son to death for treason and to even behead hundreds of rebellious musketeers himself and then publicly displaying their severed heads(though the trauma he incurred when they murdered his family when he was but a child certainly did not serve to limit his wrathfulness). He was called Russia's god by the polymath Mikhail Lomonosov (who attempted but never finished an epic poem about the Tsar) and, to an extent, there is some truth obscured by the hyperbole, Peter was a strong, energetic, seemingly omnipresent monarch who looked within his own heart and head at his grand vision for Russia and commanded it to be.

[Jodi · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a kid watching Wild Kingdom each week we rooted for the featured animal. So one week we were hoping the little gazelle would get away from the lion because it was the star and the next week we were hoping the lion would capture the gazelle. That is how I feel when I read biographies. If it is on Elizabeth I, I want her to outwit Catherine de Medici; if it is on Catherine, I want her to find the upper-hand somehow. With this book on Peter the Great, I wasn’t sure who I was supposed to root for—Peter or Charles XII of Sweden.

D. Wilson’s bio on Peter is a bit uneven. Many elements of Peter’s reign are quickly dealt with, yet the Great Northern War and Charles XII received plenty of copy—and the weird thing was, the Bibliography only cited one work about Charles.

The book was well-written and does give a good overview of Peter’s inheritance. Obviously, not of the depth of Robert Massie classic, and with the final 24 pages devoted to Peter’s successors, you get an idea of how concise this 180+ page book is on the subject of Peter.

Did admire Wilson’s thoughts on the frustrations of the machinations of Russian government as Peter issued directives as opposed to laws to get his agenda accomplished. Wilson asserts that these so entangled Russia its attempts at codification proved futile.

The vastness of Russia, its lack of infrastructure and the very nature of its peoples meshed to forestall the ‘modernization’ imposed on it by Peter (and later Catherine the Great). Wilson’s scope was not enough to send this message across although he attempted to do so. He spent so much time on the war with Sweden that perhaps if he had called his book, “Peter the Great and the Great Northern War” or “Peter the Great and Charles XII”, it would have made more sense.

[Chantal E. R. H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

17th book of 2010. After reading about Catherine the Great, I of course had to read about Peter the Great. To be cliche, a man larger than life in every single way. My main problem with this book was that it was too short and glossed over some areas. I definitely recommend it for anyone who is interested in Russian history and who doesn't know much about Peter.

[Ian Lorenz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was decent and brief. Excellent as an introduction or for the casual reader with an interest. A quality overview of an important monarch. If one was looking for an in depth look at Peter the Great I would recommend a book of the same name by Robert Massie.

[Azeem Ali]

I read this book during my trip to Russia, which really brought it to life.

[Kathleen Freeman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is more than just a biography of Peter the Great - there is great insight into other parts of Europe and Russia.