Peter The Great Thesis

Critical Analysis Paper

Through the novel Peter The Great, his Life And World, by Robert K Massie, Peter the Great is heralded for his contribution to Russia by modernizing the country in many respects, creating a reflection of how technological and cultural adeptness within a nation is central to being connected with the modern world. Although it is nonfiction, Peter the Great, His Life and World reads like a fiction book, describing the events in Peter's life with great detail and describing him as a human being with a distinct personality as opposed to just being a historical figure void of humanity. Massie’s description of Peter throughout the book describes a self made man, who from birth was naturally strong, curious, intelligent, and

who was bound by fate and destiny to assert change. From Peter’s war games as a child to his incognito travels through Europe as an adult, Peter the Great was the trailblazer for Russia's role as a major empire throughout the 18th to 21st centuries.
Massie lays out that the role of Peter the great laid out in this book can only be understood through proper contextualization of Russia before him. Before the time of Peter the Great, Russia was a very isolated nation. This was a result not only of its relative geographic isolation, but also large part because of the religious isolation. Part of what kept Europe in constant cultural and political contact was the political marriages between states as well as the shared religion. Russia however was strictly eastern Orthodox, and leader's felt it would be tainting the purity of the religion to marry outside the religion. Massie explains this conflict, “The intermarriage of dynasties for the advancement or protection of state interests was common in most parts of seventeenth century Europe, but in Russia the practice was abhorred and avoided… an orthodox tsar could only choose an Orthodox tsaritsa… This ban helped isolate Russia from the effects of intercourse with foreign nations”(Massie 19). Peter had a very different childhood than most tzars, he was coronated at age 10, and his formal education was brief, learning practical skills and soldiering instead of theoretical studies and foreign language. Most importantly, he was left largely untouched from theology, allowing him to be a more open minded man as an adult. Maussie states that two of the “compulsive themes” in Peter’s personality and life were “his obsession with the sea and his desire to learn from the West.”(Massie 77), this plays into what Massie considers the two greatest accomplishments in Peter's life.
According to Robert Massie, the greatest accomplishments of Peter the Great are his conquests of the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, resulting in the expansion of Russia's navy, and his various efforts that brought Russia closer to Europe, most notably the construction of St.Petersburg and the great embassy.

Much of what he did was due to his own self determination to make Russia great regardless of the odds he faced. He challenged the military superpowers of Sweden and the Ottoman empire with a ragtag Russian army in order to create his idea of a new russian state. In this way, Peter the Great is shown as a great man whos pure willpower is enough to shape borders. While it is also stated that Peter was a harsh man in his imprisonment of his own son as well and that he instated large taxes he made in order to complete his state projects, Massie primarily reflects on Peter the Great as a positive figure for Russian history who revolutionized Russia into a european superpower. Throughout the book Massie claims great things about the energy and power of Peter, in the epilogue claiming “one quality which no one disputes is his phenomenal energy…He was a force of nature and perhaps for this reason no final judgement will ever be delivered. How does one judge the endless roll of the ocean or the mighty power of the whirlwind?” (Massie 880.) With his incredible will to shape the world to his plans allowing his great reforms that modernized his country, Peter the Great, had a massive influence on the roll of Russia in the both the 18th century and the years to

come.
The story of Peter the Great and his new Russia not only had a rippling effect on world history, but much of what he did and why he did it has a reflection on trends of world history seen globally. One global theme reflected by Peter the Great agreed upon by all scholars is how the will of certain individuals can have a massive effect on the world. So few people in history can be said to have single handedly through self determination and will changed the world and the course of history, but it can almost be said for certain that Peter the Great was one of those people. This way of looking at people is much different from more generic scholarship of trends over time. Encyclopedia Britannica claims “iron-willed, he could soberly appraise complex and changeable situations so as to uphold consistently the general interests of Russia and his own particular designs.”(Encyclopedia Britannica).