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Reforms of Peter the Great Persons who have no respect for those who gave them life are the most ungrateful creatures. And of all the vices, ingratitude is the vilest. Peter the Great The legislation of Peter the Great differs in many respects from that of the preceding epoch, the epoch of Muscovite Russia. In Muscovite Russia, the state set itself limited goals, going no further than foreign defense, the levying of means to maintain it, and the maintenance of courts for enforcing domestic security and order. Hence, its laws touched upon few aspects of the private individuals life, affecting it only to the extent necessary for the accomplishment of the few and uncomplicated objectives of the state.
It is true that the state of the Muscovite epoch imposed a heavy burden on society: it bound a large part of this society to military duties or taxes; it restricted the freedom of the classes involved in these obligations, forbidding them to change their status and occupations, attaching them to specific communities, and shackling the communities themselves to responsibility for them; and, finally, it attached a certain portion of the taxpayers not only to communities, but also to individual persons. However, the state intervened in the daily life of the persons bound to render services or taxes only to the extent necessary for assuring proper compliance. Indeed, the state did not play a pedagogical role, but it undertook such a role only on a modest scale, and mostly in a negative form. It prohibited and prosecuted violations of the few simple norms on which domestic security and order rested, but it did not assume the role of a mentor dictating positive rules.
The aspects of private life which did not relate to state obligations and did not endanger internal order were of no concern to it. Private life and private relations were allowed to proceed and develop without state direction. Virtually all that the state did for the welfare of its citizens was to provide them with external and domestic security. Protecting them from enemy invasion from without and within, it considered its task fulfilled, leaving it to the citizens themselves to evolve their mutual relations and achieve whatever level of well-being they could on their own.
However, without being a ubiquitous mentor in the affairs of its subjects, and leaving them to their own resources, the state did not leave them without any support. In Muscovite Russia there was one guiding force which rendered superfluous either extensive guidance by the state or detailed elaboration of juridical norms. This force was custom. Custom was the regulator of both the action of the government machine, and the conduct of private individuals. The Muscovite diplomats guided themselves by it in dealing with problems of foreign policy. The Board Duma legislated, the judges governed and passed judgment in their departments, and the governors, in their provinces, with reference to it, always finding in custom a ready answer to the problems arising before them.
So it has been done from the days of our ancestors! This sufficed to eliminate all doubt and uncertainty. If it has not been done so, then frequently no threat of torture or execution could break the obstinate resistance on this ground. By referring to the how and what of custom, the Muscovite knew where and how he was to proceed, and did so without hesitation. But such a principle was useful only within a narrow and enclosed horizon and at a time when social relations were simple and uncomplicated. It was becoming obsolete in the second half of the seventeenth century, when Muscovy entered into complex relations with the rest of Europe, when the ever-growing foreign influences began to broaden the horizons of the people, and when a stream of new Western ideas began to supplant ancient native tradition.
The decline of custom filtered gradually from the top down. While the upper classes increasingly freed themselves of its power, it was still clearly remembered and potent among the common people. Peters reforms, which gave a strong forward drive to so many changes in Russian life, also greatly accelerated the decline of custom. Reforms launched a resolute and implacable struggle against custom. But, of course, it could not limit itself merely to destructive activity. While destroying the foundations which supported the entire order of state and private life, the reformer had to build and determine this order anew, on a different basis.
Moved from their age-old customary foundations, state and private relations now needed some legislative norm as a basis for their further existence. The legislation of the Petrine epoch was many-sided and well-developed. It was many-sided because reform did not remain confined to one specific sphere, but set itself broad objectives of reconstructing both the state order and private life. While 17 th-century legislation could be called institutional only to a very small degree, Peter's legislation was predominantly institutional. It was well-developed because the reformer had to foresee both the detailed effects and the subsequent development of the innovations and phenomena which the reform was calling into existence. Legislation had to define and determine everything that was being introduced by the reform.
This was why it did not confine itself, as earlier legislation had, to a merely negative indication of the limits that were not to be overstepped by relationships which it had not created, but was merely regulating. Peters legislation abounds in positive prescriptions, aimed at establishing relationships which had not existed until then, and at determining their further development to the least detail. It contained as many prohibitions as the earlier legislation, the role of which ended at that point. But the prohibitions were outweighed by positive prescriptions, which were expanded into detailed statutes containing numerous articles. Peter's legislation was regulatory in character. Instead of the former brief items, providing fragmentary rules for individual specific cases and leaving wide gaps to be filled in by reference to custom, it took the form of detailed, exhaustive regulations, foreseeing and seeking to provide for every detail.
With these detailed instructions and regulations, Peters government developed the widest police activity. The ruling circles of that time were imbued with ardent faith in the efficacy of the police powers of the state - a faith that was, perhaps, best expressed in the tenth chapter of the Regulation to the Chief Magistracy, issued in 1721. This chapter states that "the police promote rights and justice, engenders good order and morality, provides security for all against robbers, thieves, ravishers, swindlers, and their like; it banishes disorderly and licentious living, and compels everybody to work at honest occupations and promotes good husbandry, as well as careful and good service; it regularly plans and maintains cities and streets, prevents high prices, and assures the abundance of all that is needed for human life; it guards against diseases, sees to the cleanliness of streets and homes, forbids excesses in domestic expenditures and all manifest transgressions; it cares for the beggars, the poor, the sick, the maimed, and all other indigents, and protects widows, orphans, and foreigners; it brings up the young, according to the Lord's commandments, in chaste purity and in honest studies; in short, above all these, the police is the soul of civil society and of all good order, and the fundamental bulwark of civil security and well-being. " The chapter outlines an entire program of police activity which is remarkable in its scope. It provides for security and public welfare, for sanitary police, for public education and care of the poor, and also for the policing of morals.
Such were the broad tasks undertaken by Peters government, which no longer contented itself with the organization of external defense and the maintenance of elementary justice. This program, moreover, was not a mere theoretical tract, allowed to remain on paper only. A cursory look at the collected edicts of Peters time will reveal on almost every page an inspired desire to implement in practice one or another provision of the Regulation. The state consciously sought to lead its subjects toward prosperity and well-being.
Entire series of edicts opened up avenues toward the achievement of various facets of this well-being, and the golden age was to arrive when all the edict's prescriptions had been fulfilled. IT is well-known that extreme hostility toward Peter and his activities was widely prevalent during his lifetime among the lower classes of the Russian population. Unable to understand his predilection for foreign ways, unable to see him as the son of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, the people believed the legend that Peter was a usurper and regarded him as a Swedish impostor, a German from Stekolny town (i. e. Stockholm) or even as Antichrist himself. Many were indignant at the Tsar for destroying the Christian faith and ordering men to shave their beards, smoke tobacco, and wear German clothing.
However, the majority seemed to have joined the ranks of opposition to Peter, not as a protest in matters of principle, but for material reasons. Peters detractors were less concerned with his German innovations than with the sacrifices he demanded from the people for the sake of the struggle against the Swedes. While they denounced the Tsar for turning his eyes from the East to the West, they complained most bitterly because he had dragged all the squires into service, had ruined the peasants and their households, had taken the husbands as recruits and left the wives and children orphaned... Peter and his closest aides were not as isolated in their society as some historians assume, on the basis of Pososhkov's well-known comment: He pulls uphill with less than a dozen helpers, while millions pull downhill.
How, then, can his work succeed? But if Peter had not been supported by society in his reforming activity, if the majority had not been ready for closer relations with the West, how could his efforts have succeeded? The seeds of reform had already existed in the minds of the best men, writes A. N. Pypin. They were in the spirit of the time even before Peter's influence had made itself felt.
Peter found ready followers and allies in men who grew up outside the sphere of his influence. There is, however, one respect in which Peter and his effects may perhaps be said to constitute a revolution in a sense For two hundred years he has divided Russia, very broadly speaking, into two groups. Already his contemporaries were ranged against each other, some opposing him in the name of "the old and ancient faith, of holy orthodox Rus, " others supporting him in the name of "the new European science and culture, of 'enlightened' Petrine Russia. " On the conclusion of the Great Northern War in 1721 Peter was officially acclaimed as "Father of the Fatherland, All Russian Emperor, Peter the Great. " Thus from the very time of Peter himself there appears what has been called "the ideological schism" -- ideologichesky raskol, the word raskol, schism, harking back to the great religious schism in the 60 's of the seventeenth century -- "the ideological schism" between the conception of Russia as part of Europe and of Muscovy as a world of her own, neither Europe nor Asia. In eighteenth-century literature, for obvious THE greatest of historical leaders died in frightful physical pain, fully acknowledging his human weakness, praying for strength and begging for the succor of religion. We have spoken earlier of how the entire course of previous history had paved the way for Peter's activity; how inevitably his work had been determined by this history; how it had been demanded by the people, which had to wrest itself out of its desperate situation by way of a shattering upheaval, in order that, by straining all of its energies, it might emerge upon a new road, into a new way of life. But this in no way diminishes the stature of the man who lent his powerful hand to the great people engaged in this mighty effort, who, by the strength of his extraordinary will, marshaled all its forces and gave direction to its movement.
The history of no other nation presents a comparable example of such a great and many-faceted transformation, attended by such far-reaching consequences, both for the internal life of the nation, and for its place in the general life of all nations, in world history. Times of upheaval are difficult times for all peoples, and this was also true of the era of reform. Complaints of grave hardships were heard from all sides, and for good reason. The Russians had no respite from conscriptions: into difficult and continuous military service in the infantry and the newly-formed navy; for newly-organized heavy labor duty in distant and unattractive regions; into schools and for study assignments abroad.
The army, the navy, the works projects, schools and hospitals, the maintenance of diplomats and diplomatic bribes required money, and in a poor state the government had no money. Heavy taxes in money and kind were imposed on everyone. On occasion, they were deducted from earnings. The well-to-do were ruined by the construction of houses in Petersburg. There were, furthermore, various new offices and new courts. The people did not know where to turn with their problems.
The officials in these new offices and courts did not know how to deal with the new affairs in their charge. They sent papers from one institution to another; there were interminable delays and red tape. And yet, despite all reforms the old rude customs persisted under the new French coats and wigs: the same disrespect for human dignity within oneself and others; the same drunken violence, in which every celebration had to end. Women were brought into the society of men, but they were not given the due respect for their sex and duties.
Even pregnant women were compelled to drink to excess. However, this was only one side of the coin. There was also another that the Russian people were going through a difficult school. The cruel teacher did not spare punishment for idlers and violators of laws. It was not solely a matter of threats and punishments, however.
The people were really learning and this learning was not confined to arithmetic and geometry, and was taking place not only in foreign and domestic schools. They were learning civic obligations and civic activities. With each important regulation he issued, with each major reform he introduced, the lawmaker explained why he was doing it, and why the new was better than the old. The Russians were taught in this manner for the first time in their history. Things that seem simple and self-evident to us today, were learned by our forebears for the first time from Peters manifestoes and edicts. For the first time, the minds of the Russians were awakened and their attention drawn to vital questions of state and social organization.
Whether welcomed or deplored, the Tsars words and actions aroused thought - they constantly stimulated the Russians. The perturbations of a period of reform, the constant strains and stresses, which could have caused the collapse of a senile society, of a people incapable of growth, merely served to develop the powers of our young and strong people, which had hibernated too long and needed a violent jolt to awaken it. Bibliography: V. O.
Kliuchevskii, Kurs russo istoriia (Moscow 1956 - 1958 - the English translation, New York, London) D. S. von Mohrenschildt, Russia in the Intellectual Life of 18 th-Century France (New York, 1936) N. P. Pavlov-Sil " vanskii, Property Reform v Zapiskakh Sovremennikov Petra Veliko go (Reform Projects in the Memoranda of the Contemporaries of Peter the Great), (St. Petersburg, 1897), pp. 1, 2 - 5.
Translated by Mirra Ginsburg. A. N. Pypin, Istoriia russo etnografii (History of Russian Ethnics) (St. Petersburg, 18 go; reprint: Leipzig, 1971), v. 1, p. 188; S. A.
S. M. Soloviev, Istoriia Russia s Drevneishikh Vremen [ History of Russia since Earliest Times], St. Petersburg (in. Obshchestvennaia Pol " za) n. d.
vol. XVIII, ch. 3, col. 848 - 849, 851 - 852, 854858. Translated by Mirra Ginsburg.
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Research essay sample on Reforms Of Peter The Great
