IX

Ranks and Regulations: 1722–23

Laws and decrees should be written clearly so that they cannot be reinterpreted. There is little justice in people but much perfidy. (Peter, from Nartov's Anecdotes)

The Table of Ranks

In the first weeks of January 1722 Peter worked on and off in his laboratoriia, as he called it, making and testing fireworks; on 21 January he went out visiting with the Drunken Assembly; and on the 24th he issued one of the most famous and influential edicts of his reign, the Table of Ranks – Tabel' o rangakh in the Germanised language which Peter favoured for naming his institutions. Even though some of the old Muscovite ranks were still in use – boyar, okol'nichii, stol'nik and so on – they were being superseded by newer titles which clearly differentiated military, civil and court offices and were based on foreign (often Swedish) originals. Peter now imposed a rational framework on a mainly pre-existing jumble of terms.

The Table divided the service elite into three columns – military, civil and court – its very layout reflecting Peter's passion for orderly, regulated legislation. The military column was further subdivided into four: infantry, guards, artillery and navy. The vertical columns were then divided horizontally into fourteen numbered grades (klassy), each containing a variable number of offices (chiny), in order to correlate status and identify seniority across the different branches of the services. There were marked variations of complexity. The guards column, set two grades higher than the rest, for example, had just eight classes, each containing only one office. The most crowded column was the civil service, with sometimes a dozen or more chiny packed into one klass in order to accommodate Peter's newly created central and provincial officials. Court grade 14 also contained numerous offices, including court librarian, head chef and barber. The chart was accompanied by nineteen explanatory points.

The decree was several years in the making. Peter's helpers, led by Andrei Osterman, consulted such foreign sources as Frederick I of Prussia's regulations and the statutes of Christian V of Denmark and Charles XI of Sweden. Point 8 in the explanatory section, for example – the crucial rule that only service rank gives a person eminence in society, regardless of his origins – is found in the regulations of Sweden, Denmark and Prussia. English, French and Spanish ranking systems were also examined, but were regarded as less appropriate for Russian conditions. Peter edited the drafts, leaving only four clauses untouched, crossing out some offices, adding or re-grading others. The revised project was then presented to the Senate and Colleges for discussion.

Misconceptions persist about this most enduring of Peter's reforms, one of the most widespread being that it demonstrated a firm and consistent commitment to meritocracy to the detriment of lineage. Peter's own example is often quoted. ‘By taking upon himself both a Post in his Navy, and in his Army, wherein he acted and took the gradual Steps of Preferment, like another Man,’ wrote John Perry, ‘[Peter wished] to make his Lords see that he expects they shall not think themselves nor their Sons too good to serve their Countrey, and take their Steps gradually to Preferment.’¹ Peter even had his promotions confirmed by the mock sovereign, Prince-Caesar, in order to underline that he had earned his advancement. Certainly the Table was strict about qualifications for actual jobs. No office was supposed to be allocated to any candidate who was unqualified for the duties involved, which in practice meant serving for the period deemed necessary to gain experience and certificates. Neither grade nor office could be inherited or bought (which distinguished the Russian system from many others, for example, the French) and there were strict penalties for demanding deference or a position higher than one's position in the Table, although certain occasions – meetings of friends and informal assemblies – were declared ‘rank-free’.

But birth and marriage continued to confer privilege, as they did in other countries. The first explanatory point confirmed the precedence of princes of the blood and royal sons-in-law (one of which Peter was about to acquire). Point 8 blended two principles: it conceded ‘free access’ to the court to sons of princes, counts, barons and the aristocracy ‘before others of lowly office’, but stressed that the emperor expected such people ‘to distinguish themselves from others in all cases according to their merit’; they would not be awarded any rank until they had served the tsar and Fatherland. Newcomers from non-noble families who reached grade 8 in the civil service or grade 14 (the lowest) in the military officer lists became hereditary noblemen. But certain civil offices were designated as temporary, conferring rank on individuals only as long as they held them. All new nobles had the right to acquire coats of arms, while old coats of arms and patents of nobility were to be supervised by the chief herald.

The Table of Ranks was intended to encourage the service élite to perform more efficiently, while the concept of nobles as natural leaders of society was endorsed by the fact that high-flying commoners who reached the required grades were granted noble status, including its heritable aspects. Eminent people, whatever their origins, were expected to have clothing (Western, naturally), carriages and livery appropriate to their office and calling. The Holstein secretary Bassewitz grasped the point: ‘What [Peter] had in mind was not the abasement of the noble estate. On the contrary, it all tended towards instilling in the nobility a desire to distinguish themselves from common folk by merit as well as by birth.’² As anyone who has read nineteenth-century Russian authors such as Gogol, Dostoevsky or Chekhov will know, the Table of Ranks left its mark upon Russian society for the rest of the imperial era.

The succession to the throne

Just two weeks after the Table of Ranks appeared, Peter issued a manifesto on the succession to the throne (5 February 1722), the opening clause of which referred to the ‘Absalom-like wickedness’ of the late Tsarevich Alexis. It concluded:

We deem it good to issue this edict in order that it will always be subject to the will of the ruling monarch to appoint whom he wishes to the succession or to remove the one he has appointed in the case of unseemly behaviour, so that his children and descendants should not fall into such wicked ways as those described above, having this constraint upon them.

In the manifesto accidents of birth and custom are firmly subordinated to reason and the common good. Most telling is the reference to Peter's decree of 1714 ‘that immoveable property might be left to one son, leaving to the will of the parent which son he wishes to inherit, with regard to worthiness, even if it is the younger in preference to the elder. … How much more concern we need to show for the integrity of our whole realm, which with God's help is now more widespread than all can see.’³

Even in this very personally motivated piece of legislation Peter did not suggest that the monarch ought on principle to look beyond the imperial family and raise a commoner to the throne, any more than the Table of Ranks envisaged throwing open army commissions and top government posts to peasants. Still less is there any idea of trusting the choice of monarch to popular acclaim or corporate interests. In other words, the normal expectation was that those born in the palace should occupy the throne and dispose of it by their own will. The ideas behind the manifesto were more fully explained in the book The Justice of the Monarch's Right to Choose the Heir to the Throne, first published in August 1722 and generally attributed to Feofan Prokopovich. This work identifies the divine basis of monarchical power with reference to scripture, Byzantine and classical authors, but also uses a Western frame of reference to natural law, drawing on modern writers such as Grotius and Pufendorf. The author argues that ‘the will of all the people’ delegates power to rulers for the sake of the common good, constituting a ‘contract’ between people and ruler. Even if a monarch is (or becomes) evil, people cannot take back the power they have granted; a monarch may choose to adhere to man-made law but is not obliged to do so, since rulers are subject directly to God, not to intermediaries such as the church. The thrust of the argument was to show that there was no rational or divine justification for preferring primogeniture, a mere custom which could be set aside for a higher purpose, in this case to ensure the worthiness of the successor.

Peter's only male heir under the old dispensation was the late Alexis's six-year-old son Peter. But Alexis's trial poisoned Peter against his grandson as an heir, if not as a person, for he feared young Peter could provide a rallying point for opponents of reform. Peter Alekseevich was not ill-treated, but he was not given any special prominence. For example, his name days and birthdays were not included in the official court calendar. In December 1721 Peter's daughters received the title tsesarevny, but his grandson continued to be known simply as grand duke (velikii kniaz'), not tsesarevich, a term which only later came to refer to the male heir. In a terse letter to young Peter's German tutor on 17 May 1722 Peter wrote that ‘the time has come to teach our grandson’.⁴ Otherwise, he paid him little attention, reserving his affection for his daughters. As for designating an heir, as the manifesto required, Peter seemed to be in no hurry. People could only speculate on where his choice would fall.

The publication of the succession manifesto must have stirred up unhappy memories, but apparently did not prevent Peter from enjoying himself. The carnival parade in Moscow on 31 January 1722 (a continuation of the Nystad celebrations) took the form of floats in the shape of ships mounted on sledges. Peter's was a 36-gunner in full sail modelled on the Peacemaker, firing small cannons and manned by children dressed as cabin boys, who had to lower the sails for the ship to pass under the triumphal gates, and Catherine's was a gilded gondola. The Prince-Pope was drawn along on a throne with Bacchus at his feet on a barrel, followed by his ‘cardinals’ mounted on bulls or in sledges drawn by pigs, bears and dogs. There followed white-bearded Neptune in a giant shell and the mock abbess with her ‘nuns’. Menshikov's ship contained ‘abbots’ and was followed by Prince-Caesar in a boat full of stuffed bears. There were more parades and parties on the following four days, at which Catherine appeared sometimes as a ‘simple Dutchwoman’, at others as an Amazon, a popular choice of costume at several carnivals. (An Amazon costume, apparently the only Russian masquerade outfit to survive from this period, can be seen in the Kremlin Armoury.) On the last day of the carnival Moscow ladies who had criticised St Petersburg ladies for drinking too much were forced to sit at a special table and drink as much as they were given.

More legislation

On 7 February Peter set off for Olonets on a route which took him through Pereiaslavl, Iaroslavl’, Vologda, St Cyril's monastery and Beloozero. His destination once again was the Martsial'nye mineral springs. On 18 February he began to drink the waters and also attended the consecration of the church of SS Peter and Paul which he had built. As always, he brought a travelling lathe with him and various board games to pass the time. His health, it seems, was not strong, but back in Moscow at the beginning of April Peter launched into a veritable frenzy of legislation. On 5 April he issued the Admiralty Regulation and a supplement to the Naval Statute. On 6 April, he published an edict on the post of reketmeister, an office modelled on the maître de requêtes at the French court, to whom appeals could be addressed by individuals complaining about delays, red tape and abuses in hearings of cases in colleges and other bodies. Only the reketmeister, not the emperor (who ‘never got any peace'), was to receive petitions. If for some reasons he would not or could not accept a petition, it was to be referred to the Senate. ‘The sovereign is concerned for his subjects to ensure that each case will always receive fair and swift judgement,’ Peter wrote, ‘and that cases are resolved as His Majesty's edicts command, justly and in the stipulated time and that no one should be oppressed by unfair judges and red tape.’⁵

Peter constantly agonised over how to have effective government under autocracy without the need for the autocrat to intervene. To his way of thinking, orderliness (reguliarnost') ought to result if you had good statutes, from short edicts to multi-claused regulations. Nothing was too trivial to be regulated and tidied up: in April 1722 he even launched a campaign against uneven tombstones in churchyards. Any slabs not flush with the ground were to be taken up and relaid, ‘since stones which are untidily and improperly laid inflict ugliness on holy churches and get in people's way’. Ever thrifty, Peter ordered that pieces of stone chipped off during repairs should be used for church building.⁶ In 1724 the Synod received the following order: ‘Throughout the Russian state wax candles are to be made in such a fashion that every candle has a thickness at its base twice that of its top, and the upper thickness is half that of the lower. The length should be five times the thickness at the base.’⁷ Did anyone take any notice of orders like these? The impulse behind the edict on candles with thick bases was presumably fire prevention, but Peter seems to have regarded edicts as an end in themselves, rather like the lists which he constantly drew up. Generally we know only that his orders were not being carried out when he (or his successors) had them reissued. So, for example, instructions were constantly repeated on building ‘new-style’ river and coastal boats with different-shaped hulls from the old ones (which Russian boat builders continued to favour) and on making fabric in wider sizes, which failed to take into account the peasant weavers' inability to buy wider looms or even to accommodate them in their homes.

Peter was especially proud of his many lengthy statutes. In a note written by hand in November 1722 for inclusion in the ongoing history of the Northern War he recalled that the Military Statute was started in St Petersburg in 1715 and finished in Danzig and the Naval Statute was started in 1720 and finished in 1722, and ‘done all by hard work, not just by orders [to someone else] but by the sovereign's own labour, not only in the morning but in the evening, twice daily it was done at various times’.⁸ Therein lies one of Peter's problems: the statutes which were supposed to bring about order, enterprise and initiative originated not in some representative or corporate body but from one man, albeit with some assistance from information gatherers. This ‘do-it-yourself’ philosophy sprang from a lack of faith in other people getting things done and, increasingly towards the end of his life, a fear of treachery and intrigue. Law must be unambiguous and there must be plenty of it, for wickedness was all-pervasive. As Peter stated in a famous edict to the Senate, issued on 17 April 1722:

Nothing is so vital to the administration of the state as the firm keeping of civil laws, for laws are written in vain if they are not adhered to or if they are played with like cards, one suit being picked up after another, something which was more common in this country than anywhere in the world and sometimes still happens when some people do their utmost to undermine the fortress of the law.⁹

This decree also contained strict warnings against individual interpretation of the laws and a firm reiteration that the tsar was the chief legislator and everything must have his approbation. Peter wanted it to be displayed on boards on a table ‘like a mirror, before the eyes of judges in all places, starting with the Senate right down to the most minor courts’. In February 1723 Peter added other notices to these display boards, one setting out penalties for ‘swearing, shouting and talking’ and a warning that ‘he is cursed who does God's work carelessly’, the other to remind people of ‘state laws and their importance, as the first and chief matter’.¹⁰ An example of such a display case – known as a zertsalo (mirror) – survives in the commandant's house of the Peter-Paul fortress, a three-faceted stand on legs, pyramidal in shape, with glass panels behind which the royal decrees could be displayed, topped with an ornate crown and double eagle motifs.

State intervention in the economy was a particularly contentious issue. Peter made genuine efforts to promote the Russian entrepreneurial class and believed in the superior efficiency of free labour, but ‘creating’ a capitalist class was hampered by limited social mobility and the shortage of free workers. In 1715, for example, he tried to farm out cloth manufacture to individuals to end dependence on foreign sources, and warned ‘if they won't do it willingly, then make them do it by force’.¹¹ This led to merchants being transferred by decree to Moscow. State peasants were routinely ‘ascribed’ to factories. Peter also had to juggle with the conflicting demands of serf owners and factory owners. A decree of 18 January 1721 had given factories the right to buy serfs, but comparatively few people took advantage of it, perhaps because the purchase of ‘souls’ required capital outlay for unskilled workers.¹² A decree of March 1722 banned the removal of ‘fugitive’ workers from industries in order not to impede production.¹³ Peter promoted industry with subsidies and concessions (interest-free loans, exemptions from taxes and service requirements, guaranteed purchases by the state) and imported industrial technology and personnel. On to these old principles he grafted modern features, such as centralised fiscal departments and the Colleges of Commerce and Mines and Manufacture to promote national wealth, plus ‘mercantilist’ policies, such as standardising weights and measures, improving communications and introducing a protectionist tariff (1724) and a reformed decimal currency.

Peter's economy operated in a traditional framework, however: it was the war which created its momentum, autocracy and serfdom which allowed Peter to cope with military demands. ‘This absolute master uses his subjects at his will, and their wealth in what share he pleases,’ as Johannes Korb expressed it.¹⁴ A subsistence economy generated just enough surplus for the state to take its share (which included debasing the currency, as required) without utterly ruining the population, who were also subjected to ‘fleecing’ by officials and local strong men lining their own pockets. Russians had little capital, no systems of insurance or quality control. The credits for foreign trade and ancillary services (insurance, shipping, brokerage) were supplied by foreigners. It is not surprising that merchants were unwilling to take risks.

The procurator-general

One of the most important edicts issued in April 1722 was a document on the duties of the procurator-general (general-prokurator), which was published simultaneously with a new formulation of the duties of the Senate. There are six drafts of the document on the procurator's duties, all with Peter's corrections. Ever since he created the Senate in 1711, Peter had felt the need to keep an eye on it, appointing first an inspector-general then a guards officer to ensure that senators ‘on pain of death’ got on with their work and refrained from quarrels and bad behaviour. The new procurator-general's job was spelled out in the usual numbered points. He was to see that the Senate ‘does its duty and acts in all matters which are subject to the Senate's scrutiny and resolution truthfully, diligently and correctly, without wasting time and in accordance with the regulations and edicts’ and that ‘business is completed not only on paper but also put into action according to instructions. …’ If he discovered negligence or dishonesty, he must immediately bring the matter to the Senate's attention. He was to act as the ‘tsar's eye’.¹⁵ In 1724 the procurator-general's duties were extended to the Colleges, where he was expected to keep an eye on the office personnel, for, as Peter admitted, ‘I am sure that behind our back there are many abuses.’¹⁶ In the spring of 1722 the imminence of a new military campaign added urgency to the task of ‘guarding the guardians’. As Peter announced to the Senate on the eve of his departure for war with Persia: ‘Here is my eye, with which I shall see everything. He knows my intentions and wishes; what he deems necessary, that do; and even if you feel that he is acting against my interests and those of the state, even so, do what he says, inform me and await my orders.’¹⁷

The role of the tsar's ‘eye’ was an unenviable one, but Peter found an able candidate for the post in Pavel Ivanovich Iaguzhinsky (1683–1736). The young Iaguzhinsky (his father, from Lithuania, was the organist in the Lutheran church in Moscow) had served as an orderly in the Preobrazhensky guards, where he became close to the tsar. He won military honours at the battle of Pruth in 1711, when he was promoted to general adjutant. In 1716–17 he accompanied Peter to the Netherlands and France, travelling in the same carriage, and in 1719–21 he served on a series of diplomatic missions. Foreigners described him as talented and intelligent, an outsider who owed his rise to his relationship with the tsar.

Despite Peter's confidence in him and his experience (in 1718 he had already acted as the tsar's ‘eye’ by supervising the newly established Colleges), Iaguzhinsky doubted his ability to keep order amidst the passions of, as he put it, a Senate ‘riven with discord’. Just a few days after Peter's departure for the war a quarrel flared up between Menshikov and Peter Shafirov, who complained about insulting references to him and his brother as people of ‘Yiddish’ origin whose father was a ‘slave’. Iaguzhinsky's view was that ‘when the sovereign's favour is conferred upon a person his former baseness and low birth are thereby concealed’.¹⁸ In a letter to the tsar he proposed that the Senate ought on principle to be composed of men of ‘middling rank’ so that there should be fewer quarrels between strong personages. Iaguzhinsky apparently combined efficiency and honesty with hard drinking, as he ‘despaired of achieving anything in the sea of perfidious and cunning men who will not forsake their own particular interests for the sake of the sovereign's’.¹⁹ This did not stop him profiting from Shafirov's subsequent banishment, when he received an island which had previously belonged to the deposed vice-chancellor and some of his servants. Like all such newcomers, Iaguzhinsky had to feather his own nest as best he could and look to the future by making alliances at court.

Procurators, inquisitors and police chiefs

The package of legislation issued in 1722 implemented Peter's conception of the interlocking parts of the state apparatus, in which institutions were supervised by a hierarchy of individuals, with safety valves installed at various levels to allow the bypassing of the system by ‘whistle blowers’ unmasking wrong-doing from below and all-seeing ‘eyes’ peering in from above. The Admiralty Regulation, for example, contained a clause on the duties of the Admiralty procurator, who was to ensure that board members did their duty, wasted no time and observed the regulations. This post was to be ‘the eye of the procurator-general in this college’.²⁰ The congruity of church and state organisations was further emphasised by the creation in May–June 1722 of the post of over-procurator of the Holy Synod: ‘a good [lay]man who is bold and should be familiar with the administration of Synod affairs’. He, too, was the sovereign's eye, the assistant of the procurator-general and his deputy. A list of his duties issued in June 1722 mimicked the document on the procurator-general: the new official was to ‘sit in the Synod and make quite sure that the Synod does its duty and acts in all matters which are subject to the Synod's scrutiny and resolution truthfully, diligently and correctly, without wasting time and in accordance with the regulations and edicts’. ²¹ The church already had additional spying mechanisms. In 1721 ‘inquisitors’, an arch-inquisitor in Moscow and provincial ones in all bishoprics, were appointed to supervise churchmen, bishops in particular. The main task of the arch-inquisitor and his underlings was to initiate proceedings against insubordinate priests. Bishops, who in earlier times had ruled their dioceses more or less unchecked, became ‘agents of the Synod’. Everybody, it seemed, was watching or being watched by someone else.

The instructions issued to the newly created Moscow chief of police in June 1722 provide a glimpse of attempts at extending urban regulation beyond St Petersburg. The chief ‘s duties included supervision of building regulations and fire prevention (detailed rules were included for the use of stoves and the operation of bathhouses) and maintenance of pavements and bridges. For crime prevention, street barriers and night watchmen were introduced, as in St Petersburg. Guarding public morals involved closing down gambling dens and rounding up and finding useful work for loose women, drunks, vagrants and beggars. The police chief was also responsible for registering all strangers in town. He was to supervise public health, garbage collection and handling of food in markets, prevent river pollution and report outbreaks of infectious diseases. Paper and rags were to be recycled. ‘Shooting for entertainment’ on the streets was outlawed, as was horse racing, a favourite pastime with cab drivers.²² But the chain of command was unclear. In October the Moscow police chief was reprimanded for issuing some instructions on building regulations without seeking the Senate's permission. Yet again the tension between individual enterprise, strict regulations and existing pecking orders hampered efforts to get things done.

The section of the population which most easily evaded the tsar's eyes – his own and his surrogates' – was the peasantry, who by and large came under official scrutiny as individuals only if they went to towns. An edict of 6 April 1722 required peasants visiting towns on business to get permission from their landlords or village elders in the form of ‘maintenance papers’, a reiteration of a decree of October 1719 which declared it illegal for peasants to travel from town to town or village without a pass. Such measures were variations on much earlier attempts to minimise peasant flight in order to reduce the evasion of taxation and army service. Only occasionally did Peter try to extend his sense of urban orderliness to the village, and with poor results. In July 1722, for example, an edict was issued

on [re]building burnt-out villages and hamlets in accordance with plans, and plans were sent out with the edicts, but now [in 1724] His Imperial Majesty has been made aware that in the gubernii and provinces, in villages and hamlets, peasants' houses on burnt-out sites are being rebuilt not in accordance with this specification but after the previous practice, without leaving any cottage gardens and hemp-fields between the houses. Therefore His Imperial Majesty has decreed that confirmatory edicts be sent out to all the gubernii and provinces stating that from now on peasants in the villages and hamlets must without fail build according to the specification. … Wherever a village or hamlet has burnt down or people want to resettle a site then the landlords themselves, or, in the absence of landlords, their bailiffs and elders, should immediately mark out the site according to the published edict and drawings and compel the peasants to build in accordance with the edict and ban absolutely the building of houses in the previous manner.²³

There is no evidence that this decree had any impact on the layout of villages. By and large peasant life remained unregulated from above; in sharp contrast, a vast number of rules and regulations applied to state servitors, both in their office and in their private life, and increasingly to town dwellers. The bulk of state legislation which touched peasants was to do with counting them, taxing them, recruiting them into the army and trying to get them back if they ran away. Other matters were dealt with locally, usually by the peasants themselves. As long as they remained in their villages, there was no attempt to meddle in their dress, customs and lifestyle, or in agricultural practices.

The Persian campaign

Russia, established on the Caspian Sea since taking Astrakhan in 1556, had a long-standing interest in the region and what lay beyond, especially the lucrative silk routes. The belief persisted in the existence of a river route to India from the Caspian but Peter's government also had a realistic grasp of the troubles in Central Asia which made Russian influence over or domination of part of the region possible. In May 1714 Peter had dispatched a mission headed by Prince Aleksandr Bekovich-Cherkassky to Khiva by way of the eastern Caspian with instructions to investigate rumours of gold finds on the Amu-Dar'ia river and to survey and chart the east coast of the Caspian. In 1716 Cherkassky was sent back to the mouth of the Amu-Dar'ia with instructions to win the confidence of the ruler of Khiva, but on entering the city, most of the Russians were slaughtered. Cherkassky's head was sent as a gift to the emir of Bukhara and his body stuffed and put on display.

In 1721 the overthrow of the shah of Persia in an Afghan revolt and protests by Russian merchants about violations suffered in Daghestan, a protectorate of the shah, provided a pretext to return to the region. Peter's objectives were the Persian provinces on the western and southern shore of the Caspian, including the trading ports of Derbent and Baku. The alleged persecution of Transcaucasian Christians, Armenians and Georgians living under Muslim rule also provided a pretext for limiting Turkish expansion in the region. In July 1722 Peter assured Prince Vakhtang of Georgia: ‘We hope with the help of God by the time that this messenger reaches you already to be on the Persian shores, therefore we hope that this news will be pleasing to you and that you will join us with your troops for the Christian cause in fervent fulfilment of your promise.’²⁴ In the end, however, Peter abandoned the plan to push southwards to the Georgian city of Tiflis when support failed to materialise.

Peter took almost boyish delight in this campaign, which gave him new opportunities for messing about in boats, both on the journey south along the Volga to Astrakhan and on the voyage to the ‘Persian shores’, when he kept navigation logs and issued orders on boat building and naval protocol. Catherine went with him, accompanied by her ‘jester’ Princess Anastasia Golitsyna. Peter's dogs also went along, including Prince, who got lost and was returned by a man who was rewarded with a rouble and 50 kopecks. An orderly was in charge of feeding the dogs and buying equipment such as beds and sheepskin coats to keep them warm on the road from Tsaritsyn to Moscow on the return journey.²⁵

The tsar's party left Moscow in mid-May, reaching Nizhny Novgorod on the 26th. On inspecting the docks and discovering that ships were being built ‘in the old manner’ (a constant complaint), he issued reprimands. The royal party dined with members of the Stroganov merchant family, who virtually ruled the town, and visited their church. On 3 June Peter arrived in Kazan’, ‘where on his majesty's arrival they fired from cannon all over the town and he attended mass and dined with the metropolitan [Tikhon], whence to the convent [of Our Lady of Kazan], where there is a miracle-working icon of Our Lady of Kazan, then they visited the vice-governor [N. A.] Kudriavtsov’. On subsequent days Peter inspected leatherworks and textile mills, then departed on 6 June for Astrakhan, which they reached on the 19th.

At this stage the campaign was not so dangerous or so arduous as to halt the usual June celebrations. On 25 June the fortieth anniversary of Peter's coronation was marked with gun salutes from ships and on Poltava day, 27 June, Peter appeared on parade with two companies of the Preobrazhensky guards who put on a display of volley fire. He sent a stream of orders home, on such diverse matters as fountains for his new residence in Reval, house building in St Petersburg, history writing, the publication of a book on Islam and additions to his cabinet of curiosities.

As usual, Prince-Caesar was left in charge at home, although Peter instructed him to deal only with urgent business. On 18 July the fleet set sail from Astrakhan and the next day Peter wrote to Romodanovsky:

Sire. I inform Your Majesty that this day we and gospodin general-admiral [Apraksin] left Astrakhan on your royal service with all the fleet and hope with God's help soon to reach the shores of Persia. Your Majesty's most humble servant, Peter.²⁶

Another of Peter's ‘mock’ personnel, Chief Surveyor ‘Baas’ Ivan Golovin, was on board. An anecdote tells how Peter had a laugh at his expense by ordering his retinue to bathe in the Caspian Sea, which involved diving from a board. When the terrified Golovin hesitated, Peter forced him under with the little ditty: ‘Down goes Baas, to drink Caspian kvas.’²⁷ (The water of the Caspian was particularly bitter-tasting from oil deposits.) Golovin, to whom Peter deferred when he was playing his shipwright's role, was often the butt of Peter's jokes. In November 1721 at the wedding of Golovin's daughter to Prince Trubetskoy, the tsar went up to Golovin, who was greedily tucking into a huge bowl of something in aspic, and stuffed more of the jelly down his throat, forcing his mouth open to get it in. ‘Baas’ apparently suffered such indignities uncomplainingly.

Peter withdrew to Astrakhan that autumn, leaving others to continue the campaign into the following year, having issued an order to Governor Volynsky to buy 2,000 camels and 500 pairs of oxen, at a calculation of 15 roubles per camel and 10 roubles per pair of oxen.²⁸ Peter wrote that compared with the ‘difficult and bloody’ Swedish war the present one was ‘easy and profitable’.²⁹ In fact, the campaign proved costly in men, many of whom fell sick, and in ships and supplies, and only brought temporary gains.

Carnivals and a funeral

In December 1722 the Synod erected triumphal gates in Moscow to celebrate the capture of Derbent on the Caspian, which had fallen to the Russians on 25 September. Peter was greeted by a choir from the Latin school dressed in hired wigs and crowned with greenery. He and Catherine saw in the New Year in the old capital. The journal for 6 January (Epiphany) records that

they went carol singing in the palace where Tsarevna Natalia Alekseevna of blessed memory once lived, then all the revellers awaited his majesty and then revelled in the town called Presburg [Preobrazhenskoe], which is on the River Iauza opposite that same palace, and in the evening they went revelling in his Majesty's house then at night in the Foreign Quarter in the house of the director of the Moscow Cloth factory Ivan Tames. Today His Majesty did not attend [the ceremony of blessing] on the Jordan and the troops were not lined up as the ice was very weak and in some places had not frozen over.³⁰

The winter continued mild. For carnival 1723 they used the ship-sledges from the previous year, sixty-four of them, even though the snow had melted. The procession visited various sites, including the triumphal arches set up on Red Square for the peace celebration the previous December. The master of ceremonies was James Bruce. The third day of the carnival, 19 February, coincided with Peter and Catherine's wedding anniversary and on the final day there was a festive burning of ‘the old house’ at Preobrazhenskoe, which produced a ‘splendid effect’. Peter made a speech: ‘Together with this house, in which I worked out my first plans for war against Sweden, may there disappear any idea which might again make me take up arms against that state and may it be the most true ally of my empire.’³¹ The empress and her ladies rode in a barge, all dressed as Amazons. There was also amusement to be had from the spoils of the Persian war. In 1722 four young Kalmyks were sent from Astrakhan to Moscow and fitted out in ‘simple garb’. They were treated (and neglected) rather like household pets, abandoned in Preobrazhenskoe when the royal party departed for Moscow. Catherine arranged for them to be fed and given beer and kvas when she heard that ‘they are dying of hunger and keep drinking water and are now all lying down’. A couple of days later a servant was warned to travel carefully with the Kalmyks and dogs.³²

On 25 February Peter left Moscow for St Petersburg where he arrived on 5 March. Four days later Tsarevna Maria Alekseevna, Peter's last remaining halfsibling, died at the age of sixty-three. It was remarkable that she survived so long, given her association first with Sophia, then with Tsarevich Alexis. Somehow she, the only one of Tsar Alexis's daughters to travel abroad, managed to adapt to the new life while retaining traditional manners, as suggested by the scene at her deathbed, which was surrounded by priests, ‘who in accordance with the ancient method of comforting the souls of the dying brought her food and drink and enquired in piteous tones whether she had a sufficiency of everything required for the maintenance of life in this world’.³³ Peter was apparently angered by this ‘superstitious’ display, but he observed the proper obsequies. As the journal notes, at the liturgy in the Trinity Cathedral on 10 March His Majesty and all dignitaries were dressed in black. On 12 March the tsarevna's coffin, drawn by a team of horses on a black-draped sleigh and with a canopy over it, was transported from her home on the Fontanka across the Neva, which was lined with men of the Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky guards holding candles, to the service in the Trinity Cathedral, thence to the unfinished Peter-Paul Cathedral.

The grandfather of the navy

On 22 March the ice melted near the fortress, three cannon were fired and a flag was raised to signal that the tsar had gone out on the river for the first time that season. Thereafter he spent as much time on board ship as possible, this year with the added excitement of the arrival of his first boat, ‘grandfather of the Russian navy’, from Moscow, an event which was celebrated with a special regatta for his birthday on 30 May. As Prokopovich had said in a sermon in praise of the Russian fleet, delivered in 1720, the boat was the seed which sprouted the tree of the fleet. ‘From that seed there grew this great, marvellous, winged, weapon-bearing tree. O little boat, worthy of being clad in gold. Some seek the planks of Noah's ark on Mount Ararat; my advice would be to keep this boat and preserve it as an unforgettable memorial.’³⁴ Peter personally made elaborate arrangements for the boat to be brought from Moscow, where it had been on display in front of the Dormition Cathedral in the Kremlin. To receive it, as if to underline the theme first elaborated in the Naval Statute, a plinth was carved with the inscription THE AMUSEMENT OF THE CHILD BROUGHT THE TRIUMPH OF THE MAN. There were plans also to honour another of Peter's early boats, the yacht in which he made his first sea voyage in 1693. In 1723 Iaguzhinsky wrote to Archangel, ‘if even a few remnants of the yacht are found, have them put in a convenient place and guarded’.³⁵ Thus were myths made in Peter's own lifetime.

Nearly all the anniversaries, both personal and national, which clustered in the summer months of 1723 were celebrated with boat trips and regattas known as ‘marine assemblies’ aboard the craft of the so-called ‘Nevsky fleet’ of civilian vessels. Sometimes religious feasts also featured a watery element, such as the blessing of the water for the feast of the True Cross at the Trinity Quay, on 1 August. For Russians less enthusiastic about the sea than Peter one of the new capital's most disagreeable features was the amount of time people were expected to spend in boats, for there were no permanent bridges over the Neva during Peter's reign. Dignitaries were required to maintain one yacht, one barge and two launches and to join the royal sailing parties to Strel'na, Peterhof, Kronstadt and beyond. The idea for the St Petersburg regattas came to Peter during his travels, especially in Holland and England, but it is doubtful whether Western regattas were accompanied by such a high degree of regulation and compulsion. Peter took personal offence at lack of enthusiasm for nautical jaunts and non-attendance was punished with the same sort of penalties as for dereliction of military duty. In June 1723, for example, nine people incurred a fine of 15 roubles for failing to turn up to greet the arrival of the ‘grandfather’ of the fleet.³⁶ On 30 July 1723 Peter issued an order to Devier:

There has been constant disobedience about attending the marine assemblies, and today attendance was poor. … Therefore those who were not in their barges, except for legitimate reasons, are to be fined 50 roubles tomorrow, and not allowed until the next day to pay. If they say that they have no money then take goods instead and at the same time inform them in their homes that if they do the same again the fine will be doubled, and for a third offence they will be banished to the spinning mills.³⁷

On 1 September 50-rouble fines were collected from Admiral Apraksin, James Bruce, Cornelius Cruys and Peter Apraksin, but Archbishop Feodosy of Novgorod had his 50 returned after his excuse was accepted.³⁸ As this incident indicates, even top men in the government and church were not let off. For some unlucky people the boat trips even proved fatal. On 13 June Peter's page Ivan Drevnin drowned while taking a trip on the ‘grandfather’. His body was fished out of the river the following day. This incident and his funeral are laconically recorded in the journals, just part of the routine of court life in the summer of 1723.³⁹

There were other deaths that summer. On 22 August Prince-Pope Peter Buturlin died. His funeral in the church of St Samson was attended by Peter and Catherine, generals and other dignitaries dressed in black. Archbishop Feodosy officiated. The coffin was carried under a black pall by under-officers from the home of privy councillor Zotov, son of an earlier mock prelate. On 30 August, Nystad day, a masquerade processed from the coffee house to Trinity Quay, where most people got into barges and boats to accompany Peter in the ‘grandfather’, which he sailed to the Nevsky gates of the fortress to the sound of gunfire.⁴⁰ The small craft, steered by Peter, rowed between the warships of the Russian navy, ‘in order that the good grandfather could receive due honour from all his splendid grandsons’,⁴¹ as the navy fired guns in honour of the boat and the creator of the navy. The festivities finished with a service in the Alexander Nevsky monastery. After this the boat was replaced on its plinth in the Peter-Paul fortress, but in 1724 Peter ordered that it be brought out on the water and taken to the Alexander Nevsky monastery every year on 30 August.⁴²

The Persian war ends

On 8 September 1723 Peter received the good news that Russian troops had taken the Caspian port of Baku. As he wrote: ‘We had much [celebratory] bombardment on that evening when the news was received.’⁴³ The treaty signed with the new shah of Persia ceded Baku, Gilian and Derbent to Russia ‘in perpetuity’ in return for Russian aid against the shah's enemies.⁴⁴ The Persian war provides some valuable insights into the colonial policies of the expanding Russian empire. Peter instructed his commanders to treat non-Christian populations firmly but tactfully,

on pain of death to cause no devastation or oppression to the local inhabitants, but rather to reassure them to remain in their homes and to have no fear … firstly because without this they will flee and we will be left with everything empty; secondly, because we shall distress everyone and thereby lose everything of which we have a common need, therefore it is better to work for what is permanent and solid rather than for a small temporary gain.⁴⁵

He told another commander that resistance must be met with force. Even so, ‘in all the measures that you employ try to avoid destroying this province. Also at times and as occasion demands you need to treat these peoples proudly and more severely because they aren't like people in Europe.’⁴⁶ In other words, Peter regarded his country as an expanding European Christian nation, which was bringing civilised values to the conquered. In the event, it proved impossible to maintain the Caspian coastal strip. The anticipated commercial profits failed to materialise and the costs of military occupation exceeded revenues. Most of the territories were returned to Persia in 1732.

In September 1723 there was a carnival in St Petersburg which lasted several days with almost a thousand masks, which included the duke of Holstein's party (now a permanent feature at court) dressed as Romans. For most of the time Peter wore his favourite sailor's costume, but one day he appeared dressed as a cardinal and proceeded to ordain four ‘priests’, then changed back into the sailor's outfit. Catherine was an Amazon one day, a grape seller the next. The carnival ended at the house of Prince-Caesar and was rounded off with a massive drinking session.⁴⁷ The Persian ambassador arrived in St Petersburg to ratify the treaty, which gave an excuse for another boat trip to Kotlin island on 2–3 October, one of the last of the season, but not before Peter had shown the no doubt bemused ambassador some of his lathes and presented him with two telescopes. Peter remained on Kotlin to inspect work on the fortifications and from there went to inspect canals.⁴⁸

Death of Tsaritsa Praskovia

On 15 October Peter received the news that his sister-in-law Tsaritsa Praskovia had died. Tsar Ivan's widow was by all accounts a pious and uneducated woman, devoted to an assortment of orphans, holy fools and cripples who lived in her house. One might expect Peter to have had little time for such an unreformed character, but he frequently confounded expectations. He treated his sister-in-law with deference and affection and on one occasion even paid off a 2,000 rouble debt on her behalf. No doubt Praskovia's love of the bottle helped to bring the two together; she was a fringe member of the odd assortment of people who made up the Drunken Assembly. Her good relations with Peter may also have had something to do with the fact that she was sufficiently astute to make concessions to the new times. Her three surviving daughters (two others died in infancy) were raised as modern young women and provided Peter with useful marriage fodder, while Praskovia herself was happy to entertain foreign visitors and appear at court functions.

Peter helped to organise her funeral on 22 October, applying the same theatrical detail as he did to the organisation of masquerades and regattas. The catafalque was topped by a canopy in mauve velvet and a golden double eagle motif on ermine. Crowns, sceptre and orb and a royal standard were set out nearby. The coffin, placed at the top of several steps, was lined in white satin and Praskovia was dressed in a robe of the same satin, with a long veil cascading over the steps. The scene was illuminated by twelve large candles and dozens of candelabra, set off against black draperies and festoons. The room was also decorated with various unspecified ‘allegories’. Twelve captains in black cloaks and with black cockades stood on guard.

The funeral parade from Praskovia's house on the embankment near the Winter Palace to the Alexander Nevsky monastery took two hours. Wailing and screaming, a standard feature of Muscovite funerals, were expressly forbidden. The coffin, set high up on an open black carriage and covered in black velvet, was accompanied by guardsmen and followed by a long procession of state officials, army and navy officers; Peter, Catherine and the dead woman's daughters Ekaterina and Praskovia, in full mourning with their heads dramatically covered in long veils, brought up the rear. Their sister Anna was at home in Courland and did not learn of her mother's death until some time later. Women rode in carriages, men went on foot. The whole procession was flanked by soldiers holding lighted torches. In church, a priest delivered a funeral oration (sadly nonextant) and a portrait of Praskovia's late husband was placed in her coffin. This occasion illustrates how funerals had become ‘designer’ occasions dominated by Western-inspired invention rather than tradition, intended to impress a much wider public than Muscovite ceremonies, which were confined within the Kremlin walls. The cost was borne by Peter's Cabinet office, which for months afterwards found itself dealing with appeals from Praskovia's many creditors.

Pulling uphill. Bribery, corruption and red tape

As the season for boat trips and excursions drew to a close, Peter turned to matters of state. High on his agenda was the issue of how to inculcate and develop honesty, responsibility and enterprise in the ruling élite and as usual he sought solutions in regulations and penalties. An edict of 25 October 1723 (published in February 1724) declares:

Whosoever shall commit an injustice in a court or in any matter whatsoever entrusted to him or which is a part of his duties and he commits that injustice for his own ends, knowingly and of his own volition, that man, as an infringer of the state laws and his own duty, shall be condemned to death, either physical (naturalnoiu) or political (politicheskoiu) according to the severity of the crime and deprived of all his property.⁴⁹

In this decree Peter makes a clear distinction between crimes against the state and the existing order (including brigandage and religious dissent) and the much lesser matter (in his view) of ‘particular’ crimes against the person. In the latter case ‘only’ an individual was injured and the decision to prosecute could be left to the aggrieved party and/or in local hands. At the same time, Peter made efforts to reform legal procedures in order to facilitate the resolution of ‘particular’ cases. The decree ‘On the form of trials’ (5 November 1723) gathered together and tried to simplify legislation on the use of written evidence, bail, forms of petition and other procedures.⁵⁰ But the frequent repetition throughout the century of orders to speed up trials and reduce red tape underlines that even the most perfect procedures could not solve the problem. Bribes remained the most effective means of getting a settlement. This was not an exclusively Russian problem, as anyone who has read Dickens knows.

Peter was frustrated that his reforms were not working more quickly and that few people seemed to understand his most cherished ideas. In a manifesto on the encouragement of factories issued in November 1723 he wrote:

It's true that there are few who are willing to participate, for our people are like children who, out of ignorance, will never get down to learning their alphabet unless the master forces them to do so. At first they find it tedious, but when they learn their lesson they are grateful. This is evident in the current state of affairs where everything has to be done by force, but already thanks can be heard and fruit has been produced. It is the same with manufacturing: it is not enough just to make proposals. This may happen in places where there is already a firm tradition, but here an enterprise is sometimes initiated but not implemented … it is necessary both to use compulsion and to provide aid in the form of manuals, machines and other items and thus be a good steward.⁵¹

Peter's concerns must be seen within the context of not just a personal schedule and private goals but also as a timetable for the reform of a whole nation. Only then can we begin to appreciate the dismay he must constantly have experienced when his goals were thwarted by individual and collective lethargy and resistance. Few state officials regarded bribery and misappropriation of state funds as crimes. The problem was expressed graphically by the peasant entrepreneur Ivan Pososhkov's famous image of Peter pulling uphill with the strength of ten men and millions pulling downhill. This is an exaggeration, of course. Peter did have some committed and energetic supporters. But in view of the number who apparently abused his trust, it seems unlikely that by 1723 he had complete faith in anyone. Several high-profile cases were fresh in his mind: in 1721 the execution of Gagarin, the former governor of Siberia and in 1722 the trial on corruption charges of Peter Shafirov, who was condemned to death by beheading, but was reprieved at the last moment as he lowered his head to the block. His Moscow house went to Peter Tolstoy, all his wine was sent to the palace and distributed to various officials, and money invested abroad was allocated to Russian students.⁵² Peter was much struck by this example of ‘treachery’, for he had personally raised Shafirov, son of a converted Jew, to high office, making him a baron in 1710 and senator in 1717.

It was Menshikov, with whom Shafirov had a joint venture in fish oil production, who brought the charges against his partner, but Peter had no illusions about Menshikov's honesty, either. ‘Aleksasha’ had long been under a cloud of suspicion for illegally acquiring property in Ukraine, but managed to evade the serious charges of corruption brought against him by government officials in 1714. In 1718 he was brought before a tribunal on charges of embezzlement, involving estimated losses to the treasury (including ‘insider dealing’ on grain contracts for the army in the 1710s) of more than 1.5 million roubles. Friendship prevailed and Menshikov was restored to favour upon payment of a heavy fine. ‘Menshikov will always remain Menshikov,’ Peter allegedly remarked.⁵³ In the words of Pavel Iaguzhinsky, one of the few men to escape corruption charges in Peter's lifetime, it would be unwise to issue an order to execute anyone who stole as much as the price of a piece of rope, as Peter once proposed, ‘unless Your Majesty wishes to be left alone without servitors or subjects. We all steal, only some more and more visibly than others.’⁵⁴

The provinces were particularly impervious to Peter's reforming efforts. In October 1723 the inspector of mines Wilhelm Henning sent a memorandum from Siberia:

I am heartily sorry that you have not been here in person and do not know the state of affairs in Siberia in any detail. It's true, the governor here, Cherkassky, is a good man, but he lacks courage, and has few decent assistants, especially in the local courts and police department. As a result local affairs do not flourish and the people have to bear a heavy burden.

Henning urged Peter to give Cherkassky the support of more officials from central institutions:

Terrible deeds are in evidence, the poor peasants suffer ruin at the hands of officials, and in the towns much oppression is caused by the officials sent from the local finance office and the merchantry has been so badly damaged that an artisan with any capital is scarcely to be found, which has led to a decline in revenues. Lord, do not begrudge the administrators here a decent salary, for no one here owns villages [i.e. serfs] and everyone has to eat and even if a man is good, if he has no means of livelihood he is forced to feed himself by illegal means; at first he will take enough to satisfy his needs, but then he will try to get rich. In this way you will suffer great loss and the people will be ruined.⁵⁵

The old system of officials feeding off the local population by extracting ‘gifts’ in money and kind, ostensibly outlawed in the late sixteenth century, was alive and well. The weak were as vulnerable as ever.

The year looked set to end on a sombre note. On 17–18 October the Neva and the Little Neva froze over, an unusually early frost and an early end to the navigation season, which always put Peter in a bad mood. Official mourning for Tsaritsa Praskovia lasted until 24 November. There was much state business to deal with. Peter's papers include numerous drafts of the decree ‘On the forms of trial’ and on issues of trade and manufacture. Much correspondence was also devoted to unrest in Ukraine, from where a stream of complaints arrived against Cossack officers and officials reported fears of Cossack collusion with the Crimean Tatars. But Peter continued to maintain his precarious balancing act of dealing with the trivial alongside the weighty, slipping in and out of his alternative identities and pursuing his various hobbies. Papers for December 1723 include sheets and sheets of the tables of ships' parts (all measured in feet and inches) which he found so fascinating. He wrote several letters to ‘Sire’ Ivan Romodanovsky and every now and then he dropped into his shipwright's identity, writing to ‘Baas’ Ivan Golovin and signing the name Peter Mikhailov alongside the signatures of his fellow shipwrights Richard Cozens, Joseph Noye and Richard Browne in support of the petition of one Dmitry Dobrynin to be paid his wages and be awarded his master's certificate.⁵⁶ On 24 December he penned an order for ‘three Friesian-style jackets made from the pattern sent to you on paper, one in black velvet, the other in cinnamon brown cloth, the third in cinnamon serge with a flannelette of the same colour’. He gave precise specifications for the buttons (the same colour as the buttonholes) and hems, and ordered three pairs of breeches in the same materials and colours. It is not clear whether these sailor outfits, ordered from Holland, were for masquerades or for everyday wear.⁵⁷

The same eye for detail can be found in a handwritten note on a project for a garden in Moscow sent to the Dutch doctor Nicholas Bidloo in December 1723:

On the big pond on the two islands and on the octagonal island you are to build summerhouses (liust'gosy, from German Lusthaus), also places for doves and small birds near the wood and other embellishments suitable for a garden, and across the canals bridges, little hump-backed ones, with railings on one side with just enough room for one person to cross (like they do in Holland); also send a drawing or ground plan of both residences and the garden.⁵⁸

Peter was also beginning to plan an event which provided ample opportunities for enjoyable details: the coronation of Catherine as his consort. His handwritten draft on the topic survives, dated 15 November, in which he quotes Byzantine precedents for the crowning of consorts and praises his wife's personal courage, especially at the battle of Pruth, where she behaved ‘in a manner more male than female’.⁵⁹ There were precursors for this accolade, for example in a speech to mark Catherine's name day in November 1717, when Feofan Prokopovich recalled her courage at the Pruth and her worthiness to be the first recipient of the Order of St Catherine.⁶⁰ On 24 December 1723, following Peter's instructions, Feofan ordered the Synod to prepare triumphal gates in Moscow for the coronation the following spring. He could hardly have guessed that less than two years later Catherine would be celebrating another coronation, but this time as empress in her own right.