58
IN THE SERVICE OF THE STATE
Peter had been sitting at dinner one night in 1717 surrounded by friends and lieutenants when the talk turned to Tsar Alexis and the achievements and disappointments of his reign. Peter had mentioned his father’s wars against Poland and his struggle with the Patriarch Nikon, when Count Ivan Musin-Pushkin suddenly declared that none of Tsar Alexis’ accomplishments had measured up to Peter’s and that most of Alexis’ successes had actually been due to the work of his ministers. Peter’s reaction was icy. “Your disparagement of my father’s achievements and your praise of mine are more than I can listen to,” he said. The Tsar got up and walked over to the seventy-eight-year-old Prince Jacob Dolgoruky, sometimes called the Russian Cato. “You criticize me more than anybody else and plague me with your arguments until I sometimes feel I could lose my temper with you,” said Peter. “But I know that you are sincerely devoted to me and to the state and that you always speak the truth, for which I am deeply grateful. Now, tell me how you estimate my father’s achievements and what you think of mine.”
Dolgoruky looked up and said, “Pray be seated, Sire, while I think a moment.” Peter sat down and Dolgoruky was quiet for a while, stroking his long mustache. Then he replied, “It is impossible to give a short answer to your question since you and your father were occupied with different matters. A tsar has three main duties to perform. The most important is the administration of the country and the dispensation of justice. Your father had enough time to attend to this, while you have had none, which is why your father accomplished more than you. It is possible that when you do give some thought to this matter—and it is time you did—you will do more than your father.
“A tsar’s second duty is to the organization of the army. Here again, your father is to be praised because he laid the foundations of a regular army, thereby showing you the way. Unfortunately, certain misguided men undid all his work, so that you had to start all over again, and I must admit that you have done very well. Even so, I still do not know which of you has done better; we will only know that when the war is over.
“And, finally, we come to a tsar’s third duty, which is building a fleet, making treaties and determining our relationship with foreign countries. Here, and I hope you will agree with me, you have served the country well and have achieved more than your father. For this, you deserve much praise. Somebody tonight said that a tsar’s work depends on his ministers. I disagree and think the opposite, since a wise monarch will choose wise counselors who know their worth. Therefore, a wise monarch will not tolerate stupid counselors because he will know their quality and be able to distinguish good advice from bad.”
When Dolgoruky finished, Peter stood up and said, “Faithful, honest friend,” and embraced Dolgoruky.
The “administration of the country and the dispensation of justice” were much on Peter’s mind during these later years. Victory at Poltava had given him more time and freedom to consider domestic matters; his actions were no longer hasty improvisations made under the threat of imminent invasion. In the years after Poltava, Peter turned his attention from organizing armies and building fleets to a basic remodeling of the structure of civil and church administration, to modernizing and changing the economic and social patterns of the nation, and even to rechanneling the age-old trade routes of the Russia he had inherited. It was in the second half of the reign, the years between 1711 and 1725, that the fundamental Petrine reforms were fashioned. Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s greatest poet, compared the later fundamental reforms with the early wartime decrees: “The permanent laws were created by a broad mind, full of wisdom and kindness; the earlier decrees were mostly cruel and self-willed and seemed to have been written with a knout.”
The nature and sequence of Peter’s early reforms were dictated by war and the need for money to pay for it. For a while, as Pushkin wrote, the state was ruled primarily on the basis of Peter’s decrees, hastily scribbled on pieces of paper. Traditionally in Russia, the tsar had ruled with the advice of an ancient, consultive council of boyars, and beneath it, the administration of the laws was carried out by a number of government offices, or prikazi. For the first two decades of Peter’s reign, 1689–1708, there had been no change in this structure. The youthful Tsar attended meetings when he was in Moscow and delegated power when he was absent—thus, when Peter went abroad in 1697–1698, he made Prince Fedor Romodanovsky president of the council and ordered other members to accept his leadership. As Peter grew older and grasped the reins of government more firmly, he used the council little, and his opinion of it became openly contemptuous. In 1707, he ordered the council to keep minutes of its meetings, which were to be signed by all members. “No resolution shall be taken without this,” he instructed, “so that the stupidity of each shall be evident.”
In 1708, when Charles XII was marching on Russia, the central government had seemed unable to cope with the crisis. To raise money and find recruits, both desperately needed, Peter ordered a sweeping decentralization of government administration. The nation was divided into eight huge provinces or governments—Moscow, Ingermanland (later called St. Petersburg), Kiev, Smolensk, Archangel, Kazan, Azov and Siberia—endowed with wide powers, especially in the areas of revenue collection and army recruiting. To underline the importance of these new regional governments, Peter had assigned his most senior lieutenants as governors. But this new system did not work. Most of the governors lived in St. Petersburg, too far from the regions they supposedly governed to control them effectively. Some of the governors, such as Menshikov and Apraxin, had more pressing duties with the army or the fleet. In February 1711, Peter was ready to admit defeat. He wrote to Menshikov, “Up to now, God knows in what grief I am, for the Governors follow the example of crabs in transacting their business. Therefore, I shall not deal with them with words, but with hands.” Menshikov himself was criticized. “Inform me what merchandise you have, how much has been sold, when and where the money had gone,” commanded the anguished Tsar, “for we know no more about your government than about a foreign country.”
The failure of the provincial governments left only Peter at the center of government along with the crumbling boyar council and the increasingly ineffective, overlapping administrative offices. Although Peter attempted to overcome inefficiency and inertia by his own enormous energy, often even he had not enough. In frustration and despair, he wrote to Catherine, “I can’t manage with my left hand, so with my right hand alone I have to wield both the sword and the pen. How many there are to help me you know yourself.”
In time, Peter realized that he himself was part of the problem. All power was concentrated in his person, which, as he was so often on the move, made administration difficult. Further, he was completely absorbed by military affairs and foreign policy and had no time for domestic matters. To discover what laws were necessary, to formulate the legislation, to administer the laws and government and to judge violations, Peter needed a new institution more powerful and more efficient than the boyar council.
The Senate was created in February 1711, on the eve of Peter’s departure for the disastrous campaign on the Pruth, and was intended as a temporary institution to govern during the months he was away. The short decree establishing the Senate was specific on this point: “We appoint the governing Senate to administer in our absence.” Because the new body of nine senators would rule in place of the Tsar, it was granted wide powers: It was to oversee the provincial governments, act as the highest court of justice, take charge of all state expenditures and, above all, “to collect money as much as possible, for money is the artery of war.” Another decree proclaimed that all officials, civil and clerical, and all institutions were under pain of death to obey the Senate as they would the Tsar.
When Peter returned from the Pruth, the Senate did not disappear but gradually became the chief executive and legislative organ of the central government of Russia. Nothing could be done without the command or consent of the Senate; in the absence of the Tsar, it was the government of Russia. Yet, for all Peter’s effort to enhance its power, no one was fooled. The Senate’s power was mostly hollow, its grandeur mostly façade. In fact, the Senate remained a body for transmitting and administering the will of the autocrat and had no independent will of its own. It was an instrument, its powers were those of an agent, its jurisdiction touched only on domestic matters—all questions of foreign policy and peace or war were reserved to the Tsar. The Senate helped Peter by interpreting and clarifying his hastily, cryptically written instructions and transforming them into legislation. But in the eyes of the people and in its own mind, the Senate knew it was the creature and servant of an unchallengeable master.
The subordinate status was made plainer by the fact that none of Peter’s principal lieutenants—Menshikov, Apraxin, Golovkin, Sheremetev—was included in the Senate. These “Supreme Lords” or “Principals,” as they were called, could send the Senate instructions “by order of His Majesty.” And yet, at the same time, Peter instructed Menshikov that he and the others must obey the Senate. In fact, Peter wanted both the assistance of his powerful, loyal lieutenants and the aid of a powerful, central administrative body. He would not choose one definitely over the other, and therefore he left the situation confused, with opposing methods and systems of government functioning in contradiction to each other. Inevitably, the “Supreme Lords” and “Principals” bridled and refused to accept the authority of this fledgling body.
Nor was Peter himself always pleased with the Senate’s behavior. He wrote regularly to the senators, scolding them as if they were thoughtless children, telling them that they had made themselves a laughingstock, which he said was doubly infamous “for the Senate represents the person of His Majesty.” He ordered them not to waste time in meetings talking about matters unrelated to business, and not to chatter and joke, because “loss of time is like death, as hard to return as a life that has ended.” He ordered them to transact no business at home or in private, and commanded that every discussion must be written down. Yet, the Senate still moved too slowly for Peter. On one occasion, he summoned it to tell him “what has been done and what has not been done and the reason for it.” Repeatedly, he threatened the senators with punishment. “You have nothing else to do except to govern,” he declared, “and if you do not do this conscientiously, you will answer to God and also will not escape justice here below.” “You have acted in a contemptible way, accepting bribes according to ancient and stupid customs,” he thundered on another occasion. “When you come before me, you will be called to account in a different way.”
In November 1715, attempting to discipline the Senate and make it more effective, Peter created the supervisory post of Inspector General of Decrees to sit “in the same place as the Senate, to take note of the Senate’s decrees, to see that they are enforced, and to denounce and fine negligent senators.” Vasily Zotov, the foreign-educated son of his old tutor, was the first Inspector General, but he had little success, and soon it was he who was complaining to Peter that the Senate paid no attention to his wishes, failed to hold the required sessions three days a week, and had left one and a half million roubles of state revenue uncollected.
In 1720, detailed new rules of Senate procedure were promulgated. Meetings were to be conducted “without shouting and other manifestations.… The business is to be stated and is to be thought about and discussed for half an hour. If, however, it be complicated and more time is asked for, then it is to be postponed until the following day. If the business is urgent, extra time up to three hours will be granted for further deliberations, but as soon as the hourglass shows that time has run out, paper and ink are to be handed out and every senator is to note down his opinion and sign it. If a senator fails to do this, business is to be stopped while somebody runs to tell the Tsar, wherever he may be.”
Eventually, when it became clear that even the Inspector General could not keep order in the Senate, officers of the Guards were assigned for a month at a time to police the senators. If a senator misbehaved, he was to be arrested and confined in the Peter and Paul Fortress until the fact could be reported to the Tsar.
As it was, the Senate functioned as well as it did only because of Prince Jacob Dolgoruky, the First Senator, who had served in many capacities over many decades. He was the first Russian ambassador to the court of Louis XIV, and it was on this mission in 1687 that he purchased an astrolabe to bring back to the fifteen-year-old Peter. At the age of sixty-two, he was present at the Battle of Narva, was captured and spent eleven years in a Swedish prison. In 1712, at seventy-three, he escaped and made his way back to Russia, where he was appointed First Senator. A portrait of Dolgoruky shows a powerful man with a double chin and a shaggy mustache, a man who looks unkempt, shrewd and fierce. He was also brave, obstinate, strong-willed and liked to have his way; when he could not impose his wishes by force of logic or force of character, he simply shouted at his opponent at the top of his lungs. Only Menshikov, permanently armored in the Tsar’s favor, could stand up to him.
Dolgoruky always dared to tell Peter the truth. Once, late in the reign, Dolgoruky actually tore up a decree because he believed that the Emperor had not reflected on it. The decree had commanded all landowners in the governments of St. Petersburg and Novgorod to send serfs to dig the Ladoga Canal. Dolgoruky had been absent on the day the decree was signed, and the following morning, when he read it, he protested loudly. The other senators looked uncomfortable, but warned that it was too late to object, as the Emperor had already signed it. Whereupon, in a spasm of disgust, Dolgoruky ripped the edict in half. Stunned, the other senators stood up, demanding to know if he realized what he had done. “Yes,” said Dolgoruky passionately, “and I will answer for it before God, the Emperor and my country.”
At this moment, Peter walked into the room. Surprised to see the entire Senate standing, he asked what had happened. In a trembling voice, one member told him. His expression grim, Peter turned to the eighty-three-year-old Dolgoruky and demanded an explanation. “It is my zeal for your honor and the good of your subjects,” Dolgoruky replied. “Do not be angry, Peter Alexeevich, that I have too much confidence in your wisdom to think you wish, like Charles XII, to desolate your country. You have not reflected on the situation of the two governments your decree regards. Do you not know that they have suffered more in the war than all the provinces of your empire together, that many of their inhabitants have perished, and are you unacquainted with the present miserable state of the people? What is there to hinder you from taking a small number of men from each province to dig this canal, which is certainly necessary? The other provinces are more populous than the two in question and can easily furnish you with laborers. Besides, have you not Swedish prisoners enough to employ without oppressing your subjects with works like these?”
Peter listened to Dolgoruky’s appeal and then turned calmly to the other senators. “Let the decree be suspended,” he said. “I will consider this matter further and let you know my intentions.” Soon after, several thousand Swedish prisoners were transferred to work on the Ladoga Canal.
Nevertheless, despite the presence of Dolgoruky, Zotov and the Guards officers, the Senate failed to perform as Peter wished. In time, he came to realize that force or the threat of force exercised from above was insufficient and often counterproductive. The Senate could not be disciplined roughly and peremptorily, as the Tsar was accustomed to doing, and still maintain its dignity and authority in the eyes of the public. In addition, it was overloaded with work. Inefficiency, quarrels among its members and unwillingness to take responsibility caused a huge and growing backlog of work which at one point reached 16,000 unresolved cases and decisions.
Thus, in 1722, Peter resolved to create a new managerial office, that of the Procurator General, who was to be the Emperor’s personal representative in the Senate. “Here is my eye through whom I will see everything,” Peter declared when he presented his Procurator General to the senators. “He knows my intentions and wishes. What he considers to be for the general good, you are to do. Although it may seem to you that what he does is contrary to the advantage of me and of the state, you should nevertheless carry it out and, having notified me, await my orders.” The Procurator General’s duty was to direct the Senate and superintend its work. Although he was not a member of the body and could not vote, he was in fact President of the Senate, responsible for maintaining order during sessions, for initiating legislation and bringing it to a vote (using an hourglass to limit discussion), and for seeing that, once passed, new legislation was sent to the Emperor for approval. When administrative offices were unable to understand the language or meaning of a Senate decree or discovered difficulty in administering one, they were to notify the Procurator General, who would ask the Senate to rewrite the decree in clearer language.
Peter’s choice for this important role was Pavel Yaguzhinsky, one of his low-born “fledglings.” Yaguzhinsky was eleven years younger than the Emperor, born of Lithuanian parents in Moscow, where his father was the organist in a Lutheran church. Peter liked him from the first, enrolled him in the Guards, and, charmed by the good humor and intelligence of the stalwart young man, made him a field orderly to his own person. Yaguzhinsky was promoted rapidly. Peter used him on diplomatic missions and took him along to Paris, where the French described him as Peter’s “favorite.” Yaguzhinsky was excitable, he enjoyed drinking, and he made and forgot new enemies every week. But he was unquestioningly loyal, he was almost completely honest and he was decisive, qualities which Peter found lacking in many senators.
Even before the appointment of Yaguzhinsky, Peter had altered the Senate’s role. From 1711 to 1718, the Senate had been responsible for administration as well as for legislation, but Peter realized that the state needed a new executive machinery, separate from the Senate, which would permit the Senate to concentrate on legislative matters. It was this realization which led him to begin his experiment with a new government institution imported from Europe, the system of colleges or ministries.
From his own travels and from reports of foreign ambassadors and his agents, the Tsar had learned that colleges were the basic working institutions of government in Denmark, Prussia, Austria and Sweden. Even in England, the semi-autonomous, college-like Board of the Admiralty was charged with administering all the affairs of the Royal Navy. Leibniz, whom Peter had consulted, reported: “There cannot be good administration except with colleges. Their mechanism is like that of watches whose wheels mutually keep each other in movement.” The college system in Sweden had the highest reputation in Europe; it functioned so well that the Swedish government continued to administer the country smoothly despite the absence of its sovereign for fifteen years, the loss of armies, the conquest of its empire and a devastating plague. Peter, admiring both Charles and Swedish efficiency and, having no qualms about borrowing from his enemy, decided to use the Swedish colleges as models for his own.
By 1718, his new system was ready. The old-fashioned prikazi, or government offices, now thirty-five in number, were superseded by nine new colleges: Foreign Affairs, Revenue Collection, Justice, Expenditure, Financial Control, War, Admiralty, Commerce, and Mining and Manufacturing. The presidents of these colleges were to be Russians (in fact, they were all Peter’s close friends and chief lieutenants) and the vice presidents foreigners. Two exceptions were the College of Mining and Manufacturing, of which General Bruce, a Scot, was appointed president, and the College of Foreign Affairs, whose president, Golovkin, and vice president, Shafirov, were both Russians. All nine college presidents simultaneously became members of the Senate, which had the effect of transforming that body into a council of ministers.
To help make these foreign institutions work, Peter imported foreign experts. Russian agents circulated through Europe inviting foreigners to come to the new Russian colleges. Even Swedish prisoners of war who had learned Russian were invited to the colleges. (Weber thought that some would not accept, “considering that they are apprehensive of a troublesome inquiry at home into their behavior.”) In the end, enough foreigners were found, and Weber was to describe the humming activity at the College of Foreign Affairs in glowing terms: “Hardly any foreign office in the world issues dispatches in so many languages. They have sixteen interpreters and secretaries: Russian, Latin, Polish, High Dutch, Low Dutch, English, Danish, French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Turkish, Chinese, Tatar, Kalmuck and Mongolian.”
Yet, even with foreigners working at several levels in the new machinery, the college system began jerkily. The foreign lawyers, administrators and other experts had difficulty explaining the new system to their Russian colleagues, and the translators brought in to help were tongue-tied by their own ignorance of Swedish terminology and administrative affairs. Explanation of the new system and procedures to local officials in the provinces was even more difficult, and uncomprehending provincial clerks sent reports to the capital which could not be categorized, understood or even read in the new offices in St. Petersburg.
In addition, several of the college presidents treated their new assignments lackadaisically, and Peter once again was forced to lecture them like children. They must appear at their colleges every Tuesday and Thursday, he commanded, and while there and in the Senate must act with decorum. “There should be no unnecessary talking or chatter, but only talk of the matter in hand. Moreover, if someone begins to speak, another shall not interrupt but shall allow him to finish, behaving like orderly people and not like market women.”
Peter had hoped that including the new college presidents as members of the Senate would enhance the efficiency of that body, but there were such antagonisms and jealousies among these potentates that putting them all in the same room without the Tsar to enforce order led to violent quarrels and even brawls. The aristocratic senators Dolgoruky and Golitsyn disdained the low-born Menshikov, Shafirov and Yaguzhinsky. Golovkin, president of the College of Foreign Affairs, and Shafirov, its vice president, hated each other. The quarrels became more strident, senators openly accused one another of being thieves, and while Peter was away on the Caspian Sea, a resolution was passed reporting Shafirov to the Emperor for outrageous, illegal behavior in the Senate. On Peter’s return, a special high court composed of senators and generals was summoned to Preobrazhenskoe and, on hearing the evidence, sentenced Shafirov to death. On February 16, 1723, Shafirov was brought into the Kremlin in a common sledge. The sentence was read to him, his wig and tattered sheepskin coat were taken away and he mounted the scaffold. Crossing himself repeatedly, he knelt and placed his head on the block. The executioner lifted the axe—and at this moment Peter’s Cabinet Secretary, Makarov, stepped forward and announced that, in consideration of Shafirov’s long record of service, the Emperor had granted him life and sentenced him instead to exile in Siberia. Shafirov got to his feet and climbed down from the scaffold, his eyes filled with tears. He was taken to the Senate, where his former colleagues, shaken by the experience, congratulated him on his reprieve. To calm his nerves, the doctors bled him, and Shafirov, contemplating his dismal future, said to them, “You had better open my largest vein and thus relieve me of my torments.” His exile to Siberia was further commuted to confinement with his family in Novgorod. Two years later, on Peter’s death, Catherine pardoned Shafirov, and under Empress Anne he returned to the Senate.
Peter’s hopes for his new administrative machinery often went unfulfilled. The institutions were alien to Russian practice, the new administrators were insufficiently trained and motivated, and the looming, mercurial presence of the Tsar himself did not contribute to initiative and decisiveness on the part of his subordinates. On the one hand, Peter commanded them to assume responsibility and act boldly; on the other, he punished them if the move they made was the wrong one. Naturally, this made them excessively cautious, “as if a servant, seeing his master drowning, would not save him until he had satisfied himself as to whether it was written down in his contract that he should pull him out of the water.”
As Peter grew older, he seemed to grasp this problem. He began to understand the importance of government by laws and institutions rather than by the arbitrary power of individuals, including himself. Instead of being commanded from above, the people were to be taught, guided and persuaded. “It is necessary to explain just what are the interests of the state,” he said, “and to make them comprehensible to the people.” After 1716, his major decrees usually were prefaced by pedagogical explanations of the need for this legislation, citation of historical parallels, appeals to logic and promises of utility.
On balance, Peter’s new governmental system was an improvement. Russia was changing, and the Senate and the colleges administered this new state and society more efficiently than would have been possible under the old boyar council and government prikazi. Both Senate and colleges endured until the end of the dynasty, although the colleges were changed into ministries and the Senate was renamed the Council of the Empire. In 1720, the architect Trezzini set to work on an immensely long red-brick building on the Neva embankment on Vasilevsky Island to house the colleges and the Senate. This building, which now houses Leningrad University, is the largest surviving edifice of Peter’s St. Petersburg.
Peter’s reforms affected individuals as powerfully as institutions. Russian society, like that of medieval Europe, was based on obligations of service. The serf owed service to the landowner, the landowner owed service to the tsar. Far from breaking or even loosening these bonds of service, Peter twisted them tight to extract every last degree of service from every level of society. There were no exceptions and no mitigations. Service was the motive force of Peter’s life, and the Tsar thrust his energy and power into making sure that every Russian served as efficiently as possible. Noblemen serving as officers in the new Russian army or navy must know how to fight with modern weapons and tactics; those entering the growing Westernized central administration must have the training and skills necessary to manage their new assignments. The concept of service was broadened to include the duty of becoming educated.
Peter began this program pragmatically with his first impulsive dispatch of young Russians to the West in 1696, on the eve of the Great Embassy. After Poltava, the effort became more serious, more inclusive and more institutionally structured. In 1712, a decree ordered all sons of landowners to report to the Senate. They were divided into age groups; the youngest were sent to Reval to study seamanship, the middle group went to Holland for naval training and the eldest marched directly into the army. In 1714, the dragnet was extended: All young noblemen between ten and thirty not already registered or in service were commanded to report to the Senate for service during the winter.
Peter intended the army to be wholly officered by professionally trained Russian noblemen who had begun their twenty-five years of service at the age of fifteen when they entered the Guards or a line regiment as private soldiers. From that lowest rank, each nobleman was to work his way up on the basis of merit. In February 1714, Peter categorically prohibited the commissioning of any officer, no matter what his title, who had not come up through the ranks. At one point, 300 princes of the noblest families of Russia were serving as private soldiers, receiving the minimum in pay, food and comfort. According to Prince Kurakin, it was not uncommon for Petersburgers to see a Prince Golitsyn or Prince Gagarin with a musket on his shoulder doing sentry duty in front of his barracks.
Instruction for these young men, however, went far beyond how to handle firearms and conduct military drill. As more and more of them passed through these training years, the regiments became not only nurseries for officers but academies for service to the state in a variety of fields. Some young men would learn gunnery, some engineering, some navigation, some languages—one was sent to Astrachan to learn about salt mining. In time, the officers of Peter’s Guards became a pool from which Peter could draw for almost any service. The watchdogs whom the Tsar set on his Senate were Guards officers; these same officers made up the majority of the civil tribunal which condemned the Tsarevich Alexis.
Although most of the young noblemen went into the army, this was not the preferred avenue of state service; the civil service was growing rapidly, and its entry doors were always crowded as work in government offices was less dangerous, less arduous and potentially far more lucrative. To narrow the stream of candidates flowing in this direction, Peter decreed that no more than one third of the members of a family could serve in civil government; two thirds must serve in the army or the navy.
The navy, a body wholly alien and repugnant to most Russians, was even more intensely and universally unpopular than the army. When a son had to go into service, the father struggled to enter him anywhere other than in the navy. Nevertheless, in 1715, when the School of Mathematics and Navigation was transferred from Moscow to St. Petersburg, its classrooms were filled. “This summer the Naval Academy was opened,” wrote Weber in 1715. “I daresay that there was not one noble family within the boundaries of the vast Russian empire but what was obliged to send thither one or more sons above ten and under eighteen. We saw swarms of these young plants arriving from all parts of Russia at St. Petersburg. So that this academy at present contains the flower of the Russian nobility who for these four years past have been instructed in all the sciences belonging to navigation, besides which they are taught languages, fencing and other bodily exercises.”
Russian nobles did not bow easily to Peter’s disposition of their sons or themselves. Although Peter’s first decree in 1712 was simply an effort to bring the lists of noblemen up to date and register them for future service, the Tsar knew he could not easily uproot these young men from their comfortable lives in the provinces. Accordingly, he accompanied the order with the threat that failure to report would be punished by fines, corporal punishment and confiscation of property. He added that anyone accurately identifying a nobleman who failed to report would receive all of that nobleman’s wealth, even if the informer was “a runaway serf.”
This threat often failed. Noblemen dreamed up endless deceptions and explanations, business and travels, visits abroad and to monasteries, to avoid registering for service. Some simply disappeared into the vast emptiness of the Russian land. A clerk or soldier would arrive to investigate and find a deserted house; oddly, no one in the village would know where the master had gone. Some escaped service by pretending illness or feigning holy foolishness: “He jumped into the lake and stood there with the water lapping at his beard.” When one group of young noblemen enrolled in a Moscow theological seminary to evade service, Peter swiftly drafted all these novice monks into the navy, packed them off to the Naval Academy in St. Petersburg and, as further punishment, sent them to drive piles along the Moika Canal. General-Admiral Apraxin, offended by this humiliation of the honor of old Russian families, went to the Moika, stripped off his admiral’s uniform with its blue ribbon of the Order of St. Andrew and hung it on a pole, and began to drive piles beside the young men. Peter came up and asked with astonishment, “How is it, Fedor Matveevich, that you, a general-admiral, are driving piles?” Forthrightly, Apraxin replied, “Sire, these laborers are my nephews and grandchildren. Who am I then and by what right should I be privileged?”
In time, Peter was forced to decree that all noblemen who failed to report for service were outlaws. This meant that they could be robbed or killed with impunity, and that anyone bringing in such an outlaw would receive half of the outlaw’s property. Finally, in 1721, also to limit evasion, Peter established the office of Herald, whose duty was to keep up-to-date lists of the nobility, recording the names of all male children and the place and capacity in which these sons were meeting their obligation of state service.
Education, in Peter’s mind, was simply the first rung on the ladder of state service, and he tried to place every child on that ladder at a tender age. In 1714, along with his plan for compulsory enrollment of all noblemen into the army at fifteen, he decreed that their younger brothers must enroll in secular schools at the age of ten. For five years, until they were ready for the army, they were to learn to read and write and do elementary arithmetic and geometry; until a young man had a certificate stating that he had finished this course, he was forbidden to marry. Landowners deeply resented this disruption of their traditions, and two years later, in 1716, Peter admitted defeat and revoked his decree. His effort to insist on compulsory education for children of the middle class also met with such widespread resistance and evasion that Peter was forced to give it up.
Once noblemen or others were enrolled in the service of the state, whether in military, naval or civil administration, their promotion supposedly was based on merit. A different and potentially far-reaching reform incorporating the principle of meritocracy was the Tsar’s overthrowing of the time-honored Muscovite law of inheritance. Traditionally, when a father died, his landed estate and other immovable property was equally divided among his sons. The result of this continual subdivision into smaller and smaller plots was the impoverishment of the gentry and the drying up of sources of tax revenue. Peter’s decree of March 14, 1714, declared that a father must pass his undivided estate to only one son—and that this son need not be the eldest. (If there were no sons, the same rules should be applied to daughters.) In England, Peter had been impressed by the system in which the eldest son inherited both title and land and the younger sons were expected to go into the army, the navy or some form of commerce. But Peter rejected primogeniture and chose inheritance by merit, which he thought would be even more productive than the English system: The ablest son would inherit, the land would be kept whole, thus preserving the wealth and distinction of the family (and facilitating the collection of taxes), the serfs would be better cared for, and the disinherited sons would be free to find some useful occupation in the service of the state. Unfortunately, no decree of Peter the Great was more unpopular; it produced family quarrels and violent feuds, and in 1730, five years after Peter’s death, it was repealed.
Throughout his life, merit, loyalty and dedication to service were the only criteria by which Peter chose, judged and promoted men. Nobleman or “pie seller,” Russian, Swiss, Scot or German, Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant or Jew, the Tsar heaped titles, wealth, affection and responsibility on anyone who was willing and competent to serve. Sheremetev, Dolgoruky, Golitsyn and Kurakin were illustrious names long before their bearers devoted themselves to Peter’s service, but they owed their success not to blood but to merit. Menshikov’s father, on the other hand, was a clerk, Yaguzhinsky’s a Lutheran organist, Shafirov’s a converted Jew and Kurbatov’s a serf. Osterman and Makarov began as secretaries; Anthony Devier, the first Police Commissioner of St. Petersburg, began as a Portuguese Jewish cabin boy whom Peter found in Holland and brought back to Russia. Nikita Demidov was a hard-working illiterate metalworker in Tula until Peter, admiring his energy and his success, gave him huge land grants to develop mines in the Urals. Abraham (or Ibrahim) Hannibal was a black Abyssinian prince brought as a slave to Constantinople where he was bought and sent as a present to Peter. The Tsar set him free and made him his godson, sent him to Paris to be educated, and eventually promoted him to General of the Artillery.* These men—Peter’s eagles and eaglets, in Pushkin’s phrase—began with nothing, but when they died, they were princes, counts and barons, and their names were inseparably entwined with Peter’s in the history of Russia.
There is no better example of Peter’s promotion by merit than the career of Ivan Neplyuev, one of Peter’s most famous “fledglings.” Neplyuev, the son of a small landowner in the Novgorod region, was summoned into service in 1715, when he was already twenty-two years old and the father of two children. He was sent to school in Novgorod to learn mathematics, then to the navigation school in Narva, then to the Naval Academy in St. Petersburg. In 1716, he was one of thirty midshipmen serving with the Russian fleet in Copenhagen. From there, Neplyuev followed the Tsar to Amsterdam, whence Peter sent him to Venice to train aboard Venetian galleys. After two years fighting the Turks in the Adriatic and Aegean seas, Neplyuev went on to Genoa, Toulon, Marseilles and Cadiz, where he served six months in the Spanish navy. When he returned to St. Petersburg in June 1720, he was ordered to come to the Admiralty for examination by the Tsar. “I do not know how my comrades received this news,” wrote Neplyuev in his memoirs, “but I did not sleep the whole night and prepared myself as for the Day of Judgment.”
When his turn came, Peter was kindly and, extending his hand to be kissed, said, “You see, brother, that I am tsar, yet there are callous places on my hands, because I wished to give you an example.” As Neplyuev knelt, Peter said, “Stand up, brother, and answer the questions. Do not be afraid. If you know, say so. If you do not know, say so, too.” Neplyuev survived the examination and was given command of a galley.
Almost immediately, however, he was transferred and placed in charge of ship construction in St. Petersburg. Upon taking the assignment, Neplyuev had been advised, “Always speak the truth and never lie. Even though things may be bad for you, the Tsar will be much angrier if you lie.” It was not long before the young shipbuilder had occasion to test this advice. Arriving late at work one morning, he found Peter already there. He considered running home and sending word that he was sick, but then he remembered the advice and walked directly up to Peter. “You see, my friend, that I am here before you,” said Peter, looking up. “I am to blame, Sire,” replied Neplyuev. “Last night, I was with people and I stayed up very late and I was late getting up.” Peter seized him by the shoulder and squeezed it hard. Neplyuev was convinced that he was doomed. “Thanks, my boy, for telling the truth,” said the Tsar. “God will forgive you. All of us are human.”
But Neplyuev was not long in this assignment either. Because of his language skills, he was frequently used as a translator, and in January 1721, still only twenty-eight, he was sent as Russian ambassador to Constantinople, returning home in 1734 to enjoy the estates which Peter had granted him in his absence. Eventually he became a senator. In 1774, during the reign of Catherine the Great, he died at the age of eighty.
Near the end of his reign, in 1722, Peter embodied his passionate belief in meritocracy in a permanent institutional framework, the famous Table of Ranks of the Russian Empire, which set before all young men entering service three parallel ladders of official ranks in the three branches of state service—military, civil and court. Each ladder had fourteen ranks, and each rank had a corresponding rank in the other two. Everyone was to begin his service on the bottom rung, and promotion was to depend not on birth or social status, but strictly on merit and length of service. Thereafter, at least in theory, nobility was of no importance in Russia, and honors and office were open to everyone. The noble titles of Old Russia were not abolished, but they carried no special privileges or distinctions. Commoners and foreigners were encouraged to apply for higher service, and soldiers, sailors, secretaries and clerks who merited notice were given appropriate positions on the Table of Ranks, where, once included, they competed, supposedly on equal terms, with Russian noblemen. Commoners who reached the lowest rank—i.e., the fourteenth on the military table, or the eighth on the civil or court ladder—were granted the status of “hereditary nobleman,” with the right to own serfs and to pass along to their sons the right to enter state service at the bottom rank.
Thus, Peter, who had always given more weight to ability than to birth and who himself had worked his way up through the ranks in the army and the navy, passed his belief along to succeeding generations. This reform endured, and, despite subsequent alterations and inevitable corrosion by special favors and promotions won by bribes, it remained the basis of class structure in the Russian empire. Position on the Table of Ranks largely displaced birth as the measure of a man’s worth, new blood was constantly brought into the army and the bureaucracy, and a man whose father had been a poor landowner or even a serf-soldier from the faraway Volga might find himself rubbing elbows with men who bore the oldest names in Russian history.*
On paper, as written in the decrees which flowed from Peter’s pen, the reforms in administration might conceivably have made the Russian government function like the wheels of a watch. That it did not function this way was due not only to slowness to grasp or unwillingness to change, but also to many layers of corruption in government. Corruption affected not only the finances of the state but its basic efficiency. It made the imported administrative systems, already awkward to understand, almost impossible to operate.
Bribery and embezzlement were traditional in Russian public life, and public service was routinely looked upon as a means of gaining private profit. This practice was so accepted that Russian officials were paid little or no salary; it was taken for granted that they would make their living by accepting bribes. In Peter’s time, only a handful of men in government were said to be honest and imbued with the idea of conscientious service to the state—Sheremetev, Repnin, Rumyantsov, Makarov, Osterman and Yaguzhinsky. The others were loyal to Peter personally, but regarded the state as a cow to be milked.
As a result, the majority of administrators were motivated less by a sense of service to the state than by desire for private gain, mingled with the effort to escape detection and punishment. Thus, two powerful negative motives, greed and fear, became the predominant features of Peter’s bureaucrats. There were chances for immense riches—the vast wealth of Menshikov was an example; there was also a very good chance of torture, the scaffold or the wheel. Yet, whatever Peter did—urge, persuade, cajole, threaten, punish—seemed to make little difference. He realized that force was not enough. “I can turn dice not too badly with my chisel,” he said sadly, “but I cannot turn mules with my cudgel.”
Disappointment followed disappointment, not only at the highest levels. Once, Peter elevated an honest lawyer to a judgeship. In this new position, where his decision could become an object of bribery, the new judge became corrupt. When Peter found out, he not only absolved the judge, but doubled his salary to prevent further temptation. At the same time, however, the Tsar promised that if the judge ever again betrayed his trust, he would surely hang. The judge fervently promised that Peter’s faith was justified—and soon afterward accepted another bribe. Peter hanged him.
The Tsar accepted that he could not enforce complete honesty at every level of government, but he was determined to suppress all forms of corruption which drained the national Treasury. In 1713, a decree called on all citizens to report to the Tsar himself any case of government corruption. The reward of the informer was to be the property of the accused, providing the informer’s charge turned out to be accurate. This seemed too dangerous for most people, and what resulted was a torrent of anonymous letters, many of them maliciously inspired by a wish to pay off personal scores. Peter promulgated another decree, condemning anonymous letters by those who “beneath a show of virtue put out their venom.” He promised his protection to accurate informers, saying, “Any subject who is a true Christian and an honorable servant of his sovereign and his fatherland may without any misgiving report orally or by letter to the Tsar himself.” Eventually, an anonymous letter arrived which accused some of the highest officials of government of corruption on a grand scale. The writer was persuaded to stand up, and a dramatic trial ensued.
Over the years, the system by which villages were required to raise provisions for the army and deliver them to St. Petersburg and other towns through the newly conquered territories created a heavy burden because of transportation difficulties. To deal with these problems, middlemen stepped forward who agreed to make the required deliveries in return for the right to charge a higher price. This practice became a source of innumerable frauds. A number of key figures in the government were involved, conspiring with the deliverers and sometimes taking delivery of the provisions themselves under borrowed names. Although the scandal was widely known, nobody dared to challenge the noblemen and high officials involved by breaking the matter to Peter. Finally, so great was the misery of the people who were being taxed twice to pay for the stolen provisions that one man decided he must inform the Tsar. At the same time, he attempted to save his own neck by remaining anonymous and leaving unsigned letters of accusation in places where Peter went. Peter read one and offered the author not only his protection but a large reward if he would make himself known and could prove what he had charged. The informer appeared and provided the Tsar with unimpeachable evidence that his chief lieutenants were engaged in fraud.
A great investigation commenced early in 1715. Those involved included Prince Menshikov; General-Admiral Apraxin; Prince Matthew Gagarin; Master of the Artillery General Bruce; Vice Governor of St. Petersburg Korsakov; First Lord of the Admiralty Kikin; First Commissioner of the Artillery Sinavin; Senators Opukhtin and Volkonsky, and a large number of civil servants of lesser ranks. The investigation was thorough and turned up much evidence. Apraxin and Bruce, brought before a commission, defended themselves by saying that they had rarely been in St. Petersburg, being mostly at sea or with the army in the field; accordingly, they had been unaware of actions taken behind their backs by their servants. Menshikov, who also had been away for many months commanding the army in Pomerania, was accused of financial dishonesty in his administration of that assignment, of making unlawful profits on government contracts and of wasting over one million roubles of government money and property.
Because Menshikov was so generally hated and because the commission of inquiry was headed by his bitter enemy, Prince Jacob Dolgoruky, the accusations were brought in an exaggerated, vengeful form which made them easier for Menshikov to moderate and partially disprove. Under scrutiny, what turned up was not sheer avarice; a considerable portion of bad management and confusion was blended in and there were many instances of irregularity in which there had been no intention of cheating. Menshikov’s lawful income from his various estates was very large. Frequently, his own revenues had been applied to government uses and, also frequently, he had used public money for his own needs. Much of the irregularity consisted of diverting funds from one purpose to another without keeping proper accounts. Menshikov, for example, had been Governor of St. Petersburg since its founding, a period of more than ten years. During this time, he had received no salary and had repeatedly used his own money for government affairs. Because Peter disliked large palaces and huge receptions, Menshikov had built his grand palace and acted as host at innumerable public and diplomatic functions costing huge sums. Often he was not reimbursed for these expenses, yet Peter expected him to continue in this role. In addition, he had sometimes taken money from his own pocket to deal with state emergencies. In July 1714, Admiral Apraxin had written urgently from Finland that his troops were starving. As Peter was away, Menshikov demanded action by the Senate, but the senators refused to accept any responsibility, whereupon Menshikov boldly requisitioned 200,000 roubles’ worth of supplies on his own account, loaded them aboard ships and sent them to succor Apraxin’s forces.
Nevertheless, there were irregularities which could not be explained away. He was found to owe 144,788 roubles on one account and 202,283 roubles on another. These sums were assessed against him as fines. Menshikov paid the fines in part, but, on petitioning the Tsar, part was forgiven.
Apraxin and Bruce also escaped with heavy fines in recognition of their past services to the nation. But for the others involved, the punishments were grim. The two convicted senators, Volkonsky and Opukhtin, who had incriminated not only themselves but tarnished the reputation of the newly formed Senate, were publicly knouted and had their tongues seared with hot iron for breaking their oaths. Korsakov, the Vice Governor of St. Petersburg, was publicly knouted. Three others had their noses slit after a knouting and then went to the gallows, while eight others, convicted of lesser offenses, were stretched on the ground to be beaten with batogs by soldiers. When Peter ordered them to stop, the soldiers shouted, “Father, let us beat them a little more, for the thieves have stolen our bread!” Some were exiled to Siberia. Kikin, who had been a special favorite of Peter’s, was condemned to exile and his property was confiscated, but Catherine interceded for him, and both his office and his property were restored to him. Four years later, Kikin was tried again, this time for his role in the affair of the Tsarevich Alexis, and this time he lost his head.
Anonymous letters and public denunciations were a haphazard means of rooting out corruption, and in March 1711 Peter created a bureau of official informers called fiscals. They were to be headed by a chief, the Ober-Fiscal, whose assignment was to track down and report to the Senate all offenders, no matter what their rank. This kind of systematic, official informing was new to Russia. Previously, Russian law had permitted arrest and trial on the basis of a private accusation, but accusation was a double-edged weapon. The accuser had to present himself and prove his charges, and if the charges turned out to be false, the accuser rather than the accused was tortured and punished. Now, however, the accusers were permanent officers of the law, safe from revenge. Naturally, accusations multiplied, and soon the 500 fiscals were the most hated men in Russia. Even the members of the Senate, their nominal employers, feared these diligent spies. In April 1712, three senior fiscals complained to Peter that senators deliberately ignored their submitted reports, that Senators Jacob Dolgoruky and Gregory Plemyannikov had described them as “Antichrists and rogues” and that they dared not even physically approach most senators. Later in 1712, the Metropolitan, Stephen Yavorsky, denounced the fiscals in a sermon, declaring that they held everyone at their mercy while they themselves were above the law. Yet, Peter did not intercede, and the fiscals continued their hated work.
The most dedicated of the fiscals was Alexis Nesterov, who eventually became the Ober-Fiscal. This zealot labored with a fury, poking into every aspect of government, denouncing his victims with fanatical malice and at one point even bringing his own son to judgment. Nesterov’s most prominent prey was Prince Matthew Gagarin, who since 1708 had been the Governor of Siberia. Because of the great distance of his province from the capital, Gagarin ruled almost as a monarch beyond the Urals. Among his responsibilities was supervision of the China trade which passed through Nerchinsk and which was now a government monopoly. Nesterov, through his network of spies, discovered that Gagarin was cheating the government of revenue by allowing private merchants to trade illegally and by trading illegally himself. By this means, he had amassed an enormous fortune; his table was set every day for dozens of guests, and near his bed hung an icon of the Virgin decorated with diamonds worth 130,000 roubles. The record was not all black; on the contrary, Gagarin had made a substantial contribution to the development of Siberia by promoting industry and trade and opening up the mineral resources of the vast region. In addition, Gagarin was highly popular throughout the province for the mildness of his rule. When he was arrested, 7,000 Swedish prisoners working in Siberia petitioned the Tsar to pardon him.
Nesterov’s first report on Gagarin’s dishonesty was submitted to Peter in 1714, but the Tsar refused to pursue the matter. In 1717, Nesterov presented a more incriminating dossier, and Peter appointed a commission of Guards officers to investigate. Gagarin was arrested and confessed to irregularities and even illegalities, begging pardon and permission to end his days doing penance in a monastery. Everybody believed that Peter would pardon the Governor in recognition of his influence and services. But the Tsar, furious that his repeated decrees about honesty had been flouted, determined to make an example. Gagarin was condemned and publicly hanged in St. Petersburg in September 1718.
Nesterov wielded his power for almost ten years. Then the Ober-Fiscal himself was caught receiving presents which, although almost inconsequential in size, attracted the eye of his many ill-wishers. Quickly, the accumulated weight of enmity crushed him. He was tried, convicted and condemned to be broken alive on the wheel. The sentence was carried out in the square opposite Trezzini’s new building for the colleges on Vasilevsky Island. By then, Nesterov was an old man with white hair. As he lay on the wheel, still alive, Peter, who happened to be visiting the colleges, went to the window and looked out. Seeing Nesterov and pitying him, the Tsar ordered the Ober-Fiscal’s head to be cut off immediately so that he would not suffer longer.
The worst offender, whom even Nesterov had never dared to accuse, was Menshikov. Again and again, the Prince presumed on the indulgence of his long-suffering master. He knew that Peter needed him; for any man who occupies the lonely pinnacle of power, such a friend is essential. He was Peter’s confidant, the interpreter of his thoughts and executor of his decisions, his closest companion for drinking, the governor of Peter’s son, his cavalry commander, his right arm. In public, he was careful to treat the Tsar with exaggerated respect; in private, he knew exactly how near the line he could go. If he passed it unwittingly, he received a blow from Peter’s fist or cudgel. He accepted these with good humor and never sulked, which further endeared him. Yet, behind Peter’s back, Menshikov showed a different face. To inferiors, he was domineering; to rivals, insolent. He had boundless ambition, his manners were coarse, he was an implacable enemy and he was bitterly hated as well as widely feared.
As Peter’s reign progressed, the power of this royal favorite steadily grew, and after Poltava it knew few bounds. Menshikov was Governor General of St. Petersburg, First Senator, Knight of the Order of St. Andrew, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, and bore titles from the Kings of Poland, Denmark and Prussia. It was commonly said that he could travel across the empire from Riga on the Baltic to Derbent on the Caspian and always sleep on one of his own estates. His palace on the Neva housed a glittering court of gentlemen, chamberlains, pages and Parisian cooks who prepared dinners of 200 dishes served on golden plates. Making his way through the streets in a fan-shaped carriage with his coat of arms emblazoned in gold on the door and a golden crown on the roof, drawn by six horses caparisoned in red and gold, he was always accompanied by liveried servants, musicians and an escort of dragoons to clear a way through the crowds. Yet, although Peter in affection and gratitude had endowed Menshikov with enormous wealth, it was never enough. Like many another man raised from nothing to vast power, he cared greatly for the trappings which would display that power. When not enough came in as bribes and gifts, he stole rapaciously. Despite the huge fines fixed on him by Peter, he was always rich and, after a brief period of disgrace, always returned to renewed favor. To the foreign ambassadors, expecting that each successive scandal would be Menshikov’s last, then seeing him rise again, radiant and awesome, the Prince seemed a phoenix.
Often, Peter simply overlooked Menshikov’s behavior. At one point, the Senate found evidence of irregularity in Menshikov’s purchases of ammunition. They asked the Prince for an explanation, but Menshikov arrogantly brushed them aside, refusing to answer in writing or sign his name to anything, sending instead a junior officer with an oral reply. The senators then drew up a list of the principal charges and evidence against Menshikov and placed the paper on a table in front of the Tsar’s chair. When Peter came in, he picked up the paper, ran his eye quickly over it and put it back on the table without a word. Finally, Tolstoy dared to ask what his reaction was. “Nothing,” replied Peter. “Menshikov will always be Menshikov.”
Nevertheless, Peter’s indulgence had limits. Once, when he had deprived Menshikov temporarily of his immense estates in the Ukraine and compelled him to pay a fine of 200,000 roubles, Menshikov retaliated by taking down all the brocade and satin hangings and removing all the elegant furniture from his palace on the Neva. A few days later, when Peter came to visit, he was surprised to find the house almost empty. “What does this mean?” he asked. “Alas, Your Majesty, I was obliged to sell everything in order to settle with the Treasury,” said Menshikov. Peter stared at him for a minute. “I know better,” he roared. “None of these games with me. If when I come back in twenty-four hours your house is not furnished as becomes a Serene Prince and Governor of St. Petersburg, the fine will be doubled!” On Peter’s return, the palace was furnished more magnificently than before.
Peter’s first warning to Menshikov came in 1711 after the Prince was accused of extortion during his command of the army in Poland. (Menshikov excused himself by arguing that he had taken only from the Poles.) “Mend your ways or you will answer to me with your head,” Peter threatened, and for a while Menshikov obeyed. In 1715, he was charged again, and again he escaped by paying a fine. Nevertheless, after the 1715 trial Peter exhibited a new coolness toward his old friend. He continued to go to Menshikov’s house and wrote him amiable, even affectionate letters, but never fully trusted him again. Menshikov circumspectly adjusted to this new relationship. In his own letters, he dropped the familiar forms of address he had always used to Peter and switched to a more formal, respectful style as became a subject addressing an autocrat. He was abjectly apologetic, invoking Peter’s old friendship and his own past services whenever the Tsar’s mood darkened. The Prince had a powerful protector in Catherine, who was always ready to intercede on his behalf. On one of these occasions, Peter acceded to his wife’s pleas, but warned her for the future: “Menshikov was conceived in iniquity, brought into the world in sin and will end his life in deceit. Unless he reforms, he will surely lose his head.”
Menshikov was not out of trouble for long. At the beginning of January 1719, new charges were brought against him. He was summoned before a military court-martial, along with General-Admiral Apraxin and Senator Jacob Dolgoruky, and charged with maladministration of Ingria and embezzlement of 21,000 roubles meant for the purchase of cavalry horses. Menshikov admitted taking the money, but explained in his defense that the government still owed him 29,000 roubles which he had never been able to collect; therefore, when this money came into his hands, he had pocketed it in partial repayment. The court accepted the extenuating circumstances, but still condemned him for violating military laws. Both he and Apraxin were sentenced to the loss of all their estates and honors, and ordered to give up their swords and confine themselves in their homes until confirmation of the sentences by the Tsar. Both men went home to await the blow. Peter first confirmed the sentences and then, a day later, to everyone’s surprise, canceled them in recognition of former services. Both men were restored to full rank. They paid severe fines, but nothing more. Peter simply could not afford to lose them.
For the time, it seemed, Menshikov was subdued. Soon after, the Prussian minister wrote, “The good Prince Menshikov has been well plucked. The Tsar asked him how many peasants he possessed in Ingria. He confessed to seven thousand, but His Majesty, who was much better informed, told him he was welcome to keep his seven thousand but he must give up all above that figure—in other words, eight thousand more. Menshikov, from anxiety and wondering what will happen to him next, has grown quite ill and as lean as a dog, but he has saved his neck once more and been pardoned till Satan tempts him again.”
Nevertheless, true to Peter’s prediction that “Menshikov will always be Menshikov,” the Prince continued to swindle his master. In 1723, he was caught again and brought before an investigatory commission. He had been granted Mazeppa’s estates near Baturin, and in 1724 he was accused of having concealed there over 30,000 serfs who had either fled the obligation of military service or run away from their landowners. Menshikov relied again on the advocacy of the good-natured Tsaritsa and presented a petition to Catherine at her coronation in which he laid the blame on Mazeppa, saying that the concealment of serfs had been done before he inherited the estates. Again, he was forgiven in greater part, but investigations were still continuing when Peter died, after which they were quashed by Catherine.
Peter, a man of simple tastes, was distressed and disgusted by the shameless rapacity of his lieutenants clutching at every opportunity to rob the state. On all sides, he saw bribery, embezzlement and extortion, and the Treasury’s money “flowing from everybody’s sleeves.” Once, after hearing a Senate report listing further corruption, he summoned Yaguzhinsky in a rage and ordered the immediate execution of any official who robbed the state of even enough to pay for a piece of rope. Yaguzhinsky, writing down Peter’s command, lifted his pen and asked, “Has Your Majesty reflected on the consequences of this decree?” “Go ahead and write,” said Peter furiously. “Does Your Majesty wish to live alone in the empire without any subjects?” persevered Yaguzhinsky. “For we all steal. Some take a little, some take a great deal, but all of us take something.” Peter laughed, shook his head sadly and went no further.
Yet he persevered to the end. Now and then, as with Gagarin, he made an example of a prominent delinquent, hoping to deter the smaller ones. Once when Nesterov asked, “Are only the branches to be cut off or are the roots to be cut out?” Peter replied, “Destroy everything, roots and branches alike.” It was a hopeless task; Peter could not compel honesty. In this sense, the Tsar’s admiring contemporary Ivan Pososhkov was right when he wrote, “The great monarch works hard and accomplishes nothing. The Tsar pulls uphill alone with the strength of ten, but millions pull downhill.”
* After his death, Hannibal gained immortality when he became the maternal grandfather of Alexander Pushkin and the central figure in Pushkin’s novel (only a forty-page fragment of which was completed) The Negro of Peter the Great.
* Ironically, under the Table of Ranks, Lenin, born Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov, was an hereditary Russian nobleman. This title was inherited from his father, Ilya, the son of a serf, who had gone to Kazan University and become an educator. Taking over responsibility for primary education in Simbirsk province on the Volga in 1874, he raised the number of primary schools in the province from 20 to 434 in fourteen years. For this achievement, he was promoted to the rank of Actual State Councilor in the civil service, the fourth rank from the top and the equivalent of a major general in the army. When Lenin’s elder brother Alexander Ulyanov was executed in 1887 for attempting to assassinate Tsar Alexander III, the title passed automatically to the future founder of the Soviet state. In 1892, when Lenin, at twenty-one, applied to St. Petersburg for permission to take examinations in law, he signed himself “Nobleman Vladimir Ulyanov.”