Transcript The cultural change in the 18th century Russia

Peter I: policy and the cultural change
in the 18th century Russia
The monument to Peter I by Falconet, “Petro primo Catharina secunda”
“The Bronze Horseman”
Two historical eras: before and after
Peter I
Kolomenskoe, the countryside palace of
Alexey Mikhailovich
Kadriorg, the palace built for
Catherine I
Peter the Great’s “Cultural revolution”
(1682-1725)
A hero ?
or a tyrant?
The reasons of Petrine reforms
• crisis of Russian
traditionalism in the
17th century
• Territorial expansion
and international
competition for
territories
• The Military revolution
in the West
Meeting the West
• The German Quarter in
Moscow
• “The Grand Embassy”,
1697-98 (Livonia,
Germany, Holland,
Great Britain)
• The second foreign trip
1717 (France)
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Peter I’s rule
• 1682 Peter is declared the tsar. His sister Sofia
rules;
• 1689 Peter married Evdokia Lopuhina and
removes Sofia
• 1682, 1697 Musketeers’ rebellions
• 1698 Peter’s Grand embassy
• 1703 foundation of St Petersburg
• 1711 establishment of the Senate
• 1712 marriage to Catherine I (Marta Skavronska)
Military policy
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1686 Russia as part of the anti-Turkish league
1695 unsuccessful campaign at Azov
1696 the victory at Azov
1700 peace with Turkey and beginning of Northern War
1703-04 conquest of Narva, Tartu and Nienshants
1709 victory at Poltava (defeat of Karl XII)
1710 taking Riga and Tallinn
1713-14 victories at Finland, Gangut and Aland islands
1721 the treaty of Nystad (Uusikaupunki): Russia got
Livonia, Inria, south-east finland
• 1722 war against Persia
The “Great” Northern War
• Russia’s allies: Poland,
Denmark
• Poltava as a turning
point
• Reforms: legislative,
military, building of the
fleet;
Expansion of the Russian Empire under
Peter I
Peter I’s reforms
• Triggered by the war
• Military reform: regular army (300, 000)
• The fleet: 48 war ships, 800 galers; 28, 000
crew
• Administrative
• The law on succession (1714)
Ideology of Great Northern War and
its outcomes
• Military conquest as a
restitution of the
“fathers’ legacy”
• War to the glory of God
• Restoring Orthodox
faith
• Roman and Grek
mythology
• Imperial symbolism
from 1721
Main cultural innovations 1698-1721
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Calendar
Change of dress code
Women in public life
Secularisation of culture
Court life modelled on
European courts (balls,
theatre, masquerades)
• A first museum
“Kunstkamera”
Religion
• Abolishing of the office of
patriarch
• Rationalisation of church
administration (Spiritual
Regulation and the Holy
Synod)
• Struggle against
superstitions and
monasticism
• Monasteries to be socially
useful
Aleksander-Nevsky Lavra, 1710-13 (to
commemorate the victory of St
Alexander Nevsky of 1240.
Rationalisation
Table of ranks 1722
• 14 numbered grades for
civil service and nobility
• Social mobility by merit
not by kin (in theory)
• The army as a faster
track to nobility
• Emergence of
bureaucracy (chinovnik)
Resistance to Peter I’s reforms
• Resistance of the old
nobility and the clergy
• Conspiracies
• The deepening of
religious dissent
• Popular rumours (Peter
was a changeling,
emergence of
impostors)
The consequences of Peter I’s reforms
• opening of Russian culture to the West
(classical culture)
• Cultural conflict (traditionalism)
• The emergence of Imperial ideology
• Synchronicity with Europe
• Nineteenth century as a synthesis
After Peter
• Female rulers (the rule of
succession): Catherine I,
Anne, Elizabeth, Catherine
II;
• Intrigues and coup de etats
at court;
• Russia as an absolutist
monarchy
• Enlightenment under
Catherine II;
• the change of Style:
“Elizabethan Rococo”,
Baroque;
Catherine II
Evaluations of Peter I in Russian
culture
• Peter as the architect of Russian history, a
genius, that cut out the window to the West;
• Peter as a “man of the people”; builder of the
Russian nation;
• An embodiment of the Imperial power,
crushing the small nations and the individuals
• Alexander Pushkin: duality of Peter’s image
Alexander Pushkin “Bronze horseman”
• For now he seemed to see
The awful Emperor, quietly,
With momentary anger burning,
His visage to Yevgeny turning!
And rushing through the empty
square,
He hears behind him as it were
Thunders that rattle in a chorus,
A gallop ponderous, sonorous,
That shakes the pavement. At
full height,
Illumined by the pale moonlight,
With arm outflung, behind him
riding
• See, the bronze horseman comes,
bestriding
The charger, clanging in his flight.
All night the madman flees; no
matter
Where he may wander at his will,
Hard on his track with heavy
clatter
There the bronze horseman
gallops still.
Thereafter, whensoever straying
Across that square Yevgeny went
By chance, his face was still
betraying
Disturbance and bewilderment.
As though to ease a heart
tormented
“The dark side” of Peter the Great
Alexander Benois, “The Bronze copperman”
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His hand upon it he would clap
In haste, put off his shabby cap,
And never raise his eyes demented,
And seek some byway unfrequented.
A little island lies in view
Along the shore; and here, belated,
Sometimes with nets a fisher-crew
Will moor and cook their long-awaited
And meager supper. Hither too
Some civil servant, idly floating,
Will come upon a Sunday, boating.
That isle is desolate and bare;
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No blade of grass springs anywhere.
Once the great flood had sported, driving
The frail hut thither. Long surviving,
It floated on the water there
Like some black bush. A vessel plying
Bore it, last spring, upon her deck.
They found it empty, all a wreck;
And also, cold and dead and lying
Upon the threshold, they had found
My crazy hero. In the ground
His poor cold body there they hurried,
And left it to God’s mercy, buried.
–Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin, from the
conclusion of Медный всадник:
Петербургская повесть (The Bronze
Horseman) first published in excerpt in
Библиотека для чтения (1834)(W. Lednicki
transl. 1955)