2022/06/14 by Tom Blowers
#Peter the Great #Russia #westernisation.
paper · doi:10.5526/esj115
The reign of Peter the Great was exceptional as a period of transformation. It combined all the conflicting tendencies that had marked Russian development for years: the seemingly incompatible extremes of Russia balanced between Europe and Asia, between Muscovite traditional culture and Western civilisation, and between Eastern despotism and European Enlightenment. Thus, it is the intention of this work to determine the extent to which Peter the Great achieved a genuine ‘westernisation’ of Russia in implementing his unprecedented programme of reform consciously based upon western design. Utilising the diverse wealth of secondary literature concerning this subject, this work will seek to establish a balanced understanding of Petrine westernisation, one that desirably accommodates areas of both ‘revolutionary’ transformation, when placed in their Russian context, but also those areas of limited change. Alexander Chubarov states that ‘this debate touches the centrality of what Russia was and is’ (1999: 35). Thus, the controversy surrounding Peter the Great’s transformation of Russia continues to represent a debate about the Russian nation, its roots, identity, and place in the wider world.