Peter the Great and His Accomplishments
Peter the Great and His Accomplishments
In 1629, a young and determined prince named Peter Alexeyevich Romanov took the crown of Russia. However, Peter inherited a state where the real power was held by a large group of traditional landowning elite, known as the boyard nobility. After a weak rule by Michael Romanov and his son, who was backed up by the nobility, the traditional Russian service system was breaking down, as the nobility attempted to avoid duty in the army. As a result, the whole country was in decay and the army in tatters. Peter the Great, however, decided to reverse the trend and decided to consolidate what little power was given to him by his weak predecessors. In an attempt to make Russia a great Baltic power, Peter the Great would permanently change the Russian military and the social structure of his country
The greatest and most remembered accomplishment of Peters reign was his military reforms. Peter was a tsar know for his towering stature and dynamic personality. In fact, he put all his energy into making Russia a great military power and winning international prestige for his country. After learning from early mistake against the Ottomans and in his defeat to the Swedes at Nava in 1702, Peter enacted his toughest yet most effective reforms. He tightened up the old service system of Russia, where nobles got land by joining the army, and demanded them to serve for life. Peter knew that a great army needed skilled technicians and experts, Peter created schools and universities to produce them. He demanded a five year compulsory education for every young nobleman, and lured talented foreigners with honorable positions within his army. Lastly, Peter also established a fourteen-tiered war bureaucracy where everyone had to start from the bottom and work the way up. Because Peter did not give the nobility special privilege in the army but allowed all soldiers of all class to have equal opportunity for promotion, he opened his army to talent as all talented soldiers, regardless of class, can achieve high positions in the army bureaucracy. Peters policy was a success. By 1709, he had a permanent standing army of 200,000 and was able to win the decisive battle against the Swedes at Poltava. After Poltava, the Swedes never really regained the offensive. By 1721, Peters large war machine had all but crushed the small but disciplined Swedish army. As a result of the war, Peter accomplished what no other tsar before him had done: acquiring Latvia and Estonia, and parts of Poland. Peter changed Russia into