Peter the Great: His Life and World By Robert K. Massie
Robert K. Massie won my heart with his book about Catherine the Great, so I definitely had to read the one about Peter as well. I cannot believe that I postponed it for so long. This will be one of the best books I've read this year. Massie writes in a clear and concise manner, spicing up the story with ample details which nonetheless never burden the line of narration. The book is perfectly suited both for serious history students as well as those of us who simply enjoy reading history. Indeed this huge tome was so well written, compelling, suspenseful and dramatic at certain points, that it reads like a real page turner.
What I mostly enjoyed in the book was the fact that not only was Peter's portrayal as true and extensive as possible, but also that the author took great care to represent the bigger picture, including extended depictions of many other major - and minor - players of the era, both in Europe and in Russia. We really do get to learn all about Peter's world, from the life of the average Russian peasant to the role of the Holy Roman Empire in European politics. Massie has the amazing ability to handle the intertwined paths of European diplomacy with stunning balance and evenhandedness. He neither turns his protagonists into saints, nor fails to find the deeper reasons underneath seemingly irrational behaviors. The description of Peter's relationship with his son and heir Alexis was blood chilling, and I had to admire the author's decisiveness to not take parts in a very messed-up situation.
Peter has been idealized, condemned, analyzed again and again, and still ... he remains essentially mysterious. One quality which no one disputes however is his phenomenal energy. He was a force of nature, and perhaps for this reason no final judgment will ever be delivered.
And while no final judgment may exist, this exquisite book will be a true treasure for all those who wish to learn more about Peter and his world. 9781842121160 When I want to learn a great deal in a single book, I turn to a biography. When I want to be completely inundated with information, I look to Robert K. Massie and his handful of well-crafted biographies of the Romanovs. Not for the weak of arm, Massie offers up this lengthy and detailed biography of Peter the Great, whose reign in the late 17th and into the 18th centuries left a significant mark on Russia and the world as a whole.
Peter Alekseyevich Romanov was born to Tsar Alexis and his second wife, Natalya Naryshkina, in 1682. Named for the apostle, Peter was a robust blessing to a royal family that was plagued with issues when it came to potential heirs. The tsar struggled to see how his bloodline would continue as rulers of the country, as his male heirs were either weak or died at an early age. Peter’s birth ushered in new hope for Russia and the Romanovs as a dynastic entity. Massie speaks of Peter’s upbringing in some detail, offering up random facts that the reader may find highly amusing. One such fact, that the royals used dwarves as servants and playmates to the young children to acclimate them to seeing ‘small people’. Peter’s health was accompanied by a great height, topping out at 6 foot seven inches in adulthood. While he towered over others, Peter was quite slim, which made him appear less than rugged, as one might expect a ruler to be. However, he was always quite keen to learn and showed much aptitude when given tasks. This curiosity and active nature would prove useful in the coming years.
When his father died at a young age, Peter was thrust into the position of tsar at ten. Massie talks about the political struggle for the next ruler and how many favoured the young Peter, while others wanted Ivan, one of the surviving sons from the first marriage. Both boys became co-tsars, with a regency put into place for a time. Peter revelled in this, as he was able to fine tune his skills and was quite hands-on. He was said to have taken to sailing and rubbed elbows with the sailors on many occasions, wanting to be ‘one of the boys’ and not treated as royalty. Ivan was sickly and chose to stay out of the limelight, passing his days and keeping the title only because it was pushed upon him.
When Peter became the sole Tsar of Russia on Ivan’s death, he began to shape the country in his own image. He chose to leave the confines of the country to explore Europe and help connect Russia with the outside world. No tsar had ever left the country in peacetime, though Peter was happy to break that tradition. With no diplomatic footprint anywhere, Peter assembled a group of men to travel with him and called it the Embassy Tour, in which he went to see how some of the European powers were engaging in technology, politics, and diplomacy. Peter knew that there was an instability across the continent and wanted to forge some allies ahead of any outbreak of war. Massie offers some interesting mini-biographies as Peter travelled, including Louis XIV (the Sun King) of France and William of Orange of the Netherlands and England. The trip, which took eighteen months, offered Peter a view of the area and helped him better understand how backward Russia was in comparison to their neighbours. Much would have to change if the country were called upon share its insights, on and off the battlefield, in the coming years.
With this new insight into how he might make Russia a great power in the world, Peter sought to bring about a number of changes. He modernised things by pushing back against the strong hold the church had over citizens as it related to their dress, pulled the country out of an arcane calendar system (choosing to tie it to one used around the world), and took a look at having Russia make a political imprint on Europe. Massie turns his focus on King Charles XII of Sweden, another European leader who is soon to have interactions with Peter. The two leaders would clash over territory between their two countries repeatedly, fighting completely different styles. Massie goes into great detail with this interaction, as well as clashes with the Ottoman Empire, which the curious war history buff can soak up at their leisure.
Massie peppers the biography with mention of Peter’s progeny and wives. Beginning with Eudoxia Feodorovna Lopukhina, she and Peter married young and had a son, Alexei Petrovich. Alexei would become the tsarevich, a title and standing that would become important in the years to come. However, Peter and Eudoxia had a falling out and he sent her to a nunnery for the latter part of her life, which led to a great distancing between the tsar and tsarevich. Years later, while fighting the Swedes for the first time, Peter encountered the young Lithuanian Marta Samuilovna Skavronskaya, who would one day become Empress Catherine. Massie again mentions this second wife in passing, though letters between the two show the passion they had for one another. When Tsarevich Alexei grew to adulthood, he sought to reconnect with his father, if only to scold him for his long-standing estrangement. Peter and Alexei did enjoy some time together as the tsar continued to expand Russia’s power across Europe. However, there was an ongoing concern about Alexei’s fidelity towards his father, which proves to be a theme in the latter portion of the biography, to the point that Peter debated sending his progeny to a monastery, where he could do no harm. Things took a turn for the worse and Massie details what is sure to be one of the most surprising aspects of Peter’s life, showing how ruthless he could be to protect his position of tsar.
As the biography begins is climactic end, Massie illustrates the impact of Peter’s various decisions and how it helped to shape Russia throughout the rest of the Romanov Dynasty. As any ruler with a dash of narcissism, Peter began the creation of a new and vibrant city to depict the birth of a new Russia. While Moscow remained a key city, the building of St. Petersburg showed some of the grand fortifications that Peter felt would exemplify some of the strength Russia had shown in battle. There was also a new political system put in place, which included a Senate and colleges, that Massie aptly called a Council of Ministers, to assist Peter in running the massive country. While ultimate power rested with the tsar, the depth of experience in the political system helped Russia compete with its European brothers. One final decision made by Peter that shocked the country was to amend the act of succession, removing the idea of primogeniture, allowing the tsar to choose his successor. Peter turned to his long-time wife, who was crowned in an elaborate ceremony. Massie discusses this, as well as the decision’s fallout, in the final pages of the biography. Not long after Catherine’s coronation, Peter fell ill and died, leaving Russia with its first female ruler.
While I am no expert when it comes to Russian history, I feel as though I have a better understanding of the country and its modern place in the European power structure. This came from understanding Peter Alekseyevich Romanov and his choices to remove many of the impediments that kept Russia from being able to grow. Massie takes a great deal of time (over one thousand printed pages) to make his point and offers the reader many wonderful examples throughout the piece. Any reader with the patience to explore this biography is in for a treat, not least because Massie was required to write in direct opposition to many of the Soviet historians of the day. While Peter may not have been ideal from a Marxist perspective, as Massie argues throughout, his life was anything but dull. The amount of research that went into creating this book is astounding and there is no doubt that the thorough chapters used to depict much of his life add another layer to Massie’s already stellar work. I am not surprised that he won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for this piece and am sure that many other accolades were bestowed upon him in the years that followed. While the tome is massive and the amount of information is overwhelming, anyone seeking to understand how Russia entered the modern era need look no further than Peter the Great and thank Robert K. Massie for paving the way!
Kudos, Mr. Massie, for this wonderful piece. I knew nothing of the man or how Russia evolved, but can speak with a little more authority now. I cannot wait to find and read more of your amazing work.
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A Book for All Seasons, a different sort of Book Challenge: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/... 9781842121160 It All Starts with Peter.
All Russian leaders since 1725 have looked to Peter the Great, whether 19th Century autocrats, Soviet dictators or modern politicians. The benchmark seems to be set with him. But who was this almost mysterious figure, who transformed Russia from a medieval backwater to a major player in the European balance of power? Robert K Massie tells us with ease in the Pulitzer Prize wining historical biography.
Although hefty, coming in at 855 pages of reading pages, plus the bibliography, index and notes it is not only for die hards. This is true accessible history as it is a beautiful piece of literature. A flew through this in no time and read to enjoy it and soak up the information, not to just come to the end.
Peter’s story is unique and cannot be missed if you are interested in Russian or Early Modern history. He is a major player in both senses. Being made joint Tsar in the only western ceremony where two male monarchs were crowned at the same time for the same state, Peter like many great kings had to overcome difficulty and dominating figures in his youth (Edward I and III of England come to mind) to grow and rule. In his natural curiosity and ceaseless energy he turned Russia’s eye to the west, innovated, reformed and built.
The story is epic, the backdrop is fascinating and the writing pulls it all together. A man who saw his family and protectors brutally murdered by the Streltsy (a version of the Royal guard), betrayed by his half sister, victory and then defeat against the Ottoman Empire and ultimate glory in the Great Northern War against the Swedes. St Petersburg was his project and his alone, the learning and skills obtained from the Great Embassy and his willingness to reform drove Russia into a wealthy, powerful and confident nation by the time of his death. Amazing he left no national debt at all!
In recent times there has been a tendency to feel embarrassed about Peter in Russia as he has been called a tyrant. This comes from the brutal oppression of the Streltsy and those involved in the scandal of his son, the Tsarevich Alexis, who Peter even had tortured. It is possible he even killed his son, this may have come about indirectly as a result of the torture itself. The truth is no one knows. However, this is not a reason to shy away from him as being a national icon, his achievements as an exceptional human are too great. This has to be put into context of the time and what was expected of him. He is not a Stalin or a Hitler.
If I had to pull criticisms of the book I would say that there are no sources cited, no references highlighted. Only a select bibliography at the back. Also the book was written in 1980, when the USSR was still clinging on. Times have changed and we now know more, due to more Russian archives being accessible (for example he is unaware in this book that Nicholas II and his family have been found). Sadly Mr Massie is no longer with us to provide an updated edition. With that said, this is still the benchmark for Peter I biographies and I feel that a revision or re look at him is needed. It’s all there, in black ink, in this book. I really enjoyed it.
9781842121160 53rd book of 2022
Massie's biography of Peter the Great is absolutely wonderful. I had read very little about Peter the Great up until this point, and I found this to be a great jumping-off point to start diving into more specific aspects of Peter the Great's life and times. One thing I found very interesting was how much Peter the Great opened Russia up to the West. Bringing in much of the arts and culture of the West that had never been seen in the county before, as well as his love of ships which led him to the creation of the first Russian Navy. Five stars. 9781842121160 9781842121160
This lengthy biography of Russian Tsar Peter the Great is thoroughly entertaining with all the strengths and weaknesses of a blockbuster. No prior knowledge of the period required.
Maybe because it is a biography it doesn't give much attention to the extent of the terror and suffering caused by the massive mobilisation and movements of population caused by his military and civil policies (Anisimov's book The Reforms of Peter the Great Progress Through Coercion in Russia is great on this even if the title does sum up the argument). Nor is there a rich study of his inner circle. The oddities of his reign don't get a full mention either - as for example visible in the collection in the Kunstkammer in St.Petersburg, (although the giant penis that Peter collected from one of his soldiers was removed, allegedly out of a concern for public morality, already in soviet times).
Massie's book takes, in contrast to the Anisimov, a deeply traditional view of Peter which was that he single-handedly pulled Russia out of barbaric backwardness and steered it into the European mainstream. The problem is the easy and disturbing assumption that military power determines the place of a state in the world and that whatever measures are taken to achieve military success are acceptable, there's an implicit acceptance that military dominance is the be all and end all of being a country that one may not want to accept uncritically. Taking a longer view the role and in particular the glorification of the use of violence in bringing about sudden, and in many cases unsustainable change, was a precedent that was to have a lasting impact on Russian politics both in terms of internal policy and foreign policy, and one that the 'little man' of Pushkin's The Bronze Horseman and his really life equivalents would not appreciate, nor is there much appreciate of how Peter was not his own creator but following in well established footsteps - for example Klyuchevsky's golden oldie view that Peter never succeeded in anything apart from projects that his father Tsar Aleksei had also attempted.
Generally weak on context, poor on Peter's circle and on his impacts (or the lack thereof). But on the plus side it does mention how Peter and his wife, Catherine, had their hair shaved off and made into wigs while on campaign in Dagestan which they would take off during the day to keep cool and put on at night to stay warm, as well as the buckets of grain liquor doled out to invited revellers at the Summer Palace.
Best read and appreciated as entertainment rather than history. But as readable and a massive a narrative biography as one can more or less easily get in English.
9781842121160 This is my second Robert K. Massie book after Nicholas and Alexandra. I really like the way he writes his books as they read like a history textbook and a novel meshed together. Again the author covers a lot of material related to Peter the Great and gives relevant information without going off topic. I learned a great deal as Peter the Great's reign was anything but dull. His building of Russia and St. Petersburg and the founding of the Russian Navy are only brief examples of his life.
I enjoyed Part Three: The Great Northern War (pgs. 289-515). This was an on-going struggle with Charles XII and Sweden given in full details throughout the segment. Peter the Great employed scorched-earth warfare to decimate the invading Swedish army as they deceptively retreated into the Russian winter. The author palaces helpful maps to illustrate the Battles of Narva and the Battle of Poltava in the war with Sweden. I enjoyed this segment of the book.
Secondly, chapter 19 Fire and Knout (pgs. 244-261) covered the Streltsy Rebellion. In this interesting chapter Peter the Great swiftly crushed this military insurrection and severely punished the culprits. The four rebellious regiments who thought they could take over when Peter the Great was away were only met with torture, trial, and execution.
Not all the men of the four regiments were executed. Peter reduced the sentences to 500 soldiers under twenty years of age from death to branding on the right cheek and exile. Others had their noses or ears lopped off to mark them hideously as participants in treason. Throughout Peter's reign, noseless, earless, branded men, evidence of both the Tsar's wrath and his mercy, roamed the edges of his realm. pg. 258
Great book! I learned a great deal and I enjoyed the reading. Highly recommended for history buffs. Thanks! 9781842121160 History is safe in the hands of Robert K. Massie as his meticulously researched biography Of Peter the Great, his life and world really is a breathtaking Journey back into the Russia of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century , warts and all. Peter The Great was one of the most transformational leaders in European history and while I was familiar with some aspects of his reign I now feel very informed and complete having read this wonderful book.
This is my third book by Robert K. Massie and a great deal of time and attention is needed to invest in one of his books as his attention to detail and research into events and characters is remarkable and this is the reason I took an unusual approach to reading this tomb of a book. I decided I would read this over a three month period as it is heavy going with all the Russian names, events, battles, dates and characters to keep track of but I just LOVED every moment spent in the company of this book. Having read quite a lot of Books on the rulers of Russia over the years, this is up there with my favourite Nicholas and Alexandra also by Mr Massie.
The reader gets a no holes barred view back into history as the author delves deep into the life of this intriguing historical figure and his many achievements in Russian history and also his relationships and the cruelty he inflicted. I thought the author portrayed his subject in a very balanced way.
While this is quite a lengthy read it is written in a flowing almost novel like style which is vivid and captures the reader’s attention from the very beginning. We also learn a great deal from the book about other European leaders such as Charles XII of Sweden which was interesting.
I loved the addition of the colour illustrations in the centre of the copy I purchased.
I am so delighted to have finally added this amazing paperback book to my Russian collection of books and I continue to be fascinated and intrigued by Russian history and look forward to making space on my Real Life Bookshelf for more great reads.
I recommend this book for history lovers who love their books full of facts and dates and who have an interest in European and Russian history. 9781842121160 “History may slow its pace, but it does not move backwards.” (4.5 stars)
Before picking up this book I knew nothing about Imperial Russia. After reading PETER THE GREAT: HIS LIFE & WORLD that is no longer the case. As the subtitle indicates this text really focuses on the world around Peter, and how it intersects with his rule over Russia. You will learn about an era, when you read this text, not just a man.
A small quibble, the book is organized more by topic than chronologically, and at times it slowed my pace of reading as to avoid confusion. I don’t think that organization aided the book.
Some thoughts that have stuck with me from the read-
Peter is the one responsible for a Russian Navy. He created it out of nothing. Fascinating to read about.
Unlike most Russians of the period, Peter was vastly interested in the wider world, and as a young man he undertook a “Great Embassy”. Traveling incognito (somewhat) through Europe was an amazingly astute thing for a young monarch to do. Peter’s travels to Western Europe were key to bringing Russia into the modern age. Compared to other nations in the late 1600s, Russia was positively medieval before Peter dragged it kicking and screaming into the modern era.
Often while reading this book I would find myself getting irritated at Peter’s barbarity, and he could be a tyrant. But then Massie would bring up some of Peter’s more enlightened attitudes. Peter was an autocrat, but he was also lenient about religious practices that did not follow his own, he banned the killing of children who were born deformed (a common practice in Russia at the time), he banned women being forced into compulsory marriage, he worked to bring the rights of Russian women up to the western standards of that age, and many others. Peter, like all of us, was a man of contradictions.
Quotes:
• “The most accurate image of Peter the Great is of a man who throughout his life was perpetually curious, perpetually restless, perpetually in movement.”
• “Peter viewed himself as personally responsible for the strengthening of the national economy, but at the same time he understood that private enterprise and initiative were the true sources of national wealth.”
Direct quotes of Peter’s:
• “We shall exercise no compulsion over the consciences of men, and shall gladly allow every Christian to care for his own salvation…”
• “Less servility, more zeal in service and more loyalty to me and to the state-this is the respect which should be paid to the tsar.”
• “When the light of learning is lacking, it is impossible that the church should be well run.”
This is a long book, and just when I was getting a little sick of Peter, Massie would frequently insert a chapter that focused on the larger historical framework, so that when he would later write something more specific to Peter/Russia the reader had a sense of the larger context of the action. It is effective, broadened the scope of this book, and made for a delightful reading experience.
Massie has a few other books about Russian monarchs/history. I will read them. 9781842121160 I agree with Jan-Maat's characterisation of this bumper biography in his review from 2011. (And as he studied Russian history around the same time I was doing courses on early modern Western Europe, I appreciate how he gives the academic context for this resolutely popular and traditional history book.)
As I may have posted somewhere before on GR, I have a game with old portraits of imagining the person with the clothes and haircut of another era, thinking about what type of person, what role they look like they would have especially in the present, or at some other time in the past. It is obviously a terrible cliché to talk about 'modernity' and PtG, but I have rarely encountered a written portrait of a historical person which made them seem so much like a modern type - where that modern-dress version seems almost as present in the painting as the much older one, as sometimes happens with pictures, bigwig merchants often being the most transposable IMO - without the author overtly making the comparison. Peter in his childhood and teenage years I would always think of as the geeky aspie/ADHD son of wealthy parents who were able to get him access to top-level experiences that fit his interests, and for whom it didn't matter if he took apart something expensive to see how it worked, because they could afford it. One of the most likeable things about him is that he never loses that curiosity - but of course the resoluteness of his obsessions, and his ability to drag other people into them by dint of being a monarch, made even this side of him intimidating simultaneously.
Hearing about the older Peter, it dawned on me that there's something very reminiscent of the modern tech mogul about him. If one of those had been able to run rampant with absolute power. PtG would love modern digital technology, wouldn't he? (I can't ever remember having such certainty about the likely opinions about the present of a person from 300 years ago.) This was all the more interesting because the biography was published in 1980, and from the sound of the acknowledgements, Massie worked on it all through the 70s, perhaps even earlier - so way before the early 21st century tech boom.
Back in the early 00s, I read a questionable business /self-help book based around examples from historical figures - one of whom was PtG; so there probably have been people trying to get ahead whilst trying to emulate a less bloodthirsty version of PtG.
(One point on which I diverge from J-M is that I felt that cruelty was frequently-enough talked about through the book that one cannot but be aware of its pervasiveness during the period, and as part of PtG's own character - but, other than one section about the torture and execution of those involved in a military revolt, it did not go into so much unrelenting detail as to make the entire narrative gruelling. Though there was admittedly concentration on those executed at the Tsar's own behest. The suffering of peasants under PtG's policies can readily be extrapolated from conditions described, if you have knowledge of roughly this era in other countries - but it is true it is not substantially discussed in detail in Massie's book.)
Massie has done nothing to dislodge the opinion I formed whilst listening to Simon Sebag Montefiore's The Romanovs, that Russian leaders have been in thrall to the memory and image of PtG ever since. However strong their own personality, there seems to be an implicit assumption that to be a strong leader in Russia, one needs to be like PtG whilst diverging from him just enough to put your own stamp on it.
The book is also strong on his world in the wider European sense - who and what Peter encountered on his travels and who was most influential on the Continent; I was surprised just how much space was given to them, but it's because of this sort of thing that the book is nearly 1000 pages in print. Having previously spent very little time on late 17th- to early 18th-century history, I heard more detail here about other notable figures and places of the age than I had before, including Peter's great antagonist Charles XII of Sweden (a very Classical young monarch for whom militarism seemed to be a religion in itself - though not an idea Massie verbalises overtly), Leibnitz, Louis XIV, and the rise of Prussia as a military power under strong rulers. In listening duration, some of these accounts were about as long as an episode of In Our Time, though of course rather less analytical, and from a perspective that was already old-hat academically when the book was first published forty years ago (it is implicitly weighted towards 'great man' theory - though with some figures one needs to acknowledge that isn't groundless, even if it used to be overdone) - but the writing is always entertaining, and vividly engaging.
This giant book (which I originally selected because, as a Pulitzer winner published before 2000, it would fit into a reading challenge), over 40 hours of it, has been a companion during one of the most extraordinary and unexpected periods in my own life, and it came to seem apt that its subject was such a revolutionary monarch and era. And in a wider sense, it felt appropriate to the present moment to be listening to a narrative about emerging into a more modern, but more tightly-controlled state which was controversial and about which many had (and still have) mixed feelings. 9781842121160
Against the monumental canvas of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and Russia, unfolds the magnificent story of Peter the Great, crowned at the age of 10. A barbarous, volatile feudal tsar with a taste for torture; a progressive and enlightened reformer of government and science; a statesman of vision and colossal significance: Peter the Great embodied the greatest strengths and weaknesses of Russia while being at the very forefront of her development.
Robert K. Massie delves deep into the life of this captivating historical figure, chronicling the pivotal events that shaped a boy into a legend - including his 'incognito' travels in Europe, his unquenchable curiosity about Western ways, his obsession with the sea and establishment of the stupendous Russian navy, his creation of an unbeatable army, and his relationships with those he loved most: Catherine, his loving mistress, wife, and successor; and Menshikov, the charming, unscrupulous prince who rose to power through Peter's friendship. Impetuous and stubborn, generous and cruel, a man of enormous energy and complexity, Peter the Great is brought fully to life. Peter the Great: His Life and World
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