Which leader westernized russia

Those paying the tax were given a token, silver for nobility and copper for commoners. But one thing is for sure—Peter I did change Russia forever. Kat Eschner is a freelance science and culture journalist based in Toronto. In , he defeated the Swedish army by purposely directing their troops to the city of Poltava, in the midst of an unbearable Russian winter. In , Peter established the city of St.

Petersburg on the Neva River and moved the capital there from its former location in Moscow. Shortly after, St. Petersburg was deemed Russia's "window to Europe.

Under Peter's rule, Russia became a great European nation. The high taxes that often accompanied his various reforms led to revolts among citizens, which were immediately suppressed by the imposing ruler. Peter married twice and had 11 children, many of whom died in infancy. The eldest son from his first marriage, Alexis, was convicted of high treason by his father and secretly executed in Peter the Great died on February 8, , without nominating an heir. We strive for accuracy and fairness.

If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! He also sought to end arranged marriages, which were the norm among the Russian nobility, because he thought such a practice was barbaric and led to domestic violence, since the partners usually resented each other.

A statue of Peter I working incognito at a Dutch wharf, St. Peter the Great learned the shipbuilding craft in Holland in It was one of many skills that he acquired during his Western European trip.

In order to modernize a socially and economically lagging Russia, Peter the Great introduced sweeping social, administrative, and economic reforms that westernized Russia to a certain extent, yet did not alter deeply feudal divisions in the increasingly authoritarian state.

By the time Peter the Great became tsar, Russia was the largest country in the world, stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean. However, the vast majority of the land was unoccupied, travel was slow, and the majority of the population of 14 million depended on farming.

While only a small percentage lived in towns, Russian agriculture, with its short growing season, was ineffective and lagged behind that of Western Europe. The class of kholops, or feudally dependent persons similar to serfs, but whose status was closest to slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until , when Peter converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation Russian agricultural kholops were formally converted into serfs in Russia also remained isolated from the sea trade and its internal trade communications and many manufactures were dependent on the seasonal changes.

Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. His visits to the West impressed upon him the notion that European customs were in several respects superior to Russian traditions.

He also commanded all of his courtiers and officials to wear European clothing and cut off their long beards, causing great upset among boyars , or the feudal elites. Those who sought to retain their beards were required to pay an annual beard tax of one hundred rubles. Peter also introduced critical social reform. He sought to end arranged marriages, which were the norm among the Russian nobility, seeing the practice as barbaric and leading to domestic violence. In , he changed the date of the celebration of the new year from September 1 to January 1.

Thus, in the year of the old Russian calendar, Peter proclaimed that the Julian Calendar was in effect and the year was While their clout had declined since the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the Boyar Duma, an advisory council to the tsar, still wielded considerable political power. Peter saw them as backwards and as obstacles standing in the way of Europeanization and reform. He specifically targeted boyars with numerous taxes and obligatory services. The state was divided into uyezds, which mostly consisted of cities and their immediate surrounding areas.

In , Peter abolished these old national subdivisions and established in their place eight governorates. In , a new state body was established: the Governing Senate.

All its members were appointed by the tsar from among his own associates, and it originally consisted of ten people. All appointments and resignations of senators occurred by personal imperial decrees. The senate did not interrupt the activity and was the permanent operating state body. The new provinces were modeled on the Swedish system, in which larger, more politically important areas received more political autonomy, while smaller, more rural areas were controlled more directly by the state.

Previously, high-ranking state positions were hereditary, but with the establishment of the Table of Ranks, anyone, including a commoner, could work their way up the bureaucratic hierarchy with sufficient hard work and skill. A new generation of technocrats soon supplanted the old boyar class and dominated the civil service in Russia.

With minimal modifications, the Table of Ranks remained in effect until the Russian Revolution of Peter also taxed many Russian cultural customs such as bathing, fishing, beekeeping, or wearing beards and issued tax stamps for paper goods. However, with each new tax came new loopholes and new ways to avoid them, and so it became clear that tax reform was simply not enough. The solution was a sweeping new poll tax, which replaced a household tax on cultivated land.

Previously, peasants had skirted the tax by combining several households into one estate. Now, each peasant was assessed individually for a tax paid in cash. This new tax was significantly heavier than the taxes it replaced, and it enabled the Russian state to expand its treasury almost sixfold between and Peter also pursued proto-protectionist trade policies, placing heavy tariffs on imports and trade to maintain a favorable environment for Russian-made goods.

He firmly enforced class divisions and his tax code significantly expanded the number of taxable workers, shifting an even heavier burden onto the shoulders of the working class. For example, he created a new class of serfs, known as state peasants , who had broader rights than ordinary serfs but still paid dues to the state. He also created state-sanctioned handicraft shops in large cities, inspired by similar shops he had observed in the Netherlands, to provide products for the army.

By the end of his reign the two were basically indistinguishable. More importantly, Peter created a state that further legitimized and strengthened authoritarian rule in Russia. The foreign policy of Peter the Great focused on the goal of making Russia a maritime power and turned Russia into one of the most powerful states in Europe, shifting the European balance of power. Peter the Great became tsar in upon the death of his elder brother Feodor, but did not become the actual ruler until He commenced reforming the country, attempting to turn the Russian Tsardom into a modernized empire relying on trade and on a strong, professional army and navy.

His only outlet at the time was the White Sea at Arkhangelsk. Russia and Poland signed the Eternal Peace Treaty of , in which Poland—Lithuania agreed to recognize the Russian incorporation of Kiev and the left-bank of the Ukraine.

During the war, the Russian army organized the Crimean campaigns of and , which ended in Russian defeats. Despite these setbacks, Russia launched the Azov campaigns in and and successfully occupied Azov northern extension of the Black Sea in However, the gains did not last long.

The conflict was ended by the Treaty of the Pruth, which stipulated that Russia return Azov to the Ottomans, and the Russian Azov fleet was destroyed. While Peter successfully occupied Azov in , the gains did not last long. However, Peter managed to gain access to the Caspian Sea. In the Russo—Persian War — , Russia had managed to conquer swaths of Safavid Irans territories in the North Caucasus, Transcaucasia, and northern mainland Iran, while the Ottoman Turks had invaded and conquered all Iranian territories in the west.

The two governments eventually signed a treaty in Constantinople, dividing a large portion of Iran between them. The annexed Iranian lands located on the east of the conjunction of the rivers Kurosh Kur and Aras were given to the Russians, while the lands on the west went to the Ottomans. Between the years of and , Sweden created a Baltic empire centered on the Gulf of Finland.

Peter the Great wanted to re-establish a Baltic presence by regaining access to the territories that Russia had lost to Sweden in the first decades of the 17th century.

In the late s, the adventurer Johann Patkul managed to ally Russia with Denmark and Saxony by the secret Treaty of Preobrazhenskoye. As Augustus II the Strong, elector of Saxony, gained the Polish crown in , the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth, at conflict with Sweden since the midth century, automatically became a member of the alliance. The treaty also secured the extradition and execution of Patkul, the architect of the anti-Swedish alliance. After Poltava, the anti-Swedish coalition, which by that time had fallen apart twice, was re-established and subsequently joined by Hanover and Prussia.

The remaining Swedish forces in plague-stricken areas south and east of the Baltic Sea were evicted, with the last city, Riga, falling in