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Internalreformsunder Peter were generally enacted under the pressure of war, usually in an ad hoc, disjointed manner. Often the confusion they were designed to fix was made worse. Still, Peter's reforming of Russia was by no means limited to hectic measures to bolster the war efforts. Rather, he wanted to Westernize and modernize the entire Russian government, society, and culture. Peter literally moved the capital west, from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, in 1712. Even if he failed to overhaul all of Russia, changes pointed more and more away from backward Muscovy and toward borrowing from the West. Peter the Great was not a theoretician, but he had the makings of a visionary.
Ofthereforms,themodernization of the army and the creation of the navy were among the most successful. In 1711, before leaving on the Ottoman campaign, Peter created a Senate of 10 (later 11) members to supervise all judicial, financial, and administrative affairs in his absence. Upon his return it became a permanent institution, with a special high official, the ober-procurator, serving as the link between the Senate and the monarch, or, in Peter’s own words, as "the sovereign's eye."
In1717andtheyears immediately following, Peter replaced Muscovy’s numerous and unwieldy governmental departments with new agencies, called colleges. Originally nine in number, the colleges were councils that served as the main agencies of the newly structured government, dealing with such matters as foreign affairs, justice, and commerce. The group leadership of each agency was meant to provide a variety of opinion and to deter corruption. Town government also underwent major reform. In 1699 control of the cities was shifted from appointed governors to locally elected officials. Intended to stimulate the initiative and activity of the townspeople, the reform failed in practice because of local inertia and ignorance. An even greater failure was provincial reform, again very progressive and ambitious but totally unrealistic. Peter divided the country into 50 gubernias (provinces), for which he established a vast bureaucracy. A governor headed each gubernia and answered to the Senate. The system provided more uniformity, but corruption and confusion thrived within the new bureaucracy.
Peterwasmoreeffective at changing the structure of the Russian Orthodox Church. His reforms were influenced especially by church-state arrangements in the Lutheran states of Northern Europe. In 1721 a Holy Synod, or religious college, of 10, and later 12, clerics replaced the patriarch at the head of the Orthodox Church. A secular official, the ober-procurator, was appointed to supervise the synod for the ruler. Although the emperor acquired no authority on questions of faith, the reform enabled the government to exercise control over church organization, possessions, and policies.
OnthewholePeterhad to accept Russian society as it was, with serfdom and the economic and social dominance of the gentry; he did not produce any revolutionary changes in the Russian economy. However, Peter’s tremendous effort to make that society and economy serve his purposes brought some lasting social results. To fund the wars and the building of Saint Petersburg, taxation became extremely oppressive, with new taxes of every conceivable kind proliferating. After a census was ordered in the early 1720s, a head, or poll, tax replaced the household tax and the tax on cultivated land. Serfs and eventually even vagrants—individuals who had previously escaped taxation because they did not own land or were not part of a household—were subject to the new tax.
UnderPeter,membersof the service gentry, landowners who held property in return for their service to the state, were divided into classes. In 1722, Peter promulgated a system of ranks that classified the gentry according to their level of service. This system, called the Table of Ranks, listed in hierarchic order the 14 ranks to be attained in the military, civil, and imperial court service. Promotion now depended on ability and service to the state, not birth, which historically determined how far one rose in Russian society. The Table of Ranks served as the foundation of the imperial Russian bureaucracy and lasted, with modification, until 1917.
Peter’swarendeavors provided a strong stimulus to the Russian economy, from mining and metallurgy, which supplied armaments and ships for the army and navy, to the new textile industry. But perhaps his most significant impact was in the broad field of education and culture, where the Western orientation could never again be reversed. This orientation began before Peter’s reforms, but it was Peter who made it state policy and thus transformed an optional and slow process into a compulsory official drive. In a sense, the Academy of Sciences, planned by the emperor and inaugurated shortly after his death, remained his most appropriate monument.
PeterdiedinFebruary 1725 after a brief illness, without using a new law, issued in 1722, giving him the right to appoint a successor. His only son to grow to maturity, Alexis, had died in 1718 in prison in tragic and unclear circumstances after having been condemned to death for treason against his father, whose views he never shared. The reformer's semiliterate second wife ascended the throne as Empress Catherine I, sponsored especially by Peter's most prominent assistant, Aleksandr Menshikov, and the guards.
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