THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 1450-1750

By the time of the golden age of the Qing Dynasty, the Russian Empire had expanded all the way from its origins in Eurasia east to the Pacific coast. There they came into border conflicts with the Chinese, but they also shared they problem of attack by Mongols and other nomadic people of Central Asia. However, Russian tsar Peter the Great, who ruled Russia during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, cast his eyes in the other direction, toward Europe, for guidance in strengthening his growing empire. Russia's early days had been shaped by the Byzantine Empire, and when the Byzantine's power faded, so did that of the early Russian tsars. Before Peter's rule, Russians had had almost no contact with Europe, and their lack of access to warm water ports crippled their ability to participate in the Maritime Revolution. The feudalistic political and economic structure meant that tsars had trouble containing the boyars, or Russian nobility, who often plotted against them. Partly because of this threat, the tsars practiced absolutism, with the power of the tsar backed by divine right granted by the Russian Orthodox Church. Peter's Russia was a vast, cold empire with almost no infrastructure &endash; no navy, a limited army, very few decent roads, and few warm water ports.

Peter hoped to strengthen his country by westernizing it. As a boy he frequently visited the "German suburb" of Moscow, the place where all foreigners were forced to live, apart from Russians. Peter was intrigued with their maritime talk and with the sea-faring instruments they showed him. As a young man he took the first of several trips to Europe, where he studied shipbuilding and other western technologies, as well as governing styles and social customs. He returned to Russia convinced that the empire could only become powerful by imitating western successes, and he instituted a number of reforms that revolutionized it:

• Military reform - He built the army by offering better pay and also drafted peasants for service as professional soldiers. He also created a navy by importing western engineers and craftsmen to build ships and shipyards, and other experts to teach naval tactics to recruits. Of course, his Gunpowder Empire developed better weapons and military skills.
• Building the infrastructure - The army was useless without roads and communications, so Peter organized peasants to work on roads and do other service for the government.
• Expansion of territory - The navy was useless without warm water ports, and Peter gained Russian territory along the Baltic Sea by defeating the powerful Swedish military. He tried to capture access to the Black Sea, but he was soundly defeated by the Ottomans who controlled the area.
• Reorganization of the bureaucracy - In order to pay for his improvements, the government had to have the ability to effectively tax its citizens. The bureaucracy had been controlled by the boyars, but Peter replaced them with merit based employees by creating the Table of Ranks, eventually doing away with titles of nobility.
• Relocation of the capital - Peter moved his court from Moscow to a new location on the Baltic Sea, his "Window on the West" that he called St. Petersburg. The city was built from scratch out of a swampy area, where it had a great harbor for the navy. Its architecture was European, of course.

When Peter died, he left a transformed Russia, an empire that a later ruler, Catherine the Great, would further strengthen. But he also left behind a new dynamic in Russian society &endash; the conflicting tendencies toward westernization mixed with the traditions of the Slavs to turn inward and preserve their own traditions.