The Emergence of Russia into the Modern World

The environment in which bill came to government agency and ruled is an important aspect of the book. For, Sumner argues, just as much as beam helped create what came to be a precedentful Russia in the modern world, so did light beam's environment in the late 17th and early 18th centuries profoundly render his character and leadership. As we read, in a passage which connects the historical and cultural environments with the political environment, as well as with the inseparable environment of his personality:

rooster grew (explosively) out of seventeenth-century Muscovy, . . . far outside from seventeenth-century Europe. Most of [his] reforms . . . linked on with the tentative steps . . . make by his predecessors. . . . [His] daemonic element . . . , his violence and cruelty, [his] unrelenting pace . . . , the order of the ubiquitous burdens that he imposed--- these features . . . have given the impression that Peter broke completely with the past. . . . [But] the greatness of Peter lies in the point that . . . he gave shape to needs and aspirations growing within Muscovite society (10-11).

The Muscovy of Peter's era was smaller than what Russia was to become, but by the conviction Peter ascended to power enlargement was well under way. The self-governing rule of Peter was also well precendented. Th

e basic argument of Sumner was that Peter was an "pundit despot," the kind of leader necessary for maintaining power and using it effectively at that precipitous point in the history of the nation.

Sumner demonstrates no less admiration and appreciation for Peter's accomplishments in foreign fight than he does for his domestic consolidation and exercise of power. After having frankincense established himself as powerful leader at place and abroad, Peter had to come to "grips with the most baffling problem of his reign. . . . Would the solid conception of the new Russia he was trying to forge be abandoned on his death bed by his inheritor?" (91).

Peter saw as well that control of the nation's pursestrings through and through effective taxation was a step toward maintaining political power and effecting reforms he sought (46-47). Above all, however, Peter's military empowerment of Russia serves as the source of his leadership. The Great blue War and its victory for Peter stands as testament to his ability to realize his grand ambitions for himself and his nation. As Sumner summarizes, the three years preceding the start of the Great Northern War had already established Peter as a powerful, unique and revolutionary leader.

dragged on for twenty-one years and resulted in the downfall of Sweden and the emergence of Russia as a European power. . . . The czar won for himself the titles of "father of his country" and "Peter the Great" (49).

Peter was "quick in intelligence," "cruel," and well-trained in a number of fields, focusing on things military (30; 32-33). His military ruthlessness was responsible for his consolidating power in the first place against internal rivals, for the continuing expansion of the nation, and for effectively exercising the despotic rule he demo throughout his reign.

One way or another---the specifics are in doubt---Peter killed or had killed the son he saw as a threat to his new Russia, and in his place planned to operate the p
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