“Peter the Great: His Life and World” by Robert K Massie
This book is part of my ‘Russian journey’ – you have to start somewhere.
It has one of those memorable opening passages that draws you in:
“Around Moscow, the country rolls up gently from the rivers winding in silvery loops across the pleasant landscape. Small lakes and patches of woods are sprinkled among the meadowlands. Here and there, a village appears, topped by the onion dome of its church. People are walking through the fields on dirt paths lined with weeds. Along the riverbanks, they are fishing, swimming and lying in the sun. It is a familiar Russian scene, rooted in centuries.
In the third quarter of and seventeenth century, the traveler coming form Western Europe passed through this countryside to arrive at a vantage point known as the Sparrow Hills. Looking down on Moscow from this high ridge, he saw at his feet “the most rich and beautiful city in the whole world”. Hundreds of golden domes topped by a forest of golden crosses rose above the treetops; if the traveler was present at the moment when the sun touched all this gold, the blaze of light forced his eyes to close. The white-walled churches beneath those domes were scattered through a city as large as London. At the center, on a modest hill, stood the citadel of the Kremlin, the glory of Moscow, with its three magnificent cathedrals, its mighty bell tower, its gorgeous palaces, chapels and hundreds of houses. Enclosed by great white walls, it was a city in itself.
In summer, immersed in greenery, the city seemed like an enormous garden. Many of the larger mansions were surrounded by orchards and parks, while swaths of open space left as firebreaks burst out with grasses, bushes and trees. Overflowing its own walls, the city expanded into numerous flourishing suburbs, each with its own orchards, gardens and copses of trees. Beyond, in a wide circle around the city, the manors and estates of great nobles and the white walls and gilded cupolas of monasteries were scattered among meadows and tilled fields to stretch the landscape out to the horizons.
Entering Moscow through its walls of earth and brick, the traveler plunged immediately into the busting life of a busy commercial city. The streets were crowded with jostling humanity. Tradespeople, artisans, idlers and ragged holy men walked beside laborers, peasants, black-robed priests and soldiers in bright colored caftans and yellow boots. Carts and wagons struggled to make headway through this river of people, but the crowds parted for a far-bellied, bearded boyer, or nobleman, on horseback, his head covered with a fine fur cap and his girth with a rich fur-lined coat of velvet or stiff brocade. At street corners, musicians, jugglers, acrobats and animal handlers with bears and dogs performed their tricks. Outside every church, beggars clustered and wailed for alms. In front of taverns, travelers were sometimes astonished to see naked men who had sold every stitch of clothing for a drink; on feast days, other men, naked and clothed alike, lay in rows in the mud, drunk.
[…]
At noon, all activity came to a halt. The markets would close and the streets empty as people ate dinner, the largest meal of the day. Afterward, everyone napped and shopkeepers and vendors stretched out to sleep in front of their stalls.
With the coming of dusk, swallows began to soar over the Kremlin battlements and the city locked itself up for the night. … “
I will let you read the other 850-odd pages yourself.
Comment:
Incredibly, the hard copy that I purchased in a local bookstore has the title “Peter the Great: His Life and Work [sic – not World]”. Did you pick that in the cover picture above? How could they have made such a typographical blunder in the very book title !!???
https://www.booktopia.com.au/peter-the-great-robert-k-massie/book/9781801102773.html
You can also find a copy here on oceanofpdf …
I like to look at the bibliography and related sources as I go and was prompted to check this one out …
“The History of the Russian Empire under Peter the Great” - Voltaire, 1759 – where I found one of my favourite quotes:
“A [] bookseller orders a book to be written, just as a manufacturer gives directions for weaving a piece of cloth; and unhappily there are authors to be found, whose necessities oblige them to sell their labors to these dealers, like work-men for hire; hence arise these insipid panegyrics, and defamatory libels, with which the public is overrun, and is one of the most shameful vices of the age.
Never did history stand more in need of authentic vouchers, than at this time, when so infamous a traffic is made of falsehood.”
Voltaire in Author’s Preface to “The History of the Russian Empire under Peter the Great” (1759)
https://archive.org/details/cu31924088380583
Incidentally, Massie received the Pulitzer prize for Biography in 1981 for this work.
Massie’s book left me with more questions than answers regarding Peter’s behaviour, especially towards his own Russian people, not the least of which being the murder of his own son.
I have read elsewhere that his enigmatic/mysterious behaviour on his two-year travelling, incognito ’Grand Embassy’ involved induction into occult freemasonry.
Nevertheless, a must read to give a detailed insight into Russia from the 1690s to the 1720s.
In three words … ‘Peter “modernised” Russia’.