To give it more weight and in the hope of gaining the support of Empress Elizabeth, Peter the Great's daughter, he gave it the name of the emperor who had died almost twenty years before.
In particular, he proposed to rely on an alliance with the "maritime" states, Britain and the Netherlands, to maintain friendly relations with Austria in opposition to Prussia and strengthen control over the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
This became known as the so-called "Testament of Peter the Great", which Napoleon Bonaparte used for anti-Russian propaganda purposes in 1812, and has been widely publicised since, although scholars have since established that the document is a forgery.
Marx continued, "Peter the Great touched this weak point when he wrote that in order to conquer the world, the Muscovites needed only souls.
[10] From the speculative fiction novel The Third World War: The Untold Story by John Hackett: Tsar Peter the Great in 1725, shortly after his annexation of five Persian provinces and the city of Baku, and just before he died, enjoined his successors thus: "I strongly believe that the State of Russia will be able to take the whole of Europe under its sovereignty… you must always expand towards the Baltic and the Black Sea.<...>" In 1985 Peter the Great, the mystical-absolutist, might have conceded, had he been aware of events, that the dialectical-materialist usurpers in the Kremlin were not doing so badly.