His Azov campaigns were followed by the foundation of the Russian Navy; after his victory in the Great Northern War despite initial difficulties, Russia annexed a significant portion of the eastern Baltic coastline and was officially renamed from a tsardom to an empire.

Peter led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political systems with ones that were modern, scientific, Westernized, and based on radical Enlightenment.

Peter grew up at Izmaylovo Estate and was educated at the Amusement Palace from an early age by several tutors commissioned by his father, most notably Nikita Zotov, Patrick Gordon, and Paul Menesius.

[12] Throughout this period, the government was largely run by Artamon Matveyev, an enlightened friend of Alexis, the political head of the Naryshkin family and one of Peter's greatest childhood benefactors.

Peter, warned by others from the Streltsy, escaped in the middle of the night to the impenetrable monastery of Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra; there he slowly gathered adherents who perceived he would win the power struggle.

[21] As a young man, Peter I adopted the Protestant model of existence in a pragmatic world of competition and personal success, which largely shaped the philosophy of his reformism.

By hard daily work (according to the figurative expression of Peter the Great himself, he was simultaneously "forced to hold a sword and a quill in one right hand") and courageous behavior he demonstrated to his subjects his personal positive example, showed how to act, fully devoting himself to the fulfillment of duty and service to the fatherland.

[22] Heavily influenced by his advisors, like Jacob Bruce, Peter reorganized the Russian army along modern lines and dreamed of making Russia a maritime power.

Peter, furthermore, had chosen an inopportune moment: the Europeans at the time were more concerned about the War of the Spanish Succession over who would succeed the childless King Charles II of Spain than about fighting the Ottoman Sultan.

Through the mediation of Nicolaas Witsen, an expert on Russia, the tsar was given the opportunity to gain practical experience in shipyard, belonging to the Dutch East India Company, for a period of four months, under the supervision of Gerrit Claesz Pool.

Peter stayed at 21 Norfolk Street, Strand, and met with Bishop of Salisbury Gilbert Burnet and Thomas Osborne and posed for Sir Godfrey Kneller.

[44][37] King William III presented a schooner with a whole crew to Peter I in exchange for the monopoly right of English merchants to trade tobacco in Russia (see Charles Whitworth).

[50][51] In the same year, Peter also sought to end arranged marriages, which were the norm among the Russian nobility, because he thought such a practice was barbaric and led to domestic violence, since the partners usually resented each other.

In 1701, the Moscow School of Mathematics and Navigation was founded, led by Jacob Bruce; for fifteen years, naval officers, surveyors, engineers, and gunners were educated there.

[56] Therefore, he issued another decree in 1714 calling for compulsory education, which dictated that all Russian 10- to 15-year-old children of the nobility, government clerks, and lesser-ranked officials must learn basic arithmetic, trigonometry and geometry, and should be tested on the subjects at the end of their studies.

[65] Gottlieb Schober was commissioned to examine hot springs and discovered rich deposits of sulfur; Peter immediately set up a factory for the development in the Samara Oblast.

The law also guaranteed the inheritance of the ownership of factories, proclaimed industrial activity a matter of state importance and protected manufacturers from interference in their affairs by local authorities.

Peter made a temporary peace with the Ottoman Empire that allowed him to keep the captured fort of Azov, and turned his attention to Russian maritime supremacy.

After the battle, Charles XII decided to concentrate his forces against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which gave Peter time to reorganize the Russian army and conquered Nyenschantz in the Ingrian campaign.

While the city was being built along the Neva he lived in a modest three-room log cabin (with a study but without a fire-place) which had to make room for the first version of the Winter Palace.

In January 1716, Tsar Peter traveled in the Baltic region to discuss peace negotiations and how to protect the sea trade route from the Swedes.

After 1718, Peter established collegiums in place of the old central agencies of government, including foreign affairs, war, navy, expense, income, justice, and inspection.

[81] Gavrila Golovkin, the State Chancellor, was the first to add "the Great, Father of His Country, Emperor of All the Russias" to Peter's traditional title of tsar following a speech by Theophan Prokopovich in 1721.

After considerable success and the capture of many provinces and cities in the Caucasus and northern mainland Persia, the Safavids were forced to hand over territory to Russia, comprising Derbent, Shirvan, Gilan, Mazandaran, Baku, and Astrabad.

According to legend, in November, at Lakhta along the Gulf of Finland to inspect some ironworks, Peter saw a group of soldiers drowning near shore and, wading out into near-waist deep water, came to their rescue.

He did not believe in miracles and founded The All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters,[87] an organization that mocked the Orthodox and Catholic Church when he was eighteen.

[88] He often used the nickname Pakhom Mikhailov (Russian: Пахом Михайлов) among the ministers of religion who made up his relatively close circle of long-term drinking companions.

[115] Historian Y. Vodarsky said in 1993 that Peter, "did not lead the country on the path of accelerated economic, political and social development, did not force it to 'achieve a leap' through several stages.... On the contrary, these actions to the greatest degree put a brake on Russia's progress and created conditions for holding it back for one and a half centuries!

[118] According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, "He did not completely bridge the gulf between Russia and the Western countries, but he achieved considerable progress in development of the national economy and trade, education, science and culture, and foreign policy.

James Cracraft argues: The iconic representations of dead saints typical for centuries of Russian visual culture suddenly give way to naturalistic portraiture.