Peter the Great

Peter I transformed Muscovite Russia into a major European power and took the title of emperor. Born in Moscow in 1672, he was the son of Tsar Alexis by his second wife, Natalia Naryshkina. On the death of his half-brother Fyodor III in 1682 he was proclaimed joint tsar with his disabled half-brother Ivan V, under the regency of their sister Sophia; Peter assumed real power in 1689 and ruled alone after Ivan's death in 1696.

Fascinated from youth by ships, warfare, and Western technology, Peter travelled through the Dutch Republic and England in 1697-98 with his Grand Embassy, working for a time as a shipwright. The experience informed a sweeping program of reform: a standing army on European lines, Russia's first navy, a reorganized administration culminating in the Senate and the colleges, the Table of Ranks opening state service to merit, and compulsory Western dress and education for the nobility. The church was subordinated to the state through the Holy Synod.

His foreign policy centred on the Great Northern War of 1700-1721 against Charles XII of Sweden. After an early disaster at Narva, Peter rebuilt his forces and won a decisive victory at Poltava in 1709. The Treaty of Nystad in 1721 gave Russia the eastern Baltic coast, and the Senate conferred on Peter the title of Emperor of All Russia. On territory seized from Sweden he had founded St. Petersburg in 1703, making it his capital and a deliberate window toward Europe.

Peter's family life was turbulent. He repudiated his first wife, Eudoxia Lopukhina, and their son Alexei died in prison in 1718 after being condemned for treason. His second wife, a Livonian commoner crowned as Empress Catherine, succeeded him as Catherine I when he died in February 1725. Their daughter Anna married Charles Frederick, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, and it was through this union that the later Romanov line, beginning with her son Peter III, descended.