Peter loved mechanics, and the thought of converting the government into a machine delighted him. Yet what seemed so simple in theory, proved far otherwise in practice.
The Russian people neither understood nor liked the idea of colleges, and mockingly called them “kaleki,” which means cripples. The Tsar had invited learned foreigners “versed in law.” They worked through the medium of interpreters. This however did not answer. Young Russian clerks were then despatched to Königsberg, “to learn the German language and thereby facilitate the working of the Colleges,” and supervisors were sent with them to prevent them from idling. But the supervisors idled with the supervised. The Tsar published a decree: “All colleges are obliged to draw up regulations for their work on the Swedish model. If some of the points in the Swedish regulation are inapplicable, or are unsuited to the conditions of this Empire, the same should be altered at discretion.” But judgment was sadly lacking, and the Tsar felt the new institutions would prove as inefficient as the old ones. “It is all in vain,” he thought, “until the direct good, the supreme patriotic interests of the Empire is realised—a thing that can’t be expected for another hundred years, at least.”
The orderly announced a Foreign Office translator, Koslovsky. A young man came in, haggard, pale and consumptive-looking. Peter rummaged among his papers and gave to him a manuscript corrected and marked with pencil notes on the margin; it was a treatise on mechanics.
“It is badly translated. It must be done over again!”
“Your Majesty,” stuttered Koslovsky in fear and trembling, “the author himself has written the book in very involved language. More mindful of the subtlety of his philosophical style than of the benefit people could derive from the book, he is abbreviated and abstruse. For my part with my dull brain I cannot possibly follow him.”
The Tsar patiently instructed.
“There is no need to translate literally, but, having ascertained the meaning clothe it in language which can best convey it, employing only what is necessary for presenting the main ideas. To try and retain the style is not necessary. Your matter should be useful and not written for effect, without any superfluous words which only waste time and distract the reader’s attention. Avoid the high-flown Slavonic style, and write the plain Russian speech. Do not use high sounding words but the language of the Foreign Office. Write as you speak, simply. Do you understand me?”
“Quite so, your Majesty,” answered the translator, with the precision of a soldier, yet he hung his head with as melancholy an air as if he remembered the fate of his predecessor Boris Wolkoff, also a translator to the Foreign Office, who in despair over a French book on gardening, ‘Le jardin de Quintiny,’ and afraid of the Tsar’s wrath, opened his veins, and perished.
“Well go, God be with you! Put all your heart in the work! And also tell Avrámoff that the type in the new books is fatter and not so clean as in the older ones. The types of letters B. and P. must be altered, they are too broad. The binding also is defective, especially as he binds the pages together too tightly; the books won’t close. He should sew them at the hinges more loosely and give them more space at the back.”
When Koslovsky left him, Peter remembered the dreams of Leibnitz about a general Russian Encyclopedia—the quintessence of sciences, such as was not yet in existence; a Petersburg Academy, the college of learned administrators with the Tsar at their head; a future Russia, which having surpassed Europe in knowledge, would act as lighthouse of the world.