HAXTAUSEN’S ESTIMATE OF PETER’S INFLUENCE
From the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries a national spirit dominated entirely. Moreover, Russian sovereigns had, for many years, perceived that the people were behind other nations who had sprung into being as late as themselves or who were inferior either in origin or in physical or intellectual faculties. To remedy this tardy growth they conceived it necessary to put themselves into direct contact with the west in order to borrow its light and imitate its progress. The best way of accomplishing this was, they thought, to get as many foreigners as possible into the country to train the young; to give the state new institutions, and remodel the old on western principles. Ivan Vasilievitch had already drawn a crowd of foreigners, and particularly Germans; had even tried to put his army on a European footing. The successors of the Romanov branch followed zealously in this path, but no prince felt more strongly than Peter I the necessity of letting Russia take a foremost place in Europe. His quick impetuous nature detested slow and incomplete measures. To him, to sow without reaping, or prune without tasting the fruits, was labour provoking all his repugnance.
The impetus he gave Russia is that in which she still continues. Everywhere in the public and social life of this people is to be noticed the impulse he gave. It is an accomplished fact that no human power can annul; so all inquiry to find out if this impetus was necessary and favourable to Russia would be inopportune and sterile. There is, however, no doubt that in Peter’s haste in his work of reform he did not sufficiently consider national things both great and good; that he introduced a crowd of foreign innovations, some mediocre, some positively bad, without pausing to think whether they were suitable to the climate, the established order of things, or if they would fit in harmoniously with Russian nationality.[j]
FOOTNOTES
[39] A verst is 3500 English feet and a sazhen 7 feet.
[40] The ancient Borysthenes.
[41] [Porte is the name given to the chief office of the Ottoman government, so called from the gate of the palace at which justice was administered. The name is applied also to the Ottoman court—the government of the Turkish Empire.]
[42] Bruce, who was in the battle of the Pruth, asserts his belief that this negotiation was conducted without Peter’s knowledge; and the Journal de Pierre le Grand alludes to the transmission of the letter, but is silent as to the share Catherine took in the affair. There is no doubt, however, that the details of her interference are correct, and Peter afterwards appears to have confirmed them by his declaration at the coronation of the empress in 1723, that she “had been of great assistance to the empire in all times of danger, but particularly at the battle of the Pruth.”
[43] Ulrica had ceded the crown to her husband.
[44] The men who have no tchin, the tchornii narod, that is, the black people, or blackguards.