Portrait of an Enlightened Autocrat

Abstract

WHEN PETER THE GREAT set about transforming Russian state institutions, modeling them after their West European counterparts, he improved the external techniques of the administrative apparatus and also made some changes in the social organization of the estates. However, neither his administrative nor his social reform altered the basic principles upon which the Russian political order of that time rested. Though Russia had been provided with Swedish-type government institutions and dressed in German camisoles instead of semi-Asiatic kaftans, it remained a polity enserved from top to bottom, an autocratic monarchy in which all strata of the population without exception were required to perform service and pay dues to the ruler.