Fall, Flight, and Rehabilitation

Abstract

Fortified by what he had seen and heard on his Grand Embassy, Peter the Great returned to Moscow in 1698 in the conviction that his country needed to change drastically, if it was to become one of the European Great Powers rather than the relic of a once powerful borderland empire. Apart from a host of concrete plans to modernize his country in terms of its politics, culture, economy, and military, he also brought more than six hundred experts back home with him, who were to help the Russians implement their reforms. A steady flow of Western specialists joined them in subsequent years. Their expertise ranged from shipbuilding and seafaring to the study of the natural sciences and the practice of medicine, art, and architecture. Suddenly, Western people and Western ways were no longer a rarity in Russia.