Latest / The Romanov Dynasty: Rise, Power, and Bloody End — Fexingo History / Peter the Great and the Birth of St. Petersburg
Transcript
- Lucas: We've talked a lot about the later Romanovs—Nicholas II, Alexander II, the revolutions. But let's go back to one of the dynasty's most transformative figures: Peter the Great. I mean, he literally dragged Russia into the modern world, sometimes by the beard. Luna: Beard tax, right? That was his idea? Lucas: Exactly. But before that—before St. Petersburg, before the Great Northern War—he was a young tsar sharing the throne with his half-brother Ivan, while their sister Sophia actually ran things as regent. Peter grew up in a foreign suburb, around Europeans, learning shipbuilding and military tactics. That shaped everything. Luna: So he wasn't exactly a typical tsar from the start. Lucas: Not at all. When he finally took power, he knew Russia needed a warm-water port, a navy, and a break from its isolation. The problem was that the Baltic coast was controlled by Sweden, which was then a major power under King Charles XII. So in 1700, Peter launched the Great Northern War—Velikaya Severnaya voyna—against Sweden. Lucas: The war started disastrously. At the Battle of Narva, the Russian army was crushed by a much smaller Swedish force. Charles XII could have marched on Moscow, but he turned south to deal with Poland, giving Peter a crucial window to rebuild. Luna: That sounds like a huge mistake on Charles's part. Lucas: It was. Peter used those years to modernize his army—new training, new weapons, and a lot of Western European officers. By the time Charles turned back east, Russia was ready. The decisive battle came in 1709 at Poltava, in what is now Ukraine. Peter's forces crushed the Swedes. Charles fled into Ottoman exile, and Russia became the dominant power in the region. Luna: And then he built St. Petersburg on captured Swedish land? Lucas: Even before Poltava, Peter had started construction. In 1703, on a swampy island in the Neva River delta, he laid the foundation for a fortress—the Peter and Paul Fortress. That became the nucleus of his new capital. He named it Sankt Pieter Burkh, after his patron saint. It was a bold statement: a brand new city, on captured enemy territory, designed to be Russia's window to the West. Lucas: The cost was staggering. Tens of thousands of serfs died building it—disease, starvation, harsh labor. Peter didn't care. He ordered nobles and merchants to relocate there, and he banned stone construction anywhere else in Russia so all masons would work on the new capital. Luna: That's brutal. But it did become one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. Lucas: Absolutely. And Peter's reforms weren't just about conquest and construction. He overhauled the government, created the Table of Ranks—a system where service to the state, not noble birth, determined your position. He forced the boyars to shave their beards and wear Western clothes. He introduced a new calendar, simplified the alphabet, and even taxed beards. Anyone who wanted to keep their beard had to pay a fee and carry a special token. Luna: I'd love to see one of those beard tokens. Lucas: They've survived. They're copper coins with a beard and mustache on one side, and the inscription 'the beard tax has been taken' on the other. Peter was relentless. He also built a navy from scratch—the Baltic Fleet, based at Kronstadt, an island fortress near St. Petersburg. Lucas: His right-hand man was Aleksandr Menshikov, a former pie seller who became Peter's closest friend and the de facto governor of the new capital. Menshikov was corrupt and ambitious, but Peter trusted him completely. Luna: So Peter really broke the mold of what a tsar could be. Lucas: He did. And speaking of breaking molds—this feels like a good moment to mention something important. We keep going episode after episode, diving into these stories, and we never run ads. No sponsors pushing products. That's a choice, and it only works because some listeners choose to support us directly. Luna: Yeah, it's how we keep the show exactly what we want it to be—focused on the history, not on selling stuff. Luna: And it genuinely keeps us going. Now, back to Peter—he died in 1725, but his legacy was just beginning. Lucas: Right. After Poltava and the Treaty of Nystad in 1721, Russia gained Ingria, Estonia, Livonia—and St. Petersburg became the capital. Peter declared himself emperor, and Russia was now an empire in name as well as fact. He even had the imperial title recognized by foreign powers. Luna: But his reforms weren't always popular, were they? Lucas: No. The old nobility resented the Table of Ranks. The church lost its independence when he abolished the patriarchate and replaced it with a Holy Synod run by a lay official. And the peasantry bore the heaviest burden: conscription, taxes, forced labor on canals and cities. There was a saying: 'Peter turned everything upside down, and left nothing as it was.' Lucas: Yet for all the hardship, he created a modern state. The navy he built would dominate the Baltic for decades. The city he founded remained the capital until 1918, and it was the stage for much of Russia's subsequent history—including the revolutions that ended the Romanovs. Luna: It's almost poetic that the dynasty's beginning and end are tied to that city. Lucas: It is. The first Romanov, Michael, was elected in 1613 during the Time of Troubles. Peter dragged Russia into the 18th century. And Nicholas II faced his final days in Ekaterinburg. But St. Petersburg—or Petrograd, as it was renamed during WWI—was where the February Revolution started in 1917. Luna: A city born from war, and then the cradle of revolution. Lucas: Exactly. Peter couldn't have imagined that his window to the West would become the epicenter of the dynasty's collapse. But that's the thing about history: it's full of ironies like that.