274 Ch. 7 • The Age of Absolutism, 1650-1720
The bustling docks of Amsterdam and London had inspired Peters
interest in building first a river navy and eventually an oceangoing fleet.
Skilled workers from Prussia and the Dutch Republic were hired to build
warships, and Russian craftsmen were sent abroad to learn new skills.
Russians gradually replaced Western Europeans as designers, builders,
and ship commanders. By the end of the century, Russia had a naval fleet.
Military might, then, also underlay Russian absolutism. Even in peace
time, at least two-thirds of state revenue went to the army and navy. Peter
forced nobles to send their sons to new military and engineering schools by
decreeing they could not marry unless they did so. To pay for his army, the
tsar tripled state revenues, imposing a direct tax on each male serf, or “soul/’
Landlords became responsible for the collection of these taxes. He estab
lished state monopolies on the production and sale of salt, oil, tobacco,
rhubarb, and even dice, awarding the profitable right to collect these rev
enues to his favorite nobles, to “official” merchants, or to foreigners. The
acquisition of new territories helped increase state tax revenues by three
times. Hoping to expand Russian industry and attract gold and silver pay
ments from abroad, Peter oversaw the exploitation of mines and the estab
lishment of a metal industry in the Ural Mountains. But even absolute
authority could not overcome a primitive transportation system, the lack of
capital, and the absence of a sizable merchant class.
Peter succeeded in managing the often volatile politics of the court and
the boyars, the 200 to 300 noble families (some of whom had as many as
40,000 serfs on their lands). While remaining an autocrat, Peter was
nonetheless the first tsar to distinguish between his person as ruler and the
state itself. Indeed, he made officials take two oaths, one to him and one to
the state whose power he enhanced.
Tsar Peter reorganized the civil administration, dividing his domains into
fifty administrative districts, each with a governor, although the effective
reach of the state over such vast lands remained quite weak. He created a
Senate, an administrative body charged with ruling in his absence during
wartime and with overseeing state administration in times of peace. He
experimented with councils, or committees, whose members could—if they
dared—give him advice, representing the equivalent of government min
istries. The tsar also put towns under the direct control of provincial gover
nors, although they retained some measure of self-government. The Table of
Ranks (1722) required all male nobles to enter state service and serve in the
army, navy, or bureaucracy, and allowed commoners who rose through the
bureaucracy or military to assume noble titles. Thus, the nobility also
became an instrument of the state, and in Moscow nobles sought places on
the boyar council (Duma), which met in the throne room of the palace.
The tsar’s turn toward the West angered the old noble families of Moscow
and the traditional Orthodox Church leaders, despite the fact that Peter
himself remained quite pious. In particular, Peter faced the hostility of the
Old Believers, dissidents who claimed authority over the tsars and resented