military power (Peter-Paul Fortress), naval power and shipbuilding (Admiralty),
orderly government (Twelve Colleges), practical learning (Academy of Sciences,
Cabinet of Curiosities, and Ethnographic Museum), God’s blessing on his realm
(fortress Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul, Alexander-Nevskii monastery). Peter
commissioned two (summer and winter) modest palaces in restrained baroque
style, and a sumptuous Versailles-style suburban palace and garden ensemble to
impress and to entertain. Palace interiors werefilled with European portraits and
paintings (Peter was fond of seascapes); his nobles followed suit. St. Petersburg was
a military, political, and economic center on the European model.
After Peter I died, the frenetic energy of Petrine ideology was reined in some-
what, for several reasons. In ideological terms, as Wortman analyzed it, Petrine
theory required each ruler to totally transform his realm, thus posing huge problems
of instability. Furthermore, as noted below, the path of succession proved turbulent
across the century and resulted in primarily female rulers, making an ideology that
stressed Minerva over Mars all the more expedient. For thefirst half of the century,
rulers and their official panegyricists shaped their rhetoric of rulership around three
themes: God’s approval of the ruler, allegories to classical antiquity stressing
wisdom and military might, and dedication to the Petrine reforms. Continuity,
rather than change, became the hallmark of accession odes by Aleksandr Sumar-
okov, Mikhail Lomonosov, and others.
Figure 13.4Peter I planned St. Petersburg as his new capital and a new symbolic center for
his realm, celebrating its European culture and geopolitical power by arranging it around a
spectacular ensemble of eighteenth-century classical buildings on the banks of the Neva
River. Here, the Academy of Sciences and Kunstkammer, housing Peter I’s ethnographical
collection. Photo: Jack Kollmann.
274 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801