14
Army and Administration
Expansion of the administration and army captured most of the attention of
eighteenth-century rulers. They struggled to balance central structures with local
and to coordinate the many offices needed tofinance and oversee an expanding
society, economy, and army. Reforms were informed by Enlightenment ideas,
combining the German Enlightenment’s emphasis on orderliness and duty with a
French preoccupation on rational thinking, rule by law, and individual self-
development (Kant famously said that Enlightenment meant“dare to know”). In
their prodigious programs of institutional change, both Peter I and Catherine II
declared their intent not only to maximize state income but also to improve social
welfare. Both were committed to drawing the nobility into civil service to create an
officialdom equal in prestige to the military officer corps. These goals proved elusive
but progress was made.
MILITARY REFORMS
One of the century’s most fundamental preoccupations was military reform. Peter
I devoted prodigious energies to creating a navy out of whole cloth and transform-
ing Russia’s army in one generation. Although military reforms towards a“new
model”army had been well under way since the mid-seventeenth century, Peter’s
efforts dwarfed them—in scale (he created a massive infantry army), speed (in a
decade), and success in battle (he defeated the best army and navy in eastern and
central Europe in the Great Northern War, namely Sweden). Peter’s youthful
experiences shaped his commitment to military might. Exiled from the Kremlin
from ages 10 to 17, living in the suburban enclave of Preobrazhenskoe near the
German Quarter, Peter met foreign officers and created “play” regiments of
European-style troops that carried out real military exercises. They became the
core of the future Semeonovskii and Preobrazhenskii Guards regiments. He was
fascinated by sailing and began as early as 1690–2 to have ships constructed at Lake
Pereiaslavl’, most likely (as had been done in his father’s time) to produce ships to
guard Caspian shipping.
Peter deposed regent Sofiia Alekseevna in 1689 and returned to the Kremlin, but
he actively took the reins of leadership around 1698. His initial focus was,
following Muscovite priorities, towards the Black Sea. In 1695–6 a newfleet of
galleys assembled at Voronezh to campaign against Azov; Peter won the port from
the Ottoman empire in 1697, but was forced to destroy his ships and yield the city