Peter's Soldiers 97
on the Petrine empire, rather than Britain or the Netherlands (important
thou~h thev were for commercial and naval develop!'!'!l'.'!'!!s); France's turn
would come later in the eighteenth century. This point has sometimes been lost
sight of by writers dazzled by Peter's well-documented visits to the latter coun-
tries (1697-8, 1717).
More important still, the new rational and pragmatic spirit derived from
Europe was intermingled with one that had deep roots in Russia's own past.
The traditional service-state ethos, which had somewhat weakened towards the
end of the seventeenth century, was now mightily reinforced. 'Westernization'
did not bring about an easement of the historic bonds that made each of the
tsar's subjects, according to his social affiliation, a servant or slave of the
Autocrat; on the contrary, it helped the absolutist state to plug some of the
loopholes that had appeared in the fabric of universal compulsion and submis-
siveness. In this sense Peter's reign marks a throwback to the sixteenth century
as much as an advance into the eighteenth. It seems to have greatly increased
the burden carried by all classes, particularly the lowest-a burden whose
rationale lay in an aggrandizement of Russian military power, deemed
necessary to achieve supposed 'national objectives'. The reign did not bring
any progress towards broader distribution of political power, for Peter,
although on occasion willing to devolve administrative responsibilities, was as
jealous of his monarchical prerogatives as any of his predecessors had been;
and in his treatment of domestic opponents he displayed the arbitrariness and
ferocious cruelty one associates more readily with Ivan IV, although Peter's
aims were certainly more rational.
Even the principal artefact of the reforms, the standing (regular) army, was
not wholly new. As. we have seen, during the seventeenth century elements of
both the old-and new-model forces had been subjected to mobilization for
lengthy periods. Peter's main achievement was to construct an integrated force
out of these disparate elements, to impose uniform conditions of service, to
institute a system of discipline based on hierarchical principles, to establish
military schools, and to bring the troops under centralized administration by
the War College in St. Petersburg. Yet Muscovite practices survived like cracks
in the walls of the new edifice. They were most evident in the persistence
(largely due to the lack of specie) of 'self-maintenance' by troops who in prin-
ciple were entirely on the state payroll. The eighteenth-century Imperial army
might wear European-style uniform and drill according to European manuals,
but it remained distinctively Russian-as the society from which it sprang did.
The new army took shape in a long drawn-out process of reshuffle and purge
that began almost casually. It is difficult to discern any plans for comprehen-
sive structural change before 1699 at the earliest. This occurred as a response
to two problems: first, the need for a better organized, trained force to take on
Charles XIl's Sweden, once the long desultory war with Turkey had ended;
and second, the need to fill the gap left by the martyred strertsy.