Peter the Great: "It is impossible to describe him..."

Over the past century in Russia, a succession of historical Titans have strode across the world’s stage. For good or bad, (probably more bad than good), the list of Russian leaders and their historical achievements have been impressive indeed. From Tsar Nicholas II, the last of the Romanov Tsars; through leaders of the Soviet Union (1917-1991) – among them, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Josef Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, and Mikhail Gorbachev; to the leaders of the new post Soviet democratic Russia – Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin – Russia’s twentieth century leaders have had a tremendous, if not always positive, impact on world history.

Perhaps no Russian leader, however, has been as much of a driving force within his own nation and the world of his times than the Romanov Tsar who ruled Russia two centuries before our own: Peter the Great (1672-1725). Peter, the first great autocrat of modern Russia, was truly a giant of his times. It was he who, primarily by the force of his own will, dragged Russia from her old medieval ways and rooted her firmly in the modern world of the eighteenth century and beyond.

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Peter the Great: His Life and World, historian Robert K. Massie masterfully chronicles the life of this mercurial, complex, and paradoxical man who became the greatest Tsar in Russian history, and perhaps one of the greatest figures in all of European history.

Massie’s brilliant narrative depicts Peter as a man who towered, both literally and figuratively, over his world. When he reached full adulthood, he stood six feet seven inches tall. Here was a man of great passions; a man who loved his family and friends and hated his enemies with almost equal fervor. His closest friends – most of them advisors to his court and senior military officers – could do no wrong in his eyes, even though there is historical evidence that many advisors were corrupt, and Peter knew it. Yet, he thought nothing of putting his sister Sophia and his first wife Eudoxia into convents when they fell out of favor, or having his son and heir to the throne, Alexis, arrested, tried, and tortured for suspected treasonous activity.

Peter was a man possessed with many paradoxes. He was an absolute autocrat who disdained the glittering trappings and the ceremonial pomp and circumstance concomitant with his royal station, preferring instead the informal company of his close circle of friends, and a simpler, more unadorned lifestyle. Forced to abandon his formal education at an early age due to his accession to the throne, Peter nevertheless continued his education informally, becoming largely self taught and reasonably literate in the process. Still, he derived his greatest pleasures from working with his hands. It was he who built, almost single-handedly, the first boats of what would eventually become the Russian navy; it was also he who laid the plans for, and personally built much of the new Russian city which now bears his name: St. Petersburg.

The main thrust of Peter the Great: His Life and World is not so much an examination of Peter’s personal qualities (although Massie’s portrayal of Peter the man is nothing short of masterful), but of how he used the force of his personality to transform Russia, during his lifetime, from a backward medieval kingdom of little consequence into a major European political and military power. Massie devotes the vast majority of Peter the Great to spin a highly detailed, absorbing, and wonderfully written narrative of the events which led to Peter’s – and Russia’s – evolution.

Peter put his personal stamp on nearly every key historical event involving Russia in the last quarter of the seventeenth century and the first quarter of the eighteenth. From his "Great Embassy" at age eighteen, when he traveled incognito to all the major western European capitals (becoming the first Tsar to set foot outside Russia), to his numerous wars with the Ottoman Empire (present-day Turkey), to his ten-year long "Great Northern War" with Sweden and its king, Charles XII, Peter is seen as forcing the pace of events throughout Europe, thereby modernizing and expanding Russia and planting the seeds of future greatness for the nation he loved above all else.

Robert K. Massie is a noted American historian who has written several books on Russian history over the past thirty years. His most notable works, aside from Peter the Great, are The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, and his classic 1967 book, Nicholas and Alexandra, which tells the story of the last days of Russia’s last Tsar and his family. Like these earlier works, Peter the Great is written with Massie’s trademark beautifully crafted, smoothly eloquent prose. While reading this sumptuous biography, it’s all to easy to forget you’re actually reading a work of history imbued with tremendous scholarship!

Massie has continued his fine tradition of writing extremely readable, highly entertaining, and factually sound biographies. With Peter the Great: His Life and World, he completely captures the essence of this towering eighteenth century figure, and does it in such a way as to make him totally relevant to today’s readers. Peter the Great: His Life and World, is a biography that's indeed very well worth reading!