The lessons of the Petrine reforms as seen by a historian

Abstract

The article attempts to identify the most significant lessons that can be learned from the experience of Peter the Great transformations— one of the key developments in Russian history that determined the vector of the country's development for a long time. The author considers both positive and negative implications of Peter the Great's reforms, and concludes that the success of Peter I reforms was primarily due to the fact that their focus on the European model of development correlated with internal trends in Russian development at the turn of the 17th–18th centuries, and this is exactly what made Peter I transformations irreversible. Peter's successors, faced with serious financial and economic problems, were forced to make certain adjustments to his transformations, but retained all the main institutions he created. Thanks to Peter's transformations, Russia acquired the status of a great power, which was due to the country's integration into the system of international relations, the world economy and culture, without which the very status of a great power lost its meaning. Thanks to the reforms in economic sphere, the technological gap with the leading European countries was largely overcome, but the priority development of industries focused on military needs and based on the labor of serfs hindered the development of capitalist relations and contributed to the transformation of Russia into a raw material power. At the same time, the pace of economic development remained low, which resulted in a new lag in the next historical stage. Reforms in the social sphere, based on meeting fiscal needs of the state, hampered but could not stop the development of Russian society