Peter the Great-Emperor of Russia

  Peter the Great-Emperor of Russia (Part-1)

Peter the Great

   Peter the Great was a clever despot. His full name was Peter Alekseyevich Romanov. He had fits of manic-depression in which he would indulge in the worst kinds of brutalities and take delight in them. Typically of his horribly cruel behavior was the way he treated hundreds of men and women who, he alleged, were plotting to overthrow him. They were mercilessly whipped which tore their flesh, their bones were broken on the wheel and then grilled on slow fire. Could the Devil be more ruthless than him?

   Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich’s fourteenth child was Peter (total sixteen, but two of them died in childhood). Nathalie Naryshkina’s was Tsar Alexis’s second wife and Peter was her first child, Peter was merely three years old at the time of the Tsar’s death in 1676. Tsar Alexis was succeeded by his eldest son, Fedor, a boy of 14, from his first wife Maria Miloslavskaya. Fedor was sickly and he died childless at 20. He left a brother, Ivan - a half-blind and mentally deficient boy of 15.

   Immediately after the death of Fedor (April 27, 1682) Peter’s mother succeeded in nominating Peter as his, successor. This was resented by Sophia Alexseyevna Romanov, the eldest of the six daughters of Peter’s father by his first wife. Sophia organized a military revolt which began on March 15 and resulted in the brutal murder of Peter’s maternal uncles and other supporters. She took control of the government in her hands on May 17. On May 26, she announced Ivan the first and Peter the second Tsar and herself became the regent for the duration of the minority of her brothers. She first refused regency, as a comic act on her part, and then accepted it on May 29, 1682. Thus she became Russia’s first woman ruler since the rule of Princess Olga in the tenth century. Sophia was not beautiful by any count. She was madly in love with Prince Vasili Golitsin, one of her father’s advisers, and he became Sophia’s most trusted counselor.