The attitude of the Russian monarchists of the early twentieth century to Peter the Great

The article is devoted to the attitude of the leaders and participants of the right- monarchist movement to the activities and reforms of Emperor Peter I. The views of well-known right-wing conservative politicians and publicists on the military, administrative, and church reforms of Peter the Great, on his foreign policy, and on Peter’s transformations in the field of science and culture are analyzed. The article also discusses the policy of Peter I in relation to the Slavic peoples of Europe. The conclusion is made that the Russian monarchists had an ambiguous attitude to Peter’s transformations. On the one hand, almost all publicists and politicians noted the importance of Peter’s reforms aimed at eliminating the technical and economic backwardness of the country. On the other hand, the methods reforms were often criticized by monarchists for their excessive rigidity. Most monarchists, following their Slavophile predecessors, agreed that Peter’s reforms contributed to the bureaucratization of the Russian state, led to the emergence of a “bureaucratic mediastinum” in the state machine that divided the Tsar and the people. Almost all the authors we have reviewed have subjected the church reform of Peter I to the harshest criticism, which, in their opinion, led to the transformation of the Church into an appendage of the state. Nevertheless, most conservative politicians and publicists believed that it was not Peter’s reforms that led to Russia’s loss of identity and blind copying of Western traditions, but the subsequent incompetent rule of a number of emperors and empresses of the era of palace coups, who proceeded from self-serving motives and did not care about the welfare of the state.