Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/84

58 length, in the year 1721, Peter assumed the Byzantine title of Imperator, the fullness of power of his reformed absolutism was thereby well characterised. The Moscow tsars, such rulers as John the Terrible, had been absolute or quasi-absolute, but the absolutism of Peter was qualitatively higher. Peter was recognised by Europe; he co-ordinated Russia with the European powers; he made Russia one of the great powers of Europe. At Poltava, Peter broke the might of Sweden. At the very time when Russia was thus becoming predominant in the east, Spain was definitively ceasing to be a world power in the west. Following France, England, and Austria, Russia now took fourth place among the powers of the world, Poland ceasing to count as one of the Slav forces of the east.

In the domestic sphere, too, Peter and his state took a position higher than that which had been occupied by Muscovy.

Peter bureaucratised the organism of state, basing the administration upon the work of expert officials. His father, the second Romanov, had begun this process, but the fuller development and the perfectionment of the bureaucratic machine was the work of Peter.

The duma of boyars was abolished, its place being taken by an advisery council (bližnaja kanceljarija), whose relationship to the emperor was a personal one. The institution was not maintained, and the senate was therefore founded as supreme administrative authority.

In the course of years, administrative reform created a better organism of state, but the backbone of the state was the newly established military system, for in this domain was found the core of Peter's reforms; it was by the militarisation of the state and by military successes that Peter's prestige was sustained at home and abroad.

In the plenitude of his power, Peter had even less thought than his two predecessors of summoning the zemskii sobor. It was his aim, not merely to carry on the administration, but to bring new institutions into being, and the sobor would have been unfitted for this work. The eﬂect of Europeanisation in Russia was to strengthen absolutism. It is true that in the year 1698 a species of sobor was summoned from all classes for the condemnation of the tsarevna Sophia, but the sole aim of this was to shift the tsar's responsibility to