page_title: Military history of the Russian Empire
section_title: Early rule and military reforms
hierarchical_section_title: Military history of the Russian Empire / Peter the Great / Early rule and military reforms
caption_attribution_description: Grandfather of the Russian navy. Boat of Peter the Great. The exhibit of Navy Museum in Saint-Petersburg, Russia.
context_page_description: The military history of the Russian Empire encompasses the history of armed conflict in which the Russian Empire participated. This history stretches from its creation in 1721 by Peter the Great, until the Russian Revolution, which led to the establishment of the Soviet Union. Much of the related events involve the Imperial Russian Army, Imperial Russian Navy, and from the early twentieth century, the Imperial Russian Air Service.
context_section_description: Peter personally studied soldiers and sailors from the bottom up, serving in the rank and file before promoting himself into the officer corps. Thus, Peter did not become a full general until after his victory at Poltava in 1709, and did not become full admiral until the conclusion of the Great Northern War more than a decade later. As early as 1694, he established a dockyard in Archangel and built an entire ship by himself. Russia suffered from an acute lack of expertise, a problem Peter mitigated by going to the foreign quarters in Moscow; there, in a relaxed environment far removed from the throne, he learned the particulars of such things as shipbuilding, navigation, military formation, and the erection of fortifications. Peter wanted to be everywhere at once, and see everything for himself. Not taking his role as tsar very seriously, he and his noble friends often staged elaborate drinking rituals and other forms of horseplay, displays of personal excess that helped unite his circle of friends through talk and drink. However, at the same time, he could be cruel, not flinching from the application of force to put down rebellions and sometimes beating his own friends if he thought it necessary.
  Once he took over the governmental machinery, Peter found a distinct lack of skilled specialists with which to run his government. Never placing much importance in rank or origin, Peter began recruiting skilled specialists out of every corner of the Russian empire, including serfs, foreigners, clergymen, and foreign specialists along with the usual boyars. Thus his administration consisted of men from across the social gamut. Most prominent among them was a one Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov, a childhood friend from Peter's days with the mock troops. Menshikov was a former stableboy of the lowest rank, and would later rise up and become Peter's most able administrator. As corrupt as he was energetic, Menshikov could be found in every part of the Russian governmental machinery, was under constant surveillance by the Russian court, and often met Peter's cudgel, all the while somehow maintaining his prominent position.
  With the head of the Russian governance now firmly in place, Peter began a sweeping modernization of his army. Peter inherited a partially Westernized military, and he sought to consolidate the reforms of his predecessors. Before Peter, Russia had a large, irregular, low-quality army. The army dissolved annually during harvest seasons, and the only regular forces in the Russian army were the streltsy, a formally elite unit that had, by Peter's time, become a hereditary, ill-trained, ill-equipped force that garrisoned in Moscow and played more of a role in politics then in actual fighting.
  Peter started by firmly placed the nobility into the officer corps. Drawing on his personal experiences, he made young nobles serve as rank-and-file soldiers before ascending to the officer corps; commoners who distinguished themselves could achieve officer rank as well. Peter believed in lifelong servitude to the state, whether it was growing crops or fighting wars. Thus he offered serfs escape from their lifelong servitude on the farm in return for lifelong servitude in the army. Older and disabled veterans were transferred to positions in administration and the reserves, and thus, once they joined, Peter's troops were bound to the army for life.
  Peter established new schools and training grounds for the officer elite that was to lead the Russian army, and dispatched large numbers of men abroad to learn under foreign masters. Finding promises of release from serfdom insufficient, Peter began drafting soldiers, starting with a levy calling for 1 man for every 50 households. This levy was repeated an incredible 53 times, drawing 300,000 new soldiers into his army. He grew increasingly adept at pulling manpower out of every available resource, including the clergy and enemy deserters. The resultant Russian army was thus heavily Russian; the army was vastly more nationalistic then its European counterparts, which relied heavily on me
caption: Model of the boat Peter the Great discovered around 1688. Located at the Central Naval Museum, St. Petersburg.
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