This Powerful Tsar’s Modernization Efforts Did Not Extend to Russia’s Serf Masses
Conspicuously absent from Peter’s reforms were efforts to alleviate the abominable conditions of the serfs, a majority of Russia’s population. In the powerful reformist tsar’s reign, their lot actually worsened. Peter squeezed the serfs hard to pay for his wars. He raised their taxes, which, thanks to his more efficient bureaucracy, were now harder to evade. He also conscripted serfs into his armies, with enlistments terms as high as 25 years. Given the era’s brief life expectancies, such enlistment terms amounted to life sentences for most conscripts. Such policies led to bloody peasant and Cossack uprisings, which Peter brutally crushed.
The resistance to Peter the Great’s modernization efforts was widespread. Opponents of the tsar’s reforms included Peter’s only son to reach adulthood, his heir Tsarevich Alexei. So determined was Peter to bend his heir to his will, that Alexei fled Russia and sought asylum in the Austrian Empire – a move that Peter viewed as treason. So he inveigled his son to return with promises of forgiveness and reconciliation. Soon as Alexei crossed the border into Russia, he was arrested, imprisoned, and killed soon thereafter in 1718. Reportedly, Peter had him flogged to death. One thing that can’t be denied, is that Peter the Great was determined to get his way, and for better or for worse, the powerful reformist tsar left his everlasting mark on Russia.