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====Peter the Great====
[[File: 640px-Lomonosov Poltava 1762 1764.jpg |400px|thumb|left|Mosaic of Peter the Great at Poltava]]
Peter was born in Moscow, Russia in, 1672. He was the 14th child of Tsar Alexis by his second wife. After the death of his father, he jointly ruled with his brother Ivan V from 1682. Ivan died in 1696 and then Peter ruled alone. The Tsar was a giant of a man and was unpredictable and prone to violent outbursts. Peter was a curious man by nature and he wanted to make his kingdoms strong and to protect it from its many enemies. To do this, he wanted to modernize his realm. He also wanted to strengthen his own position in regard to the local aristocracy. As a youth, he and his brother were dominated by the Boyars and for the rest of his life, he distrusted them. Peter, early in his reign to solidify his rule crushed a rebellion by soldiers in Moscow who supported his half-sister, he had her later sent to a nunnery. Peter in the first years of his reign had to suppress many rebellions, he remained a ruthless leader.<ref> Anisimov, Evgenii V. The Reforms of Peter the Great: Progress Through Violence in Russia (London, Routledge, 2015), p. 187</ref>.
This did not stop him from modernizing his country. The Tsar appointed many western advisors to his court and made western dress compulsory. Peter later toured Europe, this was known as the Great Embassy and he learned much about the west and especially its new technologies. When he returned he was ever more determined to modernize his country. Perhaps the main motive that drove the Tsar to transform his realm was to secure a military advantage. Tsar Peter was an expansionist and he wanted to secure warm water ports that would improve Russia’s access to the sea. He fought wars with Sweden and Turkey to secure these ports. Peter seized territory in Estonia, Latvia and Finland and land from the Ottoman Empire. By 1710 Russia had access to the Baltic and the Black Sea. In the Great Northern War, the Swedish King, Charles XII inflicted a humiliating defeat on Peter at the Battle of Narva. The Swedish monarch who was a military genius defeated Poland and Denmark. A Swedish attempt to march on Moscow was defeated but this did not deter the Swedes.
Charles invaded the Ukraine, in order to join up with rebellious Cossacks. Peter defeated the Swedish army by purposely directing their troops to the city of Poltava, during an unbearable Russian winter and there he surrounded them and annihilated Charles XII army. In the aftermath of his victory over Sweden, Peter founded a city on the Baltic Coast and named it after himself Petersburg. This city was a symbol of the pivot that Russia was making under the Tsar and it became known as Russia’s ‘window on Europe’ Europe.’<ref> Anisimov, p. 159</ref>. By this time Peter was absolute ruler of Russia and in 1721 he named himself as Emperor of All Russia, Great Father of the Fatherland, and "the Great." Peter was a reformer but he was like previous Tsars and he had a reputation for being bloodthirsty and cruel. He was even cruel to his own family. His sent his first wife to a nunnery and had a son convicted of treason and was secretly executed in 1718. Peter the Great died on February 8, 1725, without nominating an heir. He is entombed in the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, located in in St. Petersburg. It is reported that when asked who should rule after his death, he whispered ‘the strongest’ strongest.’<ref> Masie, p. 214</ref>. Stability was only restored after many years when his daughter Elizabeth became Tsarina.
====Peter the Great and the Serfs====
