16. Borodin, Kabak i ego proshloe, 45, cited in Segal, Russian Drinking, 72. Lindsey Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998), 418–19. See also Derek Wilson, Peter the Great (New York: St. Martin’s, 2010), 41.
17. Hughes, Peter the Great, 36; Wilson, Peter the Great, 40.
18. Massie, Peter the Great, 116–17; Yaroslav E. Vodarskii, “Peter I,” in The Emperors and Empresses of Russia: Rediscovering the Romanovs, ed. Donald J. Raleigh and A. A. Iskenderov (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1996), 12.
19. On Lefort having “a great Share in Debauching the Czar” see von Strahlenberg, Russia, Siberia and Great Tatary, 238, 43; James Cracraft, The Revolution of Peter the Great (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), 5. Leibniz quotation from Massie, Peter the Great, 118.
20. “Peter the Great in England,” The Living Age 47, no. 11 (1855): 468. On general impacts see Arthur MacGregor, “The Tsar in England: Peter the Great’s Visit to London in 1698,” The Seventeenth Century 19, no. 1 (2004); Anthony Cross, Peter the Great through British Eyes: Perceptions and Representations of the Tsar since 1698 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 20.
21. “Peter the Great in England,” 471. See also MacGregor, “Tsar in England”; Wilson, Peter the Great, 55. On the monkey incident see Barrow, Life of Peter the Great, 88; Leo Loewenson, “Some Details of Peter the Great’s Stay in England in 1698: Neglected English Material,” Slavonic and East European Review 40, no. 95 (1962): 434.
22. Zitser, Transfigured Kingdom, 46; Massie, Peter the Great, 118.
23. Massie, Peter the Great, 118.
24. von Strahlenberg, Russia, Siberia and Great Tatary, 249; Alfred Rambaud, Russia, 2 vols. (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1902), 2:51–52.
25. von Staehlin, Original Anecdotes of Peter the Great, 354; see also John Banks, Life of Peter the Great, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1882), 2:220–21; Cross, Peter the Great through British Eyes, 44. Anthony Cross’ anecdotes of Peter the Great forcing even his heartiest sailors to get drunk with him originate with a letter of 20 August 1702 from Thomas Hale, a British merchant in Arkhangelsk, found in the British Library, Add. Mss. 33,573, Hale Papers, Correspondence vol. 11 (1661–1814), f. 178.
26. Walter K. Kelly, History of Russia, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time, 2 vols. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854), 1:260; Philippe-Paul (comte de) Ségur, History of Russia and of Peter the Great (London: Treuttel and Würtz, Treuttel, Jun. and Richter, 1829), 270; Bushkovitch, Peter the Great, 233.
27. Friedrich Wilhelm von Bergholz, Dnevnik kammer-iunkera Berkhgol’tsa, vedennyi im v Rossii v tsarstvovanie Petra Velikago, s 1721–1725 g., trans. I. Ammon, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Tipograpfiya Katkova i Ko., 1858), 2:349. See also Massie, Peter the Great, 119.
28. von Strahlenberg, Russia, Siberia and Great Tatary, 240; Vladislav B. Aksenov, Veselie Rusi, XX vek: gradus noveishei rossiiskoi istorii ot “p’yanogo byudzheta” do “sukhogo zakona” (Moscow: Probel-2000, 2007), 32–33.
29. Massie, Peter the Great, 119–20. Such a scene is reminiscent of Pieter Bruegel’s (in)famous 1559 oil painting depicting The Fight between Carnival and Lent.
30. Kelly, History of Russia, 338–39. On Zotov’s Bible see James Cracraft, The Church Reform of Peter the Great (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1971), 11.
31. Just Juel, “Iz zapisok datskogo poslannika Iusta Iulia,” Russkii arkhiv 30, no. 3 (1892): 41; Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, 258. Even Voltaire’s history of Peter makes mention of Volkov; see M. de Voltaire, The History of the Russian Empire under Peter the Great, 2 vols. (Berwick, U.K.: R. Taylor, 1760), vol. 1, chap. 9, “Travels of Peter the Great.”
32. Lindsey Hughes, “Playing Games: The Alternative History of Peter the Great,” SSEES Occasional Papers 41 (1998): 13, and Peter the Great, 90.
33. Wilson, Peter the Great, 33; Hughes, Peter the Great, 73.
34. Borodin, Kabak I Ego Proshloe, 44; Hughes, Peter the Great, 157; H. Sutherland Edwards, “Food and Drink,” in Russia as Seen and Described by Famous Writers, ed. Esther Singleton (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1906), 260–61.
35. von Strahlenberg, Russia, Siberia and Great Tatary, 240–41; Segal, Russian Drinking, 72. Segal’s accounts are based on Aleksei Tolstoi, Pyotr Pervyi (Moscow: Pravda, 1971), 335. See also Massie, Peter the Great, 117. Even Swedish playwright August Strindberg referenced Peter’s house crashing, in Historical Miniatures (1905) (Middlesex, U.K.: Echo Library, 2006), 152.
36. Hughes, Peter the Great, 147.
37. On faulting Peter’s upbringing see von Strahlenberg, Russia, Siberia and Great Tatary, 238. On the need for entertainment see Rambaud, Russia, 27. For the cultural backlash argument see Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great; Wilson, Peter the Great, 34. On the use of parody to discredit tradition see Zitser, Transfigured Kingdom, 3–9.
38. von Strahlenberg, Russia, Siberia and Great Tatary, 240–41.
39. Kelly, History of Russia, 289. See also Orlando Williams Wight, Life of Peter the Great, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1882), 1:223–25.
40. Peter himself sailed to meet the first merchant vessel to approach his new capital. Peter then piloted the Dutch vessel, with its cargo of salt and wine, to port, paying the skipper five hundred ducats out of pocket and decreeing the ship forever free from tolls. Nathan Haskell Dole, Young Folks’ History of Russia (New York: Saalfield Publishing Co., 1903), 391.
41. Massie, Peter the Great, 119. Indeed, much official business was run through “unofficial” channels. All petitions and memorials addressed to the tsar wound up with Romodanovsky. If one were to complain about any particular outcome to the tsar, he would pass the blame: “It is not my fault; all depends on the czar of Moscow,” Romodanovsky. Kelly, History of Russia, 271–72.
42. Juel, “Iz zapisok datskogo poslannika Iusta Iulia,” 37.
43. Kelly, History of Russia, 298. Also see Walter J. Gleason, Empress Anna: Favorites, Policies, Campaigns (Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic International, 1984), 194; Hughes, Peter the Great, 91, and “Playing Games,” 13. The reverse of this dynamic also had tragic consequences, as Russian ambassadors often took their inebriety with them. Adam Olearius recounted how, in 1608, the Russian ambassador to Swedish King Charles IX drank so much that he was found dead in bed. Samuel H. Baron, ed., The Travels of Olearius in Seventeenth-Century Russia (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1967), 144. See also Vladimir P. Nuzhnyi, Vino v zhinzni i zhizn‘ v vine (Moscow: Sinteg, 2001), 24.
44. “Peter the Great as Peter the Little,” in Review of Reviews, vol. 5, January–June, ed. W. T. Stead (London, Mowbray House: 1892), 172; Juel, “Iz zapisok datskogo poslannika Iusta Iulia,” 30, 32, 42–44. See also Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, 266.
45. Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, 266. The quote is from Juel, “Iz zapisok datskogo poslannika Iusta Iulia,” 43–44.
46. Cracraft, Church Reform of Peter the Great, 13. See also Banks, Life of Peter the Great, 2:222–23. Banks cites a handwritten manuscript of Dr. Birch housed in the Sloane papers in the British Museum.
47. Bergholz, Dnevnik kammer-iunkera Berkhgol’tsa, 1:257. See also ibid., 1:237; Banks, Life of Peter the Great, 216.
48. Barrow, Life of Peter the Great, 116; Kelly, History of Russia, 254–55.
49. Ségur, History of Russia and of Peter the Great, 381; von Strahlenberg, Russia, Siberia and Great Tatary, 241–42.
50. Kelly, History of Russia, 254–55. On Romodanovsky’s bear see Friederich Christian Weber, The Present State of Russia (London: W. Taylor, 1722), 137. See also Kelly, History of Russia, 271–72; Robert Coughlan, Elizabeth and Catherine: Empresses of All the Russias (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974), 17. Other noteworthy accounts of Peter’s drunken cruelty can be found in the works of novelist Alexei Tolstoy. In his well-researched Peter the First, Tolstoy depicts Peter’s Jolly Company emasculating members of the old boyar class: “Prince Belosel’sky w
as stripped naked and eggs were broken against his bare butt…. They stuck a candle into Prince Volkonsky’s anus and chanted prayers over him until they collapsed with laughter. They pitched and tarred people and made them stand on their heads. They even used a bellows to pump air into Courtier Ivan Akakievich’s anus, which caused his subsequent speedy death.” Tolstoi, Pyotr Pervyi, 214; English translation from Segal, Russian Drinking, 72.
51. Rambaud, Russia, 27; von Strahlenberg, Russia, Siberia and Great Tatary, 248.
52. Ségur, History of Russia and of Peter the Great, 443.
53. Bushkovitch goes on to note that in the ensuing drinking “Menshikov got so drunk he lost a jewel-encrusted order of knighthood, a present from the King of Prussia. Fortunately a common soldier found it the next day and returned it to him.” Bushkovitch, Peter the Great, 344–46. On the little people see Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, 259. Of course, the birth of Alexei also was celebrated with alcohol. Hughes, Peter the Great, 29.
54. Evgenii Viktorovich Anisimov, The Reforms of Peter the Great: Progress through Coercion in Russia, trans. John T. Alexander (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1993), 278–79.
55. On the law of succession and the crowning of Catherine see Anisimov, Reforms of Peter the Great, 279; Cracraft, Revolution of Peter the Great, 66–67. On the Drunken Synod and Peter’s death see Kelly, History of Russia, 338–39.
Chapter 5
1. Vasilii O. Klyuchevskii, A Course in Russian History: The Time of Catherine the Great, vol. 2, trans. Marshall Shatz (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), 15–16.
2. Robert Nisbet Bain, The Daughter of Peter the Great: A History of Russian Diplomacy and of the Russian Court under the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, 1741–1762 (London: Archibald Constable & Co., 1899), 106; Mark Cruse and Hilde Hoogenboom, “Preface: Catherine the Great and Her Several Memoirs,” in The Memoirs of Catherine the Great, ed. Mark Cruse and Hilde Hoogenboom (New York: Modern Library, 2005), xv.
3. Catherine II, The Memoirs of Catherine the Great, trans. Mark Cruse and Hilde Hoogenboom (New York: Modern Library, 2005), 4–5.
4. Klyuchevskii, A Course in Russian History, 17–18; Samuel Smucker, Memoirs of the Court and Reign of Catherine the Second, Empress of Russia (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1855), 24; Catherine II, Memoirs of Catherine the Great, 74.
5. Catherine II, Memoirs of Catherine the Great, 120; Robert K. Massie, Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (New York: Random House, 2011), 159; Henri Troyat, Catherine the Great, trans. Joan Pinkham (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1980), 86, 99–100.
6. Catherine II, Memoirs of Catherine the Great, 82–84.
7. Ibid., 184.
8. Klyuchevskii, Course in Russian History, 16–17.
9. Samuel M. Smucker, The Life and Reign of Nicholas the First, Emperor of Russia (Philadelphia: J. W. Bradley, 1856), 25.
10. Charles Geneviève Louis Auguste André Timothée d’Eon de Beaumont, Lettres, mémoires & négociations particulieres du Chevalier d’Éon, ministre plénipotentiaire de France aupres du roi de la Grande Bretagne; avec M. M. les ducs de Praslin, de Nivernois, de Sainte-Foy, & Regnier de Guerchy ambassadeur extraordinaire, &c. &c. &c. (London: Jaques Dixwell, 1764); for an English translation see Troyat, Catherine the Great, 26–27. See also Jean-Henri Castéra, The Life of Catharine II. Empress of Russia, 3rd ed., 3 vols. (London: T. N. Longman & O. Rees, 1799), 1:124. Henri Troyat, Terrible Tsarinas: Five Russian Women in Power, trans. Andrea Lyn Secara (New York: Algora, 2000), 153. On the need to balance Peter and Elizabeth see Cruse and Hoogenboom, “Catherine the Great and Her Several Memoirs,” xvi.
11. C. C. J., “Russian Court Life in the Eighteenth Century,” Littell’s Living Age 23, no. 1777 (1878): 762.
12. Troyat, Catherine the Great, 133.
13. Smucker, Catherine the Second, 38–39.
14. Troyat, Catherine the Great, 133–34.
15. Klyuchevskii, Course in Russian History, 17–18.
16. Harford Montgomery Hyde, The Empress Catherine and Princess Dashkov (London: Chapman & Hall, 1935), 29; Klyuchevskii, A Course in Russian History, 22–23; Troyat, Catherine the Great, 136–37.
17. Klyuchevskii, Course in Russian History, 22–23.
18. Valerie A. Kivelson, “The Devil Stole His Mind: The Tsar and the 1648 Moscow Uprising,” American Historical Review 98, no. 3 (1993): 733; Dmitry Shlapentokh, “Drunkenness in the Context of Political Culture: The Case of Russian Revolutions,” International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 14, no. 8 (1994): 18; Paul Miliukov, Charles Seignobos, and Louis Eisenmann, History of Russia, vol. 1: From the Beginnings to the Empire of Peter the Great (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1968), 151. Adam Olearius vividly described the sorrowful fate of those too drunk to escape the flames; see Samuel H. Baron, ed., The Travels of Olearius in Seventeenth-Century Russia (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1967), 208–13.
19. Robert Coughlan, Elizabeth and Catherine: Empresses of All the Russias (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974), 32. On Catherine I and alcohol see Sergei Romanov, Istoriya russkoi vodki (Moscow: Veche, 1998), 117–18. Also see Troyat, Terrible Tsarinas, 15–18.
20. Troyat, Terrible Tsarinas, 69.
21. Troyat, Terrible Tsarinas, 82–85; Evgenii Viktorovich Anisimov, “Empress Anna Ivanovna, 1730–1740,” in The Emperors and Empresses of Russia: Rediscovering the Romanovs, ed. Donald J. Raleigh and A. A. Iskenderov (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1996), 45–53.
22. Coughlan, Elizabeth and Catherine, 37–38; Bain, Daughter of Peter the Great, 92.
23. Klyuchevskii, Course in Russian History, 23.
24. Ibid., 22; Alfred Rambaud, Russia, 2 vols. (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1902), 2:85.
25. Klyuchevskii, Course in Russian History, 23–24, 204; Walter K. Kelly, History of Russia, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time, 2 vols. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854), 1:463.
26. Troyat, Catherine the Great, 143–48.
27. Ibid., 148–49.
28. Ibid., 149.
29. Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova, The Memoirs of Princess Dashkova, trans. Kyril Fitzlyon (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995), 82; Massie, Catherine the Great, 268–69. On the rumors see Virginia Rounding, Catherine the Great: Love, Sex, and Power (New York: Macmillan, 2006), 147.
30. Klyuchevskii, Course in Russian History, 26. Claims of losses from the celebration totaled roughly 105,000 rubles. Rounding, Catherine the Great, 147. Walter Kelly suggests that even foreign ambassadors contributed to the celebrations. Kelly, History of Russia, 466.
31. Dashkova, Memoirs of Princess Dashkova, 81. Klyuchevskii suggests that Peter also requested Elizabeth Vorontsova, who was instead dispatched to Moscow to marry Alexander Poliansky. Klyuchevskii, A Course in Russian History, 26.
32. Robert Nisbet Bain, Peter III, Emperor of Russia: The Story of a Crisis and a Crime (London: Archibald Constable & Co., 1902), 182–84; Kelly, History of Russia, 475.
33. Kelly, History of Russia, 473.
34. J. M. Buckley, The Midnight Sun, the Tsar and the Nihilist (Boston: D. Lothrop & Co., 1886), 168–71.
35. Smucker, Catherine the Second, 268–69.
36. Edvard Radzinsky, Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar, trans. Antonina W. Bouis (New York: Free Press, 2006), 16–17.
37. Smucker, Life and Reign of Nicholas the First, 69; Radzinsky, Alexander II, 32–34.
38. See, for instance, Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970–2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 99; Stephen White, Russia’s New Politics: The Management of a Postcommunist Society (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 29–30.
Chapter 6
1. See, for instance: Linda Himelstein, The King of Vodka: The Story of Pyotr Smirnov and the Upheaval of an Empire (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 287–338; K. V. Smirnova et al., Vodochnyi korol’ Petr Arsen’evich Smirnov i ego potomki (Moscow: Raduga, 1999), 85–118. On international disputes arising from such Russian imagery see Boris S. Seglin, “Russkaya vo
dka v mezhdunarodnykh sudakh,” Biznes-advokat, no. 1 (2005); http://www.bestlawyers.ru/php/news/newsnew.phtml?id=370&idnew=14983&start=0 (accessed Feb. 8, 2013).
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