563. Peter the Great: Bloodbath in the Kremlin (Part 2)

概览

This episode follows Peter the Great after he has secured power in Moscow, focusing on the strange mix of curiosity, brutality, play-acting, technical ambition, and violent insecurity that shaped his early rule.

The main narrative is Peter’s “Great Embassy” to Western Europe. Traveling incognito as Peter Mikhailov, he moves through Riga, Brandenburg, Holland, and England, seeking shipbuilding knowledge, military expertise, scientific learning, and contact with Protestant Europe.

The episode then turns sharply darker when Peter returns to Russia. He imposes visible Westernizing reforms, removes his wife Eudokia, crushes the Streltsy through torture and public executions, and redirects Russian strategy from the Black Sea toward the Baltic, setting up the Great Northern War against Sweden.

分段落总结

[00:31] Burnet’s Portrait of Peter

[事实] Gilbert Burnet met Peter the Great in London in 1698 and described him as hot-tempered, brutal in passion, given to drinking brandy, and afflicted by convulsive motions.

[事实] The hosts use Burnet’s account to introduce Peter as a ruler who was both curious about Protestant doctrine and capable of extreme violence.

[推测] Burnet’s description frames the episode’s central tension: Peter as an eager student of the West and as a terrifying autocrat.

[03:17] Peter After Sophia’s Defeat

[事实] In the summer of 1689, Peter was 17, had deposed Sophia, and had secured the loyalty of the Streltsy.

[事实] He is described as six foot seven, angular, long-haired, mustached, physically restless, and possibly affected by a nervous tic or mild epilepsy.

[事实] After taking power, Peter asked his mother to run Russia while he spent time with soldiers, machinery, lathes, and foreigners in the German suburb.

[推测] His early withdrawal from daily rule suggests that power, technical fascination, and adolescent excess developed together rather than separately.

[04:47] Foreign Friends and the Jolly Company

[事实] Peter’s close circle included General Gordon, a Scottish mercenary, and Franz Lefort, a Geneva-born soldier known for drinking, dancing, and sociability.

[事实] Peter’s mistress Anna Mons came through Lefort’s circle and shared the drinking and social life around Peter.

[事实] The “Jolly Company” could include dozens or even hundreds of people, moving between noble houses for long feasts, drinking, smoking, shooting, fireworks, and violent pranks.

[事实] Some pranks were extreme, including stripping people, dragging them across ice, inserting and lighting candles, and at least one fatal incident involving bellows.

[08:59] Mock Authority and Religious Satire

[事实] The Jolly Company developed mock titles and rituals, including a mock ruler called the Prince Caesar, Fedor Romanovsky, whom Peter addressed as “your majesty.”

[事实] A trained bear was said to offer peppered brandy to guests and strip people who refused.

[事实] By the 1690s, Peter’s circle had formed the “all-joking, all-drunken synod of fools and jesters,” parodying church structures with cardinals, bishops, deacons, and a mock pope.

[事实] The hosts say Peter remained pious, but he despised the anti-Western patriarch Adrian and was fascinated by other forms of Christianity.

[推测] The mock synod allowed Peter to attack Orthodox authority indirectly while avoiding an openly frontal assault on the church.

[12:59] Archangel, Azov, and Naval Ambition

[事实] Peter traveled to Archangel on the White Sea, then Russia’s only outlet to the sea, and was drawn to its English and Dutch sailors, Protestant churches, and maritime culture.

[事实] He designed a Russian naval flag by adapting and reordering the colors of the Dutch flag, creating the white, blue, and red pattern associated with modern Russia.

[事实] Peter failed to capture Azov in 1695 but succeeded in 1696, taking it from the Ottomans with the help of Cossacks and giving Russia its first victory in 20 years.

[事实] His triumph in Moscow used classical Roman imagery, including Hercules, Mars, and “Veni, Vidi, Vici,” rather than purely Orthodox ceremonial forms.

[15:39] The Great Embassy Announced

[事实] After the Azov victory, Peter announced a major embassy to Europe led by Franz Lefort, intended to recruit officers, shipwrights, and sailors for Russia.

[事实] Rumors spread in Moscow that Peter himself would join the embassy incognito as a member of the diplomatic staff.

[事实] The hosts stress that no Russian tsar had previously traveled outside Russia except in wartime.

[事实] Peter wanted allies against the Ottomans, but he was also personally fascinated by Holland and England, especially their dockyards and shipbuilding methods.

[推测] The embassy was both a diplomatic mission and a technical apprenticeship for Peter himself.

[18:32] A Violent Departure

[事实] Before leaving, Peter heard that some Streltsy had complained he was going West and betraying Russia to foreigners.

[事实] He had a Streltsy colonel and two noblemen executed, with their limbs cut off and then their heads removed.

[事实] He also had the coffin of Sophia’s uncle dragged by pigs into Red Square so that the executed men’s blood would spatter the corpse.

[事实] Peter then left under the name Peter Mikhailov with an entourage of about 250 people, including noblemen, musicians, coachmen, priests, secretaries, and four dwarfs.

[20:32] Riga and the Swedish Grudge

[事实] In Riga, then part of the Swedish Empire, the Swedes took Peter’s incognito status literally and did not provide the honors he expected.

[事实] Peter was offended that he had to pay for his own board and lodging and that a Swedish sentry threatened to shoot him while he inspected the city’s defenses.

[事实] Thirteen years later, when Russia attacked Riga, Peter insisted on firing the first shells into the city.

[事实] After Riga, Peter went through Courland and Königsberg, met the Elector of Brandenburg, hunted, watched fireworks, and attended entertainments including bear fights.

[22:35] Peter Among Western Elites

[事实] Peter met Sophia of Hanover and her daughter, but he was embarrassed in the presence of aristocratic Western women and said he did not know what to say.

[事实] He encountered the future George II as a child, hugged him, kissed him, and put him on his lap.

[事实] While dancing with German women, Peter discovered corsets and was startled by their hardness.

[事实] The hosts say Peter restrained himself around aristocratic women, while his entourage often became heavily drunk.

[24:03] Zaandam and the Shipyard Dream

[事实] Peter was intensely excited to reach Holland and went ahead of the rest of his party to Zaandam, a major shipbuilding center.

[事实] He met Gerrit Kist, a blacksmith who had once worked for him in Moscow, and moved into a nearby house.

[事实] Peter bought tools and signed up to work in a shipyard under the name Peter Mikhailov.

[事实] Crowds gathered to watch him because he was extremely tall and had a strong Russian accent, and local boys pelted him with mud.

[推测] His attempt at anonymity failed because his body, entourage, and reputation made him impossible to disguise.

[26:31] Amsterdam and Practical Learning

[事实] Peter moved from Zaandam to Amsterdam, where the Dutch East India Company offered him a closed shipyard and a new frigate to work on from start to finish.

[事实] He worked with his tools and asked to be called “carpenter Peter.”

[事实] Outside the shipyard, he met William of Orange, visited factories, laboratories, museums, botanical gardens, and anatomy demonstrations.

[事实] Peter was fascinated by anatomy and preservation techniques, and the hosts connect this interest to later cabinets of curiosities in St. Petersburg.

[事实] Peter was disappointed that Dutch shipbuilding relied on practical intuition rather than blueprints, so he turned toward England for more systematic instruction.

[30:34] Peter Arrives in London

[事实] Peter arrived in London on 11 January 1698 and was greeted in Dutch by William III’s court chamberlain.

[事实] London is described as a city of about 750,000 people, public violence, coffee houses, newspapers, the Bank of England, party politics, the Royal Society, Isaac Newton, and Christopher Wren’s churches.

[事实] Peter first stayed in Norfolk Street near the Strand, where the household resembled student lodgings and was reported to have a terrible smell.

[事实] He met the future Queen Anne, went shopping, examined watches, admired English coffins, and bought a stuffed swordfish and crocodile.

[事实] He became friendly with the Marquis of Carmarthen and had a relationship with the actress Letitia Cross.

[33:47] Deptford, Quakers, and Parliament

[事实] Because of crowd problems, William III’s government moved Peter across the river to John Evelyn’s house at Deptford.

[事实] Gilbert Burnet tried to interest Peter in Anglicanism, but Peter was especially fascinated by the Quakers.

[事实] Peter attended Quaker meetings, met William Penn, and discussed Quakerism with him in Dutch.

[事实] Peter visited Greenwich, the Tower of London, and Parliament, where he watched from above while William III handled tax bills in the House of Lords.

[事实] Peter said it was good to hear subjects speaking truthfully and openly to their king, even though such limits on monarchy would not suit Russia.

[37:51] What England Supplied

[事实] Peter took up smoking and arranged with Carmarthen for tobacco to be imported into Russia.

[事实] He recruited about 60 mathematicians, shipwrights, engineers, and barbers to return with him to Russia.

[事实] Peter later said it would be happier to be an admiral in England than a tsar in Russia, and he praised England as beautiful and happy.

[推测] England gave Peter both technical personnel and a model of maritime, commercial, and scientific power that he wanted Russia to imitate.

[39:35] The Wrecking of John Evelyn’s House

[事实] After Peter left, John Evelyn found his Deptford house severely damaged.

[事实] The damage included ink and grease everywhere, broken locks and doorknobs, smashed windows, chairs used as firewood, ripped pictures, and a destroyed garden.

[事实] The garden’s lawn and holly hedge were said to have been ruined, with one account linking the damage to wheelbarrow races.

[事实] The government compensated Evelyn by more than £350, which the hosts say would be more than a million pounds in modern earnings terms.

[41:12] Dresden, Vienna, and the Streltsy Crisis

[事实] After England, Peter went to Dresden and Vienna, and in Dresden he saw a Kunstkammer, or cabinet of curiosities.

[事实] While preparing to continue to Venice in July, Peter received news from Romanovsky that four Streltsy regiments had mutinied and were marching on Moscow.

[事实] Peter abandoned the rest of the trip and rushed east through Poland, stopping only to change horses.

[事实] In Krakow, he learned that Romanovsky’s troops had intercepted and defeated the Streltsy rebels.

[42:38] Augustus the Strong and the Swedish Question

[事实] Peter met Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and elected King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania.

[事实] The hosts describe the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as vast, culturally mixed, tolerant, and politically unstable.

[事实] Augustus was portrayed as physically powerful, extravagant, fond of porcelain, mistresses, exotic animals, and violent animal entertainments.

[事实] Augustus proposed that he and Peter join forces against Sweden and divide the Swedish Baltic Empire while the new Swedish king, Charles XII, was still a teenager.

[事实] Peter liked the proposal and began shifting his strategic focus away from the Ottomans and toward the Baltic.

[47:33] Forced Westernization at Home

[事实] Peter returned to his estate near Moscow on 4 September 1698, and the next day he greeted noblemen by forcibly shaving off their beards.

[事实] The hosts explain that Orthodox Russians regarded the beard as a divine gift and shaving it as sinful.

[事实] Peter later allowed beards only through a special tax and medallion.

[事实] He ordered Russian elites to abandon traditional caftans and adopt French or German-style coats, waistcoats, breeches, bonnets, and skirts.

[事实] Guards in Moscow were instructed to cut long caftans, and foreign ambassadors later observed elite Russians dressing in German fashion.

[50:41] Calendar, Coinage, and Eudokia

[事实] Peter changed Russian dating from years counted since the creation of the world to years counted from the birth of Jesus, using the Julian calendar.

[事实] He also wanted proper coinage modeled on English coinage after studying the Mint at the Tower of London.

[事实] Peter had not written once to his wife Eudokia during his 18 months away.

[事实] On his return, he sent Eudokia to a convent in Suzdal, where her head was shaved and she was renamed Helen.

[事实] Peter took their son Alexis from Eudokia and gave him to his sister, a moment the hosts say would later matter for Peter’s relationship with Alexis.

[52:25] Torture of the Streltsy

[事实] Peter used the Streltsy mutiny as a pretext to destroy them as a political and military force.

[事实] He believed the mutiny was part of a conspiracy linked to Sophia, though the hosts say she almost certainly did not know about it.

[事实] Peter had 14 special torture chambers built at his estate, where Streltsy mutineers were interrogated six days a week.

[事实] The prisoners were beaten, roasted over fires, and lashed with the knout, a leather whip that could kill within 25 strokes.

[事实] When the patriarch urged Peter to stop, Peter said Russian society was diseased and he was burning the disease out.

[55:22] Show Executions and Sophia’s Final Fall

[事实] Under torture, Streltsy prisoners confessed to plans to storm Moscow, burn the German suburb, remove foreigners, and restore Sophia.

[事实] Peter interrogated Sophia at her convent, ordered her head shaved, forced her into religious vows, and made her a political prisoner.

[事实] Hundreds of Streltsy were hanged, beheaded, or broken on the wheel.

[事实] Around 200 were taken to the convent where Sophia was held, and prominent rebels were hanged outside her window through the winter.

[事实] An Austrian diplomat described Peter himself wielding an axe and beheading five people.

[事实] Peter disbanded the Streltsy completely in 1699, leaving himself in a position of absolute power.

[57:51] Toward the Great Northern War

[事实] After eliminating the Streltsy, Peter continued holding elaborate parties and feasts with costumes, mock religious rituals, bears, dwarfs, and heavy drinking.

[事实] He remained focused on Augustus the Strong’s proposal to attack Sweden and divide the Baltic.

[事实] In July 1700, Peter agreed to a 30-year truce with the Ottomans, kept Azov, and gave up hope of access to the Black Sea.

[事实] News of the Ottoman treaty reached Moscow on 18 August 1700, and Peter declared war on Sweden the next day.

[事实] The hosts identify this declaration as the beginning of the Great Northern War.

播客点评/总结

[推测] The episode’s main value is its vivid portrait of Peter as a ruler whose Westernizing project was inseparable from personal violence, theatrical power, and genuine technical curiosity. The strongest sections are the shipyard scenes in Holland and England, because they show Peter learning with his hands rather than merely issuing reforms from a throne.

[推测] The episode is especially useful for listeners interested in how cultural reform, military modernization, and autocratic coercion can become tied together. It gives concrete examples: beard shaving, clothing rules, calendar reform, recruitment of experts, and the destruction of the Streltsy.

[推测] Its limitation is that the comic tone sometimes sits very close to accounts of torture, executions, and sexual or physical humiliation. That contrast may make the episode memorable, but some listeners may find the shifts in tone uncomfortable.

[推测] This episode is best suited to listeners who already enjoy narrative political history and want a dramatic bridge between Peter’s youth, his Western education, and Russia’s coming confrontation with Sweden.