PETER I AND HIS REFORMS
"He hoped to provoke amateur activity in the enslaved society by the threat of power and, through the slave owning nobility, to establish European science and popular enlightenment in Russia as a necessary condition for public amateur activity, he wanted the slave, while remaining a slave, to act consciously and freely.
The joint action of despotism and freedom, enlightenment and slavery is a political squaring of the circle, a riddle that has been solved in our country since the time of Peter for two centuries and has not been solved until now ", V. Klyuchevsky.
The personality of Peter I (1672-1725) rightfully belongs to the galaxy of outstanding historical figures of the world scale.
Many studies and works of art are devoted to the transformations associated with his name.
Historians and writers have assessed the personality of Peter I and the significance of his reforms in different ways, sometimes directly opposite.
Already the contemporaries of Peter I were divided into two camps: supporters and opponents of his reforms.
The dispute continued later.
In the XVIII century , M. V. Lomonosov praised Peter, admired his activities.
And a little later, the historian Karamzin accused Peter of treason to the" truly Russian "beginnings of life, and called his reforms a "brilliant mistake".
At the end of the XVII century, when the young tsar Peter I was on the Russian throne, our country was experiencing a turning point in its history.
In Russia, unlike the main Western European countries, there were almost no large industrial enterprises capable of providing the country with weapons, fabrics, agricultural implements.
It had no access to the seas - neither to the Black nor to the Baltic, through which it could develop foreign trade.
Therefore, Russia did not have its own military fleet that would protect its borders.
The land army was built on outdated principles and consisted mainly of a noble militia.
The nobles were reluctant to leave their estates for military campaigns, their weapons and military training lagged behind the advanced European armies.
There was a fierce struggle for power between the old, well born boyars and the serving people the nobles.
There were continuous uprisings of peasants and urban lower classes in the country, who fought both against the nobles and against the boyars, since they were all feudal serfs.
Russia attracted the greedy eyes of neighboring states Sweden, the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, which were not averse to capturing and subjugating the Russian lands.
It was necessary to reorganize the army, build a fleet, seize the sea coast, create a domestic industry, and rebuild the country's management system.
his policy towards the city, the merchants and the artisan population was changed.
The population of the city was divided into "regular", who owned property, and "irregular".
In turn, the "regular" was divided into two guilds.
The first group included merchants and industrialists, and the second group included small merchants and artisans.
Only the "regular" population enjoyed the right to choose city institutions.
The idea of the human, not God given nature of the state gave rise to the idea that the state is the ideal tool for transforming society, educating a virtuous subject, an ideal institution with which one can achieve the "universal good" - the desired, but constantly disappearing, like a horizon line, goal of humanity.
It seemed to the society, which had only recently emerged from the darkness of the Middle Ages, that the key to happiness had been found, it was only necessary to formulate laws and, with the help of the organization of the state, consistently implement them.
Hence the amazing optimism of the people of the XVII XVIII centuries, the naive belief in the unlimited powers of a reasonable person who builds his ship, house, city, state, society according to drawings on "reasonable" principles.
The well known mechanism of thinking of people of Peter's time in the approach to society, man and nature is also worthy of mention.
The outstanding achievements of the exact, natural sciences made it possible to interpret social life as a process close to mechanical.
All these ideas and images with varying degrees of abstraction and simplification were widely used in European society, and together with the ideas of reforms (and some of them even earlier) reached Russia, where, having changed under the influence of Russian conditions, they became elements of political consciousness.
Of course, it would be an exaggeration to say that when building his empire, Peter laid the philosophical concepts of Descartes and Spinoza in its foundation.
We are talking about a certain and strong influence of these ideas on the consciousness of the great reformer.
Without taking into account all these circumstances, it is difficult to give an adequate assessment of the very personality of the tsar reformer, his transformations.
It is quite obvious that a sharp economic leap took place in Russia during the reign of Peter the Great.
Industrial construction of the Peter the Great era took place at an unprecedented pace: during the first quarter of the XVIII century, at least 200 manufactories appeared instead of the 15-20 that existed at the end of the XVII century.
The most characteristic feature of the economic boom of the beginning of the XVIII century was the defining role of the autocratic state in the economy, its active and deep penetration into all spheres of economic life.
The economic concepts of mercantilism that prevailed in Europe proceeded from the fact that the basis of the wealth of the state, a necessary condition for its existence, is the accumulation of money through an active balance of trade, the export of goods to foreign markets and preventing the import of foreign goods to its market.
This alone presupposed state intervention in the economic sphere.
The promotion of some - "useful"," unnecessary "- types of production, crafts of goods entailed the restriction or even prohibition of others- "not useful" from the point of view of the state.
Peter, who dreamed of the power of his state, was not indifferent to the concepts of mercantilism.
The idea of the leading role of the state in the life of society in general and in the economy in particular (with the use of coercive methods in economic policy) coincided with the general direction of the idea of "violent progress", which Peter followed.
But another thing is more important - in Russian conditions, not only and not so much the concepts of mercantilism determined the choice of the direction of economic policy characteristic of the beginning of the XVIII century.
The strongest stimulator of state building and, in general, state intervention in the economic sphere was the unsuccessful beginning of the Northern War of 1700-1721.
The construction of numerous manufactories, mainly of defense significance, was carried out not out of abstract ideas about the development of the economy or calculations to get income, but was directly and rigidly determined by the need to provide the army and navy with weapons, ammunition, ammunition, uniforms.
The extreme situation after the defeat at Narva in 1700 made us realize the need to increase and rearm the army, determined the nature, pace and specifics of the industrial boom, and ultimately the entire economic policy of the Peter the Great autocracy.
In the state industry created in a short time, the principles and techniques of economic management were worked out, characteristic of subsequent years and unfamiliar to Russia of the previous time.
A similar situation has arisen in trade.
By creating its own industry, the state created (or rather, sharply strengthened) its own trade, striving to get maximum profit from marketable goods within the country and export goods when selling them abroad.
The state seized trade in a primitive, but very effective way - by introducing a monopoly on the procurement and sale of certain goods, and the range of such goods was constantly expanding.
Among them were salt, flax, leather, hemp, lard, wax and many others.
The establishment of a state monopoly led to a voluntary increase in prices for these goods within the country, and most importantly to the restriction and regulation of the trading activities of Russian merchants.
The result was the disorder, disorganization of free, market based commercial entrepreneurship.
In the vast majority of cases, the introduction of a state monopoly meant the transfer of the right to sell monopolized goods to a specific buyer, who paid a large amount of money to the treasury at once, and then sought to more than return them at the expense of the consumer or supplier of raw materials, inflating prices and destroying his competitors at the root.
The Peter the Great era has remained in the history of the Russian merchant class as a genuine hard time.
A sharp increase in direct taxes and various state "services" - at customs, drinking fees, etc. - from merchants as the wealthiest part of the townspeople, the forcible formation of trading companies (a form of trade organization that seemed to Peter the most suitable in Russian conditions) this is only part of the means and methods of coercion that Peter applied to the merchants, setting the main goal to extract as much money as possible for the treasury.
In line with such measures, we should also consider the forced relocation of merchants to St. Petersburg, as well as the administrative regulation of cargo flows, when merchants were told in which ports and what goods they could trade, and where it was strictly prohibited to do so.
The gross interference of the state in the sphere of trade led to the destruction of the shaky foundation on which the well being of many rich merchants was largely based, namely, loan and usurious capital.
This was the price paid by Russian entrepreneurs for the victory in the Northern War.
It should be noted that the cost of the victory was shared by the citizens with the rural population.
It was on the shoulders of the Russian peasantry that the greatest burden of the war fell.
The victory became possible thanks to the super efforts of the people.
Monetary and in kind payments, recruitment, heavy underwater and postage duties destabilized the national economy, led to impoverishment, the flight of hundreds of thousands of peasants.
The intensification of robberies, armed demonstrations, and finally the uprising of K. Bulavin on the Don were the result of immense tax pressure on the peasants.
From about the end of the 10s of the XVIII century, when the military storm finally moved to the west and no one doubted the successful end of the war, Peter went to a significant change in trade and industrial policy.
In fact, the monopoly on export trade was eliminated.
The government's industrial policy has also undergone changes.
The essence of the changes was the adoption of various measures to encourage private industrial entrepreneurship.
The practice of transferring state owned enterprises (especially those that are unprofitable for the treasury) to private owners or specially created companies has become particularly widespread.
The new owners received numerous benefits from the state: interest free loans, the right to duty free sale of goods, etc.
The Customs Tariff approved in 1724 also provided significant assistance to entrepreneurs, which facilitated the export of products of domestic manufactories abroad and at the same time made it difficult (with the help of high duties) to import goods produced at foreign manufactories.
However, there is no reason to think that by changing the economic policy to some extent, Peter intended to weaken the influence of the dominant system of power on the economy, i.e. unconsciously contributed to the development of capitalist forms and methods of production, which were widespread at that time in Western Europe.
The essence of what happened was a change not of the principles, but of the accents of industrial and trade policy.
By giving" relief " to manufacturers and merchants, the state of Peter was not going to be eliminated from the economy and even weaken its influence on it.
Now the whole force of gravity was transferred from open forms of coercion to the creation and operation of an administrative control bureaucratic machine that could direct the economic (and not only it!) the life of the country through a carefully thought out system of peculiar gateways and channels in the direction necessary for the state.
It was this work that was entrusted to the newly created special state institutions.
It should be noted that until that time, Russia did not know the management bodies of trade and industry.
Creation and beginning of the dey the activity of the collegiums and the Chief Magistrate was the essence of the changes that had taken place.
These bureaucratic institutions were the institutions of state regulation of the national economy, the bodies of implementation of the trade and industrial policy of the autocracy on the basis of mercantilism.
It is important to note that in Sweden, whose state institutions served as a model for state reform, such colleges implemented the policy of royal power on the same theoretical foundations.
However, the conditions of Russia differed significantly from those of Sweden not only by the scale of the country, fundamental differences in the political structure, the extraordinary intensity of industrial construction by the state and at its expense, but above all by the special rigidity of regulations, an extensive system of restrictions, excessive guardianship over the commercial and industrial activities of the filed.
The organization or transfer of new enterprises to companies or private entrepreneurs represented the forms of actual lease.
The terms of this lease were clearly defined and, if necessary, changed by the State, which had the right, in case of non fulfillment, to confiscate enterprises.
The main responsibility of the owners was the timely execution of state orders; only the excess over what is now called the "state order", the entrepreneur could sell on the market.
This dramatically reduced the importance of competition as an eternal engine of entrepreneurship.
The active influence of the state on the economic life of the country is only one aspect of the problem.
Social relations in the state have deformed the features of manufactories as potentially capitalist enterprises.
It is primarily about the use of labor.
During the Northern War, the state and the owners of manufactories used both freelance labor and "assigned" peasants.
However, in the late 10 - early 20s, important social transformations took place: the fight against peasant escapes was sharply intensified, a detailed audit of the available population was carried out, followed by fixing their social status and fixing it forever to the place of entry in the tax cadastre.
A sharp turn in the government's policy affected the industry, the possibility of supplying products to the treasury was questioned.
January 18, 1721 Peter signed a decree that allowed private manufacturers, regardless of their social affiliation, to buy serfs to their factories in order to use them for factory work.
This decree marked a decisive step towards the transformation of industrial enterprises, where the capitalist way of life was born, into serf enterprises, into a kind of feudal property, a kind of patrimonial manufactory.
The industry of Russia was put in such conditions that it could not actually develop in a different way than serfdom.
The serfdom policy in industry also deformed the process of formation of the Russian bourgeoisie.
The feudal deformation also affected the sphere of public consciousness.
Having become soul owners, the manufacturers did not feel their social identity, but sought to increase their status by obtaining the nobility.
Thus, we note two of the most important consequences of active state industrial construction: the creation of a powerful economic base, which is so necessary for a developing nation, and at the same time a significant slowdown in the existing trends of the country's development along the capitalist path, which the European peoples have already embarked on.
The only alternative to these decrees could be the abolition of serfdom.
However, there was no such alternative for Peter.
Serfdom permeated all the pores of the country's life, the consciousness of people, played a special, comprehensive role in Russia.
The destruction of the legal structures of the lower floor would undermine the basis of autocratic power.
Of all the transformations of Peter, the central place is occupied by the reform of public administration, the reorganization of all its links.
At the beginning of the reforms, the old command apparatus inherited by Peter did not undergo qualitative changes.
They tried to compensate for the increase in the volume of managerial activities by increasing the number of new orders and offices.
But already in the first years of the Northern War, it became clear that the turnovers of the mechanism of state administration, the main elements of which were orders and counties, could not keep up with the increasing speed of the flywheel of the autocratic initiative.
Peter tried to radically solve this problem with the help of regional reform - the creation of new administrative entities provinces.
The main purpose of this reform was to provide the army with everything necessary: a direct connection was established between the provinces and the army regiments distributed across the provinces.
The regional reform, responding to the most urgent needs of the autocratic power, was at the same time a consequence of the development of the bureaucratic trend that was so characteristic of the previous period.
It was with the help of strengthening the bureaucratic element in the administration that Peter intended to solve all state issues.
The reform led not only to the concentration of financial and administrative powers in the hands of several governors representatives of the central government, but also to the creation of an extensive hierarchical network of bureaucratic institutions with a large staff of officials on the ground.
A similar scheme was laid down in the idea of organizing the Senate, which was the next level of bureaucratization of the highest administration, confirmed the increasing importance of bureaucratic principles, without which Peter could not think of either effective management or the autocracy itself as a political regime of personal power.
To understand many phenomena in the history of Russia, it is necessary to emphasize the huge role of the state in the life of society.
In many ways, everything progressive and reactionary comes from above.
For Russia, it has long been a natural phenomenon when it is not public opinion that determines legislation, but, on the contrary, legislation forms (and even deforms) public opinion and public consciousness.
Peter attached great importance to written legislation, which in his era was characterized by comprehensive regulation and unceremonious interference in private and personal life.
The law was implemented only through a system of bureaucratic institutions.
We can talk about the creation of a genuine cult institution under Peter, an administrative instance.
The idea of the great reformer of Russia was aimed, firstly, at creating such a perfect and comprehensive legislation that would cover and regulate the entire life of subjects as far as possible, and secondly, Peter dreamed of creating a perfect and accurate state structure like a clock, through which legislation could be implemented.
Peter made great efforts to establish the smooth, effective work of the established institutions and paid the main attention to the development and improvement of numerous regulatory documents, which, according to their creator, were supposed to ensure the efficiency of the apparatus.
Peter's worldview was characterized by an attitude to a state institution as a military unit, to the regulations as a charter, and to an employee as a soldier or officer.
He was convinced that the army is the most perfect social structure, that it is a worthy model of the whole society, and military discipline is what can be used to educate people in order, diligence, conscientiousness, Christian morality.
The introduction of military principles into the civilian sphere was manifested in the extension of military legislation to the system of state institutions, as well as in giving the laws defining the work of institutions the meaning and strength of military charters.
Peter was characterized by a conscious orientation towards military models, a desire to give the state machine the features of a grandiose military bureaucratic organization created and operating as a single military organism.
Since the time of Peter the Great, the army has occupied an outstanding place in the life of Russian society, becoming its most important element.
It was argued that in Russia it was not the army that was under the state, but, on the contrary, the state was under the army.
The creation of a bureaucratic machine that replaced the system of medieval administration, which was based on custom, is a natural process, since bureaucracy is a necessary element of the structure of modern states.
However, in the conditions of the Russian autocracy, when the monarch's unlimited will is the only source of law, when an official is not responsible to anyone except his boss, the creation of a bureaucratic machine also became a kind of "bureaucratic revolution", during which the perpetual motion of bureaucracy was launched.
Starting from the time of Peter the Great, he began to work according to his inherent internal laws, for the ultimate goal of consolidating his position.
Many of these traits and principles have made the close knit caste of bureaucrats invulnerable to this day.
The military bureaucratic system created by Peter was based on a clear hierarchy, subordination of all links.
The Petrine era is notable for the final formalization of the autocracy.
The elimination of the last traces of class representation, the creation of codes of laws that enshrine the right of an individual to manage and own millions on the basis of his legally unlimited will with the help of a bureaucratic machine - the essence of the main processes that took place under Peter.
MODERN ASPECTS OF REFORMS Reforms in Russia have been undertaken repeatedly, but all attempts have failed.
The main reason for this is that the periodic occurrence of vlast and the desire for change was focused not on changing society, but on reforming the state.
Human interests were ignored by all reforms without exception.
The rules of reform in Russia are completely different than in Western society.
In Russia, there was no social basis for reformism due to the dominance of traditional culture, focused on the ideal imperial power.
In order to implement reforms, it is necessary, at least, to formulate their ultimate goal.
Instead, Russia has always begun to imitate Western type countries in order to become a state capable of actively opposing the West.
In addition, the reform requires a non simultaneous effort, their implementation involves a fairly long cycle - 2-3 generations - it is during this period that the stereotype of human consciousness completely changes.
The idea of the materialization of power became the basis of perestroika.
The bureaucratic nomenclature is tired of its unnatural state, when there is a lot of power, but there is no large property.
Even the benefits that they used could leave at any time along with the party card.
Perestroika reformism has purely "material" origins and it was precisely because of this that it came "from above".
The people were waiting for changes, but they were a "human factor"for the reformers.
And today, the words of V. Klyuchevsky sound topical: "Russia was ruled not by an aristocracy and not by democracy, but by a bureaucracy, that is, acting outside society and deprived of any social appearance by a bunch of individuals of various origins, united only by chin production.
Thus, the democratization of governance was accompanied by an increase in social inequality and fragmentation. "
PETER'S REFORMS AND THE SPECIAL WAY OF RUSSIA The concept of Russia was largely identified with the Russian State.
Russian Russian understanding itself, the Russian territory after the classical period of Kievan Rus was associated with the work of the state assembly.
The Russian ethnic group in its modern understanding as something unified was essentially nurtured by the state in the process of mixing diverse human masses.
Russian Russian history really looks like something that has grown out of an idea that creates itself - the Russian ethnic group, territory and culture.
The formation of the main positive principle of development - the state, the struggle for its approval, etc. - was carried out at the expense of mass repressions, the destruction of entire lifestyles, due to further restrictions on individual freedom.
In Russia, in the conditions of the weakness or practical absence of civil society, the reforms that in Europe came from below, from society, as a result of the emergence of new ways of life, new types of production in the fight against the established ones, were carried out in the interests of the authorities in the face of external and internal threats, in particular, from their own society.
Therefore, these reforms were carried out primarily through the suppression of society, giving rise to the phenomenon of alienation of society from power.
In Russia, there is a special, incomparable development, in which the movement forward is paradoxically intertwined with the suppression of freedom, and technical and other progress - with the alienation of society from the state.
As a result of historical development, a kind of "Russian way" has developed from modernization to modernization.
And since reforms from above, especially the introduction of a new one, require the strengthening of power, the development of productive forces in Russia, accompanied by a wave like strengthening of despotism at every turn of reforms, went towards the destruction of civil society, which was revived to some extent, however, after the era of reforms passed.
Peter's reforms froze the processes of emancipation of private property, especially at the most mass, peasant level.
This is confirmed by the destruction of the right of private ownership of land due to the introduction of an equalizing poll tax (instead of a land tax) on state peasants.
Over time, this tax led to the liquidation of private ownership, the redistribution of land by the community and to the increasing interference of the state in the affairs of the peasants.
Now, looking around the ruined country, which suddenly turned out to be poor and backward, as in ancient times, having felt itself facing the uncertainty of the future for the umpteenth time in our history, it is necessary to think, since our country carried with it through the revolutionary storms the age old tradition of creating a rigidly despotic regime of a special type, which in Russia was called autocracy, as a result of reforms.
The peculiarity of the historical path of Russia was that each time the reforms resulted in an even greater archaization of the system of public relations.
It was she who led to a slow flow of social processes, turning Russia into a country of catching up development.
The peculiarity also lies in the fact that catching up, basically violent reforms, the implementation of which requires strengthening, at least temporarily, the despotic principles of state power, ultimately lead to a long term strengthening of despotism.
In turn, the slow development due to the despotic regime requires new reforms.
And everything repeats again.
These cycles become a typological feature of the historical path of Russia.
This is how a special path of Russia is formed - as a deviation from the usual historical order.
Will the "change of the usual historical order" continue in our future - a special path that will once again plunge the country into a paroxysm of convulsive violent changes, giving nothing in return, except the prospect of repeating them in the future, already on the periphery of world development?
Or will the meaning of the word "reform" change in our history, and we will find the strength, opportunities and will to take a place worthy of a great culture in this world?
Only historians of future generations will be able to answer these questions, but I would like to affirmatively answer the second one.
