Untitled - OUDL Home

functioning remained as before dependent upon differentsections of the landed class and the machinery of government.Peter did not introduce the idea of the servicestate; he pushed it to extremes, enforced compulsoryservice in the army, navy, and government on the landowners,and himself set the example as the first servantof the state. He wrote of himself with full justification:"I have not spared and I do not spare my life for myfatherland and people."Peter was repellent in his brutality, coarseness, andutter disregard of human life; but he was mightilypropellent, through his ever-flaming energy and willpower,his insatiable curiosity and love of experiment,his refusal to accept any defeat and his capacity tolaunch, however crudely and over-hastily at first, greatschemes on an immense, however wasteful, scale. Fromearliest childhood his overriding personal interest wasthe art of war, by sea as well as land; but he understoodit in the widest sense as involving the full utilization ofthe human and material resources of his country. Hewas at war for twenty-eight consecutive years, from1695. He began when he was twenty-four; when hefinally had peace he was fifty-two and had little morethan a year to live.Almost all Peter's reforms were born of military andnaval requirements. Russia must be westernized inorder to ensure the "two necessary things in government,namely order and defence." His task was, again as hehimself put it, to convert his subjects from " beasts intohuman beings," from "children into adults." Hisstrongest modern critics allow that he was inspired bydevotion to Russia not by personal ambition, and thathe aimed at inculcating by example and precept rationalideas of citizenship in terms of efficient, and thereforeeducated, service to the state, in contrast with blindservice to a sacrosanct ruler throned far away on highin the hallowed veneration of Muscovite ceremonial.His reforms until about 1715 were imposed piecemeal,chaotically and (as he himself admitted) far too hastily,in dependence on the urgent pressure of the moment.He was constantly scrapping or remodelling this or that103