Lindsey Hughes (SSEES, University of London), Peter's Russia: Work in Progress
Autumn 1991 was a good time to visit the newly renamed city of St Petersburg (Sankt Piter Burkh) to embark on the research for a book on Russia m the reign of Peter the Great The provisional plan envisages a primarily thematic arrangement, with chapters on comparatively well covered areas such as army and navy, government reforms, trade, industry and the Church, and also comparatively neglected ones: byt (including festivals, dress and manners), architecture and painting, and women. It is intended that the finished product, which will be based as far as possible on primary sources, will be accessible to students and of interest to scholars.
Even a non-biography is bound to start with Peter himself, and archival collections consulted in September-November 1991 included:
(i) Unpublished volumes of Письма и бумаги императора Петра Великого (the 12 vols so far published (1887-1977) cover the years 1688-1712). A коммиссия по изданию писем и бумаг was formed in 1872 under the chairmanship of the Minister of Education Count D. A. Tolstoi but the money soon ran out and much of the work, including copying thousands of documents, was done by academician A. F. Bychkov (died 1899) and his son Ivan, whose efforts continued to 1918. Delays were also caused by the illegibility of Peter's handwriting. Handwritten copies survive in фонд 270 of the archive of the Leningrad Institute of History, generally two папки per year containing an average of 550 листы per папка up to 1725.
(ii) Papers of Peter's private office (Кабинет, founded 1704), ЦГАДА, фонд 9. The papers, which fortunately survived poor storage conditions in Empress Elizabeth's summer palace, were sorted and catalogued on the orders of Catherine n by Prince M. M. Shcherbatov, appointed archivist in 1768. He classified the papers into the отделение and книга numbers which survive to this day and also published many
documents. (Copies of Petrine documents in his hand survive in the Эрмитажное собрание отдел рукописей of the State Public Library in St Petersburg.)
(iii) Отдел рукописей, State Public Library, фонд 1003: papers of N. A. Voskresenskii, which include unpublished volumes of Законодательные акты Петра I (Moscow 1945): documents on trade, industry. Church and peasantry. Voskresenskii made it his life's work to transcribe with scrupulous accuracy and publish all known variants of Petrine legislation. Some of the папки are inscribed Leningrad 1942 and 1943.
The paper ended with some snippets from sources, both archival and printed: matters maritime (Peter's "maritime assemblies" - водянные асамблеи - non-attendance at which was strictly punished, and naval terms in English and Dutch); weights and measures (the use of English feet and inches for both ship-building specifications and the height of persons); the numbers of children borne by Catherine to Peter, still a matter of conjecture; rules on the building of public baths; Dr Erskine's will and Peter's instructions on an autopsy; Peter's "shopping lists", including orders sent abroad for English dogs, foodstuffs and wine and cage birds.