On September 10, 1721, the peace treaty that ended the Great Northern War was signed in the Finnish city of Nystad, which for two decades pitted the Russian Tsardom against the Swedish Empire. As a result of the agreement, Russia obtained Estonia, Karelia, and other territories in present-day Latvia, thus consolidating its access to the Baltic. But, above all, it shifted the center of power in northern Europe from Stockholm to St. Petersburg and turned Russia into an empire, with its tsar, Peter the Great, becoming its first emperor.
Although Peter the Great could only wear the imperial crown for just three years, his military, political, and social conquests were so significant that his death, which marks three centuries this Saturday, is commemorated in Russia with great fanfare. In part, due to the personal interest of the current Russian president, Vladimir Putin, determined to present himself to his people - and to the world - as the heir to Peter's greatness.
Even his early biographies, like the one Voltaire wrote about him in History of the Russian Empire under the reign of Peter the Great (1763), identified two fundamental aspects in the monarch's consolidation of power. On one hand, personalism, with a tsar (later emperor) involved in almost every aspect of life, from craftsmanship and the most optimal farming methods (he forced the traditional sickle of Russian peasants to be replaced by the scythe) to human relationships. On the other hand, expansionist militarism, which marked his ambivalent relationship with Europe: attentive to advances coming from France, Prussia, the Netherlands, or England (countries he made several diplomatic trips to) and eager to intervene in their geostrategic map, while keeping a distance from continental powers.
Putin proclaims himself a follower of that path and has even drawn parallels with the first Russian emperor. For this narrative, the Battle of Poltava (1709) is crucial, as it decided the course of the Great Northern War: the Swedish emperor Charles XII launched an offensive to conquer Moscow from the south, that is, from Ukraine. He relied on the Cossack-Ukrainian leader Ivan Mazepa. However, the harsh winter (a constant in failed Russian campaigns) decimated the Swedish and Cossack troops, forcing their retreat from the Ukrainian fields. Peter had founded the city of St. Petersburg in 1703 on the banks of the Neva River, in a post conquered from the Swedes, and after the victory, he decided to move the court there in 1712. St. Petersburg would thus be the imperial capital for two centuries, until the Bolshevik revolution.
The Great Northern War was a challenge from Russia to the rest of Europe. For Putin, it is also a symbol of the struggle for Ukraine between his country and the West. At a meeting with young scientists and entrepreneurs at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June 2022 (just three months after launching the invasion of Ukraine), the former KGB agent proclaimed that "practically nothing has changed" compared to the time of Peter the Great. The Russian president stated: "Peter the Great fought the Great Northern War for 21 years. At first glance, he was at war with Sweden to seize something. But that was not the case, his goal was reincorporation."
According to Putin, when Peter I founded the new capital, "none of the European countries recognized this territory as part of Russia, but of Sweden. However, from time immemorial, the Slavs lived there, and this territory was under Russia's control." Putin then asserted that Peter's idea was to restore it and strengthen himself. And that is the mirror in which he looks: "We also have to restore and strengthen ourselves. If we start from the premise that these basic values constitute the basis of our existence, we will undoubtedly achieve our goals."
The historian and analyst Florentino Portero says that it is "evident" that Putin, precisely because he no longer has the USSR or Marxism-Leninism behind him, resorts to what he can find to justify his policy. "He has no other history to talk about than the Russian Empire," he explains. "He is not going to talk about the Soviet Union, he is not going to talk about Stalin. At the bottom of the closet, all he has left is the creation and consolidation of the Russian Empire, which involved enormous sacrifices for Russia, as the conquests were not easy and there were many casualties."
"We understand that politically he has to do that, just as Pedro Sánchez politically has to do very strange things," he adds. "To justify the unjustifiable, you use what you have, even if it is not very credible. And, truth be told, that discourse resonates in Russian society. In that Russian identity, obviously, the 'patron saints' are the great tsars of the past."
An example of this reality would be the visit Putin made last June to St. Petersburg, where the CEO of the energy giant Gazprom (and a personal friend of the president), Aleksei Miller, announced his intention to erect a triumphal column 82 meters high to commemorate the victory over Sweden and the proclamation of the empire. Vladimir Vladimirovich blessed the proposal with a visit to the models and plans of the monument.
Author of Society Z. The Russia of Vladimir Putin, José María Faraldo points out that the connection between the current Russian leader and Peter I is established from the moment the president began to position himself in a line of continuity with the great rulers of Russia who, according to him, made it a great power. "It is very clear that he chooses those he considers most important," says Faraldo. "Let's not forget that Putin was born in St. Petersburg. So to speak, he is imbued with the culture of homage to Peter I, who created the city."
"He would love to resemble Peter I," comments José Ángel López Jiménez, professor of Law and International Relations at the Pontifical University of Comillas. "In reality, he would have liked to resemble Catherine the Great." Because if we analyze the connection with the aggression towards Ukraine, "what Putin has done since 2014 with the annexation of Crimea has been an attempt to recreate what the Novorossiya or New Russia project was, which in the late 18th century Catherine achieved by connecting all the territory of the Russian Empire and extending it with what are currently the eastern districts of Ukraine, plus the Crimean peninsula, plus the territory of Transnistria in Moldova."
Thus, the researcher speaks of a game of comparisons in terms of "alpha male" between Putin and Tsar Peter, which can be seen in the search for routes to warm seas, especially the Sea of Azov, and through it, to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. That is, ways to move their military fleet around the world.
In this approach, the element of military threat is crucial. "It is engrained in Russian political culture that only by showing strength can the necessary respect be obtained," notes Faraldo. "There is no idea that people or countries can be respected simply through negotiation, friendship, or compromise. Peter I was the one who built that kind of empire."
What Putin aims for, the historian points out, "is to regain that kind of power, and he believes that he can only achieve it through militarism. Among other things, because he has not succeeded in any other way." While the United States or China can make other countries relate to them or reach agreements through their economic power, "Russia's economy is very weak, there is no innovation, there are no attractive products, so the only option left for them is militarism."
"War feeds Russia's identity interpretation," Portero concludes. "The concept of sacrifice in Russian culture is similar to Shia culture." From sacrifice arises the nation, and it "infuses the soul" of it, it is what responds to its ideal. "In reality, and unfortunately, Russia is only a military power." It could have been an intellectual power, "but the State has prevented it," Portero points out.
"Geoffrey Hosking, who is one of the leading historians of Russia, has always defended a thesis that I like to remember," López Jiménez intervenes, "which is that due to the very configuration of the Russian Empire and the geographical characterization of the lands that have composed it in its different stages, the best way to defend itself is by extending its borders westward." That is, by moving the border focus as far as possible from what have been the capitals, St. Petersburg or Moscow. And he introduces another theoretical vector: "Russia has been an Empire before being a nation."
From these coordinates, it is understood how from the very beginning Putin stated that the collapse of the Soviet Union had been a geopolitical catastrophe. And how, within his priorities, especially from 2007 and the Munich Security Conference of that year, "he has tried to recreate -on a reduced scale, because the infrastructure at his disposal has not allowed for more- the Soviet antiquity in its Slavic core." Thus, Russia has effective control "over a puppet state like Belarus and tried to do the same with Ukraine."
Hence, Portero concludes that Peter the Great's glory has also been a curse: "Russia only has the military, nothing more."