Peter Alexeyevich or Peter the Great ruled over the Russian Empire from 7 May 1682 until his death in 1723. He was remembered to be a tsar who led a cultural revolution that had westernised the traditional social and political systems and to an extent, his subjects’ daily life as well as the nobles and the Church. He was active in his reforms, and hasty, especially in relation to improvement of Russia’s military power and the setting up of its first navy. Anderson believes that military and naval expansion had “inspired many of the most important changes and the most striking innovations of the reign”, in terms of financial and power structure. These changes, both mild and drastic, made to accommodate his desire to create a powerful Russia and make it as a European country made significant…show more content… Nonetheless, not all of his reforms had the desired effect as what he wanted. In fact many had created more frictions which according to Raeff, “the effect of Peter the Great’s reign was to tear Russian society apart.”
During his reign, Russia was in constant war against Sweden to the north and Turkey to the south, so it did not come to a surprise when most of her revenue was invested into Peter’s military and naval expansion – 75% in 1701 to 80% at its peak in 1710. This was entirely borne by his subjects with no foreign loans which caused trouble to the citizens which will be explained later in this essay. Previously, the military army consisted mostly of group of villagers with little military experience. Peter wanted to enlarge the army and he solved this by introducing standing army in 1699 and this lasted until 1874. In November 1699, by a ukaz, volunteers were offered 11 roubles per year with a food allowance. In the