Is Putin trying to restore Russia to its Tsarist, Orthodox past?

Muhammed Abdulhamid

(Translated from Turkish by Ali Fahd)

Peter, son of Mikhail Romanov, son of Tsar Alexievich (Alex I), was born in Moscow in the last part of the seventeenth century. He was the Fifth Tsar (1672-1725) and a Romanov dynasty descendent. He would become one of Russia’s greatest and most influential Tsars. He was the first to build Tsarism’s renaissance, advance its ambitions, and expand its geography in Asia and Europe. He built its new capital (St. Petersburg) and lay its strategy as an influential power in the global arena by giving the Russians two exits from the Ottomans and Swedes in the Black and Baltic seas. He posited himself as a man of distinction who combines character strength, violence, terrible treatment, ruthless brutality, political savvy and military prowess. He had urbanisation, industrial and military goals.

Prior to Peter, Russia was a primitive and barbaric land. Yes, his grandfather Ivan the Terrible (d. 1488 AD) was able to unite the Russian Emirates, scattered and at odds between Moscow and Kyiv, under the absolute dominance of the Mongol Muslims who dominated Russia. Peter, on the other hand, was more ambitious than his grandfather.

In his first years in power, he was forced to rule along with his sick brother, Ivan the 5th (d. 1696). However, Sophia, who is Ivan’s sister, wanted the power to be for her brother and then for herself. She wanted to keep everything in her own hands. Peter the Great seized power through his aides and supporters and with the support of the Caesarean section guards. According to some historians – he decided to “massacre those in Moscow sadistically and ruthlessly”. According to Will Durant, “Peter was similar to Ivan but humorous. He longed for modernisation and envied the West, not for his delicacy and art, but his army, equipment, trade, industry, and wealth.”

The whole purpose of civilisation as components was to these virtues. Moreover, that is where his insatiable curiosity begins, he wants to know how everything works, and then he looks for ways to make it work better. Even at night, he rushes here and there to see this and that, tiring his helpers on their journeys.

Therefore, it was known that he was fascinated by and mimicked developed European nations of the time, such as Holland, France, Britain, and Sweden, and even took advantage of this by accepting every skilled European to help construct his nation. Thus, he proceeded to construct the new capital of the Russian Empire outside of Moscow’s tradition and monotony. St. Petersburg was constructed in the Western style near the Baltic Sea, which, according to some historians, symbolises a new future and vision for the country: “Peter was so eager to westernise Russia that he turned to the Baltic as if he were luring Russia to it, and then ordered that the West be visible from his window.” He abandoned all his other plans to accomplish this, give his fleet a base, and get a port for foreign trade. True, the port will be encircled by ice for five months of the year, but it will face west and be in contact with the ocean. Similar to how the Dnieper and Volga rivers made Russia Byzantine and Asian, the Neva will make Russia European.

In a bid to build St. Petersburg and make it the capital of the Russian Empire, Russia was proclaimed a great world power then. Peter was able to subordinate the vast territories of the Kingdom of Sweden, Latvia, Finland and Estonia to the sovereignty of Russia. In 1714 AD, after having led Swedish prisoners through the streets of St. Petersburg, Peter the Great stood among his army and his people and said:

“O who accompanied me in all my conquests, the princes who have helped me in all my affairs, the notables of my country and my friends, have you ever thought twenty years ago that you or your ancestors will become this and that you will come to this state, and fight in the Baltic Sea with me, and to build ships that will sail with the flags of victory, that will seize all the coasts, that will raise Russian flags in their fortresses and ports, that you have fought against them bravely with the fleet you have made with your own hands, it goes without saying that you have shattered the enemy’s fleet.”

Firm Ambition!

If Peter was able to dominate the Baltic Sea in and around Novograd, even managed to build his new capital, St. Petersburg, and was able to reach the Black Sea by capturing the Azov fortress on the Sea of Azov, which separated from the Northern Black Sea between 1696 and 1700, until then, the Russians might have no presence either in Ukraine or on the Black Sea coast. In 1700 AD, Peter set out for England for a four-month excursion. According to his biographer Bogdanov: At the invitation of King William III (d: 1702) of England, Peter came to Portsmouth, the main base of the English fleet, and watched the manoeuvres of warships, which at that time were the largest ships in the world. Peter spent much of his time studying theory in shipyards, receiving a theoretical shipbuilding curriculum under Sir Anthony Dean’s supervision. The latter was the inspector of the Royal fleet in Deptford, near London.

In 1709, the most crucial battle in Russian history occurred when Peter the Great and his forces faced the Swedish army led by King Charles XII in the Poltova region of northeast Ukraine today.In this battle, Peter managed to crush the Swedish army and eliminate his rising power in northwestern and north-central Europe. The defeat forced Charles to flee to the Ottoman Empire as a refugee. At the same time, his rival, Peter the Great, was able to expand the territory of his state through north-eastern Ukraine, Belarus, and much of modern-day Poland. With this strategic victory, Peter managed to defeat his most significant enemies.
For the next fifteen years, Peter devoted himself to expanding the sphere of his own state, strengthening its fleets and war industry, and even interfering in the affairs of the Empire of its neighbouring countries, bringing them under constant Russian control. Poland, Ukraine, the Crimean Tatars, the North Caucasus and even more distant regions like “Romania”, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Serbia were mostly under the rule of the Ottoman State at that time.

Do The Legacy of Peter the Great Inspire Vladimir Putin?!

During his more than thirty-year reign, Peter the Great was able to develop a political, military, and diplomatic plan for the survival and permanence of Russian influence in the surrounding globe. This is the scheme he left to his successors in the form of wills. It is remarkable that this plan, written three centuries ago, corresponds to the Caucasus, Ukraine, Black Sea, and other wars of the present Russian president, Vladimir Putin. It is also noteworthy that Putin has long admired Peter the Great’s character. Perhaps for these reasons, several American thinkers who met him, such as Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford advisor Harald Malmgren, saw him as a modern Russian manifestation of Peter the Great’s personality.

Most of the legacy of Emperor Peter the Great (d: 1725) revolves around the need to subjugate the Caucasus, Crimea, the Baltics, and the Ukrainian territories, maintaining the Russian threat to Finland and Sweden, and placing the Orthodox Church globally as the “Third Rome” and as a Christian pilgrimage site. In addition, the Russian adoption of military diplomacy provoked disagreements between European powers. Many historians have quoted these wills, perhaps the most famous of which is Ahmet Jawdat Pasha (1822 - 1895), the author of Tarih-i Cevdet (Tarikh al-Jawdat).

In the first article of his will, we see that Peter called on Russian decision-makers to the necessity and continuity of war “Soldiers must get used to war and always fight, and the Russian nation must be ready for the state of war in order to be on alert, to give the soldiers time of rest to fix financial affairs, to constantly organise the military organisation until the time of attack comes, in this way Russia should take advantage of the time of peace and security by increasing its supply and expanding the scope of its benefits, it should use peace as a tool of war.”

If we compare the advice of Peter the Great with the strategy followed during Putin’s era, we will notice Putin’s deep belief in it. Since Putin came to power in 2000, he has intervened in at least seven wars, on average every three years. as we will see, the Chechen war in 2004, the South Ossetia war in 2008, the Crimean war in 2014, the Syrian war in 2015 and the intervention of Russia, the capture of Donbas by eastern Ukraine since 2014 and 2015, the Russian intervention in Libya in late 2019, then the current Ukrainian war in 2022.

Among the advice of Peter the Great is the necessity for Russia to interfere in the affairs of the European continent and create discomfort and divisions between them; Because the unification of Europe is a danger to Russian interests, he says: “It is necessary to intervene in European affairs and situations as much as possible and to take direct advantage of this, it is necessary to intervene in disputes and disagreements, especially in Germany which is near us”. Today we see Russia’s influence on Germany in two gas pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and 2. Besides, the ideological influence over East Germany has continued since the Soviet era, when it came under Russia’s influence and occupation. We also know the role that Putin played as an intelligence officer in East Germany during the Soviet Union, and he speaks German. We also know how important it is as a country in the European continent.

Furthermore, if it is in Russia’s interest to create discord among Europeans, then – according to Peter the Great – it is imperative to interfere in the affairs of Sweden and Poland since they are within Russia’s immediate and direct geopolitical sphere. Peter says: “Bribery must be used to sow discord and corruption in Poland and stir up internal turmoil, to win over the notables by giving them money, and to take control of the Council of Government. As much as possible, some parts of Sweden should be captured and then try to seize the opportunity to seize the rest. This can only be done by provoking Sweden to attack Russia.

Perhaps Putin’s warning to Sweden and Finland against joining NATO is a literal translation of this strategy developed by Peter the Great centuries ago, and even expressing the necessity of Russian control over the Baltic and Black Seas, he says: “The Russians must expand day by day in the north of the Baltic Sea and the southern Black Sea coast.” If Russia controls Crimea, the Sea of Azov, and eastern Ukraine and invades Ukraine, it will have the most powerful authority over the Black Sea.
As a matter of fact, Peter the Great focused on the conquest of Istanbul as a strategic Russian goal. He was aware of the importance of Istanbul and its strategic, geographical and global position “He who dominates Istanbul can dominate the whole world, so it is necessary to conduct successive wars with the Ottoman Empire “. Perhaps Russia’s expansion in the Black Sea through its invasion of Crimea and Ukraine, and its intervention in Syria before that, can be considered a policy of encircling Turkey from the north and south.

Putin is revitalising the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in foreign affairs. In this role, he is not only expanding Russian influence over the Orthodox in Russia, Europe, Asia, and North Africa in the surrounding world but also carrying out missionary activities to Christians of different denominations. It is noteworthy that Peter Great made this strategy part of the Russian strategy. He said: “We must win over all the Christians who are of the Roman sect, who deny the spiritual leadership of the Pope, and who have spread in the countries of Hungary and the Ottoman State (Anatolia, Asia, Africa, the Caucasus, the Balkans, etc.), and we must make them refer to the Russian state, and above all a doctrinaire so that we can have some kind of influence and monastic rule over them. We need to build a leadership, and through this, we will try to get jealous friends that we can use under the protection of each of our enemies.”