A Russian Engraving of a Classic Fabulist NYPL, Spencer Collection

Peter’s historical status has been the subject of debate since his death in 1725. He made Russia a great power, but at the sacrifice of two decades of suffering and tens of thousands of lives. He westernized the Russian elite but thereby created a “dual Russia,” with a significant part of the population still adhering to Muscovite culture and values. Peter carried out a program of much-needed reform, but he used the force and compulsion of a police state to achieve his ends. While Peter was not a tyrant like Ivan the Terrible, he firmly believed—as did most of the other monarchs in Europe—in the form of government known as absolutism (or autocracy), wherein a ruler shares power with no other group or institution. Nonetheless, whether he was a superhero or an arch demon, the changes that Peter the Great imposed upon his country make him the most dominant figure in all of Russian history.