The Presidential Library’s new collection marking Peter I’s anniversary

Marking the significant day of June 9, when Russia celebrates the 350th anniversary of Peter I, the Presidential Library has formed a new collection that involves over 600 unique documents about the personality of the first Russian emperor and Petrine era.

The collection includes four sections: Biography of Peter I, Peter I’s Activities, Death of Peter I and Memory of Peter I. The materials are grouped according to the chronology of publications.

The book of the historian, teacher, director of public schools of the St. Petersburg province Sergei Rozhdestvensky About Peter the Great (1872) is available among the biographical materials that spotlight the beginning of Peter I’s activity. The first part of the book tells about the childhood and young years of Peter I, when “...he experienced a lot of grief, sometimes he had to fear for his life. But sorrows and fears did not harden the hearts of the great tsar. For the good of the people, he voluntarily doomed himself to hard work and science. His hands were covered in calluses, like those of a common man. But only he alone could accomplish those great deeds that put him above all the former sovereigns of Russia. The second part of the book is devoted to the creation of a fleet in Russia”. The edition is supplied with color engravings illustrating the contents of the book.

The book of the real state councilor Yakov Stehlin who arrived in St. Petersburg in 1735 on a contract from Germany "for verbal sciences" contains memories of Peter.

For 40 years, Stehlin collected the oral stories of his contemporaries: "The witnesses of the legends mentioned here - I only cite those whom I knew personally in Moscow and St. Petersburg and heard how they told". The author narrates how he gained a short acquaintance with Prince Ivan Trubetskoy, from whom he heard cases never told before and "briefly brought to paper".

The titles of the chapters (“Impatience for pomp in the court staff”, “Correction of the shoes of Chukhon peasants”, “Favour to the first inhabitants of St. Petersburg and its environs”) testify to the literary talent of the author. In each of the chapters, incidents that happened to the first Russian emperor are warmly recalled, and general socio-historical sketches that give an idea of ​​the features of the time of Peter the Great are presented.

In the chapter “Gifts at baptism by tooth”, the author writes how Peter I agreed with pleasure “when ordinary people invited him to be godfathers”. “He went to them with pleasure and accepted poor treats. No one should have expected noble gifts at baptism, his usual gift consisted of a kiss from his mother and one ruble, which he usually put under his pillow”.

Stehlin addresses the book, written with great warmth of heart, to subsequent generations: “If happiness favors me, then let the honor and gratitude of posterity remain in this work as a successor”.

The major section Peter I’s Activities features the legislative acts of Peter I, as well as documents regulating public administration. Among these documents is the first edition of the charter of the state civil service, created at a time when Russia is introducing a collegiate record keeping system, according to which decision-making takes place in a collegiate way - in the presence of the president, vice president, members of the collegiums, secretary, translators. This document is a prototype of the Regulations of the State Duma, which is currently in force.

The same section contains historical documents spotlighting military and naval reforms, as well as maritime law. Here one has opportunity to learn about the Instructions to the Russian Navy (1710), which defines combat and daily service on the ships of the Russian fleet in 64 articles. This document is the forerunner of the first Naval Charter issued in 1720.

The set of laws and regulations governing the life and activities of the main maritime department is included in the Regulations for the Management of the Admiralty Shipyard, which was first published in 1722 and covered all areas of naval activity "at sea, in ports and in admiralties". According to the Regulations, it was necessary to equip the Russian fleet annually: “The Collegium should have strong supervision over the fleet, so that the fleet is always ready, and the servants do not forget their practice, for this reason it is necessary to equip the fleet every year after the ice breaks”.

Among the materials testifying to civil book printing, the collection of the Presidential Library contains the first official Russian civil alphabet. It was created in 1710 with the direct participation of Peter I and included Slavic printed and handwritten letters. On this copy of the alphabet, one has opportunity to see instructions written by the royal hand in which he recommends not using certain letters and symbols in the printing of civil books. The alphabet includes moral teachings from the Holy Scriptures and tables of correspondences related to church and arithmetic numbers, Arabic and Roman number systems.

The collection contains a unique edition of 1704 - the first trilingual dictionary of Slavic, Greek and Latin. Its peculiarity is in the fact that no books of this level of typographical complexity have been produced before at the Moscow Printing Yard.

The collection is especially lively due to publications that present historical anecdotes associated with the name of Peter I - this includes two parts of Genuine anecdotes about Peter the Great, heard from the mouths of famous people in Moscow and St. Petersburg, extracted from oblivion by Yakov von Stehlin (1800 ), as well as Anecdotes relating to the Sovereign Emperor (1807), collected by Ivan Golikov. These books are available in the section containing biographical materials about Peter I.

The visual materials included in the subsection "Portraits of Peter I" include his lifetime portraits. The engraving The Coronation of Peter I, made in 1717 by the Dutch artist Pieter Pikart, should be noted here. The engraving sings of Peter the Great as a wise ruler and commander. Standing on a pedestal, Peter I is surrounded by 33 portraits of the great tsars and princes who ruled from the 9th century until the beginning of Peter's rule. The work was commissioned by the Russian statesman and church leader, theologian Feofan Prokopovich (1681–1736), the ideologist of the Petrine reforms. He also prepared the royal genealogy, displayed on the engraving. Its electronic copy is also available in the collection Peter I (1672-1725).

The collection also features images of Peter, executed by our contemporaries - for example, a postcard by the artist Mikhail Zanegin Peter I, a portrait of Peter I, made by the artist Tatyana Leonova, as well as a drawing by seven-year-old Katya Kuznetsova The most important, the proudest and the most beautiful tsar.

The list of materials associated with the name of Peter the Great includes letters of the first Russian emperor, his travel journals, the history of the Semenovsky, Preobrazhensky, Cuirassier regiments, as well as sources that testify to the foreign policy of the Russian state and tell about the events of the Northern War, the Battle of Poltava, the capture Swedish fortress Noteburg on Lake Ladoga - each of the presented publications is rightfully an adornment of the Presidential Library’s collection.