Fun facts from Peter the Great’s life in the electronic collection of the Presidential Library

June 9, 2017 marks the 345th anniversary of the birth of the first Russian emperor Peter I. There is an extensive collection on The House of Romanov. Zemsky Sobor (Assembly of the Land) of 1613, one section of which is dedicated to a reformer of Russia and a founder of St. Petersburg, on the Presidential Library website. The selection includes historical documents, business and personal correspondence, research works, bibliography and many other sources that offer readers a chance learning more about the personality of Peter I and measuring a scope of his activities.

The appearance of the tsar-reformer was predicted in advance, as the 1875-year edition reviewing The Seventeen First Years in the Life of the Emperor Peter the Great tells us: “Among the folks his birth was clothed with poetry: they said that Simeon Polotsky, the first educated man of his time, observed the movement of the heavenly bodies, and nine months before Peter’s birth had noticed a bright star near Mars. He foretold Tzaritza the birth of a glorious son.”

The long-awaited successor, upon whom Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich put his hopes, was born on May 30 (June 9, New Style) in 1672. “Tzarevitch Peter met life cheerfully. He was of good health and good looking; a bright blush glowed on his cheeks; he grew up like folk epic heroes in fairy tales, not day by day, but in the hours. One contemporary observers that at the age of ten he seemed to be a sixteen-year-old,” - S. Y. Rozhdestvensky writes in his book About Peter the Great, published in 1872.

Parents tried to give the child everything: the boy grew in luxury, but much attention at that was paid to his upbringing and development. In published in 1882 work of A. G. Brickner entitled A History of Peter the Great, there is a reference to archival documents: “His first teacher, a scribe Zotov, requested to make for the prince so-called “kunshts” – fun illustrations for kids, needed for his visual training; <…> among Peter’s toys a prominent place belonged to all kinds of weapons. <…> It stands to mention that, as it can be seen from the archival sources, at the time when Peter turned twelve, various handicraft tools were supplied to the court for the Tzarevitch, among which was: tools for stone work, for books printing and binding, as well as a workbench and a turning lathe machine.”

During his involuntary exile happened under the reign of Princess Sophia, who removed his brother from the throne, the ten-year-old Peter was carried away by military action: “One thing only entertained him than he was playing with his peers, whom his father purposely gathered for his fun time, and for what they were called amusing. They played soldiers,” – as we learn from an electronic copy of the 1872-year edition of A history of Peter the Great (with 19 drawings). These children's games laid the foundation for the formation of a regular Russian army: “They began to invite to the amusing regiment people of different ranks and no longer children. First mainly guys from the court grooms were coming to amusing troop; but then others began signing-up, even the ones from some distinguished families. Finally, in 1684, all who interested of joining the amusing squad were openly called, and many people came. Of these, at first, one regiment was formed, and then another; both were named after the settlement in which Peter and his troops lived: the Preobrazhensky and the Semyonovsky ones. Now these two guards regiments which laid a foundation of the Russian Guards are still called the same names.”

Another interesting episode from Peter Alekseevich’s life is in the book entitled Legendary narratives about Peter the Great's life and deeds, prepared by the editors of the “Russkaya Starina” (Russian Antiquities) magazine to the 200th anniversary of the emperor’s birth. According to this publication the future designer of the Russian fleet, which gained more than one naval victory, had a particular dislike for water in his early years. The reason for this was one incident when a mother with a five-year-old Peter entered into overflowed its banks creek: Tzaritza “seeing the water inside the carriage, which was bending over and ready to overturn (at least how it seemed to her in fear), cried out loud. Awakened from this cry Tzarevitch, seeing a palled face of his frightened mother, the water in the carriage and a noise of steam flow, was so struck with fear that has immediately gotten a fever.”

Nevertheless, the future emperor, despite “such disgust from the water, that he could not comfortable look at the river, lake and even the pond,” had managed to overcome his fear. According to the publication Legendary narratives about Peter the Great's life and deeds, a mentor of Tzarevitch Boris Golitsyn, who wanted to release him from his hydrophobia, in the hunting intentionally led Peter to the river, explaining this by the need to rest people and horses. Then he “without waiting for an answer, went through it, and yet all the hunters, preliminary ordered, undressed and went swimming in the river. At first Tzar was annoyed with this, but when he saw the prince crossing the river and inviting him from the other shore, became ashamed to show that he afraid of water and then, so to speak, having made some kind of violence against himself, he dared to enter the river and override it. All His Majesty’s surrenders who followed him, knowing his fear, were delighted with this, and the monarch himself already felt a certain pleasure inside from this crossing.”

Apart from rare editions telling about the life and deeds of Peter the Great, in the electronic collection of the Presidential Library there is a facsimile copy of the pages from his notebook with learning exercise; ancient engravings depicting important episodes from Tzar’s life and memorable places associated with the name of the emperor; his associates’ portraits and much more.