Tsar and God. Peter the Great and His Utopia

The book by the famous writer, historian, and publicist Yakov Gordon is dedicated to the fate of the grand utopian project of Peter I and the price that had to be paid for its implementation. A great dreamer, Peter was also a great organizer, able to put all the resources of the state he governed to the service of his idea. However, as a builder of utopia, he suffered a heavy failure - he could not build a regular state and carve out a new person. But this was a failure of biblical proportions, altering the course of history. According to the author, the decisive moment when Peter's perceptions of his mission, the limits of what was permissible for a monarch, and the distance between the tsar and God were finally defined occurred during the period of 1713-1718. At the center of this five-year span was the "case" of Tsarevich Alexey Petrovich - the lethal conflict between father and son, casting a sinister shadow over the entire subsequent history of Russia. The tragedy of 1718 became a point of no return, after which the utopian version of what is commonly referred to as the Petrine reform began to irrevocably take shape. The book is richly illustrated and provided with an annotated index of names.