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Yet, despite the extent and strategic value of Peter’s gains, on the Baltic, the Caspian and the Pacific, the Empire remained overwhelmingly Russian in character. It has been calculated that in 1719 over 70 per cent of its population were ethnic Russians, and at least another 15 per cent were Ukrainians or Belarussians, whose languages were very similar, though there were significant differences related to culture, primarily religion. Of the remaining minorities, the largest groups were Estonians and Tatars (1.9 per cent each), Chuvash (1.4 per cent), Kalmyks (1.3 per cent), Bashkirs (1.1 per cent), and Finns and Latvians (1 per cent each). ²⁴

Great resources had been expended on the Empire’s expansion, though by modern standards they were modest. Peter left an army little more than 200,000 strong, yet that represented an almost three-fold increase. He also left Russia’s first fleet of significance: 48 ships of the line, as well as 800 smaller vessels. ²⁵ In the northern war alone Russia lost 100,000 men killed, died of wounds and of disease, and a total of over 365,000 were drafted into the armed services during Peter’s reign - but this was little more than 15,000 a year out of a male population of nearly 7.8 million. ²⁶ The costs were proportionate. However, between 1710 and 1725 the state’s revenues increased threefold — or by some 250 per cent allowing for inflation. ²⁷ This proved sufficient to feed, clothe, arm and equip the army and navy, and to build the core of St Petersburg, together with all its related infrastructure, and dozens of forts and settlements besides. Funds were to prove insufficient to prevent most of the navy going to rot after Peter’s death. On the other hand his military priorities produced some useful by-products: expanded woollen cloth and arms industries, and an expansion in iron production sufficient not only to meet the demands of the armed services, but to roof half the buildings of the new capital, and to export sufficient quantities in pig form to help get the heavy-industry sector of Britain’s Industrial Revolution under way

Despite the immense cost in terms of money, people and material, Peter’s projects turned out to be affordable. In the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries Russia’s assets had grown significantly, thanks to conquest and to more peaceful conditions in the productive Black Earth zone of the south. Furthermore, along with other parts of Europe, the Empire profited from a marked economic upswing that stemmed from a beneficent global warming. As harvests became more abundant, diet improved and so did fecundity. Epidemics were somewhat fewer, and their death toll less severe. With population increasing, the economic tempo quickened — and the demands of government accentuated the trend. In this context Peter’s huge expenditure on war and on building projects (shipyards, mines and factories as well as a new capital city) was in the end to yield dividends — notwithstanding the claims by some economic historians that the country’s economic development would have been even better without it. ²⁸

And there was a moral dimension besides. More than a century later Russia’s greatest poet, Aleksandr Pushkin, who well understood the suffering involved in the creation of St Petersburg, wrote a poem, The Bronze Horseman, which celebrates the city and its creator. Pushkin demonstrated nothing less than love for the imperialism and militarism the city represented:

I love you, O military capital,

Love your acrid smoke and the thunder of the guns

That announce the birth of a son in the imperial palace

Or a victory over the enemy.

Russia triumphs again …

To this day many Russians share Pushkin’s sentiments, even though they know about the costs. And the moral dividend was also to help sustain the imperial momentum, and even quicken it.

It is said that Peter the Great left a testament encapsulating his advice to his successors on how to enlarge the Empire. Indeed, France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs contains a copy of this plan for the domination of Europe. It begins with exhortations to Europeanize Russia and to keep it in a perpetual state of war ‘in order to harden the soldier and militarize the nation’. All possible means were to be used to expand in both the Baltic and the Black Sea regions. More particularly, Sweden was to be softened up for subjugation by stirring up England, Brandenburg and Denmark against her. Similar indirect means were recommended to assist Russia’s advance in other directions.