Volume 28, Number 4 · March 19, 1981
Was Peter All That Great?
By Marc Raeff
Peter the Great: His Life and World
by Robert K. Massie
Knopf, 909 pp., $17.95
Few rulers are believed to have done so much to reshape and redirect their nation's destiny as did Peter I, tsar of Muscovy and emperor of All the Russias (born 1672, ruler de jure 1682, died 1725). Whatever their differences, both his contemporaries and subsequent writers—poets, novelists, historians, publicists—agree that the extraordinarily energetic, dynamic, impetuous, and ruthless personality of Peter was essential to the successes, as well as the failures, of his enterprises.
Review, 2626 words
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