Russia Without Peter the Great
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Russia is big and has a lot of people. Poland-Lithuania and the Ottomans are on a relative decline due to internal issues and Sweden is surrounded by enemies and does in the long term not have the economy and population to sustain its grand power status. Even without Peter, Russia is ripe for some reform and then becoming a regional power and then a grand power. If not Peter, then in one or two generations someone else - a regent for a Czar or the Czar himself.
You probably need to either Balkanize Russia (divide it up or prevent the unification of the various Russias - Muscowy, Kiev, Novgorod, Tver etc) and/or prevent the decline of Poland-Lithuania and the Ottomans in order to prevent Russia's rise.
@alexmilman is very good on Russia in this era, he probably has some interesting comments.
You probably need to either Balkanize Russia (divide it up or prevent the unification of the various Russias - Muscowy, Kiev, Novgorod, Tver etc) and/or prevent the decline of Poland-Lithuania and the Ottomans in order to prevent Russia's rise.
@alexmilman is very good on Russia in this era, he probably has some interesting comments.
Well, Catherine the Great was wife of Peter's grandson and this marriage was idea of Peter's daughter, ATL without Peter when she still gets to be wife of Russian tsar and somehow still replaces him with herself is not too likely. As far as Russia is concerned, we should answer the question - who would replace Peter as tsar? His only surviving brother, Ivan V was mentally challenged and he died in 1696, not from non-natural factors. I don't know if his daughters could ascend the throne, as they had no backer and were little children at the time of their father's death. If Peter dies before he'd been able to become significant factor in Russian politics, than his half-sister Sophia would be the one pulling the strings. Maybe having near full power in country and being faced with succesion crisis, she could convince her rumored lover Vassili Golitisin to divorce his second wife and marry her instead. Than, Vassili (in pre-Petrian Russia women could not inherit the throne) could be elected a new Tsar, taking name Vassili V. If he had a son by Sophia, this son would succeed him. If not he can always marry one of Ivan's daughters to his younger son, Michael and name Michael new heir if he didn't have half-brother by Sophia. As far as Poland is concered, there would be probably no GNW, because Golitzin would not support Augustus II against will of Sejm (he was rumored to be polonophile) and probably French candidate, Francois-Louis de Conti would take the throne.
If they get more same-old-same-old tsars, this might butterfly away the existence of Sankt Petersburg, Russia's new-found focus on building up its navy and naval tradition (something they mostly lacked) and overall reforms might take longer. You might see far more traditional beard wearing for longer among Russian aristocracy (they were faously resistant to Peter's esthetic/etiquette reforms) and even cyrillic script might use a more traditional and slightly more complex form for somewhat longer. They would still get reformists, but it's an open question if anyone of them would be as drastically reform-minded as Peter the Great was in OTL.
Let’s separate apples from oranges. There are 3 main issues:
1. Succession. This is the grey area. Obviously, Ivan V is the (only) Tsar and Sophia is the regent. Ivan is not healthy but so was Feodor III and this did not prevent him from implementing at least one fundamentally important reform (abolishing “mestnichestvo”). Stories regarding Ivan’s mental health belong to the same category as the stories about Peter III being an imbecile: they are coming exclusively from a hostile camp. Strictly speaking, mental capacities of Peter I are now under at least superficial scrutiny and results are not good even if the medical diagnosis (some serious disorder preventing person from concentrating on a mental work as opposite to the physical activities) may or may not be correct. So it is all boils down to who is the heir. While there were no female rulers, there was no succession law, just a tradition based upon the assumption that female is an inferior creature. But a protracted regency of Sophia could change this perception and her marriage to a top level aristocrat like Vasily Golitsin would make the whole issue moot. Taking into an account that Peter was claimed a Tsar as a result of a palace coup and then “demoted” to a junior co-Tsar as a result of a military coup and his clique came back to power by another coup and that after Peter’s death CI, AI, EI and CII came to power by a coup, excessive stress upon a legality of succession does not make sense. If Sophia has enough of a military backing, then the obstacles are not significant and from that point on we can only speculate regarding the future events because even in an absence of the male Romanovs there are plenty of females of the marriageable age. In the worst case scenario, there could be Zemsky Sobor and one more election. Not that the Romanovs were an uninterrupted line of the outstanding rulers and that almost any alternative would be definitely worse.
As a side note, quite a few members of the top aristocracy were “westernized” before Peter’s reign so an election of a new dynasty would not mean going back to the times of Rurik. But it could mean a steady evolution rather than a chaotic revolution, which heavily concentrated on the least meaningful aspects of the “Western” civilization. To become “Western” you needed “3 generations of the people who were not flogged” and Peter’s reign definitely did not qualify as a starting point.
2. Reforms. Reforms started during the reign on Michael Romanov and never really interrupted with a possible exception of the period between victory of the Naryshkin clique over Sophia and the death of Peter’s mother during which the process seemingly stalled or even somewhat rolled back. Now, I keep repeating that “reform” is not a magic word related to something unquestionably good. Peter’s reforms, among other things, turned serfdom into almost de facto slavery (the final step had been made by another “great reformer”, CII) and put Russian industrial development on a completely wrong track converting country into the supplier of the raw materials and consumer of the manufactured goods all the way to the reign of AIII. By the end of his reign Russia lost something in a range of 20-25% of its population (similar to the reign of Ivan IV) and was in a deep fiscal crisis: up to 80% of the state revenue had been spent on the military and still the army was underfunded and had to rely upon the legalized looting of the civilian population.
Yes, Peter built the “modern” Baltic fleet (and Azov fleet before this, which he had to destroy after his screwup on the Pruth). But this fleet was pretty much useless during the GNW and afterwards had been rotting all the way to the 7YW when it did not accomplish anything remarkable either. It’s 1st serious deployment was only during the 1st Archipelago expedition of CII. So the obvious question is a need of this extremely expensive but useless toy built because “any modern country must have a navy”. Could this fleet be useful for, say, protecting Russian merchant marine? No, because there was none and because, with all brouhaha about getting “Western”, Peter did not give a damn about promoting the Russian naval trade.It was much more fun to have the foreign merchants coming to his “paradise” on Neva to express their admiration of the great man and his achievements: look, these Russians are wearing the western costumes and wigs and are smoking, surely, they are civilized.
In an absence of the merchant fleet, usefulness of the GNW is questionable: the Swedes were not blocking the Russian trade through their ports, just were taking reasonable custom dues. Edit: sooner or later the war would most probably happen but, typically, Peter was extremely ill-prepared even if he was pretty much defining the schedule of the Russian entry into the war.
Yes, Peter built the “modern” Baltic fleet (and Azov fleet before this, which he had to destroy after his screwup on the Pruth). But this fleet was pretty much useless during the GNW and afterwards had been rotting all the way to the 7YW when it did not accomplish anything remarkable either. It’s 1st serious deployment was only during the 1st Archipelago expedition of CII. So the obvious question is a need of this extremely expensive but useless toy built because “any modern country must have a navy”. Could this fleet be useful for, say, protecting Russian merchant marine? No, because there was none and because, with all brouhaha about getting “Western”, Peter did not give a damn about promoting the Russian naval trade: it was much more fun to have the foreign merchants coming to his “paradise” on Neva to express their admiration of the great man and his achievements: look these Russians are wearing the western costumes and wigs and are smoking, surely, they are civilized.
BTW, most of the famous St.Petersburg had been built starting from the reign of EI. Strictly speaking, with the conquest of the Baltic provinces and the multiple functioning ports, of which Riga was the biggest port on the Baltic, an objective need in building St-Petersburg into the new main port and then a capital was minimal. Of course, it is located on a convenient waterway but think about the effort and expenses and about inconvenience of having a capital on a farther end of the empire. Kronstadt is probably a good geographic location for a naval base (well protected) but keeping a wooden fleet in a low salt water was not the best idea. Plus, the area suffered from the regular flooding. Wouldn’t it be better just to built a port there without elevating its status?
To be fair, location of Peterhoff was selected with much more brains than one of Versailles (no problem with water supply for the fountains) and the palaces (mostly built after Peter’s death) are beautiful.
An idea of the Volga-Don canal was seemingly reasonable but implementation on the upper Don proved to be almost unusable. Of course, the OTL site would be impractical (IIRC, tried and abandoned).
Of course, it was not all bad and some useful things had been accomplished but a prevailing style was wastefulness and inefficiency, which became one of the main legacies of his reign and, unfortunately, was inherited through the following Russian history.
For those excessively excited about CII, under her enlightened rule corruption and inefficiency reached the new height probably unsurpassed by any of the following rulers. While under her rule Russia was one of the main European powers, her foreign policy was a set of the screwups (she basically “lost” the PLC as the Russian client and got the really pissed off Poles as her subjects ) and her military campaigns were marked by the brilliant victories but during the 2nd Ottoman War her troops had been mostly re-conquering places they conquered during the 1st one. Needless to say that her ideas regarding conquest of Greece ended with nothing (the closest thing was achieved by Paul I when Republic of the Seven Islands was created under the Russian-Ottoman protectorate). Yes, a very important territory had been eventually conquered but Potemkin’s grandiose plans were only partially implemented (and how could they be implemented with an absence of the free peasants to settle on these lands) and the process continued all the way to the late XIX. Actually, after her death Paul I was (initially) greeted as a ruler who is going to reinstate some order in the empire. Russia or rather its ruling class) was flourishing because it developed a full scale “colonial economy” concentrated on export of the raw materials. The sets became slaves who could be sold individually and without land.
OTOH, Vasily Golitsin (who was considered the most cultured person of his time) is credited with the plan to abolish the seldom (which in pre-Petrian Russia was not yet a form of slavery). If successful (a big “if”), this could put Russia on a seriously way of development.
3. Russian regional and European status. Under Peter Russia became a regional power but his ambitious plans to become the main power on the Baltic had been dwarfed during the GNW. Prestige had been upgraded during the reign of presumably completely incompetent Anna: Russia played a major role in the Polish component of the WoPS and from this point on was dominating the Polish affairs. Russian victories over the Ottomans, even if the war ended with a minimal gain, further upgraded the military prestige so probably it could count as the “European power”. Status of the “Great Power” was probably achieved by the next incompetent ruler, EI, as a result of the 7YW.
Sweden was not kicked out of the picture as a military power until the war of 1808-09. Strictly speaking, it was still a factor in last anti-Napoleonic coalition even if the Crown Prince was intentionally preventing the Swedish troops of his army from seeing more action (the officers had been upset by the lack of glory but they, and their soldiers remained alive).
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After 1721, Sweden lacked the economical muscle to field the arm it in theory had, and corruption reduced that ability even further. The wars of 1741 and 1788 were intended as quick surprise attacks while Russia was distracted, for even the delusional Swedish leadership dreaming of reconquering Kexholm, Estonia and Livonia knew that Sweden could not face Russia alone and even a distracted Russia when prepared. While the Swedish navy in general was able to make sure that Russia could not invade modern Sweden (which was the core of the country), Sweden was completely unable to force anything on Russia in this era.
Crown Prince Karl Johan preserved the Swedish army at Leipzig to pursue the retreating Danish army and ensure that it was not able to prevent Sweden from taking Norway. The presence in Germany was paid for by the other coalition members - Sweden was bankrupt and had defaulted on all foreign debt.
There was no " same-old-same-old tsars" because the wide range reforms started during the reign of Tsar Alexey and continued during the reign of FIII and regency of Sophia. The focus on " building up its navy and naval tradition" happened not in the right time (and enormous expenses on building first Azov and then Baltic fleet had been wasted) and the only place where the naval tradition did exist and was appropriate had been almost put out of circulation when Peter closed Archangelsk to promote trade via St-Petersburg. Of course, it makes sense to think of what use would be a naval tradition for a country which does not conduct any sea trade.
When eventually push came to shove in the 1760s the "naval tradition" had to be created practically from the scratch because even passing through the danish straits proved to be a fundamental task which not all ships of Spiridov's squadron managed to accomplish and some of the ships fell apart when they reached the British coast. But after this development of both maritime skills and naval construction was going on i n a very good rate (with the British help) because they were finally truly required (as opposite to being just Tsar's caprise).
As far as the long beards are involved, they had been gone well before Peter. At the court of his father and elder brother the aristocrats had been picking up the Polish manners and costumes and the beards were either absent or trimmed short. Below are portraits of Vasily Golitsyn, Fedor Romodanovsky and Boris Golitsyn. Notice that the dress is not an old Russian and the beards are either short or absent. An idea that there was any serious resistance to Peter's " esthetic/etiquette reforms" is just a legend. The only (rather weak) "resistance" was to the enforced excessive drinking on the "assemblies" (everybody, disregarding the rank, age and gender, had to start with drinking a big glass of a very low quality vodka and at the table not emptying a cup during the mandatory toasts to the health of the Tsar, his family, etc. was a very heavy offense.
As I already remarked, being "reform-minded" is not a good thing on its own. Actually, PIII was blamed by his wife and her clique for being obsessed with pushing through numerous reforms (many of which CII later "adopted" and got credit for). The reforms must be useful and practical and many of Peter's "reforms" were neither. You can start with the enforced smoking (with a benefit of a retrospect
), a dress code that, unlike Polish and Hungarian, was ill-suited to the Russian climate and even state of the city streets (shoes and stockings in a deep dirt is not the best idea).This does not contradict to what I was saying: not being a major military power does not automatically mean that you are not a military factor altogether. The war of 1788 was reasonably successful, especially on the sea, and the fact that Russia could not deploy an overwhelming force on the North while fighting the Ottomans on the South (and being generally outnumbered there) is a clear indication of its limited military capacities at that time: due to the endemic corruption and mismanagement (to which Sweden did not have a monopoly) a big part of the Russian military force existed only on paper or was in a state preventing it from being used at the field. The goals of GIII could be unrealistic but so were the plans of CII vs. the Ottomans. Anyway, the war prevented CII from sending the Baltic squadron to the Med, which was a significant, if not intended result.
BTW, Bernadotte was limiting action of the Swedish troops not only at Leipzig by the reason you mention and because the high losses could negatively impact his popularity at home. Sweden was not the only one heavily subsidized by Britain, so was Russia and, AFAIK, Prussia and Austria as well. But its financial situation does not contradict to what I wrote on the subject: by that time it was only a “secondary power”.
Well, Estonia, and Latvia were eventually going to fall the Russians along with Neva as well. Vyborg would fallen as well because the Russians wanted a forward fort for St. Petersburg as well. Though what the name of the city will be ITTL is up to you. St. Ivanburg? Anyways, there is a possibility that Sweden can keep the rest of Finland and the Estonian Islands. Which again means that Sweden won't be a Great Power anymore, however it won't exactly be a Secondary Power either. It get stuck somewhere in between. Much like Britain today in terms of Soft Power.
@alexmilman
Is it true that, before Peter I's reign, weddings in Muscovy involved whipping the bride? The biography by Robert Massie says that that was one of the things he changed, going instead with the German custom of a kiss. Or is that another one of those legends?
More broadly, the Great Northern War was mostly instigated by Augustus II of Saxony/Poland-Lithuania. Would Ivan V or Sophia agree to join his ill-fated misadventure as readily as Peter did?
Is it true that, before Peter I's reign, weddings in Muscovy involved whipping the bride? The biography by Robert Massie says that that was one of the things he changed, going instead with the German custom of a kiss. Or is that another one of those legends?
More broadly, the Great Northern War was mostly instigated by Augustus II of Saxony/Poland-Lithuania. Would Ivan V or Sophia agree to join his ill-fated misadventure as readily as Peter did?
As far as I can tell, the “whipping” was purely symbolic: the whole procedure has to show that the bride goes from father’s authority to one of her husband (father was doing a stroke of a whip and delivering the whip to a husband). Can’t say if it was still mandatory at that time, especially in the high circles. Massie is very entertaining but he is also a little bit too “enthusiastic” about Peter. 😜
As for the GNW, Sophia allowed to get Tsardom involved into the Ottoman War (which proved to be a political disaster for her). I’d assume that at least Golitsyn would be more reluctant to get into a new risky adventure than Peter because Peter loved to play soldiers. To be fair, Peter did chose a better and less ambitious target: a single fortress of Azov instead of the whole Crimea (much easier to reach as well) and after failure of the first siege made the right conclusions so the second attempt was successful: even if the siege works had been a failure, his newly built fleet allowed to establish a close blockade and starve fortress into surrender.
OTOH, while being overly ambitious, the attacks on the Crimea made strategic sense while the Azov adventure was more or less a “tactical” exercise: it allowed Peter to build fleet on Azov but the Ottomans remained in charge of the entry into the Black Sea.
But this success went into his head and he decided that his army is already qualifying for the European war: Peter was seemingly learning only from his failures but success was considered as something absolute. The lessons of Azov were obvious: art of a siege craft was absent, siege artillery was inadequate for a task (it is not like Azov was one of Vauban’s fortresses) and quality of the infantry was quite low as far as hand to hand combat was involved. All of that was ignored and he was ready to start a new adventure. Of course, he picked a seemingly easy target: fortifications of Narva were anything but modern and they had been dilapidating and the garrison was not strong. There was a seemingly reasonable expectation that Charles would be busy with Denmark and then Riga and, Narva being rather unimportant, give Peter enough time to take it. But, AFAIK, by the time Charles appeared at Narva the siege was already failing. Russian artillery could not breach the walls, attempt of a direct assault failed, gunpowder was almost exhausted and the troops were starving. The Russian camp was pretty much a trap in the case of a marginally competent attack: look at the map, the only bridge is on a far end of it (cavalry managed to get across the river but infantry could not) and to protect outside perimeter the troops had to be stretched really thin.
Not that there was any rush and definitely starting campaign in a fall was plain idiotic because with the lousy roads the troops had been exhausted even before they got to Narva and regular supply from Novgorod was close to impossible.
So, IMO, a less adventurous government would postpone the whole adventure. There was no real pressure because the system of the trade through the Swedish-held ports had been functioning for decades and there was an open port of Archangelsk.