During Peter's reign a large number of social and state reforms were introduced. They were implemented at the cost of a bitter struggle with the reactionary boyars and church hierarchy, and were to play an important part in securing the country's advancement. 

Before Peter's reign there had been no regular army in Russia. Troops had been mustered only in case of war. Peter set up a regular army and organised its proper training. The recruiting system was also reorganised. Men in the ranks were recruited from both the peasantry and the urban population. One soldier was recruited from every twenty peasant households, whenever recruits were rounded up. All members of the nobility were obliged to serve in the army. A uniform was also introduced; members of Peter's guards wore short dark green tunics, comfortable tricorn hats worn low on the forehead and were armed with bayonets. 
Peter had begun to build his fleet before the Northern War broke out while he was making plans for an expedition to the Sea of Azov. At the beginning of the Northern War when Russia had already gained control of part of the Baltic coast, a new Baltic fleet was built. The first squadron of Russian ships was launched m 1703; it consisted of six frigates (three-mast men-of-war). By the end of Peter's reign the Baltic fleet consisted of 48 large warships and 800 galleys and small vessels, and 28,000 sailors. 
Peter was determined that Russia should be as independent of foreign powers as possible and start to produce everything it needed on home soil, relying on her own potential everything.
Large new iron works were built near Olonets, Tula and in the Uials. At the Tula armoury thousands of guns and pistols were produced every year. Manufactories for the production of canvas and rope were built to supply the needs of the fleet. 
To provide the necessary manpower, Peter ordered thousands of peasants to be sent as serf workers to these manufactories. Whole villages were assigned to various enterprises which sometimes were as far as three or four hundred miles away and the working conditions were extremely harsh. There was a shortage of skilled workers and so Peter invited foundry workers and skilled craftsmen in the cloth and paper industries from abroad to come and teach their skills to Russian workmen. It was now imperative for the cloth industry to start putting out fine woolen cloth. It was at this period that fine-fleeced Silesian sheep were first brought to Russia and cloth manufactories were set up. 
Before Peter's reign there had existed a Boyars' Duma at the court of the Tsar of Muscovy, a large assembly which at the Tsar's command had discussed various affairs of state. By the seventeenth century this body had already become clearly obsolete and the dyed in the wool Moscow boyars found it more and more difficult to cope with increasingly complicated affairs of state. In 1711 Peter replaced the Boyars' Duma with a Senate of nine members, hand-picked by the Tsar himself and entrusted with important affairs of state. 
The central administrative organs which had existed in Russia were known as prikazy (or departments) and there were approxi- mately fifty of them. They sprang up intermittently whenever the need arose. They were badly organised and frequently obstructed each other's work. Peter did away with these too and replaced them with an incomparably more streamlined system of ministerial colleges. 
In Moscow Peter set up a Navigation School where mathematics were taught for the first time in Russia. It was later transferred to St. Petersburg and made into a Naval Academy. Special arith- metic schools were opened in the provinces, along with schools for the study of reading and writing, mathematics, engineering, naval skills, accounting and medicine. All these schools were of a clearly practical bent. 
Peter also gave instructions for an Academy of Sciences to be founded (1724), which were carried out after his death. The first Russian newspaper was printed in Peter's reign and the first public theatre was opened. 
The reforms introduced by Peter the Great met with strong opposition from the boyars who were staunch defenders of the traditional way of life. One of the methods Peter used against them was forcible Europeanisation of everyday moeurs. He gave orders for his courtiers to cease wearing long Russian robes and adopt short European garments and shave their beards. During a reception in the village of Preobrazhenskoye near Moscow Peter himself tarted cutting off the boyars' beards and the long skirts of their raditional robes. Compulsory gatherings of the nobility were organised at the residences of the various Moscow grandees in turn. This Europeanisation drive, however, was to affect only the upper stratum and make little imprint on society as a whole 
The European calendar was also introduced. Previously the Rus- sian calendar had gone back to the year of the Creation, but in 1700 Peter adopted the calendar used throughout the rest of the Europe.
Although Peter was unable to make a complete break with the past, important steps forward were made in what still remained a feudal serf-owning society. Russia had become an empire with a stronghold on the Baltic coast and a sea-power to be reckoned with. She now possessed a powerful army and fleet; industry and trade had been considerably expanded. The state apparatus had begun to function much more efficiently and important advances had been made in the sphere of education. The countries of Western Europe were now starting to take notice of developments in this powerful Russian Empire and seek closer ties with it. 
These successes were reaped at the cost of tremendous efforts by the common people and, not infrequently, entailed the loss of numerous lives. Tens of thousands perished in the course of the Northern War, at the walls of the fortress of Narva and on Pol- tava Field. They were drilled in the military arts, worked under great pressure building ships for the new fleet at Voronezh and on the Neva, and died by hundreds and thousands as a result of hunger, disease, damp and dangerous working conditions building Peter's new capital. It was the common people who made it pos- sible for Peter to open up dozens of new factories, it was they who smelted metal and extracted ore by the light of splinter-torches. The Petnne Empire was built with money wrested from them in the form of crippling taxes and by means of exploitation of the oppressed masses. The consolidation of the Russian Empire benefited above all the dvoryane and the merchant entrepreneurs.

"A Short History Of The World", edited by prof. A. Z. Manfred, Progress Publishers, Moscow

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