Customer Reviews

Peter the Great

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Derek Wilson's "Peter the Great" is an informative overview if you are looking for a quick read on ol'Pyotr. Wilson is not a specialist in Russian history, and does not know Russian. Normally I would not read a book written by someone lacking expertise, but I didn't know this when I bought the book. Wilson's style is readable, and at 208 pages, it doesn't take a huge time investment. If you want a more serious book on this subject, read Robert K. Massie's "Peter the Great: His Life and World" or Lindsey Hughes' "Russia in the Age of Peter the Great." Massie's work is longer but in a more readable style, while Hughes' work is more academic. Wilson cites Hughes quite a bit, but never cites Massie.

The book is divided into eight chapters plus an epilogue which reviews subsequent history and discusses how Peter has been viewed differently over time since his death in 1725. The chronology is a bit confusing at first since he starts off talking about Peter's family and early life ("Survival") and then in chapter two goes back and reviews his predecessors ("The Third Rome"). The book is about equally divided between Peter's foreign travels and wars on the one hand, and domestic reforms and struggles on the other, with somewhat greater emphasis on the former. In such a short work, there isn't much room for material about what was happening in parts of Russia outside Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Wilson has one habit I found a bit annoying in that he repeatedly compares the more negative aspects of Peter's rule - from a contemporary Western perspective - to European countries at the time, just to show that if he was at times brutish and authoritarian, so were they, just less so. For anyone who knows anything about European history this is not necessary, and creates a cultural parallel that obscures more than it enlightens. Also, on page 23 he compares Peter's relationship to the Russian Orthodox Church to Western states and the Catholic Church, saying that the doctrine of the divine right of kings was "founded on the Bible and supported by the church." This I consider historically inaccurate, as the doctrine of divine right of kings was created by kings to resist the expansion of ecclesiastical authority, not the other way around. I do think there is a comparison between Peter's religious views and Henry VIII's subordination of the English church to royal authority, but this is not the comparison Wilson makes.

If the longer biographies of Peter (by Peter Massie and Lindsay Hughes) are not for you, or if you just want to visit Peter's history anew, you can't go wrong with this tightly and beautifully written biography of Peter Alexe­yevich. Derek Wilson is not a Russian expert, but a historian, a biographer, and a fine writer. And he ably packs a very full life into just 202 pages.

As reviewed in Russian Life.