Moving such men in a single generation to the worldview of the West, with its more individualist conceptions and complex civil society was for all practical purposes, an impossible task. Which is why Peter had to surround himself with foreigners like Francis LeFort and parvenu creatures like Alexander Menshikov in order to carry out his reforms. In all likelihood, Peter’s transformation of Russia was understood by most of his Russian comtemporaries only as the inexplicable whims of the Tsar, something to be endured. Which is why a person like England’s Lord Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke, arguing the necessity of judicial independence with King James, had no Russian equivalent.
Such a thing was beyond imagining to the Russian mind, including Peter’s, who saw himself as the first servant of an all-powerful state.
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Dave Schuler:
June 22nd, 2006 at 6:20 pm
Of all the peoples of Old Russia only the Cossacks, who owed feudal military service to the Tsar as a collective host under their Atamen, could consider themselves free .
And, indeed, the freedom of the Kazaki was hardly recognizeable as such. The deal that they cut with the tsars was that in exchange for their autonomy as a people every adult male Kazak would devote, essentially, his entire adult life to the service of the Tsar. Other occupations were forbidden to Kazaki: in a Kazak settlement other jobs were performed by non-Kazaki. Kazak villages were women, girls, boys, and old men.