The First Emperor According to N.G. Chernyshevsky, the Father of Russian Socialism

In this article, the author reconstructs the various stages of the formation, in the mid-nineteenth century, of the original criticism of the work of Peter the Great and the effects of his reforms by Nikolaj Gavrilovič Černyševskij, one of the fathers of Russian socialism. For Černyševskij, Peter had not represented that deviation from the course of history of the country that admirers and detractors alike spoke of. Černyševskij recognized in the reforming tsar an exception. Certainly the tsar had introduced some spectacular reforms of customs in the Western sense, which had changed the face of Russia involving a thin layer of the population. However, his impetuous reforms had not solved any of the country's problems. As Chernyshevsky would say in 1861, Peter, as a true Russian (istinno russkim čelovekom), in the wake of a policy of expansion that united him with the other tsars of Muscovy, had only created a strong army, allowing Russia to wage war successfully and to compete on the international scene to the point of becoming part of the concert of European states.