Уроки петровских реформ глазами историка

Вестник Московского университета. Серия 6: Экономика. 2023. Т. 58. № 2. С. 159–167.

Kamenskii A. B.

The article attempts to identify the most significant lessons that can be learned from
the experience of the transformations of Peter the Great — one of the key events in Russian
history that determined the vector of the country’s development for a long time. Both
the positive and negative experience of Peter the Great’s reforms is considered, and it
is concluded that the success of the reforms of Peter I was primarily due to the fact that
their focus on the European model of development corresponded to the internal trends in the
development of Russian society at the turn of the 17th–18th centuries, and this is exactly what
made Petrine transformations irreversible. Peter’s successors, faced with serious financial
and economic problems, were forced to make certain adjustments to his transformations,
but retained all the main institutions he created. Thanks to Peter’s transformations, Russia
acquired the status of a great power, which was due to the country’s integration into the system
of international relations, the world economy and culture, without which the very status
of a great power lost its meaning. Thanks to reforms in the economic sphere, the technological
gap with the leading European countries was largely overcome, but the priority development
of industries focused on meeting military needs and based on the labor of serfs hindered
the development of capitalist relations and contributed to the transformation of Russia into
a raw material power. At the same time, the pace of economic development remained low,
which became the key to a new lag in the next historical stage. Reforms in the social sphere,
based on meeting the fiscal needs of the state, hampered, but could not stop the development
of Russian society.

Keywords: социальная политика, реформы, social policy, reforms, serfdom, Великая Держава, исторический опыт, great power, крепостничество