Was he the greatest Russian who ever lived?
>>896442
>le boat man
Most pivotal? very arguable. Definitely up there with Lenin for that title.
Greatest? probably not.
Peter undoubtedly is the man who turned Russia from a Steppe kingdom into a European Empire that could go toe-to-toe with powers like France, Austria, and Sweden.
On the other hand, that's exactly what Peter did. he set the stage for Russia's rise, rather than see it truly unfold. St. Petersburg was still under construction by the time he died and would later see its true value under later leaders like Catherine and Alexander I.
Alexander I was probably the Russian who brought the Empire to its pinnacle in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars.
>>896459
That gigantic alcoholic Dutchaboo sex freak also dragged Russia into Europe by the legs. Considering just how Asiatic it really is, it's quite a feat to accomplish.
But then again, I used to live in Saint Petersburg for a while so maybe I'm biased.
>>896442
Grigori Rasputin is obviously best russian.
>>896477
The Romanovs were German by the time of Alexander
>>896442
Rurik, because always his descendants have fucked it up until now.
No.
>>896442
>Peter was enormously fond of dwarfs. They had been around him all his life. As a child, he went to church walking between two rows of dwarfs carrying red silken curtains; as tsar, he kept at court a large population of dwarfs to amuse him and to play prominent roles on special occasions. At banquets, they were placed inside huge pies; when Peter cut into the pastry, a dwarf popped out. He liked to combine their strange shapes with the mock ceremonies in which he reveled. Dwarf weddings and even dwarf funerals, closely aping the ceremonies his own court performed, set Peter to laughing so hard that tears rolled down his cheeks.
>At four o’clock in the afternoon, they woke us up and again invited us to the summer house, where the Tsar gave us each an axe and bade us follow him. He led us into a young wood, where he pointed out trees which it was necessary to fell in order to make an allée straight to the sea about a hundred paces long, and told us to cut down the trees. He himself began to work on the spot (there were seven of us besides the Tsar) and although this unaccustomed work, especially when we had not half recovered our senses, was not at all to our liking, we nevertheless cut boldly and diligently, so that in about three hours the allée was ready and the fumes of wine had entirely evaporated. None of us did himself any harm except a certain ambassador who hacked at the trees with such fury that by the fall of one, he was hit, knocked down, bruised, and badly scratched. After verbal thanks, we received our real recompense after supper in a second drink, which was so strong that we were taken to our beds unconscious.
>At eight o’clock in the morning we were invited to the palace for breakfast, which instead of coffee or tea as we expected, consisted of a good glass of vodka.
Account of a German ambassador in Russia
http://erenow.com/modern/peterthegreat/47.html
>>896767
>That website
Is that information really legit? It has the biography of other people ripped straight out of other titles as well.
