Empire of the Tsars: Romanov Russia with Lucy Worsley (2016–…): Season 1, Episode 1 - Reinventing Russia - full transcript

LUCY WORSLEY: I'm making
my first trip to Russia,

a country I've been
wanting to visit for years.

Because if you're fascinated
by stories of royalty and royal power,

there's nowhere better than this.

(CHURCH BELL RINGING)

This is Red Square.
It's a vast and diverse place.

This is the huge scary-looking
fortress of the Kremlin.

This is an absolutely
ginormous department store,

and over there is
the Cathedral of St. Basil.

Red Square is the center of a country
that goes all the way to China.

Now, how do you rule over a place
that's that enormous and that confusing?



Well, in Russia, for more than 300 years,

one family managed to do just that,
the Romanov dynasty.

That's as if in Britain, the Stuarts
had hung onto power

right into the 20th century.

Now, I'll be following in
the footsteps of the Romanovs,

the most powerful monarchs
in modern European history.

It's a roll call of
extraordinary characters.

Peter the Great, the visionary,
who built a navy from nothing.

Ready for attack!

LUCY: And transformed
a country into an empire.

Catherine the Great,
empress of the glittering palaces.

The minor princess from Germany who became
the mightiest woman in the world.

Alexander I, who led his country
through its darkest hour.

- (YELLING)
- (GUNSHOTS)



He defeated Napoleon, and took

the triumphant Russian army
all the way to Paris.

But behind the spectacular facades,

lie stories of intrigue,
betrayal, scandal.

Even murder.

And for all their efforts
to place themselves

at the forefront of modern Europe,

the Romanovs failed to change a system

that kept millions of their subjects
in medieval servitude

until it was far too late.

When their end came,
it was astonishingly brutal.

(GUNSHOT)

Slaughtered by the revolution
that shook the world.

To understand the end of the Romanovs,
you need to understand their whole story.

Of a royal family with
unparalleled control over their people.

And you might ask yourself
what you would have done in their shoes

with such absolute personal power.

(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)

LUCY: For anyone who grew up
during the Cold War,

it's hard to shake off the image of Russia
as intimidating and impregnable.

A bona fide superpower
under the iron rule of the Kremlin.

Images of military might
on display in Red Square

have been seared into our minds.

Yet the age of the Romanovs
began in a power vacuum.

And in this program, we'll see
how in little more than a century,

this dynasty turned around
Russia's fortunes.

Back in 1613, Russia was leaderless.

There'd been years of anarchy

since the previous royal dynasty,
the Ruriks, had collapsed.

The country was so weakened
that the Polish army

had marched right in
and occupied the Kremlin.

Once the Poles
had finally been driven out,

the great and good of Russia realized
that they needed to stop squabbling

and unite around a leader.

What they wanted,
the Romans had called a Caesar,

the Germans, a kaiser,
and in Russian, a tsar.

They argued for weeks
about who it should be.

But finally they made their choice.

The only problem was,
that nobody had asked

this prospective tsar
if he actually wanted the job.

A high-powered delegation
set out for Moscow

to find their hoped-for leader,
and bring him the good news.

Their number included nobles
and leading churchmen,

the power brokers of Russia

or Muscovy as it was also known.

Their journey took them
more than 200 miles north,

across countryside that was
still dangerous and largely lawless.

And this was their destination,
the Ipatiev Monastery

overlooking the mighty river Volga.

It was still winter
and with no bridge back then,

the delegation had to cross the ice
to get to the monastery.

Sheltering here was
the object of the delegation's quest,

a 16-year-old boy called Mikhail Romanov.

But although the Romanovs
were a well-known noble family,

power was the last thing that he wanted.

It's said that when Mikhail Romanov
was offered the crown,

he burst into tears.
He didn't feel equal to accepting it.

And his mother was furious
with the delegation.

She said, "Nyet. No.

"You shouldn't have offered my son
such a dangerous responsibility."

But the delegation said,
"It's not up to us, it's not up to you.

"It's God who wants you to do this thing."

After several hours of deliberation,

Mikhail and his mother caved in,
they accepted.

Of course, regardless of what God wanted,

other considerations had played a role
in Mikhail's selection.

Mikhail Romanov came from
a well-established noble family.

The family had long dynastic connections
with the previous dynasty.

His father Philaret was the nephew
of the last wife of Ivan the Terrible.

During the election of Mikhail,
Philaret was in Polish captivity.

So different groups in Russian society

were satisfied with Mikhail's position,

with his social status,
and at the same time,

they thought it would be easy
to manipulate him

because his father, who was
a very influential figure, was not around.

LUCY: Under heavy protection,

Mikhail now traveled
to his coronation in Moscow.

Here, in a lavish ceremony before

the massed ranks of Russia's nobility
and churchmen,

he was given the all-important
divine seal of approval

at the Kremlin's Cathedral
of the Assumption.

This is the Russian equivalent
of Westminster Abbey.

All the tsars and emperors
came here for their coronations.

Mikhail Romanov was just short of 17
when he was presented with the crown,

the orb and the scepter,

presumably to a great big sigh of relief
from the Russian people.

The coronation conferred
absolute power on the Tsar.

Although the different noble families

and the church were
keen to influence Mikhail,

they agreed that
a strong leader was essential

to prevent the kind of chaos
from which Russia had just emerged.

And they were proved right.

More than half a century
of relative stability

and reconstruction followed

under Mikhail and then his successor,
his son, Alexis.

The idea that the tsars ruled
as part of a divinely ordered system,

helps justify their immense power.

I've come to the Tretyakov Gallery
in Moscow

to see an icon from the reign of Alexis

which features the Tsar himself.

Painted by an influential
Russian artist, Simon Ushakov,

it's called The Tree of
the Muscovite State.

So, Philip, this picture reminds me
of Jack and the Beanstalk

because we've got an enormous tree
growing right out of the cathedral,

that's planted in the middle
of the fortress of the Kremlin.

Yes. And the roots are common.

You see, uh, there's one...

There's a common root for
both church power and state power.

Uh, they grow together, they act together,

a very central idea for medieval Russia.

LUCY: And here, we've got
the first Archbishop of Moscow...

TARATORKIN: The first Archbishop
of Moscow and the first prince of Moscow.

LUCY: Planting the tree together.
TARATORKIN: Yes.

- I'm more interested in this person.
- Yes, he's the monarch, Alexis,

or Aleksey in Russian,

- and there's the Tsarina, his wife.
- That's his wife.

LUCY: And the two little children,
look at them.

TARATORKIN: Yes, his first wife
and two children.

Where did power really lie
at this point in the 17th century?

Symbolically, it was hand-in-hand
with civil power.

But in reality, of course
the civil power was much stronger,

um, which is not depicted here.

LUCY: Secretly, he is
the most important person in the picture.

TARATORKIN: He is the most important.

Of course, the political power
belonged to the Tsar.

LUCY: But something else
about the painting is very telling.

For all its beauty,
by Western European standards,

it looks pre-Renaissance.

Even by the late 17th century,

foreign visitors considered Russia
to be almost medieval,

and not just in its art
and its religious piety.

Beyond the walls of Moscow lay a vast,
sparsely-populated, backward country.

Russian territory stretched from
the southern Steppes to the Arctic.

And thousands of miles east into Siberia.

In the late 17th century,

Russia was 100 times the area
of England and Wales,

but it had less than twice the population.

And this overwhelmingly rural country
was hugely underdeveloped.

Apart from churches and fortifications,

stone buildings were
virtually unknown in Russia.

Peasant huts and clothes barely changed
for hundreds of years.

At the Museum of Wooden Architecture
in Kostroma,

they've preserved some examples.

I'm modeling a traditional dress
called a sarafan.

While village life looks idyllic
on a sunny day,

for most of the year,
it was quite the opposite.

Russia's climate was notoriously harsh.

Imagine trudging along here through
the mud in the wet, or the snow in winter.

But despite the inhospitable terrain,
the majority of Russians,

right into the 19th century,
had to scratch out a living from the land.

They also had to cope
with the social reality of serfdom.

This was a practice that was dying out
in western Europe,

but in 17th century Russia,
it was actually on the rise.

And if you were somebody's serf,

you were effectively their property
to be bought or sold.

Agriculture was the mainstay
of Russia's economy,

and serfdom guaranteed
the landowning nobility

a captive workforce.

The peasants couldn't just up and leave

in search of better pay
or conditions elsewhere.

Serfdom lasted and increased
in the 17th century,

simply because it was found
in the interests

of both nobles and state to do so.

The nobles had already established
that they needed

to have control
over the movement of their serfs,

and to some extent, it was
in the interests of the state as well.

To keep people in one place,
to tax them, to control them,

and to reward the nobility
for their service.

So, serfs were wealth
in a way that they weren't in the west.

Bodies were wealth.

LUCY: But towards
the end of the 17th century,

it looks like things might change.

Russia gained a new tsar.

Driven by an obsessive desire
to modernize the country,

he was convinced that Russia's future

depended on it looking westwards,
to Europe.

Hey, hey, hey, hey!

Meet Peter the Great,
or at least the next best thing,

because this is a super accurate
wax effigy made just after his death,

and using his actual death mask
for the face.

These are Peter's real clothes,
and that's even his real hair.

You might be thinking
it must be larger than life

because his arms are so freakishly long,

but no, he was 6-and-a-half feet tall.

I think he looks pretty terrifying,

and in real life,
he was absolutely terrifying.

But Peter the Great was Russia's
most farsighted and hardworking sovereign.

Peter's ruthlessness
was a result of his traumatic childhood.

In 1682, his accession to the throne
at the age of nine

was followed by a brief,
but bloody revolt.

A faction at court regarded Peter's
half-brother Ivan as the rightful Tsar.

When rumors spread
that Ivan had been killed,

a mob stormed into the Kremlin,

and they were led
by the royal guards themselves.

To calm the situation,

Peter's mother walked out
onto the palace balcony

at the top of this staircase.

She was holding hands
with both Peter and Ivan,

to prove to the mob
that they were very much still alive.

It must have been a terrifying moment

for the little boys,
for Peter and his brother.

But when the rebels saw
that they were still alive,

everything calms down. It seemed to work.

But then a second wave of violence
came sweeping through the palace.

The rebels came rushing up this staircase,
and when they got to the top,

they seized the family's closest advisors
and leading noblemen,

and they threw them down
over that balustrade,

so they fell and were impaled
upon the spears of the guards below.

Eventually, the rebels agreed
to compromise,

but not before they'd slaughtered
two of Peter's uncles.

Peter would have to wait for his revenge.

The revolts left Peter
with a loathing of Moscow.

As soon as he could get away, he did.

This is Lake Pleshcheyevo,
90 miles north of the capital.

And it's on these waters,
that the teenage Peter felt truly at home.

So where did Peter the Great get
his very un-Russian passion for sailing?

Well, he discovered
an old boat lying around

on one of the royal estates near Moscow.

But in order to learn how to use it,

he had to come up here
to the nice big lake,

where he could get up some speed.

And it was on the waters of this lake,

that a new vision of the future of Russia
began to take shape in Peter's mind.

Peter took every opportunity
to come up to the lake.

He employed foreign experts to teach him
not just how to sail the boats,

but how to build them.

This is the only survivor of
Peter the Great's flotilla of little boats

that he had made here
on the shores of Lake Pleshcheyevo.

He and his friends
would go out onto the water,

and amuse themselves
with mock sea battles.

The small ships became known
as Peter's toy navy,

but his ambition went much further
than simply messing about with boats.

Peter realized that
if Russia was to have prosperity,

security and influence in the wider world,

then it needed to be powerful at sea.

There's a saying that
a ruler with an army has one hand,

but a ruler with a navy has two.

Whether or not this saying
really was coined by Peter the Great,

there's no question that he believed it.

European powers
like the English and the Dutch

were making fortunes from maritime trade.

But despite its size,
Russia was effectively landlocked.

It had just the one proper sea port
in the far north,

and that was frozen up for half the year.

More urgently,
Russia's two most threatening neighbors,

Sweden to the west
and Turkey to the south,

both had formidable navies.

Russia needed a fleet of its own.

It needed maritime expertise.

It needed a major new sea port

that could be its gateway to the world.

Peter the Great made it his mission
to get these things for Russia.

And to fulfill that mission,
he took an extraordinary step.

In 1697, at the age of 24,

Peter left his kingdom
in the hands of his advisors,

and set off to spend a gap year in Europe.

Here he was to study shipbuilding,

and the latest developments
in maritime science.

The journey became known
as Peter's Grand Embassy.

He spent several months in Holland
working in a shipyard.

Then, early in 1698, Peter
and his entourage pitched up in London.

And one of the first places he visited
was the Royal Observatory at Greenwich.

Here at the Observatory,
Peter the Great was shown around

by John Flamsteed,
the first Astronomer Royal.

Together, they looked through
a telescope at the planet of Venus.

But this wasn't just sightseeing.

Peter wanted to check out

Britain's first purpose-built
scientific research facility.

It's hard to think of a building
that could have appealed to Peter more.

It had the express purpose of using
astronomy to improve navigation at sea.

Over the coming months,
Peter gorged himself

on the best of
English science and technology.

He visited the Royal Society,
the Royal Mint in the Tower of London,

Oxford University and the cannon foundry
at the Woolwich Arsenal.

During his time in London, Peter the Great

stayed just around the bend in the river
from Greenwich at Deptford.

He liked it there
because it was near the shipyards,

and he was spotted joining in the work.

It was said that the Tsar of Muscovy
works with his own hands

as hard as any man in the yard.

But Peter wasn't your regular shipbuilder,

he was the special guest of
King William III,

who now gave him a special gift.

It was the ultimate boy's toy,

a modern high-speed ship called
the Royal Transport.

One of several English royal yachts,
the ship was a fairly naked bribe.

William saw Russia
as a lucrative potential trading partner.

Peter soon befriended the ship's designer,
the Marquis of Carmarthen.

And this marquis also shared another
much loved hobby of the young tsar's.

This man who designed the ship,
he and Peter became drinking buddies,

didn't they?

I think they really found
some kindred spirits in each other.

They became very close and spent a lot
of time together during Peter's visit.

And yes, drinking was a big part of that.

Well, I think we know
what their favorite tipple was.

Um, brandy laced with peppers.

That's an interesting idea.

YOUNG: Indeed.
LUCY: Let's see what that tastes like.

YOUNG: Well, probably fair to say that

the English couldn't teach the Russians
much about drinking.

(LUCY LAUGHS)

But, at the same time, Carmarthen did
actually introduce Peter to this drink.

So this is the special drink
of the shipbuilders of Deptford.

- Indeed.
- And Peter the Great got a taste for it.

- Yes.
- Okay.

Pepper-flavored brandy.

Oh, that's foul.
That's really not very nice at all.

- Oh, you, you swallowed that.
- Actually, I think...

(BOTH LAUGH)

- That's not as bad as I was expecting.
- (LAUGHS)

LUCY: So when Peter and his friends
were in London,

they were staying in
Deptford on the river,

they got up to some other naughty tricks,
didn't they?

They certainly did and they were described
by one of the court servants

where they were staying as being,
"Right nasty in their behavior."

Um, they basically trashed
the place completely.

They used the portraits
and paintings as target practice,

they burnt all the chairs as firewood,

they destroyed the furniture,
tore up the beds.

Um, knocked a hole in the wall

so that Peter could get out to the...
Get out to the river easily.

And they used to race wheelbarrows

with people inside them
through the hedges.

Is that because they hadn't seen
wheelbarrows before?

That's exactly right, yes,
these were entirely new to them.

- And so this was seen as a great sport.
- (LAUGHS)

Peter is beginning to sound like
he's a complete mass of contradictions.

- Is that fair?
- I think it is.

I mean, we see on the one hand
his scientific interests,

and alongside that
he's behaving like a complete lunatic.

LUCY: During his year in Europe,
Peter not only acquired a royal yacht,

he also purchased several shiploads
of the latest maritime equipment.

And who knows, maybe a few wheelbarrows
to remind him of good times in Deptford.

He hired European shipbuilders and sailors
to bring their expertise to Russia,

and to teach the skills
that he and his retinue

had learnt for themselves
in Holland and England.

Peter also got a feel for life
in prosperous modern European cities.

He saw how their citizens behaved,
where they lived, how they dressed.

The contrast with his superstitious,
conservative homeland

couldn't have been more marked.

And as if to underline the point,

in August 1698,
he was forced to hurry back to Moscow.

The palace guards had rebelled again.

The revolt was quickly crushed.

And this time,
there were no deals or compromises,

Peter was merciless in his retribution.

He had more than 1,000
of his guards beheaded or hanged.

Hundreds more were tortured,
flogged and banished.

The fate of the guards,
known in Russian as the Streltsy,

is depicted in this picture
by Vasily Surikov,

one of the great Russian history
painters of the 19th century.

This is Red Square on the morning
of the execution of the Streltsy.

You know which ones they are
because they have immensely long beards,

and they're in their shirts

because their uniforms
have been stripped off them.

And each of them
is holding a little candle.

That's his life
that's about to be snuffed out.

All the rest of the people here,

and there's a huge mass of humanity,
are their families.

He's got his wife weeping on his lap,

and that must be his little boy
who's crying on his knee.

There's a huge amount
of suffering going on.

You'd think that somebody
would take pity, but no,

here's the man in charge,

Peter the Great, and he is implacable.

Look at him.

He is saying this lot are absolutely
going to that gallows in the background.

And the reason that Peter
is so determined,

is that he was once
the weeping little boy himself.

These are the men
who murdered Peter's own uncles.

But the real message of the picture

is that the Streltsy
represent the old Russia.

They're messy and dirty and superstitious.

And Peter the Great is the wind of change,

he's going to sweep them all away.

Peter's next move was to quash
any lingering opposition to his rule.

He was convinced

that the rebellion had been orchestrated
by his half-sister, Sophia.

He didn't execute Sophia,

but he did what was considered
the next best thing.

He forced her to become a nun,

and spend the rest of her life
largely in solitary confinement,

here at the Novodevichy Convent in Moscow.

But initially at least,

Peter did provide Sophia
with some company.

He strung up the corpses
of the Streltsy rebels,

right outside her windows.

Peter now turned to the Moscow elite.

These were the same class of people
who'd put the Romanovs on the throne,

nearly 90 years before.

But Peter considered them
to be reactionary and lazy,

it was time they caught up
with the present day.

Peter decided that the best way
to make them behave like modern Europeans,

was to make them
look like modern Europeans.

This is rather good, isn't it?

A bit tsarish, a bit furry,
a bit velvety too.

Very nice.

To see just how revolutionary this was,

I've come to the famous Mosfilm Studios
in Moscow.

Many a historical epic
has been filmed here,

and while I admire
the vast costume department,

our translator, Misha, has volunteered
to model some traditional Russian clothes,

to show what Peter's new rules
on dress actually meant.

Misha, you've been quite a long time
in there, are you ready?

- MISHA: I think I am.
- Let's have a look then.

Oh! Look at you. Come out.

(LUCY LAUGHS)

You look like a lovely little tsar.
(CHUCKLES)

- Well, I am.
- You're dressed for the 17th century.

You're warm for the Moscow winters.

- I guess.
- Absolutely.

And, um, is it practical?
Can you move about in this one?

Well, of course it's practical,
because this is how people were dressed.

- Yes.
- And it also is,

well, a little bit not really European.

Let's see your boots.

MISHA: Maybe somewhat oriental.
LUCY: Sexy!

LUCY: (CHUCKLES) Very nice. Yes.
MISHA: Oh, are they? Thank you.

Yes, you do have a touch of the Orient
about you, I would say, looking at you.

- Well, I would say it's old Russian style.
- Old Russian style, yes.

- Rather than Oriental.
- Yes.

It could have
some influence of the Orient,

just like a lot of old Russian
architecture, for example, does.

- Yes.
- So the clothing also may reflect that.

Yes. Yes.

So along comes Peter the Great
at the end of the 17th century,

and he doesn't want to see
his subjects dressed like this anymore,

- he wants to see them as Europeans.
- Absolutely.

And the first thing to go,
I'm sorry to say, is...

- Don't!
- (LAUGHS)

No, don't, because the beard,
for every old Russian...

Every old Russian.

- Very important. Right.
- Is a sacred thing.

- It's a very religious thing.
- Yes.

And the people in those days said
that the man without a beard is naked.

But Peter the Great, he'd been to Europe,

he'd seen all of these
clean-shaven people,

and he thought it was very important
that his subjects should lose the beard.

So there's stories of him ripping them out
by the roots. Is this possible?

Well, you can try, of course.
But, he wouldn't... He wouldn't...

That's going to hurt you.

He wouldn't rip them off,

but he'd cut them with an ax,
that's what the legend says.

Now, I actually know the secret
of getting your beard off you.

- (LAUGHS) Are you ready for this, Misha?
- I don't know.

- Come on, take it like a man.
- I am afraid.

LUCY: (INHALES DEEPLY) Whee!

- Argh!
- (LAUGHING)

Argh!

- You're laughing.
- No. I'm laughing.

I've still got my mustache
so it's not that bad yet.

- (LAUGHS) No, you haven't.
- Ah, no!

Now we've Europeanized your facial hair.

Peter the Great would also have wanted
to change your clothes, wouldn't he?

Yeah. He didn't stop with the beards,
just, he went the full way.

LUCY: Go on. Back into your cubicle.

Ta-dam!

LUCY: (CLAPPING) Very good! Fantastic!

Oh! Fantastic.

So here you are all Europeaned up.

Now it strikes me
that your shoes are better for dancing in,

but not so good
for walking across a snowy plain.

MISHA: Absolutely right.

For snow, this is horrible.

I would freeze my feet off.

And how are you feeling about it
as a Russian nobleman?

I, for one, am extremely unhappy

because I was used
to my warm, good Russian clothes.

- Yes.
- Where I can wander around...

- In the snow?
- In the snow without doing a single thing.

Just direct my hundreds of thousands
of serfs, and do nothing.

And are you feeling a bit drafty
in the chin department?

Absolutely naked, Lucy.

And what, what can you do about this
as an early 18th century nobleman?

Well, the thing is
that the nobleman had really no choice.

The clergy and the people in the fields,

the peasants
as they were called at the time,

they continued having beards.

They could actually pay for their beards.

And there is a little token here
and it shows that I have paid,

or whoever, paid a beard tax.

And once you wear it around your neck
to show that you have paid for it,

you can have your proud Russian beard.

LUCY: A tiny little beard on it.
Look at that.

I think that there's something that I owe
you as you are clearly a beard tax payer.

- You can have your beard back.
- Oh, thank you.

- Thank you so much.
- Enjoy your facial hair.

Do svidanya!

And all this applied to the ladies too.

Although they're said to have enjoyed
wearing their elegant European dresses,

rather more than the men did.

Peter's assault on the traditions
of old Moscow left the capital reeling.

But the Tsar was already planning
what was to be his boldest move yet.

In 1703, Peter packed up
and left Moscow once again.

ANNOUNCER ON PA: Dear passengers,
please prepare your tickets to be checked

and listen
to the information announcements.

LUCY: Peter was leading
a military expedition west,

towards the Gulf of Finland,
the gateway to the Baltic Sea.

On the high-speed train
it takes me less than four hours.

On horseback though, it took Peter weeks.

He was venturing
into barely charted territory,

swamplands with just
a few isolated fishing settlements.

Most dangerously of all,
this was land claimed by Sweden,

the most powerful country
in the Baltic region.

It was when Peter reached
the banks of the Neva River,

that the objective of the exercise
became clear.

Peter had found his gateway to the sea,

the ground zero of a new, maritime Russia.

Legend has it that
this is pretty much the exact spot

where Peter the Great got off his horse
and declared, "Here will be a city."

Luckily there was even an eagle hovering
over his head as he spoke,

to make it even more
like an epic Bible story.

And Peter did have pharaoh-like powers
over his subjects.

He was able to bend his serfs, his nobles
and even nature, to his will.

And so with frightening speed

what had been a mosquito-ridden marshland
over there,

was turned into this great city.

Peter christened his city St. Petersburg.

And it would become
the home of the Romanov dynasty,

eclipsing Moscow
for more than two centuries.

The first building Peter constructed
was the Peter and Paul Fortress.

St. Petersburg began as a military base,
because Peter had declared war on Sweden.

The timing seemed right.

Sweden had a new and teenage king,
Charles XII.

And Peter hoped to take advantage
of Charles' inexperience

to establish Russia as a Baltic power.

SIMON DIXON: I think there was the thought

that the young Charles XII
might prove an easier target

than his more celebrated
ancestors had done,

but it was still quite
a risky project to take on.

There was no sense that Sweden was
in any sense a declining power,

and of course behind Sweden,
this was the crucial Swedish advantage,

lay the diplomatic power of Louis XIV,

the greatest international power of all.

The Swedes were
French clients in diplomacy.

So it was certainly risky
to try anything on.

LUCY: War with Sweden
gave Peter the excuse

to fulfill perhaps the longest held
of all his dreams.

With its easy access to the Baltic sea,

St. Petersburg became the base
for Peter's next grand project,

the building of a navy.

Hello.

Are you Captain Vladimir?

Hello. Welcome on board the Shtandart.

- Ah! Thank you.
- Let me help you in.

And a fine ship, the Shtandart.

Thank you very much.

- Please come on board.
- Thank you.

LUCY: Let's have a look.
Guns, cannons, ropes.

This is a replica
of Peter the Great's flagship frigate,

his pride and joy, the Shtandart.

Peter sailed in the 1703 original himself,

it was modeled on the Royal Transport,

the English ship
he was given by William III.

Standby for departure.

LUCY: The Shtandart
was the biggest of 10 ships

that Peter managed to build
in just five months.

As the war with Sweden escalated,

the fleet had to be constructed
at breakneck speed.

She's brave.

Ooh!

(GASPS) What's the word for fantastic?

- Fantastic.
- Fantastic!

LUCY: Now, Peter's time in the shipyards
of Amsterdam and London really paid off.

He set his imported
Dutch and English experts to work,

alongside Russians who'd learnt
shipbuilding during the Grand Embassy.

Above all, it was probably
Peter's own hands-on involvement

that ensured the Shtandart
was completed so quickly.

- Midships now.
- Yes, Captain Vladimir.

LUCY: Peter's new and untested navy

would be like David
taking on the Swedish Goliath.

The Shtandart had to be more powerful
and more maneuverable

than anything the Swedes could muster.

Captain Vladimir, in 1703
when the Shtandart was completed,

was she a very state-of-the-art vessel?

For that time the steering wheel
was a kind of technological innovation,

very advanced.

The steering wheel comes
on the stage in 1700, 1701.

LUCY: Oh, not very long ago.
VLADIMIR: And in 1703,

the Russian fleet was equipped
with a steering wheel

which make ships very maneuverable.

LUCY: Yes.
VLADIMIR: And very well controlled.

So that was something very special.

And the artillery,
the cannons were very powerful.

They were six-pounders,
and for the ship of that size,

- that is quite powerful cannons.
- Yes.

LUCY: What was it like then when
Peter the Great and his crew were sailing?

Who would be here,
what would be happening?

VLADIMIR: A hundred and fifty people,
uh, 28 cannons.

- Four persons per cannon.
- Mmm-hmm.

So they would be standing by
next to the cannons.

- Yes.
- And the sailors,

they would have
to operate all sails at once.

So in battle during the maneuvers,

the sailors would be standing by on lines

for bracing the yards,
for hoisting sails, for setting sails.

LUCY: Peter was gambling
that his new ships and their crews

would give the Swedes a nasty surprise.

- And they did.
- Ready for attack!

(LUCY GRUNTING)

LUCY: The Shtandart soon saw action,
exchanging fire with Swedish warships

while defending Kronstadt,

the Russian naval base
in the Gulf of Finland.

Over the next six years,

in what became known
as the Great Northern War,

Peter used sea and land forces

to consolidate his position
in the Baltic region.

And on several occasions,
he led his own men into battle.

Do you admire him?

He is my hero.

And that is because he was thinking
more about the country...

- Yes.
- And not about himself.

His own wealth wasn't that important.

His life has a really clear target,
a goal, a mission.

LUCY: The Great Northern War
dragged on for two decades,

and in the early years
Peter was sorely tested.

Charles XII of Sweden
may have been young,

but he proved to be
a formidable military commander.

Charles was preoccupied with war,
war was his main passion.

Peter was also very interested in war,

and there is an argument that all reforms
initiated by Peter

were actually dictated
by his interest in war.

So we have two figures
who had very strong interest in war,

very deep sense of involvement
in international affairs,

so the conflict was unavoidable.

LUCY: Despite the length of the war,

Peter's decisive battle with Charles
came as early as 1709.

And it wasn't at sea. It was hundreds
of miles inland at Poltava in the Ukraine.

The viciousness of the battle is captured

in this 18th century mural
in St. Petersburg.

As you get closer
you realize that it's a mosaic.

It was painstakingly assembled from
thousands of tiny pieces of stained glass

by an artist and scientist
called Mikhail Lomonosov.

Here is Peter the Great
with his very distinctive mullet haircut,

and he's got his sword out ready
to cut the heads off some Swedes,

and he's leading the troops in person
as he did in 1709.

The leader of the other side

is King Charles XII of Sweden, up there.

He's riding in a sedan chair because
he'd hurt his foot before the battle.

You might also notice
that he's much, much, much smaller

than Peter the Great in this image.

And in this little scene,

a bloodthirsty Russian
showing his white teeth

is about to skewer this poor Swede
with his sword.

It was a decisive victory
for the Russians,

but not just because of their bravery.

They also completely outnumbered
the Swedes.

Poltava was a pivotal battle
for Peter the Great,

because it allowed Russia
to overtake Sweden

to become the dominant power
in Baltic Europe.

The security of St. Petersburg
was now assured.

And in 1712, just three years
after his victory at Poltava,

Peter made St. Petersburg
the new capital of Russia.

The city had grown rapidly
in its first decade.

Large numbers of nobles and wealthy
citizens had relocated there from Moscow.

Not out of choice, Peter had demanded it.

With its canals and stone buildings
resembling Venice or Amsterdam,

St. Petersburg presented foreign visitors

with Peter's vision of
a modern Europeanized Russia,

one full of thriving commerce
and rational order.

But the great irony was
that the city only existed

because of Peter's autocratic
and despotic powers.

And because of
the medieval institution of serfdom,

which he actually reinforced.

Thousands of serfs
and forced laborers perished

while constructing his new capital.

DIXON: It's famously said, of course,

that St. Petersburg was a city
built on human bones,

and there's no doubt that
it was an extraordinary business

to get it off the ground

because most of the ground was
totally unsuitable for building on it,

it's a swamp.

The, uh, climate is very severe,

the ground is very damp.

So a vast effort had
to be put in by the state,

by the troops and by the state peasantry,

in order to achieve
what Peter wanted to achieve.

HARTLEY: St. Petersburg was built
at an enormous human cost.

So much so that it's almost obscene
to discuss whether it was worth it or not.

We don't know how many people died,

it could have been up to 100,000.

What we do know is that every year

40,000 peasants were conscripted
to work on St. Petersburg.

Now some of them may not have arrived,
they may have fled before they got there,

they may have fled into the forest
once they were in St. Petersburg.

But the population of the city itself
rose very slowly,

so I think we have to assume
that many of those peasants died.

LUCY: Peter's ruthlessness
didn't stop at the palace gates.

When he got bored
of his first wife Evdokia,

he packed her off
to the convent in Moscow.

With her love of hard drinking
and dwarf entertainers,

Evdokia's replacement Catherine,
was far more to Peter's taste.

Peter's eldest son
and his putative successor, Aleksey,

presented a more intractable problem.

Now in his 20s,

Aleksey seemed incapable of,
and uninterested in,

following in his father's footsteps.

Peter was willing to give
Aleksey one last chance.

He wrote him a letter full of admonitions,
telling Aleksey to get his act together.

And if Aleksey failed,
well then, Peter had a threat to make.

"I will cut you off
like a gangrenous member.

"For if I have not spared myself
in the service of our country,

"why should I spare you?"

In 1716, poor old Aleksey fled Russia
for Vienna.

Peter was furious,
he suspected a conspiracy.

He knew that elements of the nobility
resented the way

he'd unilaterally declared war on Sweden,
and moved the court to St. Petersburg.

Might they now be rallying around his son?

Peter enticed Aleksey back
to St. Petersburg.

He promised him clemency.

But then, he had him locked up.

Here at the fortress,
Aleksey was interrogated under torture.

He was whipped, and when his back
was all covered in blood,

he admitted, as anybody would do,

that he had conspired
and plotted against his father.

A court sentenced poor Aleksey
to execution,

but before this could happen
he was discovered mysteriously dead.

Some people think that
this was the effects of the torture,

others that he'd been poisoned

in order to spare Peter the Great
the humiliation

of having to publicly execute his own son.

Every single day at noon,

a gun fires
from the Peter and Paul Fortress.

This tradition stretches right back
to the early days of St. Petersburg,

when cannon shots served
as a warning of floods,

or marked important state occasions.

In 1725, Peter the Great
heard the sound for the last time.

(COUNTING DOWN IN RUSSIAN)

- (CANNON FIRES)
- LUCY: Ooh!

LUCY: He took ill
and died on February the 8th.

An autopsy reveals that
Peter had gangrene of the bladder.

He was just 52.

Russia had lost more than a tsar.

Just three years earlier,
on the back of his Baltic conquests,

Peter had been proclaimed Emperor.

The Russian Empire would now last
as long as the Romanov dynasty itself.

In little more than a century
of Romanov rule,

Russia had undergone
an extraordinary transformation.

Mikhail I had inherited
a war-torn backwater,

but he and his son Alexis
used their absolute power

to bring stability and continuity.

But Russia would have remained
obscure and backward

if Peter the Great hadn't developed
a boundless vision,

and then let nothing stand in his way.

He gave his country a navy,

a new capital, an empire

and above all, a future.

Peter reinvented Russia,

and that's why they call him
Peter the Great.

Half a century after Peter's death,

this statue was erected to him
in St. Petersburg.

It was designed by a French sculptor,

but the face was done by
his 18-year-old female assistant,

who modeled it on
Peter's own real-life death mask.

The enormous granite boulder
on which the bronze horseman sits,

is said to be the largest stone ever moved
by human hands.

It's hard not to think of all
the broken backs and crushed limbs

involved in transporting it.

But then, perhaps that's appropriate.

For all of Peter the Great's
tremendous achievements,

I think it's hard to warm to him.

He may have dragged Russia kicking
and screaming into the modern world,

but he did so with ruthlessness,
and sometimes with downright cruelty.

It's hard to think of another sovereign
who worked so hard for his people,

yet who treated them
with so little compassion.

Nevertheless,
Peter changed Russia forever,

and he set the benchmark

against which all future Romanov rulers
had to be measured.

But one of them would
unashamedly claim Peter's mantle.

She was the woman
who erected this monument to him.

(ALL CHEERING)

Catherine II,
also known as Catherine the Great.

But if you look at the names
on the base of the monument,

you might think that Catherine's is
in a slightly bigger font than Peter's.

Does this mean that she was even greater?