For nearly three centuries Peter the Great’s reign (1682-1725) has consistently been seen as one of the main focal points of Russian and European history. His reforms left a lasting impact on Russian development and are often regarded as a  watershed dividing Russian history into two main parts: pre-Petrine and post-Petrine. Indeed, Peter’s reforms inaugurated Russia’s modern history.

It is difficult to find another period in Russian history as controversial as Peter’s reign. It is exceptional as a period of transformation which combined within it and forcefully accentuated all the conflicting tendencies that would continue to mark Russian development for many years to come: the seemingly incompatible extremes of a Russia balanced between Europe and Asia, between Muscovite traditional culture and Western civilization, between Eastern despotism and European Enlightenment. A country that could combine European Great Power status with an economy based on serfdom.

In Russia, the political and ideological controversy over Peter’s legacy started almost immediately with his death. The history of Russian political and social thought can be seen as the history of the development of contrasting views of the Petrine Reforms. This has been particularly true since the time of the ‘Great Debate’ between ‘Westernizers’ and ‘Slavophiles’ in 1840s, which revolved around the issue of the direction which Russia had followed as a result of Peter’s transformation. The debate helped crystallize the attitudes of various political currents - conservative, liberal, reactionary, revolutionary, reformist - towards the legacy of Peter the Great. Even more important, the prescriptions and blueprints of Russia’s future paths of development were made by these diverse political forces on the basis of their highly controversial and ideologically colored assessments of Peter’s reign. Since then, the Petrine Reforms have remained as a peculiar touchstone for every Russian ideological and political movement, as the ‘acid test’ of their intentions. 

In the present age of Russia’s latest attempt at modernization, Peter has once again re-emerged as the key figure of Russian history, whose Reform continues to dominate Russia’s past and, in a vital sense, her future as well. Peter’s transformation of Russia contains within it all the essential elements of the age-old Russian dilemma which have confronted all Russian reformers since Peter: the problems of continuity and change, of tradition and innovation, of searching for its own distinct destiny or joining the mainstream of Western civilization.