He reigned jointly with his half-brother Ivan V until From this year, Peter was an absolute monarch , an autocrat who remained the ultimate authority and organized a well-ordered police state.
Much of Peter's reign was consumed by lengthy wars against the Ottoman and Swedish empires. His Azov campaigns were followed by the foundation of the Russian Navy ; after his victory in the Great Northern War despite initial difficulties, Russia annexed a significant portion of the eastern Baltic coastline and was officially renamed from a tsardom to an empire.
Peter led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political systems with ones that were modern, scientific, Westernized , and based on radical Enlightenment. In December , he introduced the Julian calendar , [ 6 ] which replaced the Byzantine calendar that was long used in Russia, [ 7 ] but the Russian Orthodox Church was particularly resistant to this change.
On the shores of the Neva River, he founded Saint Petersburg , a city famously dubbed by Francesco Algarotti as the "window to the West". Petersburg, a status it retained until Peter had a great interest in plants, animals and minerals, in malformed creatures or exceptions to the law of nature for his cabinet of curiosities. He encouraged research of deformities, all along trying to debunk the superstitious fear of monsters. Peter is primarily credited with the modernization of the country, quickly transforming it into a major European power.
His administrative reforms , creating a Governing Senate in , the Collegium in and the Table of Ranks in had a lasting impact on Russia, and many institutions of the Russian government trace their origins to his reign. Peter grew up at Izmaylovo Estate and was educated at the Amusement Palace from an early age by several tutors commissioned by his father, most notably Nikita Zotov , Patrick Gordon , and Paul Menesius. When his father died in , he left the sovereignty to Peter's elder half-brother, the crippled Feodor III.
