Czar Peter the Great of Russia casts a long shadow over history. A giant of a man, with appetites for learning and adventure to match, he did more to modernize his country than pretty much any other ...

that Peter the Great fulfilled the primary purpose of the city he founded in 1703: building the fleet that made Russia a fearsome maritime power. He crowned his shipyard with a soaring spire ...

The growth of the Russian state: Varangian origins, the Kievan state, conversion to Christianity, Mongol domination, the rise of Muscovy, Europeanization and expansion under Peter the Great and ...

They showed Peter the Great, the tsar who expanded ... Now the same pattern is unfolding in Putin’s Russia. In his eyes, liberalisation at home — as under Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin ...

Catherine's major influences on her adopted country were in expanding Russia's borders and continuing the process of Westernisation begun by Peter the Great. During her reign she extended the ...