How was the personality of Tsar Peter the Great formed? The childhood of Peter the Great and his environment

In the history of the Russian state, there were many different rulers: great diplomats, wonderful strategists and brilliant commanders. But only one of them combined all these qualities - Peter the Great. He was called a brilliant reformer, a madman, a bully and the Antichrist. How was the personality of Tsar Peter formed, what factors influenced it?

Unusual king

Pyotr Alekseevich Romanov was very different from his predecessors. Undoubtedly, there was a deep hereditary connection between them. But all the rulers of Russia were masters who tremblingly guarded the wealth of the country for themselves and used other people's hands for work. And the son of Alexei Mikhailovich was a tsar-worker in the truest sense of the word. The fourteen professions that Tsar Peter the Great owned are not a beautiful fairy tale, but the truth.

The character of the first Russian emperor

Peter the Great had a complex and contradictory character. Liveliness, indefatigable curiosity and briskness of thought he inherited from his mother's side. As a child, he was a smart and handsome boy, very different from his co-ruler, brother Ivan.

The main traits of Peter's character were irascibility, impulsiveness, impressionability and distrust. When he could not explain something intelligibly, he easily fell into a rage. In this state, he often grabbed his cane. By the way, the king departed quickly and after a few minutes he could forgive the offender. But its simplicity was deceiving. Peter the Great asked to address him without a title, but in case of obvious disobedience, the sentence was quick and cruel.

How was the personality of Tsar Peter the Great formed? What made him so different from the rest of the rulers of Russia? The answer must be sought in the earliest years of the little prince.

Childhood of Peter the Great

It is not known where the future first Russian emperor was born. They name several alleged places, but the researchers do not have exact data.

Trying to understand how the personality of Tsar Peter the Great was formed, one must first turn to his parents - those who had a direct influence on him from birth.

At the age of 4, he lost his father, who loved him very much. Aleksey Mikhailovich, giving his son toy soldiers and pistols, engendered in the child the first interest in weapons and military affairs. According to contemporaries of the king, in childhood he was not interested in any other toys and amusements, except for military ones.

The father, wanting to give his young son proper military training, assigned Colonel Menesius to him as a military mentor. And so it turned out that Peter the Great began to study military affairs earlier than reading and writing. The young heir was then 4 years old. Acquaintance with literacy began for him at the age of five.

Learning from church books for a lively and restless child was a real torment, so Nikita Zotov, the teacher of the young king, taught him from the then popular “amusing” picture books. Peter's mentor paid much attention to the study of the military history of Russia, talking about Prince Vladimir and

Until the age of ten, the prince lived calmly and carefree with his mother near Moscow, in the village of Preobrazhensky. Here, an earthen fortification with cannons was built for him, where he, with his “amusing” army, recruited from his peers, could engage in military affairs, playing to capture the fortress.

The childhood of Peter the Great was not cloudless. witnessed by the young Peter, could not but leave an imprint on the psyche of the child, causing a nervous breakdown of the future emperor. Because of this, convulsions distorted the face of the king in moments of great excitement.

After his sister Sophia came to power, he was again sent to Preobrazhenskoye. Zotov was removed from him, and the young heir was left to himself. Another idle way of life would have spoiled, but the whole and active nature of Peter did not let him kill his curiosity and desire to learn new things. He himself later said that he really lacked the knowledge that he did not receive in childhood.

Tsar Peter Alekseevich studied until his death. At the age of 14, he learned about the astrolabe and instructed him to bring it to him from France. He then found a Dutchman who could give a general outline of how to handle the device. This was enough for a talented young man to figure it out on his own. It has always been so. Seeing or learning about something unknown to him, the king immediately set on fire with the idea of ​​​​learning a new business and did not calm down until he became an expert on it. So, seeing an abandoned boat, he learned to sail on it and even laid his own shipyard.

Environment

How was the personality of Tsar Peter Alekseevich formed? This question is extremely interesting, given the fact how much he differed from his predecessors. The environment of the young heir played a huge role in the education of those qualities that were inherent in Peter the Great. He was lucky - at first his father, and after his death, his elder brother Fedor paid much attention to the upbringing and education of the heir to the throne. The teachers, Menesius and later assigned to Peter, the clerk Nikita Moiseevich Zotov, engendered in him a craving for knowledge and maintained an interest in everything new.

The associates and people closest to the tsar were Franz Yakovlevich Lefort, Alexander Danilovich Menshikov, Pavel Yaguzhinsky, Yakov Bruce.

The first Russian emperor - a brilliant reformer or a tyrant?

It is difficult to judge the personality of Peter the Great. Opposite traits of character are closely intertwined in him. Hot temper, cruelty, vindictiveness coexisted with diligence, curiosity, an irrepressible thirst for life, and a cheerful disposition. The uniqueness of the personality of Peter Alekseevich lay in the fact that he had a strong craving for knowledge and a huge capacity for work, with the help of which he sought to transform Russia, which was backward in all respects, and make it a great power.