It is not easy to give you a list of his reforms in chronological
order. The Tsar worked with furious haste. He followed
no system. He issued his decrees with such rapidity that it is
difficult to keep count. Peter seemed to feel that everything
that had ever happened before was entirely wrong. The whole
of Russia therefore must be changed within the shortest possible
time. When he died he left behind a well-trained army of
200,000 men and a navy of fifty ships. The old system of government
had been abolished over night. The Duma, or convention
of Nobles, had been dismissed and in its stead, the Tsar
had surrounded himself with an advisory board of state officials,
called the Senate.
Russia was divided into eight large ``governments'' or provinces.
Roads were constructed. Towns were built. Industries
were created wherever it pleased the Tsar, without any regard
for the presence of raw material. Canals were dug and mines
were opened in the mountains of the east. In this land of illiterates,
schools were founded and establishments of higher learning,
together with Universities and hospitals and professional
schools. Dutch naval engineers and tradesmen and artisans
from all over the world were encouraged to move to Russia.
Printing shops were established, but all books must be first read
by the imperial censors. The duties of each class of society
were carefully written down in a new law and the entire system
of civil and criminal laws was gathered into a series of printed
volumes.
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