The Image of Peter I in the Russian Mind

Abstract

The article shows that the personality of Peter I occupies an important place in the structure of public thought, but often receives conflicting assessments. The task of the study was to study the image of the emperor in the minds of our contemporaries. The search was implemented by referring to the texts of messages about Peter I in social networks. In the course of the study, frequency, morphological and emotional analysis of texts was carried out. Along with the evaluation of the emotional, psychological and personal characteristics of the emperor, the authors carried out a meaningful analysis of the psychological characteristics of the attitude of users to the historical situation as a whole, which allows not only to describe the personal characteristics of the emperor, but also to demonstrate their place in the overall structure of assessments of his activities. The obtained results showed a respectful attitude of users to the achievements of the emperor with a pronounced emotional disagreement with the palette of some of his worldview beliefs. As private conclusions, it is shown that the interest of contemporaries (users of social networks) in the image of Peter I is more concentrated on progressive changes at the state level. The psychological image of Peter I is represented by detailed assessments. The main psychological features of the emperor are summarized in the minds of users into two enlarged subgroups — individual psychological and organizational and managerial. An analysis of the emotional background of the messages showed that when assessing the life of the emperor, a neutral background prevails, which may be due to the historical distance between eras. As prospects, the authors indicate methodological and applied areas of research that require additional research attention.