The Petrine Divide and the Periodization of Early Modern Russian History

Abstract

Among the chief problems in determining the boundaries of the early modern period in Russian history is die reign and reforms of Peter I the Great. In this article, Russell E. Martin situates Peter's reign within the context of dynastic marriage politics from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. He argues that the centuries from roughly 1500 to 1800 constitute a single, coherent period. Court politics were dominated by concerns of kinship and marriage: in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, by the search for a domesdc bride for the Russian rulers through bride shows; then, in the eighteenth century, by the gradual transformation of court politics away from domestic brides and toward a more traditional use of dynastic marriage as a tool in foreign policy. The early modern period ends, Martin argues, only with the promulgation of a new law of succession by Paul I (as modified by Alexander I). The so-called Petrine divide, then, is elided in a periodization of Russian history that very much mirrors the boundaries that are conventional in the west.