The subject of this article is the political and social reforms of Peter the Great, considered in the context of the world-historical process. The subject of the study is the political and social reforms carried out by Peter the Great, which, on the one hand, accelerated, and on the other hand, hampered the modernization of Russia, its formation as a European and world power. The purpose of the study is to identify and determine the links between Peter the Great's political and social transformations and the logic of the world-historical process. The theoretical and methodological basis of scientific and philosophical research are the concepts of socio-economic formations of K. Marx, the stages of economic growth of W. W. Rostow, the post-industrial society of D. Bell and the «third wave» of E. Toffler. The absolutist state built during Peter the Great's transformations and the establishment of an unlimited monarchy corresponded to the development of the last stage of feudalism in Russia, which flourished in a number of Western European countries in the XVII-XVIII centuries. The streamlining of the structure of public administration is quite consistent with the rationalization of the bureaucratic apparatus in the Western European countries of that time. The formation of the nobility as a class, the growth of the merchant class, the division of urban residents into regular and irregular, the emergence of industrialists and «possessional peasants», the strengthening of serfdom, the emergence of a social stratum consisting of knowledge workers, although contradictory, but generally fit into the hierarchical structure of European late feudal society and the beginning of Modern times. As a result, the modernization carried out by Peter the Great brought Russia into the circle of leading European powers, brought it from the sidelines onto the road of the world historical process. It was thanks to the political and social experience, borrowed in many respects from the leading European powers, that Russia at that time took a worthy place on the world stage. Peter's transformations and their results remain relevant to this day and can be in demand again