Петър I в съчиненията на германските автори (края на XVII – началото на XVIII век)
Peter I in the writings of the German authors (late 17th – early 18th century)

Summary/Abstract: In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries Russia gradually changed, started adopting new ideas and European values, seeking a new position in international relations, and as a result became one of the major European countries. As the engine of the original process, Peter I has been the subject of research for three centuries. Early interest in him and his reforms was rather a political study, which included economic goals. There was, of course, curiosity brought about by the unusual change in Russia. Diplomatic reports are intertwined with perceptions of Europeans who met the Russian Tsar during his travelling abroad. The image that German-speaking contemporaries describe is inseparable from the reality of Peter’s Russia, its lifestyle, religion, holidays, military victories and defeats. The ruler and the state in their writings are a unified whole, difficult to fit into their conceptual system, which causes the differences with the “European” to be represented as an expression of “barbarism”. Their positive attitude towards the desire for change is inevitably accompanied by the doubt about its possible realization. As a result of this bias there are differences in the characteristics of the Russian Tsar, although everyone recognizes his uniqueness and represents him as a transformer and “creator of the nation”.

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