7 The 100 Most Influential World Leaders of All Time
7
it conform to European usage with regard to the year. Peter simplified the alphabet, unified the currency, and introduced universal taxation. He encouraged the rise of private industry and the expansion of trade. Peter was the first ruler of Russia to sponsor education on secular lines and to bring an element of state control into that field. Various secular schools were opened and the children of soldiers, officials, and churchmen were admitted to them. The translation of books from western European languages was actively promoted. Peter built Russia’s first modern hospitals and medical schools. He also began construction of the city of St. Petersburg in 1703 and established it as the new capital of Russia in 1712. Peter had a son, the tsarevich Alexis, by his discarded wife Eudoxia. Although Alexis was his natural heir, the two were not close, and Alexis did not agree with Peter’s policies. Peter, meanwhile, had formed a lasting liaison with a peasant woman, the future empress Catherine I, who bore him other children and whom he married in 1712. In 1718 Alexis was tried on charges of high treason and condemned to death. He died in prison before the formal execution of the sentence. In the autumn of 1724, seeing some soldiers in danger of drowning in the Gulf of Finland, Peter characteristically plunged himself into the icy water to help them. Catching a chill, he became seriously ill in the winter but even so continued to work. He died early in the following year, leaving an empire that stretched from Arkhangelsk (Archangel) on the White Sea to Mazanderan on the Caspian and from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean. Although he had in 1722 issued a decree reserving to himself the right to nominate his successor, he did not in fact nominate anyone. His widow Catherine, whom he had crowned as empress in 1724, succeeded him to the temporary exclusion of his grandson, the future Peter II. 104