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The Testament of Peter the Great

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2018

Dimitry V. Lehovich
Dimitry V. Lehovich*
Affiliation:
Imperial Alexander Lyceum, Russia
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Extract

For more than 135 years the “Will” of Peter the Great has flitted across the stage of history at moments of tension between Russia and her Western neighbors. Recently it turned up at a business luncheon in New York in a speech delivered before a large audience; it is being discussed by “displaced persons” in their camps throughout Central Europe; and it was circulated among the armed forces of a European nation. Anonymous and parentless as a ghost, it appears, gains credence, and then vanishes again into its forgotten grave.

Here is the text as it appears today:

1. The Russian nation must be constantly on a war footing to keep the soldiers warlike and in good condition. No rest must be allowed, except for the purpose of relieving the state finances, recruiting the Army, or biding the Favorable moment for attack. By this means peace is made subservient to war, and war to peace, in the interest of aggrandizement and increasing prosperity of Russia.

Type
Articles
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , April 1948 , pp. 111 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1948

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References

1 Kelly, Walter K., The History of Russia (London, 1854), p. 374.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., p. 373.

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10 Dated St. Petersburg, April 13, 1778; Sbornik imperatorskago russkago istoričeskago obščestva (St. Petersburg, 1878), XXIII, 86.

11 Gaillardet, , op. cit., pp. 110-11.Google Scholar

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