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Article: The Father Of Modern Russia
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- August 30, 1987
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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PETER THE GREAT By Henri Troyat
Translated from the French by Joan Pinkham
Dutton. 392 pp. $22.95
ON A SHORE beaten by desolate waves HE stood . . ." Pushkin had
no need to explain who, in the opening lines of "The Bronze
Horseman," HE was. For the educated 19th-century Russian, the
effects of HIS reign were everywhere. The historian, M.P. Pogodin,
wrote in 1841:
"We wake up. What day is it?-Peter the Great ordered us to count
the months from January, the years from the birth of Christ.
"It is time to dress-our clothes derive from fashions established
by Peter the Great, made in factories which he devised, from wool
shorn from the sheep which he introduced into Russia.
"Our newspapers ...