Peter III of Russia
Peter III (
February 21,
1728 -
July 17,
1762) (
Russian: Пётр III Федорович or
Pyotr III Fyodorovitch) was
Emperor of
Russia for six months in 1762. According to most historians, he was mentally immature and very pro-
Prussian, which made him an unpopular leader. He was supposedly
assassinated as a result of a
conspiracy led by his wife, who succeeded him to the throne as
Catherine II.
Peter was born in
Kiel. His parents were
Karl Friedrich, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp (nephew of
Charles XII of Sweden) and
Anna Petrovna, a daughter of Emperor
Peter the Great of Russia and his second wife,
Catherine I of Russia. In 1739, Peter's father died, and he became Duke of Holstein-Gottorp as Karl Peter Ulrich. He was thus the heir both to the thrones of
Russia and of
Sweden.
Two years later, Anna's sister
Elizabeth became Empress of Russia, and brought Peter from Germany to Russia and proclaimed him her heir. She arranged for Peter to marry his second cousin, Princess Sophia Augusta Frederica of Anhalt-Zerbst, who formally converted to
Russian Orthodoxy and took the name Ekaterina Alexeievna, or Catherine. The marriage was not a happy one, and during the sixteen years of their residence in
Oranienbaum Catherine took numerous lovers, as did her husband.
The classical view of Peter's character is contained in the
1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica:
"Nature had made him mean, the smallpox had made him hideous, and his degraded habits made him loathsome. And Peter had all the sentiments of the worst kind of small German prince of the time. He had the conviction that his princeship entitled him to disregard decency and the feelings of others. He planned brutal practical jokes, in which blows had always a share. His most manly taste did not rise above the kind of military interest which has been defined as corporals mania, the passion for uniforms, pipeclay, buttons, the tricks of parade and the froth of discipline. He detested the Russians, and surrounded himself with Holsteiners".
After Peter gained the throne in 1762, he incurred many nobles's displeasure by withdrawing from the
Seven Years' War and making peace with Prussia, in which Russia did not gain anything, in spite of Russia's occupation of
Berlin and virtual victory in the war. He formed an alliance with Prussia and planned an unpopular war against
Denmark in order to restore Schleswig to his Duchy of Holstein-Gottorp. It is also claimed that he wanted to force the
Russian Orthodox Church to adopt
Lutheran practices.
During Peter's short reign, Russia saw several minor but important economic reforms that encouraged development of Western-European style
capitalism and
mercantilism and to move away from Russia's traditional social practices of subjugating peasants and townspeople and reserving leading positions for nobility. He issued an edict abolishing the practice allowing industrialists to purchase
serfs as workers for their enterprises. He also forbid the importation of sugar into Russia to stimulate domestic manufacturing.
Peter's major social reform was the introduction of the Liberty for Nobility, abrogating
Peter the Great's policy of forcing all male members of
Russian nobility to serve in the military or
civil service without regard for individual preference for a particular occupation.
Catherine, along with her lover
Grigori Orlov, planned to overthrow Peter, as she believed he would divorce her. The
Leib Guard, on which Peter planned to impose harsher discipline, revolted and Peter was arrested and forced to sign his own abdication; Catherine became Empress with the support of most of the nobility. Shortly thereafter, Peter was killed while in custody at
Ropsha. While Catherine did not punish the responsible guards, doubts remain as to whether she ordered the murder or not.
In December 1796, Peter's son the Emperor
Paul, who disliked his mother, arranged for his remains to be exhumed and then reburied with full honors in the
Peter and Paul Cathedral, where other tsars were buried.
There have been many attempts to revise the traditional characterisation of Peter and his policies, which were obviously influenced by his wife's memoirs and other biased accounts. It was during his reign that some of Catherine's reforms were prepared and the nobles were relieved from the burdensome obligation of serving in the army. Most recently, a Harvard historian
Carol S. Leonard published a revisionist history of Peter III with her book
Reform and Regicide: The Reign of Peter III of Russia.
