The Rest Is History - 562. Peter the Great: The Rise of Russia (Part 1)

Episode Date: May 4, 2025

Why was the early life of Peter the Great - Tsar and autocrat of all the Russias, who endures to this day as an iconic symbol of Russian might - drenched in blood and violence? What amalgamation of court politics and family feuding saw him catapulted to the role of Tsar against all the odds? What did he do during the course of his colourful life and tumultuous reign to earn the moniker ‘the Great’? And, why is he considered by many, the father of Russia?  Join Dominic and Tom as they launch into the early life of one of history’s most bombastic rulers - Peter the Great; the conditions in 17th century Russia, the violent palace coup that nearly destroyed him as a boy, and his road to the Great Northern War that would later make his name, and change the fate of Europe.  The Rest Is History Club: Become a member for exclusive bonus content, early access to full series and live show tickets, ad-free listening, our exclusive newsletter, discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, and our members’ chatroom on Discord. Just head to therestishistory.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestishistory. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude  Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is the restishistory.com. Let the soldiers know that now is the hour when in their hands rests the fate of the entire motherland. Either Russia will fall or she will be reborn. My soldiers, you are not armed and drawn up to fight for Peter. You fight for the nation entrusted to Peter by birth, for your kin, for the people of all Russia, the land that has protected you, the land that now awaits the decision of fortune. Remember as you fight that God and truth are on our side. And remember how many times the Lord of Battles

has shown us his favour. And know this of me, of Peter, that on my life I set no value, as long as Russia may live in piety, in prosperity, and in glory. There we have, in ringing masculine tones, the proclamation of Peter the Great, Tsar and autocrat of all the Russia's to his troops on the 26th of June 1709, the eve of the famous and seismically influential Battle of Poltava, the showdown that decided the Great Northern War. Dominic, quite possibly your favorite war I think. I love the Great Northern War. It genuinely is a great war. It is a great war isn't it? Yeah. It's very northern and it's a war. Yeah. It ticks every box. It ticks every box going. And the reason it's a great war is that it marks the kind of definitive emergence

of Russia as the superpower that it will be from that point on. Yeah. Uh, and unsurprisingly that speech, which I think, um, my deep masculine tone conveyed a sense of Peter as a titanic figure, not just historically, but physically. I mean, I hope people got that sense. But it's a speech that is obviously quite popular with the current leadership in Russia, isn't it? Because it's seen as a kind of great call to arms to people to die for Russia. Exactly. Exactly. And they actually read this speech or they often recite it to recruits in the Russian army

So even today it kind of has a political resonance I guess and Vladimir Putin has compared himself with Peter the Great He has compared the war in Ukraine with the Great Northern War and the Great Northern War fought against Sweden Yeah, Swedes currently are kind of issuing all kinds of slightly nervous calls to arms, aren't they? Yes kinds of slightly nervous calls to arms, aren't they? Yes. Not surprising. Although the interesting thing, of course, the Great Northern War, lots of people won't know this, is that the Swedes were the overdogs and Russia the underdogs in the Great Northern

War, which seems completely bonkers. Well, because this is a story not just about Peter the Great, but about his great rival Charles the 12th, one of the most, I mean, intriguing military figures of his age. But it's also about so much more, isn't it? Because the story of Peter the Great, I mean, it's mad in so many ways. It's one of those historical stories. We don't get them that often, but it genuinely is one of those historical stories that a fantasy novelist would hesitate to invent it. So to give people a sense of the suite before we get into the details, Peter became Tsar of Russia when he was 10.

His early life was scarred by the most horrific violence. There was a struggle for power with his own sister. Then he got power. Then he did a mad thing. He went into disguise on a gap year to Western Europe, where he worked in the shipyards in Amsterdam and hung around with bishops and stuff in London and in Oxford. And of course, famously had wheelbarrow races in Deptford, which is one of our favourite topics on the rest of history. I think we've covered it about six times already. We're

going to do it again in the series. We're never in as much detail as we're going to do it this time. And then he comes back, he cuts everybody's beards off. He fights this colossal war against the Swedes. He found St. Petersburg. He fights the Ottoman Empire. He tortures his own son to death. And after all this, he dies peacefully in his bed, but he becomes the embodiment of Russia's aspiration to join the top table of the world's powers and to rank alongside the nations of Western Europe. So Peter has become this enduring symbol of the kind of the struggle for Russia's soul caught between East and West, Europe and Asia.

But as you said, it's not just about Russia. So it's about Poland, it's about Sweden, it's about the Ottoman Empire. It's sort of- And it's about Western Europe as well, isn't it? As it's rising to kind of global power and wealth. Yeah. It's like a late 17th, early 18th century version of Risk with a strong element of Game of Thrones and a strong element of succession all kind of mixed together.

Well, I think there's a much more obvious television drama that is drawing on the life of Peter the Great. And that is a drama called The Great, which was actually about Catherine the Great. And that is a drama called The Great, which was actually about Catherine the Great. And it features Peter's grandson, who historically was a bit of a cipher and gets bumped off very quickly. But I think that the producers of that series were massively influenced by the example of Peter the Great. And I think that Peter the Third in that series is Peter the Great. And there's a lot of cavorting with dwarfs, with he has kind of cohorts of pals

who are getting up to all kinds of unspeakable business. And he's always going, has our voice, Nicholas Holt. There's gonna be an awful lot of that in this series, it's fair to say. All right, well, let's get into the man himself. So Peter's born in Moscow at one o'clock in the morning on the 30th of May, 1672. And he is the son of the second Romanov czar, Alexis,

and his wife, Natalia Nareshkina. And Peter's defining physical characteristic is that he's incredibly tall and he was a very big baby. And we actually know exactly how big, because what they would do is they would kind of paint an exact reproduction of the baby Lifesize on a board with an image of st Peter on it so you can kind of measure this image and you know exactly how big the baby Peter the great was and

There's all kind of bells ringing in in Moscow. There's cannons firing to celebrate the arrival of the of the Tsar's son So Moscow is also a kind of character in this story. So Moscow is at this point, what it's a few centuries old, it was founded in the late 12th century. What had happened is that the Mongols had swept over what is now Russia and amid the chaos,

the principality of Muscovy or Moscow had risen and swallowed up its neighbors, a bit like kind of Rome, I suppose, in the Italian peninsula, had become the sort of defining power of the area, of the region. And so by now it's a city of about 200,000 people, mainly out of wood. Very, it's always burning down. It always burns kind of basically every five years and every European visitors say, basically it's a pretty terrible place. It's full of fires. It's full burning down. Just kind of basically every five years. And European visitors say basically it's a pretty terrible place.

It's full of fires, it's full of plague, it's very dangerous, the streets are full of kind of foot pads and beggars and whatnot. But there's a kind of exoticism to it, even then. So the culture of Moscow, of Muscovy, is this really interesting fusion of the legacy of Kievan Rus, the kind of the semi-state that Harold Hardrada visited a few weeks ago that had been established by the Vikings when they gone east. And it's that and it's the Mongols golden horde that has swept over it. But above all, orthodoxy.

So it sees itself as carrying the sort of precious gift of Christian orthodoxy, especially after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. So, it's come to call itself the Third Rome. So, we have basically inherited the flame from Constantinople that they had inherited from Rome, and we are keeping it alive. And Muscovy has expanded and expanded by 1547. Uh, the grand Prince Ivan the fourth, who we know as Ivan the terrible had crowned himself Caesar, not just of Muscovy, but of what he called all the rushes.

So now you have people talking about Russia. In other words, and Caesar is Russified to Tsar to Tsar. Exactly. So he did that in the late 16th century. Um, but by the late 17th century said by 1672 when Peter the Great is born Russia is now the largest country on earth. It has expanded at a colossal rate So at this point they've already gone all the way across the forests of Siberia Largely uninhabited all the way to the Pacific

They've gone down to the Caspian Sea and they're obviously very, you know, their borders go as far as basically Eastern Europe. So it's a huge country, by far the biggest on earth, but it is a kind of lumbering, weak giant. I think that's how most people perceive it because it's surrounded by enemies, all of which you would think are more, you know more deadly more powerful more impressive so there are three countries in particular play massive parts in the story so to the west of russia you have a country that is very dear to the hearts of members of the rest of the club and it's the polish lithuania and commonwealth very exciting to be cheering in the streets of our discord as you mentioned that yeah so Yeah. So the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which is this very strange state, all we need to say about it at this point is the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

has basically been kicking the Russians around for quite a long time. They'd actually occupied the Kremlin in Moscow in 1610. However, the Poles have passed their peak and are now in kind of a long-term decline, as we will see. Now, to the south, there is the Ottoman Empire. They are a massive superpower. So they control the Black Sea, they control the Balkans,

they through their vassals, the Tatars, they control Crimea and their influence goes well into Ukraine. Yeah, and they've, you know, they've been attacking Vienna. They have. So the Ottomans are a serious serious player and basically the Russians are, I've never challenged the Ottomans. They are kind of frightened of them. And then to the North, there is the great rival, which is Sweden. So the Swedish empire has only recently become a great power, but at this point in time, 1672, it controls Finland, Est, and Latvia, as well as parts of northern Germany.

And the Swedes are regarded as by far the most potent and formidable fighting force in Western Europe. So that's the legacy of Gustavus Adolphus, isn't it, who was the great sword of Protestantism in the Thirty Years' War. So Sweden is a Protestant power. The Ottoman Empire obviously is Muslim. Polish, Lithuanian, and it's all kinds of religions flourishing there, but essentially Catholic.

So Russia as the Orthodox power is surrounded not just by geopolitical rivals, but by religious rivals and presumably that intense because it's the only Orthodox power because Constantinople has been conquered, that must presumably intensify both its sense of being beleaguered by heretics, but also the sense of mission that it has as God's chosen vessel. Absolutely, it does. Absolutely. So orthodoxy is probably the defining, the single defining thing about Russian culture. So to give you a sense of what Russian society is like, it has four times as many people as, let's say, Sweden. But about the same number as Poland, right?

Right, exactly. And not nearly as many, say, as France. No, nowhere near as many as France. And very, very few of these people live in towns. There are very few Russian towns. The vast majority are illiterate peasants and sort of culturally, it feels very different from let's say Sweden or Poland, because frankly, to use a word that academics don't like to use now, it is very backward. So because the Orthodox Church has such a stranglehold, it has no universities, it has no schools, it has no playwrights, it has no scientists, it has no parliament, it has

no newspapers, it has no playwrights, it has no scientists, it has no parliament, it has no newspapers, it has no navy. Right. And the Navy, I mean, that's in large part because it has no ports, right? I mean, it has Archangel on the north, so the Arctic, but often that's frozen, that's frozen for six months, whatever. It doesn't have a port on on the Black Sea. No, and it doesn't have a port on the Baltic. No, because the Baltic, the Black Sea is an Ottoman Lake. And't have a port on the Baltic. No. Because the Black Sea is an Ottoman lake and the Baltic is essentially a Swedish lake at this point. That's right.

So a way to think of Russia is as quite effectively landlocked and isolated country. When people go to Russia, they say, you're European ambassadors and whatnot. They say it is like going a little bit backwards in time. Even though the way in which people talk about the Tsar is feels sort of he's a magnificent figure. He is the father of the Russian family. His noblemen prostrate themselves in front of the Tsar. They use this sort of language, I'm your humble slave, I'm but a lowly worm, all of this sort of thing.

If you talk to the Tsar, you have to use his full official title at all times, and you can never repeat what the Tsar has said to you. There is this sort of pervasive culture of conservatism and deference, I guess. And nowhere is that more pronounced, of course, than the Kremlin itself. So again, as with Moscow, I think we should give a sort of portrait to the Kremlin so people who are not familiar with it can get a sense of what it's like. It's basically a citadel. The word means a citadel.

It's a citadel within the city. It is cut off from the rest of the city by a moat and by huge walls. And at the centre of the Kremlin, where a lot of the dramas of Peter's life will play out, there is Cathedral Square and there are three cathedrals. If you've ever been, I have been, and it's an amazing, amazing place to visit. There's these medieval cathedrals and there's a palace called the Palace of Facets, which still stands with a grand staircase running down the outside, which is called the Red Staircase and there's going to be some very exciting action to come.

The Red Staircase will be reddened. It will indeed. So, let's talk about Peter's family. His father is called Alexis. His nickname is Tishaisi, which means the quietest. He's monkish and kind of pious and modest and whatnot. And Natalia, his wife, is his second wife. So it's this classic thing where the czar has had two wives and there's a little bit of tension between the two sides of the family. So the first

marriage was to a woman called Maria Milislavskaya and she had two surviving sons, lots of daughters and two surviving sons, and one is called Fedor and he's 11 years old and he is bright and a nice chap but he's very years old and he is bright, a bright and a nice chap, but he's very sickly. And the other one is called Ivan, who is five and who is, he's kind of half blind. He's got a very serious speech impediment. He's like Claudius only. Yeah, exactly. More so anyway, their mother, Maria Milislovskaya had died and Alexis had to

choose another bride and the rules are she has to be Orthodox. So it's basically has to be Russian. And they had this, they would always have a kind of bridal show of candidates. So these women would be from the noble families, the boyar families would be brought to the courts and they'd have to prove their virginity. And some of them might even be serfs, isn't that right? That's right. Yeah. It's the whole spread. But I might also write that actually this is all a bit of a sham. Yes. Because the sarr has already decided who he wants. He has been a real kind of coup de foudre. It hasn't. Well, so basically it's very Henry VIII. His chief minister, who's a guy called Artamon Matveyev, has pushed forward his ward, who is called Natalia Narishkina. Now she's supposedly very

beautiful, very dark, very sort of demure. And Alexis took a massive shine to her. She's Peter the Great's mother. So they get married. And obviously, you know, this is brilliant news for the chief minister who's Matt Vaev, who is a really interesting character. And it's that's his surname, isn't it? He's not called Matt Vaev. No, he's not called Matt Vaev. His name is Artamon Matt Vaev, exactly. He's interesting because he really anticipates Peter, because he is a meritocrat and a moderniser. He's the son of a diplomat. He collects books. He has his own laboratory and his own private theatre. He's really interested in kind of Western innovations. And what is more,

he is married to somebody from our own island. So his wife is called Mary Hamilton, and she is the daughter of a Scottish royalist who fled abroad after the execution of Charles I. Because although the Russians are quite xenophobic, the Tsar himself has a lot of sympathy for exiles from the civil wars in Britain, doesn't he? Because he's absolutely appalled that an anointed king has had his head chopped off. Exactly. And actually, so that story about the Chief Minister, Matveyev, being married to this woman, tells a wider story. So during the 17th century, merchants and diplomats

had been arriving in Russia in ever greater numbers and Alexis had established a segregated quarter outside Moscow, which comes to be known as the German suburb. Because they think all foreigners basically are Germans, is that right? Yes, exactly. And they say all these Germans, whether they be Dutch, Scottish, English or whatever, or indeed German, they have to go and live there. There's about 3000 people there and they they're allowed to keep up It's a bit I guess it's a bit like living in one of those compounds in the Middle East

Yeah, you know in Saudi or something exactly there they can put on plays they can smoke tobacco Which is disapproved of in Russia they can mix with women again Which is the mixing of the of the sexist is disapproved of in Russia And we know that their influence is spreading outside, that people are copying them. Because when Peter was three years old, Alexis had to give a rollicking to his courtiers and said to them, you know, stop adopting German customs, stop cutting your hair and wearing hats of foreign design. So the Russians take all this stuff, which seems so comical, they take it incredibly seriously. If you turned up smoking and wearing a foreign hat, you would be in enormous trouble with the Tsar.

But also with the Orthodox Church, because for complicated reasons that I'm not entirely sure of, they've essentially see that smoking and foreign hats as anathema to God. Yeah, that's right. Literally. Yes. Or into being clean sha God. Yeah, that's right. Literally. Yes. Or until you've been clean shaven. So you know, worse. Yeah. With that would be regarded as very poor behavior.

Now there's, there are hints that Peter's mother, Natalia also likes this fascination with Western habits that she's probably got this from Matveyev because she's been spending so much time in his house. So she clearly doesn't really like the atmosphere of the Kremlin, which is all bells, incense, beards, you know, sort of dark corridors. So when Peter's a little boy, he and his mother spend most of their time outside the city. And we only have a couple of kind of glimpses of him.

There's a story about him riding with some dwarfs on a coach. I mean, there are a lot of dwarfs in this story. But then the first of many bombshells in this story, his father catches a chill and dies at the age of 47 in 1676. So that's what was Peter. He's about three and a half, something like that. And he is succeeded by the older of Peter's two half-brothers, so this bloke Fedor, who's now 14, and he is so sickly that he had to be carried to his own coronation. So that's actually really bad news, you would think, for Natalia and for Peter, because the old family, the previous wife's family are now in the driving seat, the Milošlavskys,

and running through this story is a sort of rivalry between these two clans, the Mila Slavskys, who were the first wife's family and the Talia's family, who were the Nurezhkins. And, and Matt. So Matt Vaev, he, chief minister, he is stripped of all his property. He's arrested and he's sent to an obscure town in the Arctic circle. Oh God. So that's bad news for him.

So now Peter sort of disappears from sight inside the Kremlin. It's not that bad. Fedor is actually his godfather and is actually quite nice to him and make sure he's educated and all this sort of thing. No, no, no, no, no, no, not at all. I think the sort of, so some of these people you think, oh, they must be the most awful butchers and kind of callous, cruel. This is not the case at all. So Fedor is quite nice to Peter. And he's a little bit of a reformer Fedor.

But he dies young as well. So he rules for six years and then he dies. And now we have a big succession crisis. So 1682, Peter is 10 years old. He's this big, big boy, huge and bright, but he's only a child, of course. And he has one remaining half brother who is Ivan, who is 16 years old. He can't walk. He can't see.

He speaks only with difficulty. So he's also not a, he's not an outstanding candidate. And there are two camps. Basically. There's the Miloslavskis who want Ivan and there's the Naryshkins He's not an outstanding candidate. And there are two camps basically. There's the Miloslavskis who want Ivan and there's the Naryshkins who want Peter. And there's great arguments. There's actually arguments around Fedul's deathbed. And the Patriot goes out onto the red staircase and he says to the crowd, who do you want

to rule? Do you want Ivan Alexievich or do you want Peter Alexievich son of Alexis and the crowd shout for Peter oh we want Peter the patriot says brilliant he goes back inside he kneels before the 10 year old Peter and says will you be Azar with your mother Natalia as the regent yes brilliant get that bloke back from the Arctic Circle Matt yeah Matt Vaev get him back he can be chief minister again so it all looks great for Peter okay he's 10 but you know everything has gone Six circle Matt. Yeah, Matt, they have get him back. He can be chief minister again. So it all looks great for Peter. OK, he's 10, but, you know, everything has gone his way.

What could possibly go wrong, Dominic? There is a twist. There is an extraordinary twist. So I mentioned offhand that Peter's father's first wife, Maria Milislovskaya, had had a lot of daughters. Now, normally these daughters were just shoved into a place in the palace called the Terem, like the kind of harem, and never let out again, princesses.

But there's one of them who is clearly a really exceptional woman. She's called Sophia. She's almost 25. She's very clever. She's very brave. She had been educated alongside her brother Fedor, which is very unusual. And when Fedor was our she had gone to his council meetings. She talked to his ministers. I mean, this is really exceptional, isn't it? Because it is hard to overemphasize how chauvinist Russian political culture is. Extraordinary details about how when a woman is married, the father will hand over a whip to the man who's marrying.

Now you're in charge. It's your turn. Yeah, I know. It's terrible. So from Sevilla's point of view, the accession of Peter, her half-brother, that's terrible news. Like she's going to be shoved into this sort of corner of the palace and never come out again and she's a spirited. Yeah.

Who's attending the council. And so it kind of death. And so she basically says to the patriarch, what's at least have joint monarchs, Peter and my brother, Yvonne, because if you, if you don't, you know, that's the end of me kind of thing. So she makes a massive spectacle of herself. She goes to federal's funeral. She breaks down in tears, very conspicuously.

She says, um, federal was actually poisoned. My sisters and I are in danger for our lives. All of this kind of thing. So she's sort of reminding everybody that she is, um, that she's still there. But what's crucial is that she has very powerful allies. And these allies are effectively the Praetorian Guard of Moscow, who are the Streltsy. And the Streltsy are Russia's first ever professional kind

of standing army. They were founded by Ivan the Terrible a century earlier. There's 22 regiments of them. They're musketeers and pikemen. And they're stationed in Moscow. They're stationed in Moscow. They wear the most amazing outfits. They have these kind of long... They wear kaftans, don't they? Kaftans, yeah. And yellow boots and kind of fur hats and stuff. They look brilliant.

You see, fur hats? I would be menaced by a man in a fur hat. Would you? And yellow boots. Yellow boots, I mean, but a kaftan. Yeah. It's a bit. Yellow boots, I mean, but a caftan. Yeah, I know. It's a bit Narnia, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, they're in there. That's exactly what it is. It's actually San Francisco in 1967. Yeah. They basically become a hereditary cast. So you pass down your place in the Streltsy from father to son, but the Streltsy are always falling out among themselves. The officers treat their men like absolute dirt.

And what is more, the officers get the men to basically do things like dig their gardens for them and kind of do odd jobs and the men hate doing that. So while, by coincidence, while Fedor has been dying, there's been a mutiny among some of the Streltsy. They've put pikemen and musketeers, they accuse their officers of abusing them, stealing their money. And Sophia and her allies use this, they're like, brilliant, we can use this, we can use these mutineers.

And they go to the Streltsy, they clearly spread rumors among them. They say, listen, Fedor was poisoned by foreign doctors working for the Nerishkins. If Peter becomes Tsar, then foreigners will be given all the commands in the army and orthodoxy will be undermined. And actually, Natalia, Peter's mother, is planning a massive crackdown against you, against the Streltsy. So you should do something about this. So this clearly begins to seep into the sort of the Streltsy's imagination. And then the denouement comes on the morning of the 15th of May. So two of Sophia's mates, her sort of aristocratic mates, ride into the Streltsy quarter of Moscow and they say the Norishkins are taking over the Kremlin,

they have murdered Ivan, which is actually not true, and they're going to kill the whole royal family quickly to the Kremlin, to arms! And the Streltsy rush out of bed, they put on their armour, they get their weapons and they march into the centre of Moscow, their banners flying and drums beating and they're shouting, we're going to the Kremlin, we're going to the Kremlin, we're going to kill the traitors. They get to the Kremlin. The guards at the Kremlin let them in and they swarm into Cathedral Square, which is in front of this palace with the red staircase. And they're shouting, this is basically a mob of men waving pikes and shouting, give us the Nourishkins, give us Matveyev, death to the traitors, death to the foreigners, all this sort of thing. Inside,

you know, Natalia, Peter's mother, Peter, this guy, Matt Vaev, they're all there, oh gosh, what are we going to do? And Matt Vaev says to Natalia, look, you have to calm them down, you have to tell them this is all nonsense. Go out onto the red staircase, take the two boys, Ivan and Peter, show them to the stroller seat. So Dominic, this is quite like Marie Antoinette confronted by the women from Paris. It's exactly what it is. It's exactly what I was thinking that myself. Natalia shows tremendous courage. She takes the two boys, 16 year old Ivani can barely walk.

He's meant to be dead. He's meant to be dead, but he's not dead. She takes them out onto the staircase. There's priests and kind of the boyars, noblemen behind her. And below there's this massive mob of men in yellow boots, yeah, waving their pikes and shouting for her blood. And she says, here are the Tsar and the Tsarovich. There are no traitors.

You have been deceived. And some of the Streltsy don't believe her and they go up the stairs. They go right up to Ivan. They say, are you really Ivan Alexeyevich? And he says, yes, I am. I am kind of thing. And they're like, hmm. And then, hmm. And then eventually they go back down the stairs.

Matveyev steps forward. He's the chief minister and he says, look chaps, you've been misled. This is all a massive misunderstanding. Um, I will give you all a pardon. You should go home. And do you know what? It works. They, they seem to listen.

He says, brilliant. He goes back inside. But Dominic, do you know what a Roman works. They, they seem to listen. He says, brilliant. He goes back inside. But Dominic, do you know what a Roman emperor would have done in that situation? He would have given them a massive bung. Yeah, he would. He'd have given them a large amount of money. So that's where I think Matt went wrong.

Well, and also what goes wrong now is one of their commanders steps out onto the red staircase. So one of the nobles who's like normally in charge of them, who's a guy called Prince Michael Dolgoruky. And he says, well, you've been told now you've disgraced yourselves. You've let yourselves down. You're at Moscow down. You've let the good name of the Streltsy down. Go back home to your barracks.

And if you don't do as you're told, I will flog you. And this is very, very this is a foolish move from Prince Dolgoruky, because when the Streltsy hear this, they say, what? Oh, actually, we're not going to... No, forget it. The moot is back on. They charge up the stairs, they grab him, and they throw this bloke over the balustrade onto the pikes of the men below.

So he's impaled on the pikes. Well, that's him told. Yeah. Now, there's a wonderful book about Peter the Great by Robert K. Massey and I've had to restrain myself from just quoting enormous chunks, but it's one of my, he loves, he really goes for it in this passage. He says, the crowd roared its approval shouting, cut him to pieces. Within a few seconds, the quivering body was butchered, bespattering everyone around with

blood. That's my kind of praise. This is just the beginning. So the Streltsy now go absolutely, they go berserk. They charge up the stairs, they've drawn their weapons, they burst him. The first person they see is Matveyev, who was stunned to see them because he thought everything had passed off successfully. He sorted it out.

He's chatting to Natalia who's still holding the hands of the two boys. They grab Matveyev, they drag him outside, he's kicking and screaming, they throw him over the balustrade too, onto the waiting halberd points, and he is hacked to pieces too. So the square is covered with the blooded pieces of Prince Dolgoruky and this bloke the Chief Minister. And now the Streltsy are like, well, in for a penny, in for a pound. So now they really kind of turn it up to 11. And what about Natalia and Peter and Ivan? Well, she's there quivering with the two boys while the Streltsy are charging into the palace around them.

They're basically in a corner kind of sobbing terrified. And the weird thing is that they're almost ignored. The Streltsy are just like, let's go through the palace and kill everybody. So they round up they do what you would always do in this situation. I think you round up the dwarves. They round up the court dwarves and they say to the dwarves, if you don't tell us where the Nurishkin family are, all the members of the Nurishkin clan, we will kill you.

So the dwarves rather let that good name of dwarves down, I think, because they do betray a lot of the Nurishkins. I think you're being very harsh there on the dwarves. I mean, what would you do in that situation? I'd have thrown my lot in with the Streltsy hours before, I think it's fair to say. Yeah, I would. So the Streltsy are kind of rampaging through the palace.

They're thrusting pikes into the cupboards and stuff in case there's anyone hiding there. To quote Robert K. Massey again, those who were caught were dragged to the red staircase and thrown over the balustrade. Their bodies were dragged from the Kremlin through the Spassky gate into Red Square, where they were tossed onto a growing pyramid

of dismembered human parts. So this goes on all afternoon. They're just killing dozens of people. And at nightfall, at last, the Streltsy get tired. It's quite tiring work, I think, hacking people to pieces with a pike or something so they get tired and the violence begins to die down. But Tom, the whole crisis is far from over and we'll find out what happens next after the break.

Thrilling. So if you want more violence, more bits of people being chopped into pieces. Don't go away. I'm David McCloskey, former CIA analyst turned spy novelist. And I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist. And together we're the hosts of The Rest is Classified, where we bring you brilliant stories from the world of spies. This week, we're talking about one of the most significant

stories of the 21st century, Edward Snowden, and how he orchestrated the biggest leak of classified secrets in modern American and British history. Snowden revealed that the American government was mass collecting data on its own citizens and it was really the first time that Americans and so many others around the world understood the extent of the US government's mass surveillance. That's right, it's a story I covered at the time. And it really gets to wider questions about what privacy means, how technology has changed our lives, and what the government and companies can do with data we might have thought was private. And we'll take you through the whole story

from Snowden's early career in the CIA and the NSA to his life in exile in Russia. So to hear more search for The Rest is Classified wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to The Rest is History. Dominic is all kicking off in Moscow, in the Kremlin. We are May 1682, the Streltsy, these guys in yellow boots, caftans, furry hats, have stormed theremlin. And they're basically chopping people that they don't like into little pieces. And inside the, the palace of facets in the Kremlin, poor little Peter, only 10 years old with his mother, with his half brother, Ivan, they are huddled in a corner and they must be kind of worrying whether they might be joining the dismembered body parts out in the court.

Of course, because the Streltsy have kind of gone for a rest, but the next morning they come back for more. So Natalia and Peter and Ivan are still sort of in this corner kind of crying and whatever. They've had a sleepless night, terrified that they're going to be thrown into pike points as well. The Streltsy return, they say to Natalia, well, there are probably loads of your relatives still here and we're going to kill them too. And they have a particular hatred of her brother, who's also called Ivan, confusingly. And they basically say, we're not going to give up until we've found him, we've chopped him into pieces too. And so for the next two days, they're all trapped in the palace while the Streltsy are

just searching like drawers, cellars, behind the wardrobe, under the bed, looking for Natalia's brother. And eventually the Streltsy say, oh, this is ridiculous now. This is massively out of hand. Look, if you don't give up your brother, we will kill everybody. We will literally kill everybody in the palace, including the royal family. And Sophia, who's sort of been behind all this, but it's hanging around the sister who sang hanging around as well.

She goes up to Natalia in front of everybody and she says, your brother will not, will not escape the Streltsy. There is no way out to save our lives. You must give up your brother." And poor Natalia, she's in floods of tears. And she basically says to her servants, go and get him. And they dig him out from whatever kind of cupboard he's been hiding in. He'd hidden in the cupboard hadn't he? And they'd left the door open. So it looked like they'd already searched it.

That's it. Very clever. Yeah. So she takes him into the palace chapel. He's given communion for the last time. She gives him an icon of the Virgin to hold. And then she leads him outside. And maybe, you know, if this was a film, there'd be a lovely twist now where the Streltsy actually, they're moved by this scene and the sight of him with his icon.

But they're not. They drag him out into Red Square. They torture him. Yeah, because they break his wrists and ankles, don't they, so that they kind of hang it flopping. Yeah, it's a dreadful scene. They do this weird thing where they lift his body up on their spear points and kind of parade him around. And then they just cut him up and then they stamp on all the pieces, which just seems

unnecessary, I think. I think it's, I would call that, that's robust even by Russian standards, isn't it? Yeah. I think it's fair to say the Streltsy's methods are a little bit unsound. Would you agree with that Tom? I think I would. So anyway, they've completely won. They end up being appointed as the palace guard. The Kremlin's silver is all melted down to give the Streltsy ten rubles each. So there's the Caesar's policy. Yeah, but too late, but too late, right?

They're given a triumphal column in Red Square in which the names of all the people they've killed are inscribed as common criminals. So Peter is not actually deposed, but Sophia gets her way so that her brother, Ivan, is raised to joint Tsar and is going to be listed first and she will be the regent instead of Natalia. But Natalia is fine, isn't she? Yeah, she's not executed or anything like that. So there's a coronation two weeks later, joint coronation of Peter and Ivan, and this gives

you a sort of sense of Russia's culture at the time. So they are crowned with a thing called the Golden Cap of Monomakh, which is a sort of skull cap ornamented with gold and pearls and trimmed with fur. It's got a golden cross on the top. And the story, legend has it that this was presented to Vladimir II of Kiev by the emperor Constantine IX Monomachus. And this is obviously, I mean, this is actually nonsense. It probably wasn't, but the claim is that this is the incarnation of Moscow's role as the third Rome, that this is a kind of symbol

of its lineage, I guess. But interestingly, this is the last time that cap, which still exists, this is the last time that cap, which still exists, this is the last time that cap is ever used to crown a czar because for Peter, this whole business has been so traumatic and so defining. He's seen about 40 of his relatives slaughtered in the most horrendous circumstances. And he, even as he's being crowned, I think he's burning with this tremendous hatred of the Streltsy, but also of what they represent, which is precisely this, Russia's

medieval past, its heritage from Constantinople, what he sees as its kind of barbarism and superstition. So kind of icons with candle wax dripping down them and all of that. A golden icon kind of glimmering in the murk with smoke from candles in front of it and men with gigantic beards chanting. This which a lot of people find very attractive about Russian culture and is part of the sort of slightly orientalist fantasy of Russia, Peter despises this. He says actually reality.

Well I think fair enough to be honest. Yeah, because just off camera are a load of blokes with pikes chopping my relatives into pieces. Jumping up on their kind of body parts. Exactly. So I think this is the world that he is determined to destroy. And this becomes a defining feature in his life because he's had this, you know, this horrendously upsetting experience when he was just 10 years old anyway so he he's slightly out of the picture because Sophia is now the the mistress I think you could say of Of Russia now, unfortunately, we we have only really one

description of her and it came from the French envoy and he wrote an unbelievably of her and it came from the French envoy and he wrote an unbelievably, I don't think you could get away with this now. It's not Galan. It's not at all. He really lets France's traditions of chivalry down. So Theo, close your ears. He wrote, her mind and her great ability bear no relation to the deformity of her person as she is immensely fat with a head as large as a bushel, hairs

on her face and tumours on her legs. But he then said, in the same degree that her stature is broad, short and coarse, her mind is shrewd, subtle, unprejudiced and full of policy. So she is an impressive person. Peter himself later says that she's physically very pre-possessing. I mean, this is kind of years on. And also, I mean, maybe the very fact that is the only description of her implies that actually, she can't have been that repulsive, or others would have commented on it.

I like the fact that you're defending Sophia's... Well, I quite like her. Yeah, I do too. I think she's very impressive. She's a figure of some glamour. So she has two very impressive lieutenants. She has a new Streltsy commander, who's a guy called Shacklovity, and her chief ally is a man called Prince Vasily Vasilyevich Golitsyn.

So the Golitsyns are one of Russia's most prominent noble families, and this guy, Golitsyn, becomes her chief minister. And he later on becomes one of Peter's great antagonists. And yet, Golitsyn as well is a kind of Westernizer. So he's fluent in Latin and Greek. His, his palace in, in Moscow is full of kind of Western artworks and German maps and Venetian mirrors and things. He's a huge admirer of Louis the 14th.

He's sort of saying, Oh, we should really, you know, we should really modernize ourselves, we should have religious tolerance. We could emancipate the serfs. We could have a new army, all of this kind of stuff. And so actually, he and Sophia, who are the kind of villains in the Peter the Great story, they run Russia really well for the next kind of decade or so. And it's mad, isn't it, that a woman is in a position of power in Russia when you think of how institutionally

and culturally sexist it is? Yeah, it's well, it's mad and it's a massive tribute to her political deafness, isn't it? To her dexterity, because actually Russia is in the next few years is quite quiet. Galitsyn, however, he gets sort of trapped by foreign policy. His big achievement is he negotiates a treaty with the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth after years of war that gives Russia a lot of territory, including Smolensk and Kiev and Eastern Ukraine. So that's the first time that Muscovy gets its hands on Kiev. Exactly, exactly.

But the price for this treaty is the polls say, well, you have to join in with us and our allies who are the Habsburgs and Venice fighting the Ottomans. That's the price. And Gillit said, well, fine. I mean, I don't really want to fight the Ottomans, but we will, we'll attack the carnate of Crimea because, you know, that's an Ottoman vassal and that's kind of doable. And as we will see, this becomes a decisive moment in the story of Sophia and Galitzin. And meanwhile, before we come to what happened about that, let's look at what's been going on with Peter.

So Peter's only 10 years old. He is kind of just a figurehead. He's always been dragged out for banquets and things to meet ambassadors. And the ambassadors write reports of him. They always say, oh, he's a very likable lad. He has a frank and open face, his great beauty in his lively manner, his half laughing mouth, he's a remarkably good looking boy, all this kind of thing. This is, these are kind of quotes from German doctors and Swedish diplomats and things. So people say, you know, he's very impressive. One day he'll be a good czar. The good news for him is basically he can spend a lot of his time

actually hanging out with his mum. They go to this. His father had a, had had a hunting lodge at a place called Priobrzańskie. Where? Priobrzańskieanskaya Tom have you do you want to have a go so he's hanging around on this on this country estate and this is the point at which he gets into one of his great passions which is kind of bonkers war games well because he can i mean he's not just playing with toy soldiers is he he ends up playing with real soldiers and real artillery and all kinds of stuff. Yeah. I mean, he has been obsessed with war since he was a boy. He has always had sort of play soldiers. Yeah. His friends were chosen for him from other noble families and boyar families. And he basically, when he goes to this hunting lodge, he rounded up all his dad's old servants, the kind of fulconers and the kind of hangers

on at the hunting lodge. And he said, you know, I'm going to make you an army. And by the time he's in his sort of mid teens, the word has spread around the area that the czar, because he is kind of still joint czar, he wants people to join his kind of play army. And so loads of young men turn up at this estate, some from noble families, some who are serfs, some who are grooms, all of this kind of thing. If you're 20 years old and you want a bit of a laugh, you turn up at this place because also of course, it ingratiates you of course with the, with the Tsar. And the outfit that they're being given, these kind of play

soldiers are Western outfits, right? Yes. They're not the kind of kaftans and yellow boots. It's tricorn hats and... Right, and a big green coat, like a green coat and a kind of tricorn hat, exactly. And there's about 300 of them. They live in, he says, well, I'll build you a barracks. So they're given ranks, they're given a soldier's pay. So in the long run, these two regiments evolve into the Praerbryzhensky and Semyonovsky Guards regiments, which become the oldest regiments in the Russian army.

And they were only disbanded, Tom, after the Russian Revolution. So there you go. Such vandalism. So basically, they spend all their time like digging trenches, playing war games, and Peter joins in, but he insists, and this is a defining thing about him. He says, I'm not going to be a commander. I'll just be a common soldier. He loves this kind of play acting, this role playing.

So he says, I'm a drummer boy. And every now and again, he gives himself a promotion. So he advances slowly up the ranks. It's a bombardier, doesn't he? It becomes a bombardier, but they do really matter. I mean, when we say they're kind of play soldiers, they spent a whole year building a fort and then they held a siege, attacking it with cannons. And Peter playing on his drum.

Yeah. Can I just ask that thing of Peter not promoting himself over the heads of people who might be better qualified than him. Yeah. Is he also kind of making a political statement there, looking ahead that birth won't necessarily guarantee privileged position, do you think? I think he is. I think it definitely has a political meaning. I think there's no way in a society that is so conservative and so hierarchical as 17th century Muscovy or Russia,

there is no way that could not have a kind of political significance. Because it's kind of instilling a notion that meritocracy will matter under his rule. And as we'll see, he does this in very peculiar ways in other forms, like he sets up his own kind of mock church, doesn't he? In his own mock court. And all of this stuff that is, this is when they're doing the sort of dwarf tossing and like playing terrible practical jokes on people with bellows and stuff like this. Bears. Yeah, but all this sort of strange role playing runs all the way through his life. Like when he

goes in disguise, sort of incognito to Holland or to England, he's always- But it's very subversive, isn't it? Yeah. In a society where the status of the Tsar is conveyed through what he wears and the postures that he takes, to subvert it so profoundly is in effect to subvert a lot of the ideology that is governing his monarchy. That's right, although the funny thing is he subverted kind of only so far. Up to a certain point.

Yeah, because if you really did treat him with no deference, I mean, he, he would kill you personally, but had you or something. So he's recalibrating what it is to be as are. I mean, he's not abdicating his, his, uh, absolute rule, but he wants to reconfigure it. Yeah. I think that's absolutely right. I think that's right. And I think what's remarkable about him, it's not just the role playing. It's also his enthusiasm, his tremendous energy and his curiosity. You know, he has insatiable appetite for learning things and for doing things. And it's practical things as well, isn't it? So it's not just kind of learning about the

broad sweep of the world, but it's about how do you make things? Right. So he does things like when he's a teenager, when he was not sort of attacking fake forts and stuff, he has a big sort of clock, like a grandfather clock, ordered and brought so he can take it apart and put it back together. He has a carpenter's bench. He's the kind of boy who, you know, he said, what do you want for Christmas? He'd say a lathe. He loves a lathe. He's always messing around with lathes and stonemasons tools. He learns to carve ivory. He learns to turn wood. He basically does a lot of things that I would hate to do because I have no interest in lathes, I'll just put it out there, but his biggest passion.

Is the sea and ships. So in 1688, when he's what 16, somebody gave him a sextant, but nobody knew what it was or how to use it. And they said, Oh, there's some bloke in the German suburb. He's a Dutchman. He's called Franz Timmerman. He smokes a pipe. He could, he'll, he'll show you this boat Timmerman turns up and he says, I'll

show you how to use the sextant. And he ends up teaching Peter geometry and geography, and they go for these long walks together talking about geography. And one of these walks that summer, they're in this state and they, they find this shed full of junk and they go into the shed, what's all this? And they find a boat upside down. And Dominic, where has that boat come from? Do you know where it's come from?

It's come from our own country. It's come from England. It's an English boat. It's got masts and it's got sails and it can go against the wind. This is what Timmerman tells Peter. He says, look, if we sort this out, you could go sailing on this and you, you know, it'd be amazing. And Peter, Oh, brilliant. He says, could you know anyone who can, um, who can fix it? Timmer says, want to know another Dutchman called Karsten Brandt? He could repair it. Peter says, brilliant. They get this bloke

brand to do this. They get this boat, they take it to the river. And then he goes sailing every single day. And do you know, that boat is in the Naval Museum in St. Petersburg to this day. The boat is called the grandfather of the Russian Navy. And it's an English boat. I love it. Now the Russians have never been interested in the sea. They're a landlocked country. Because as we said, there's only Archangel. No Baltic, no Black Sea. So everybody says, what's going on here? What's all this business? They're baffled by it.

But Peter basically gets permission to go to a lake. He builds a boatyard on this lake. He says to this bloke Brant, this Dutchman, build me more, build more ships. And they start building frigates and yachts and all this kind of thing. And I don't think you have to be a tremendous amateur psychologist to work out that actually this is about Peter's. He dreams of escaping the suffocating, claustrophobic atmosphere of Moscow and of the Kremlin and the sea, the salt, you know, the breeze, all of that stuff.

That's his dream. Presumably the fact that his accomplices in this are both Dutch and that the ship is English. It means specifically that he's looking westwards. And it's around this time, isn't it, that he starts signing his name Petrus, so the Latin form of Peter. And of course, he's learning Dutch from speaking to these Dutchmen. So he is starting to look westwards in a way that no Russian leader had ever done before and a lot of people are very concerned about this and actually his mother among them, she says, what's he doing spent hanging around with all these Dutchmen and boats, he needs a good Russian wife.

And so she gets, they have a kind of one of these bride shows. They assemble the candidates at the Kremlin. She picks one for him. He does. He says, I don't care who you pick. I'm not interested. And she picks this 20 year old girl called Eudokia Lopukina. Who's from a kind of conservative Moscow family.

So what's her take on lathes and Dutchman? She hates a lathe. She loathes a Dutchman. She hates a boat. Robert K. Massey describes it as pink, hopeful and helpless, which is very nice. Anyway, she and Peter, they clearly, they clearly do have a relationship of sorts because they ended up having a son Alexis, but they don't really get on at all. When he's awake on his boat, he never writes to her.

They have, she has a second son who dies as a baby. Peter doesn't even bother turning up to the funeral. He basically has no real interest in Eudokia at all. And as we shall see, the story does not end very well. Anyway, so he married Eudokia in 1689, January 1689, which is the year he turned 17. And sort of halfway through the year, his mother says, stop messing around with your boat to come back to Moscow. You've got, we've got a chance now to get rid of Sophia and Galitsyn and regain power.

And you can take your place as the rightful, unchallenged master of Russia. Because remember we'd said as a price for that deal with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Galitsyn had said, I'll go and have a crack at the Crimea. Well, that went horrendously badly wrong. The first expedition they did in 1687, they didn't even get there. They got halfway through Ukraine and then they basically gave up and went home. The Tatars, who were the kind of the masters of Crimea were always raiding Ukraine. They take loads of prisoners and slaves and stuff.

Very humiliating for the Russians. It's the summer of 1689. Gillitzen had a second go and absolute shambles in a disaster. They got stuck on the isthmus that connects Crimea to kind of mainland Ukraine. And they had to retreat with about 20,000 people killed and 15,000 people taken prisoner. And so Dominic, at this stage, the geography of Russia is working against the Russians because they don't control all of it.

So the kind of the classic thing, you know, you find yourself marching for days and days across featureless steps. This is happening to them. This is happening to them. Anyway, Galitsyn and his bedraggled kind of remnants get back to Moscow and they declare victory. They say, well, we've won a tremendous victory against the Tatars. You know, delighted with ourselves.

Peter refuses to go to the kind of victory party. He says, this is obviously nonsense. And it's clear that there's a, because he's 17, because he has the kind of play, the pretend army now. Yeah, but how pretend is it? Exactly. There's growing tension and Sophia's allies say to her, in fact, the guy who's the commander of the Streltsy, you've got this guy, Shklovity, he says to Sophia,

like, if you don't strike against Peter now, you have to kill him now because otherwise he will, he will strike against you, but she hesitates. She doesn't want to lose the moral high ground. he will strike against you. But she hesitates, she doesn't want to lose the moral high ground. And then on the 7th of August, she gets a note, an anonymous note saying that Peter is going to attack you. He's going to attack you with his boy soldiers and kill you. Now no one really knows where this note is from, but she sort of panics and she orders the Streltsy onto kind of full alert. panics and she orders the Streltsy onto kind of full alert. Meanwhile, some of Peter's mates say to him, Sophia is going to strike against you. She's mobilized the Streltsy. So I think what's clearly happened is that people behind the scenes have been stirring

up trouble and sort of turning the two against each other. And they say, you must flee for your life. So Peter and his friends do flee for their lives and they flee to the most important and the holiest of all Russian monasteries, which is called the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius. So this is about 40 miles outside Moscow. And he holds up in this monastery with his friends, basically issuing proclamations saying, I'm the Tsar, my sister is sort of, and the Streltsy have been plotting against me. She's saying the same about him. And Dominic, the salient thing about the monastery isn't just that it's very holy, but also that it has a massive walls, right?

Exactly. You can't storm it. It's effectively impregnable. It's like a fortress. So you have this weird situation all the way through August where Sophia is in the Kremlin, Peter is in this monastery. They're both describing the other one basically as a traitor or are they planning a coup against me, all of this kind of business.

And it reminds me a little bit of the, in a sort of much more protracted form of the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, where, you know, the coup plotters had seized Moscow, but they weren't very powerful. You know, they weren't, you could see they weren't really up for it. They'd mobilized some of the army, but it was all very uncertain. Hour by hour, if people remember that coup, the momentum was shifting away from them towards Boris Yeltsin. So Peter in this is Yeltsin. So at first you think, oh well, he's fled to the monastery. Sophia's clearly going to win. But actually, because she doesn't manage to move against him over time, momentum moves

more and more towards him. Lots of people are going to the monastery and say, actually, I'm on your side, mate. You know, I'm with you. And is that also reflecting the fact that, of course, fear is a woman? Yes, sure. Whereas Peter is a strapping lad who enjoys playing with soldiers. I'm sure, no doubt at all. So in early September, she decides to break the deadlock.

She goes off to the monastery. And actually, it's blocked by musketeers, the road. And they say, look, Peter's not going to see you. He doesn't want to see you. You've got to go back to Moscow. She goes back to Moscow. She goes back to the Kremlin. She has a massive meltdown, floods of tears, raging.

She says, oh, Peter and his family, the Nurezhkins, they're going to kill us. It's all a disaster, all of this kind of thing. And then eventually, the stalemate, the deadlock is broken, not by Russians, interestingly, but by the foreigners in the German suburb, because the Russian army, the high commander, generally, foreigners, because they're the only people who know what they're doing. And yet again, Tom, it's a man from our own beloved country. It's, um, a Scotsman called general Gordon.

It's great to have a general Gordon back on the show. Isn't it? It's been so long. It is. It's a great moment. There's a bloke called general Gordon, but not the general Gordon who got nervous around women, no, no, no, I killed in cartoon. No, not, not, uh, not Chinese Gordon. No, no, no. And got killed in cartoon. Not that one.

No, not Chinese Gordon. No, this bloke is Russian Gordon. So we'll talk about him in the next episode about his background because he's an interesting character. He is, he's a Scotsman, isn't he, General Gordon? And he has been serving in the Crimea and all this and in these campaigns. He's been torn between the two camps for a long time, but he's very fond of Peter. He'd helped him with his war games.

And what makes Gordon's mind up is he says, look, it's clear that actually only one of these people, only one of these camps has real ruthless killer instinct. And you always should back that person, the more ruthless, the more dangerous of the two parties and that is Peter. And so one night he leads all the foreign officers to this monastery, they get there at dawn and one by one, they line up and they kiss Peter's hands. It's like the sort of the Galpacino and the Godfather or something. Yeah.

Very, very Godfather. So the news of this reaches Moscow and the Streltsy in the yellow boots say, Oh, clearly Peter's gonna win. So they change sides as well. And they arrest their own commander, this bloke Shklovity, and he is beheaded Prince Golitsyn, who actually was a very good ruler of Russia and a westernizer, might have been an ally for Peter. He's stripped of all his property property he's exiled to the Arctic and he basically spends the next quarter century of his life 25 years he just lives in the Arctic and no one knows what happened to him that's a terrible

fate for a man who likes a harpsichord isn't it exactly and poor Sophia I mean we're we're quite fond of Sophia aren't we yeah she was exiled to a convent and she lived there for 15 years and was never seen in public again. But I mean, it could have been worse because she's not, I mean, she doesn't have a head shaved. She doesn't get given a kind of new name because she hasn't been made into to become a nun. No, she just has to hang out with nuns, but she has to hang out with nuns, but she has a certain degree of kind of independence.

A little bit, yeah. For now. For now, for now, because we will see what happens later on. So now Peter, only when she's safely gone to this convent, does Peter ride into Moscow in triumph. And it's an amazing scene. This is kind of the end of your season one of the kind of Apple TV series or whatever. He rides in past lines of Streltsy, kind of kneeling in the dust to ask for his forgiveness. He goes through the gates of the Kremlin. He goes up to the cathedral, to the Dolmishan Cathedral.

His brother Ivan is still there. He's still kind of hanging around and he embraces Ivan and then he goes into the palace. He puts on the robes of state and then he steps out onto the red staircase, the very place where so many people had been butchered when he was 10 years old. He steps out to receive the acclamation of the crowd. So long last, he's 17 years old. He is the master of Russia.

His mother is going to serve as regent, but he really wields supreme power. And Tom, in the next episode, we will find out how he intends to use it. Brilliant, Dominic. Thrilling stuff. And as you said, so much to come. So we've got Peter's gap year in Western Europe, going to Holland, going to England. He gets his revenge on the Streltsy. And then in subsequent episodes, we have the Titanic showdown with the Swedes in the Great Northern War and believe me it really is a great war. So Rest is History Club members of course can hear all the episodes in this series right

now and if you're not a member of the Rest is History Club then you know what to do, you can head to therestishistory.com, but either way, we will be back for more Peter the Great themed action. See you then. Bye bye. Bye bye. former CIA analyst turned spy novelist. And I'm Gordon Carrera, a national security journalist. And together we're the hosts of The Rest is Classified, where we bring you brilliant stories from the world of spies. This week we're talking about one of the most significant stories of the 21st century, Edward Snowden, and how he orchestrated the biggest leak of classified secrets in modern American and British history. Snowden revealed that the American government was mass collecting data on its own

citizens and it was really the first time that Americans and so many others around the world understood the extent of the U.S. government's mass surveillance. That's right, it's a story I covered at the time and it so really gets to wider questions about what privacy means, how technology has changed our lives and what the government and companies can do with data we might have thought was private and we'll take you through the whole story from Snowden's early career in the CIA and the NSA to his life in exile in Russia. So to hear more search for the rest is classified wherever you get your podcasts.