Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ble, while others believed that Stalin may have
been involved in his death. Between 1932 and
1990, his hometown of Nizhnii-Novgorod was
known as Gorky in his honor.
Grand Embassy
(1697-1698)
The name given to the unprecedented extended
visit that Peter the Great made to western
Europe in 1697-98. The first reigning Russian
sovereign to travel abroad on a peaceful mission
since the 11th century, Peter impressed his hosts
with his curiosity, his appetites, and his infor-
mality. Having recently defeated the Ottoman
Empire and captured the Black Sea port of Azov
in July 1696 and become sole ruler after the
death of his co-czar,
IVAN V
, Peter felt confident
enough to embark on his long-desired tour of
the West. Traveling under the alias Peter Mik-
hailov, he and his party visited Riga, Königsberg,
and Berlin before arriving in Amsterdam in
August 1697. In Amsterdam he worked in the
shipyards of the Dutch East India Company and
visited workshops and factories where he learned
about clock making, dentistry, and anatomical
dissection. The embassy left for London in Jan-
uary 1698 and stayed until May on the invitation
of King William III. Here Peter added knowledge
of the scriptures, love of drink, and general row-
diness to the reputation he had developed.
Returning to Russia via Austria, he heard news
of the
streltsy
(musketeers) revolt in Moscow in
early 1698, which forced him to shorten his visit
and return home. Although the embassy had
specific goals, such as gaining the support of
Western monarchs for further war against
Turkey, it is best remembered for the broader
symbolism of Russia's opening to the West and
for its success in attracting Western technical
specialists. Peter's vigorous program of Western-
ization clearly owed much to his experiences in
the West. Equally important, he recruited a large
number of military and technical experts who
were to have a great impact on Russian life as
teachers, officers, and administrators. In 1717,
Peter undertook a second journey to western
Maksim Gorky
(Library of Congress)
he was critical of Bolshevik excesses but was
instrumental in saving many intellectuals from
terror and starvation. He lived in Italy during
most of the 1920s, at first a critic of the Soviet
regime, but later its defender. After returning to
the Soviet Union, Gorky became head of the
Writers' Union and helped advance the literary
agenda of the
COMMUNIST PARTY
, through the
doctrine of socialist realism. For someone who
had been quite critical of
LENIN
, Gorky had few
negative things to say about the Stalin regime,
praising instead some of its more troubling fea-
tures such as forced collectivization and the
White Sea Canal, built with prisoner labor. A
long-time sufferer of tuberculosis, he probably
died of natural causes, but for a long time there
were questions about the circumstances of his
death. At the 1938
BUKHARIN
show trial, govern-
ment prosecutors alleged that the “anti-Soviet
Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites” was responsi-
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