Peter the Great

Cultural  

1. A Russian czar of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries who tried to transform Russia from a backward nation into a progressive one by introducing customs and ideas from western European countries. He moved the capital of Russia from Moscow to a new city he had built, St. Petersburg, which was renamed Leningrad after the Russian Revolution and has since had its old name restored due to the collapse of communism.

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Example Sentences

Appeared in the December 2, 2025, print edition as 'Putin’s Choice: Peter the Great or Steve Witkoff'.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 1, 2025

During a row over the Peter the Great monument's future in 2010, several Moscow residents told the BBC they hated the sculpture, which at 98m is slightly taller than the Statue of Liberty.

From BBC • Apr. 22, 2025

He has inhaled from somewhere — certainly not from studying history — an immensely dumbed-down version of the philosophy that he imagines drove Napoleon and Hitler, and perhaps Alexander the Great and Peter the Great.

From Salon • Feb. 23, 2025

He acknowledged during a news conference aboard the papal airplane that his reference to Russia’s imperial leaders Peter the Great and Catherine II was “perhaps not happy.”

From Seattle Times • Sep. 6, 2023

Composed shortly before Huygens died in 1690, the work was admired by many, including Czar Peter the Great, who made it the first product of Western science to be published in Russia.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan