Constantinople Dreams of Peter the Great: Slander, Reality or Myth?

Abstract. Historiographic coverage of the southern direction of the policy of Peter I still has many gaps. The epoch-making triumph of the Tsar in the Baltic obscured from researchers his no less grandiose but unsuccessful attempt to solve the Black Sea issue. It is still unclear what place Constantinople occupied in Peter’s plans. The utopian idea of Constantinople liberation from the Agarians fascinated many minds of the Christian world since 1453, and special hopes were invariably pinned on Russia. But were they relevant to the king himself? The forged “Testament of Peter the Great” describes the plans for the expulsion of the Turks from Europe and the conquest of Constantinople. Such expectations really revived during the Russian-Turkish wars of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, not only among the Orthodox population of the Ottoman Empire and the Eastern Orthodoxy church hierarchs, but also in the Catholic and Protestant countries of Europe. At the beginning of the 18th century the Ottoman authorities did not doubt the intention of Peter I to take the throne of the Byzantine emperors, which the emissaries of Charles XII convinced Porta with considerable success. In 1711, rumors about the Tsar’s claims to throne of Eastern Emperor circulated even in some European capitals. An analysis of sources and historiography makes it possible to separate historical myths and reality and determine the difference between the goals of Peter I and the libels of his opponents.

Keywords: Peter the Great, Constantinople, Russian-Turkish relations, Greek Project, historical myth.