1. Tasks of the Language Reform and the Nature of its Realization

The goal of the Petrine transformation was not only to create a new army and navy, a new governmental system and new industry, but the creation of a new culture as well, and among Peter’s activities cultural reform occupied no less of a place than those of a more pragmatic nature. The change in dress, shaving of beards, renaming of state posts, the introduction of “assemblies,” the regular organization of triumphal public processions, masque rades, and parodic and blasphe mous spectacles (such as the wedding of a prince-pope, the funeral of a dwarf, a false fire alarm on April 1st, etc.—see, among others, Bergholts IV, 13–14, 91) were not accidental attributes of the age of reform but substan tive elements of state policy whose aim was to reeducate society and to impress upon it a new conception of state power. It was not without reason that Feofan Prokopovich wrote in The Right of a Monarch’s Will (Pravda voli monarshei) —an apology for Petrine absolutism and the Petrine reforms — that