Peter wants to equip Russia with modern technology, institutions, and ideas.

He requires Western-style education for all male nobles, introduces so-called cipher schools to teach the alphabet and basic arithmetic, establishes a printing house, and funds the Academy of Sciences, which is established just before his death in 1725 and becomes one of Russia's most important cultural institutions.

He demands that aristocrats acquire the dress, tastes, and social customs of the West.

The result is a deepening of the cultural rift between the nobility and the mass of Russian people.

The best illustration of Peter's drive for Westernization, his break with traditions, and his coercive methods is his construction in 1703 of a new, architecturally Western capital, St. Petersburg, situated on land newly conquered from Sweden on the Gulf of Finland.

Although St. Petersburg faces westward, its Westernization is by coercion, and it cannot arouse the individualistic spirit that is an important element in the Western ways Peter so admires.