Did Peter I really be an alcoholic and killed his son? Did he participate in the construction of St. Petersburg or not? Here is a fact of myths about the emperor from Arzamas

Around the first Russian emperor Peter I, even at his contemporaries, numerous legends were formed. The publication Arzamas checked 16 myths about Peter and told which of them are true and which were not. "Paper" briefly retells some conclusions of the material.

1. It is partly true that Peter I was very high. According to Arzamas, it is impossible to call his growth now, but if by our standards he was a man of medium height - more than 170 centimeters - then against the backdrop of contemporaries seemed a giant.
2. No, Peter I was not replaced. Contemporaries really discussed that “the sovereign replaced”, but Arzamas explains this with a common motive in folk mythology. Such legends appeared before, when the authorities did what the people did not like.
3. Yes, Peter I killed his son. The emperor threatened his son with death, after which the court appointed by him really sentenced the prince to execution. According to the official version, the son of Peter died in the Peter and Paul Fortress from a heart attack, but so explained the death of other prisoners.
4. No, Peter I was not an atheist. The emperor really attached little importance to the subtleties of theological differences between Orthodoxy and other Christian faiths, writes Arzamas. However, many testimonies of the piety of Peter have been preserved.
5. No, Peter I did not force peasants to eat potatoes. The emperor could really bring a certain amount of potatoes to Russia, but there was no campaign to plant new food. Potatoes began to take root in Russia later, in the second half of the 18th century.
6. Yes, Peter I was an alcoholic and forced to drink others. Peter's own letters and evidence of his contemporaries confirm that the emperor and his entourage drank a lot and visitors of feasts forced to drink alcohol liters. This could have a political function: the desire to untie the tongues. Although they drank so not only in the Russian court, but also with many European ones.
7. Yes, Peter I himself worked on the construction of St. Petersburg. Arriving in St. Petersburg, he always visited construction sites and shipyards, could take up a wheelbarrow or shovel. “But it is unlikely that he would have enough time and desire to wave a shovel for a long time,” said Arzamas.

The ARZAMAS material can be read here . The publication tells whether it is true that Peter I changed Chuvash or Votyakov on nails whether he really cut the window to Europe and was the father of Mikhail Lomonosov.

Read also ten city legends about the damned places in St. Petersburg: about the rotunda with Satan, a mill in grinding bodies and mermaids on the Marse Field. But an interview with the author of excursions in the metro about how the St. Petersburg metro was built, where the legends about giant worms came from and what we do not know about the creation of the "Admiralty".

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