ARISTOCRATS AND DIGNITARIES

The last seven years of Peter's reign, after the trial of Tsarevich Aleksei, saw the culmination of his efforts to reorganize the Russian state apparatus. In the wake of the trial the tsar once again reset the balance among the factions at court, which had increasingly polarized between the “great families” and the allies of Menshikov. Further impulses to reform came with the end of the war with Sweden in 1721 in the Peace of Nystad, which confirmed Peter's conquests and brought needed relief to Russia and its finances. Not that the peace was complete, for the next summer Peter launched a war against Iran to take control of the trading cities on the Caspian Sea. The Persian campaign was not on the same scale as the Northern War, but also came to a victorious end in September 1723.

Even before the case of Tsarevich Aleksei had concluded, Peter had turned with renewed zeal to the pressing matters of the reorganization of state, church, and society. The decree setting up a new census to establish the new “soul” tax, which would eventually transfer the peasants' main obligation from the household to the individual, came on 26 November 1718. The same month he pushed ahead the reorganization of local administration, ordering that all local officials were to receive instructions following the Swedish model.