Board: OCR | Unit: Y210 | Component: 2 (Non-British Period Study)
About this option
Russia 1645–1741 covers the transformation of Russia from a Muscovite tsardom into a European great power. Students trace the reign of Alexis, the great schism in the Russian Church, the streltsy revolts, the dramatic reforms of Peter the Great — military, administrative, ecclesiastical, and cultural — and the turbulent period of succession that followed his death, culminating in the reign of Anna. The option requires depth across a century of extraordinary state-directed change.
Key themes
- The reign of Alexis: the Law Code of 1649, the enserfment of the peasantry, and the Raskol (Church schism)
- The streltsy and political instability: the role of the military in Muscovite politics
- Peter the Great’s reforms: military reorganisation, the Table of Ranks, the founding of St Petersburg, and the subordination of the Church to state authority
- Peter’s foreign policy: the Great Northern War, the victory at Poltava, and Russia’s emergence as a Baltic power
- The nature of Petrine reform: how radical was it, and how deeply did it penetrate beyond the court and the service class?
- The succession crisis after Peter: the palace revolutions, the guards regiments, and the instability of the post-Petrine period
- The reign of Anna: German favouritism, the ‘Bironovshchina’, and the limits of Petrine reform
What the exam asks
Y210 is a depth study. Questions require analytical depth within a defined period, focusing on causation, significance, and historical judgement. Students are expected to engage with historical debate and are rewarded for the ability to challenge or qualify interpretations rather than simply describing events.
Historiography
Peter the Great has attracted some of the most extreme assessments in European historiography:
- Peter the Great: modernising tsar or oriental despot? The Slavophile critique that Peter’s westernisation was a brutal imposition that cut Russia off from its authentic cultural roots versus the Westerniser celebration of Peter as the founder of modern Russia
- How revolutionary were Peter’s reforms? Historians who emphasise continuity with Muscovite state-building (Paul Bushkovitch) versus those who see a fundamental rupture in Russian social and cultural history
- The social impact of reform: did Peter’s changes benefit Russia as a whole, or did they deepen the gulf between the westernised service nobility and an unchanged peasant majority?
- The Church schism: its significance for Russian religious and cultural identity — the Old Believers as a persistent critique of state power
Interpretations pack — coming September 2026
A teaching pack for this option is in development, covering all core historiographical debates. It will include named historians with argument summaries, paired comparison tasks built to OCR mark scheme logic, and provenance analysis prompts — all in a downloadable PDF.
£9.99 per pack · Available September 2026
