Great Drinkers: Peter The Great

I was watching the debauched activities on the TV show The Great, revelling in the brutal atmosphere of violence and merriment and thought it would be interesting to ask…. just how pissed were they in the Russian Court?

Well, let’s talk about Catherine the Great’s grandfather-in Law, Peter the Great. In the annals of boozing, his chapter is impressive.

What’s interesting about the 6 ft 7 Peter isn’t so much what HE drank (two litres of vodka a day by some accounts, even more by others) but by how enthusiastic he was about others keeping up with him. He started a special club called the ‘All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters’ where up to 200 people including Russian nobility and foreign diplomats would party from noon until the following morning dancing, playing games, and drinking toast after toast after toast. The synod was a mock version of the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy, with members given quasi-religious titles and responsibilities. Drinking ceremonies were parodies of baptisms, weddings and funerals full of crude humour and blasphemy.

They would hold parades through St Petersburg dressed as clergy or cross-dressing. Truthfully, this prime example of top drunken banter actually sounds like a nightmare of you think about it for more than a second. Yes, it sounds like larks but it was also Peter’s power game. It sent a message to the church about where the power sat, and reduced the elites to his intoxicated playthings. Yes, he was a fan of practical jokes, theatrical behaviour and, of course, booze. Add royal entitlement and bullying into the mix and you have the synod.

Guests were encouraged to keep up with the drunken, and frequently humiliating antics. And ‘encouraged’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement.

If Peter saw someone not drinking he would make them drink from the great eagle - which meant downing 1.5 litres of wine. Once in a drinking session on a ship, the Danish ambassador tried to escape from his drinking duties by climbing up the mast to hide. Peter climbed after him wine in his pockets, the great eagle goblet in his mouth.

My favourite detail is the tamed bear owned by his Head of Secret police, which had been trained to walk around the party offering glasses of peppered vodka. If you refused, it would grab your wig until you took one. As with all drinking history, it’s worth bearing in mind that most of the witnesses were drunk, but I’m absolutely choosing to believe this one. You should too. Just don’t overthink it too much.