Peter the Great: Founder of Modern Russia, Psycho, and All-Time Drunk
Ever wonder what would happen if they gave Animal House a country to play with?
Hey (burp)…guys…GUYS!!! I’ve got a gr…great idea! Let’s start a war! SHOTS!
Moscow, Russia (AP) Vladimir Putin kicked off Pride Month this year in his traditional assless chaps, riding a sparkly T-34 that was spinning donuts in Red Square before retiring to one of his dachas for the traditional World Record Gangbang attempt. It is estimated that roughly (we mean that literally-there will be no lubrication) 2,000 penises and penis-shaped objects will be forcefully rammed into the sphincter of Mr. Putin, who insists on being called “Daddy Vladdy” for the duration.
Okay, that’s satire. I think. If there’s anything following politics will teach you, it’s that the more anti-gay someone is the more likely it is that they’re getting a bit of forbidden strange. Or more than a bit.
But to return to the subject of Daddy Vladdy and his cock party, he should probably loosen up a bit and not poison my fucking tea. He’s said he wants to emulate Peter the Great, which might be a bit of a stretch. He got a few things right, like the genocide, cruelty, and killing off oligarchs that annoy him a bit, but that’s pretty much par for the course for your average Russian Tsar/Tsar wannabe. That’s barely making the grade.
To get to the level of Peter the Great it’s going to take a little more than slaughtering innocents. He’s got to slaughter innocents and also party harder than anyone has ever partied, because in between starting wars, killing off tens of thousands of people to build St. Petersburg, and torturing and killing his own son (fucking hell) Peter the Great was an INSANE partier.
His frat house was known as The All-Joking All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters, who doubled as his political advisors when he was in the mood or state to take advice. This evolved from an earlier band of drunks simply known as the Jolly Company, which sounds very piratey. Yo ho ho and we’ll trash your fucking house. He would literally ride around Muscovy with one or two hundred of his closest friends dropping in on random nobles, drinking them fucking dry, and, of course, trashing their houses.
He also liked war games and organized fun little mock battles. In one of them 24 people died, but whatever. What fun is absolute power if you can’t kill a few peasants playing toy soldier?
He liked to practice drunken dentistry, which, considering this was the late 1600s, probably wasn’t all that great. Also, what sort of psycho does dentistry for fun? Imagine having a tooth yanked out by your cheerfully loaded homicidal Tsar with no painkiller? That’s B-grade horror film stuff. He kept a sack full of teeth, because what the fuck.
At one point he went off on a tour of Europe…sort of a gap year, except he was the leader of a fucking country. Why govern when you can party like Guns N Roses with a state treasury?
He called it the Great Embassy, because a giant drinking tour does sound better when you give it a serious name. Officially he wasn’t even there. He insisted on being known as a commoner named Peter Mikhailov and would get seriously pissed if anyone referred to him as anything else. Of course it was an open secret and he would also get pissed if you didn’t give him the respect he felt he was due.
He stayed in England for three months. He leased a house from a man named John Evelyn, who apparently hadn’t checked references. At the end of his tour he left the house a complete shambles. John Bonham would’ve shed a tear.
“No part of the house escaped damage. All the floors were covered with grease and ink, and three new floors had to be provided. The tiled stoves, locks to the doors, and all the paintwork had to be renewed. The curtains, quilts, and bed linen were 'tore in pieces.' All the chairs in the house, numbering over fifty, were broken, or had disappeared, probably used to stoke the fires. Three hundred window panes were broken and there were 'twenty fine pictures very much tore and all frames broke.' The garden which was Evelyn’s pride was ruined.”
The bill for damages was 305 pounds, which was probably getting off light even in 1698. It included three pounds for wheelbarrows, which the Tsar loved to load his friends into and drunkenly barrel into the hedges of Evelyn’s prize garden.
Welcome to Jackass, 17th century edition.
In between terrorizing Europe with drunken shenanigans he did do some serious stuff during the Great Embassy. He learned shipbuilding from the Dutch and English and military tactics and torture from the German states. Gotta go to the experts for these sorts of things. He went around Europe importing foreigners, basically. He then went straight home and went to war with Sweden, because why learn new things if you can’t murder the shit out of people with them?
Did I mention that he tortured and killed his own son? I feel like this needs repeating.
Anyway, war with Sweden, lots and lots of people dying, familicide…through it all Peter kept drinking and forcing everyone to drink right along with him. Remember the annoying guy in college who constantly kept trying to get you to drink more? Imagine that guy is the head of a country and you can’t say no. The parties got more and more crazy, because when you have absolute power and you want to rage, you’re going to rage. Elections for the new “pope” of the Synod lasted eight days. At the end of if the new pope, who was an 84 year old court jester (how was he still alive?) was married to another 84 year old. The guests of honor included a couple of dwarfs, one of Europe’s tallest men, and some Siamese twins, because Peter also liked a freakshow. He was fucking weird.
The party continued after the wedding, of course.
Another wedding was celebrated so hard that the groom died three days later.
Guests at one of Peter’s parties were given glass after glass of brandy, wine, or vodka until most of them passed out. Peter never got hangovers. Yeah, he was that guy everyone hates. The next morning he dragged those guests off the floor or lawn or wherever and immediately had them cut a path through a forest, which sounds like the worst thing ever. He then gave them vodka as a reward, because he was an asshole.
Diplomats had to drink from “the Cup of the White Eagle” which had about 1.5 liters of vodka in it. That’s two bottles of vodka today with a few shots to spare. I’m surprised the whole of Europe didn’t declare war on him just for that.
Speaking of war, the shenanigans didn’t even stop there. When meeting defeated enemies, Peter would regularly introduce his friend Fyodor Romodanovsky as the Tsar while everyone snickered in the background. Fyodor was the guy who was the general of the bad guys during Peter’s drunken war games. In the Synod he was known as the “Polish pope”, which was different than the other pope of course. I’m sure there was a sort of organization to all of this, but remember, all of these guys were constantly drunk.
Basically, if Vlad wants to live up to Peter the Great it’s going to take a lot more. Shirtless horseback riding, staged hockey games, an incompetent failvasion of Ukraine, and weirdly long tables? He’s at best Vladimir the Meh.
Might as well give up on the war and do the gangbang.