Ivan Golikov’s (circa 1734–1801) interest in the personality and history of Peter the Great sparked when he was a child. His family kept a copy of the diary of the former regimental priest of Peter I, later Archimandrite Michael.
As a young man, Golikov went from his native Kursk to Moscow where he entered service for the merchant Zhuravlev. Later, Golikov opened his own business in St. Petersburg. All that time he studied sources related to the reign of the first Russian emperor, collecting about 1,500 manuscripts and books. He also met Peter’s associates. The stories of Admiral Zakhar Mishukov, Ivan Talyzin, Semyon Mordvinov, Alexey Nagayev were another valuable source of information.
In 1781, charged with smuggling alcohol from France to Russia, Ivan Golikov ended up in prison and was sentenced to deprivation of privileges and property, and exiled to Siberia. However, soon the former co-owner of alcohol shops in Moscow and St. Petersburg was pardoned. The reason behind this was the opening of a monument to Peter the Great in St. Petersburg.
Kneeling at the monument, Golikov swore an oath to compile and publish the history of his idol and went to his daughter’s house in the village of Anashkino, near Moscow to fulfill his plans. Count Alexander Vorontsov was funded Golikov’s extensive work.
12 volumes of “Deeds” were published by the printing house of Nikolai Novikov in 1788–1789. However, the author considered his work incomplete. With the assistance of Vorontsov and Yekaterina Dashkova, he obtained access to archival documents of the Academy of Sciences and the Collegium of Foreign Affairs and plunged back into work. It resulted in 18 volumes of “Appendixes” for the “Deeds” collection.
Ivan Golikov claimed that with his work he wanted to give an answer to “Strahlenberg’s slanders” — the history of Russia, written by Philip Johann von Strahlenberg, who spent 13 years in Russian captivity. Refuting the accusations of the Swedish officer, the author of the “Deeds” stressed that he recognized Peter’s “human sins”, but explains the emperor’s unsightly actions at first glance as a matter of state necessity.
On the basis of Golikov’s work, many scientific studies of the Peter the Great era were built. Alexander Pushkin also relied on this source while working on such works as “The History of Peter the Great”, “The Moor of Peter the Great”, “Poltava” and “Boris Godunov”.
