Women in Society

Prior to Peter the Great's Westernization of Russia, Russian women lived in relative seclusion. When women appeared in public, they traditionally wore garments that covered their bodies entirely, except for the face. Russian women of upper classes even lived in separate sections of their families' houses. Peter the Great started a girls' educational academy, encouraged Western fashion sensibilities (including low-cut dresses and corsets), and brought women into society by popularizing balls and other social events.

Reforms enabled centralization of the state apparatus and consolidated tsar’s autocracy, having unequivocally subordinated all the organs of the state authority and state institutions to the czar's will. Implementation of such tendency did not leave even the Orthodox Church aside, the more so that the clergy, and especially the new patriarch Hadrian (1690-1700), openly sabotaged the reforms.

In local government, in January 1699, towns were allowed to elect their own officials. Three years later, another law decided that towns would be governed by an elective board, which replaced the old system of elected sheriffs, and in 1724 the tzar decided that towns could govern themselves through elected guilds of better citizens.

Women were allowed to take part at social events, and the engagement became compulsory. After seeing the customs in England Peter decided that women should be allowed to attend social gatherings and mingle with men.