Peter the Great Trivia
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59 free Peter the Great trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Peter the Great trivia quiz covers the tsar who dragged Russia into Europe by the beard, sometimes literally. The easy questions are the ones most people know: the city he founded on the Neva, the country he fought for two decades, his famous height, the tax on beards and the title he took in 1721. From there it moves through his strange upbringing as a boy co-tsar with a hole cut in the throne so his mother could whisper instructions, the toy army, the sister who ruled as regent, and the English boat he found on an estate. The harder end covers the Grand Embassy in detail: the fake name that fooled nobody, the four months in a Dutch East India Company shipyard, the stay in John Evelyn's house at Deptford, the monkey and the dwarfs he brought to London, and the Streltsy revolt that cut the trip short. It also goes into the Great Northern War, the disaster at Narva, the church bells melted for cannon, the Turkish nickname 'Mad Peter', the Governing Senate, the Table of Ranks, the drunken mock synod, his two wives and the death of his son Alexei. Every answer was checked against Peter's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our Catherine the Great and Russia quizzes carry the story on.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Peter the Great was the first ruler of Russia to hold which title, from 1721?
Emperor
Emperor. He took the title in 1721 to mark victory over Sweden after 21 years of war, and Russia called itself an empire from then on.
Q 02With which half-brother did Peter reign jointly until 1696?
Ivan V
Ivan V. Frail and sickly, he was crowned beside Peter in 1682 on a specially built double throne and left the governing to others until his death.
Q 03Peter, tsar at ten, was the grandson of the first tsar of which dynasty?
The Romanovs
The Romanovs. The dynasty began in 1613, when his 16-year-old grandfather was elected tsar to end the years of chaos known as the Time of Troubles, and it reigned until 1917.
Q 04What was the hidden opening in the back of the boy tsar Peter's double throne for?
Whispering advice
Whispering advice. The opening was hidden behind velvet so that an adult could prompt the two young tsars during audiences; tradition says the listener was their regent.
Q 05Which half-sister ruled Russia as regent for seven years after the 1682 military revolt?
Sophia
Sophia. Her government made a lasting peace with Poland and a border treaty with China, but two failed campaigns against Crimea helped the 17-year-old Peter's backers force her out in 1689.
Q 06Which elite military corps rose in revolt in 1682, murdering some of Peter's relatives before his eyes?
The Streltsy
The Streltsy. Peter never forgave them: when they rose again in 1698 he had hundreds executed or exiled and broke up the corps.
Q 07What did Peter call the 'grandfather of the Russian navy' and board to review his Baltic fleet in 1723?
His boyhood sailboat
His boyhood sailboat. Peter pulled the derelict boat from a storehouse on a royal estate in 1688, had a Dutch carpenter repair it and learned to sail against the wind in it.
Q 08In which Moscow suburb did the young Peter make Dutch, Swiss and Scottish friends?
The German Quarter
The German Quarter. Despite its name, it was the suburb where Moscow's western Europeans of every nation lived: to Russians of the day, all such foreigners were 'Germans'.
Q 09Where did Peter send his first wife, Eudoxia, after returning from Europe in 1698?
A convent
A convent. Eudoxia outlasted him: when her grandson Peter II came to the throne in 1727 she was freed and brought back to Moscow with a generous allowance.
Q 10Which fortified monastery outside Moscow sheltered the 17-year-old Peter when he fled a feared attack in 1689?
Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius
Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius. It was both a strong fortress and one of Russia's holiest places, and as soldiers and churchmen rallied to Peter there the regent's power drained away.
Q 11In his last winter, Peter sent which navigator to find out whether Asia and America were joined?
Vitus Bering
Vitus Bering. He sailed through the strait that now carries his name in 1728, but bad weather hid the American shore, and it took a second voyage in 1741 for him to sight Alaska.
Q 12Why did Tsar Peter serve as a mere bombardier in his own army in 1695?
To show promotion is earned
To show promotion is earned. He kept a mock tsar, the 'Prince-Caesar', who handed him each new step like any other officer, and he expected his nobles to start at the bottom too.
Q 13Which Ottoman fortress near the Don did Peter capture in July 1696 with his new Voronezh navy?
Azov
Q 21Which king of England welcomed Peter to London in 1698 and gave him a royal yacht?
William III
William III. He also lent Peter a furnished house beside the Deptford dockyard and paid his bills.
Q 22Russians who paid Peter's special tax carried a token proving their right to keep what?
Their beards
Their beards. Back from the West, Peter cut off his nobles' beards with his own hands; the tax was the compromise for men who would rather pay than shave.
Q 23Before Peter's 1700 calendar reform, Russians counted their years from which event?
The world's creation
The world's creation. Peter restarted the count from the birth of Christ and moved New Year from 1 September to 1 January, but kept the old Julian days rather than the newer Gregorian ones.
Azov. His first siege in 1695 had failed because Turkish ships kept the fortress supplied, so he spent the winter building a fleet to cut it off by water, and it surrendered.
Q 14What was the name of Peter's 18-month incognito journey to Western Europe from 1697?
The Grand Embassy
The Grand Embassy. Some 250 strong, it set out to win allies against the Ottomans and failed, but came home having hired the shipwrights, engineers and officers Peter wanted.
Q 15Peter toured western Europe in 1697 under a false name, so what made him easy to recognise anyway?
His great height
His great height. At about two metres he towered over almost everyone he met, though the alias still did its real job: sparing him the ceremonies owed to a visiting monarch.
Q 16Mobbed by sightseers after a week in the village of Zaandam, Peter moved his shipbuilding studies to which nearby city?
Amsterdam
Amsterdam. In Zaandam he had lodged with a blacksmith he knew from Moscow, in a tiny wooden house that survives as a museum, but word of who he was got out within days.
Q 17For four months in 1697, Peter worked as a ship's carpenter in a yard belonging to which organisation?
The Dutch East India Company
The Dutch East India Company. A Dutch mayor who knew Russia well arranged it, and the company laid down a new frigate just so that the tsar and his Russian volunteers could help build it.
Q 18Which Dutch scientist gave Peter an 'eel viewer'?
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. The device was one of the single-lens microscopes he made himself, set up so that the tsar could watch blood circulating in a living eel whenever he liked.
Q 19Which skill, learned on his 1697 travels, did Peter like to practise on his own courtiers?
Pulling teeth
Pulling teeth. He picked up the craft in Holland, tried it out at once on his own servants, and for the rest of his life kept the teeth he drew.
Q 20After Peter's party wrecked John Evelyn's house at Deptford in 1698, which famous architect was sent to assess the damage?
Christopher Wren
Christopher Wren. As the King's surveyor he toured the house with the royal gardener; Evelyn's servant had already warned his master that it was 'full of people, and right nasty'.
Q 24When the office of Patriarch of Moscow fell vacant in 1700, what did Peter do?
Refused to name a replacement
Refused to name a replacement. He left the post empty for 21 years, then abolished it and put the Church under a board of bishops watched by a lay official he chose himself.
Q 25Peter's first attempt to seize the Baltic coast ended in disaster at which 1700 battle?
Narva
Narva. A far smaller Swedish army attacked out of a snowstorm blowing into Russian faces, yet Peter later called the rout a blessing: 'Necessity drove away sloth.'
Q 26After a crushing defeat by Sweden in 1700, what did Peter order melted down to make cannons and mortars?
Church bells
Church bells. He had lost almost all his artillery in the rout, and bell metal was the quickest way to replace it: some 300 new guns were soon cast.
Q 27Saint Petersburg began in May 1703 as an island fortress now named for which pair of saints?
Peter and Paul
Peter and Paul. The fortress came first and the city grew up around it; from about 1720 its cells held the state's political prisoners, a role it kept for two centuries.
Q 28To free up skilled workers for his new capital, what did Peter forbid?
Stone buildings anywhere else in Russia
Stone buildings anywhere else in Russia. The ban sent every mason to the marshy site, where tens of thousands of conscripted serfs also laboured each year in conditions that killed many of them.
Q 29The Italian traveller Francesco Algarotti gave Saint Petersburg a lasting nickname in 1739, calling it Russia's what onto Europe?
Window
Window. He wrote of a 'great window recently opened in the north through which Russia looks on Europe': Peter had built the city on captured marshland to give Russia the Baltic port it lacked.
Q 30Who moved Russia's capital from Saint Petersburg back to Moscow in 1918?
The Bolsheviks
The Bolsheviks. Lenin moved the government in March 1918 to get it away from the border and the advancing Germans, ending two centuries in which Peter's city had outranked Moscow.