Muscovy has known so little.

And again, Slavophilism, with its theory of successive
civilizations, culled perhaps from the philosophy of Hegel,
each civilization superior to its forerunner, comes to show us
a vision: the gradual displacement of one type of society by
another, but continuing what is best in the preceding until
nothing except what is good remains and universal peace
results, thus portraying the displacement of national
civilizations by universal ones, from which ultimately an
idealistic world policy will result, and the federation and
peace of men.

Some Slavophiles saw even in Peter's work a process of
progressing from nationality to universality. In his time there
was the same yearning toward its peaceful ideal. The "Old
Russia" party wanted Peter to renounce war and conquest.
Alexis, his own murdered son, worked with this element which
was very largely representative of the nation. To them, St.
Petersburg, then a new and growing capitol, was typical of
change, unrest and falsity; Moscow was in their hearts the only
capital, typical of Russia's old comfort and quiet. Many nobles
antagonized Peter, but he swept them aside, imprisoning them or
sending them to the gallows. Like Russia's slight resistance to
Rurik and others, and to the Tartars, so was her feebleness
before Peter the Great, who was himself, however, by no means
an accomplished military leader, but an enlightened barbarian,
dealing with a people whom writers and observers declare to be
endowed with conspicuous traits of humility, scarcely found in
the Christian nations of the western world.