Orders and instructions of Russian diplomats in Istanbul during the reigne of Peter the Great.

Abstract

The article analyzes the main orders and instructions that Russian diplomats received in the Russian Foreign Policy Department before being sent to the Ottoman court. The Sublime Porte accepted two diplomats as Peter I’s permanent representatives: Ambassador Peter Tolstoy and Resident Ivan Neplyuev. It is shown that Peter Tolstoy’s main order was based on the order of the great ambassador Dmitry Golitsyn and had an established format by that time, the content of which did not reflect the specific duties of an ambassador permanently residing in a foreign country. Resident Ivan Neplyuev and other Russian diplomats arriving in Istanbul on various missions received instructions, not orders. The Resident’s instructions devoted considerable attention to his actions at the Ottoman court. In scholarly literature, the terms “main orders” and “instructions” to ambassadors are often used synonymously. However, these documents appeared at different stages in the development of embassy administration and had different formats