Military Engineers and the Rise of Imperial Russia

Before 1690 the Muscovite state was handicapped by its lack of knowledge of western engineering techniques and especially of mathematics and geometry. From the time of Peter the Great it moved rapidly to close the gap with the appointment of experienced foreign engineers, translation work, and the establishment of military academies. Originally lagging behind their Polish-Lithuanian enemies in gunnery and cartography, the Russians had by the eighteenth century introduced a new technical vocabulary into Russian and established good schools of navigation, gunnery, cartography and artillery.