This collection of documents on Peter the Great's reforms presents key texts that define his policies across various domains and depict the state of the Russian Empire in the early 18th century. It includes legislative materials, publicist writings from the Petrine era, notes from several prominent figures of the time, and accounts from foreign observers. Regarding this collection—much like any other anthology published in the 1920s and 30s—I must say the following: Over the past decade, the independent scholarly value of such books has rapidly approached zero. The sources included in these collections were often published in a rather crude form. Due to ideological constraints, and frequently simply due to a lack of paper, the sources were abridged according to the whims of the compiler and/or the reviewers/censors. Isolated quotes were extracted to support specific arguments, while lengthy passages often featured strange gaps that could only be filled by consulting pre-revolutionary editions. Fortunately, nearly all the materials included in these anthologies are now accessible in their complete form. However, we cannot blame the compilers. They did their best under the harsh conditions faced by historical scholarship in the USSR during the 1920s and 30s. Moreover, some fragmented excerpts were taken not from already published sources but directly from archival originals. While these instances are few, they do exist in every anthology from that era. Lastly, there remains a popular-scientific value to these collections. For those not delving deeply into the study of thousands of documents from this fascinating period, even a brief acquaintance with a couple of hundred documents can be both interesting and valuable.