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This book investigates Russia´s transformation into a European Power by way of the activities of the tsarist translator and official Andrei Vinius, who became an important advisor to Peter the Great. Vinius emerges as an influential conduit of Western culture and technology, who played a key role in transforming Muscovy into Russia.

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Acknowledgements Introduction 1. The Disappearing Dutch and Russia´s Modernisation 2. The Young Vinius 3. At the Foreign Office 4. Intrepid Diplomat 5. The Miloslavskii Ascendancy: Medicine and Mail 6 Seeker in an Age of Transition 7. Peter´s Confidant 8. At the Siberian Desk 9. Old Servants Never Die, They Merely Fade Away 10. The Books of Andrei Vinius Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Dr. Kees Boterbloem is Professor of History and Coordinator of Russian, East-European and Eurasian Studies at the University of South Florida, USA, and has been the editor of The Historian since 2008. He is the author of three books in English: Life and Death under Stalin: Kalinin Province, 1945-1953 (1999); The Life and Times of Andrei Zhdanov, 1896-1948 (2004); The Fiction and Reality of Jan Struys: A Seventeenth-Century Dutch Globetrotter (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); and one in Dutch: De Lotgevallen van Jan Struys in Rusland en Iran (2012).

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