The History of Peter , as well as other books Brickner, was written in German, and is addressed primarily to the European reader. Born in Russia, and the remaining lifetime associated with it strong ties, Brickner, however, felt it a man of the West. He lived in Russia for most of his life, he loved his homeland, was proud of her, and she has devoted all his scientific works (including the main - Die Europaisirung Russlands , 1887), which with great humility, admitted that before entering the full number of leading European countries Russia still has a long way to go. Brickner is widely used in his History of Peter foreign sources, which enables the reader to see the domestic many well-known episodes of the Petrine era in unexpected angle. For the European reader are extremely useful facts from Russian archives, with which the author deals with easy to speculation and negligence Western eyewitnesses and tendentious historiography.