What to read after Peter the Great?

A history of Russian politics during a fifty-year period which saw the transformation of Russia into a more-or-less European monarchy by Peter the Great. It demonstrates that at the core of Russian politics was the interaction of the tsar and the ruling elite. Peter managed to largely master that contentious elite by a series of compromises, ultimately towards a compromise which favoured new men without excluding the aristocrats entirely. The outcome was new balance of power at the centre, and a new Europeanised culture.