In St. Petersburg, I saw in the square in front of St. Isaac's Cathedral, the magnificent equestrian statue of Peter the Great with his hand lifted pointing his nation onward and eastward toward the sea. Peter was the maker of modern Russia. In many respects, he well deserved the name "great," but he was subject to maniacal outbursts of fury and anger. In one of such outbursts, he killed his own son. Toward the end of his reign, Peter the Great once remarked, "I have conquered an empire but I was not able to conquer myself."
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