Fedyukin draws on a wealth of unpublished archival sources to demonstrate that the evolution of "modern" schools in Russia under Peter I and his successors was driven not by the omnipresent monarch or the impersonal state, but rather by the efforts of "administrative entrepreneurs" seeking to advance their own agendas. Through massive archival research and lively narration, Fedyukin enhances the abstract structuralist accounts of social historians and takes the reader on an illuminating journey into the activities and personalities that made up the Russian government during decades of unprecedented reform activity.