History of Russia deficit required borrowing, primarily from Amsterdam; five percent of the budget was allocated to debt payments. Paper money was issued to pay for expensive wars, thus causing inflation. For its spending, Russia obtained a large and glorious army, a very large and complex bureaucracy, and a splendid court that rivaled Paris and London. However, the government was living far beyond its means, and 18th-century Russia remained "a poor, backward, overwhelmingly agricultural, and illiterate country." Peter I was succeeded by his second wife, Catherine I (1725–1727), who was merely a figurehead for a powerful group of high officials, then by his
Catherine Alekseyevna of Russia do with it. According to contemporaries, she was the only one of the half-sisters of tsar Peter the Great never to have angered him, because she never involved herself in politics. She participated in the Orthodox baptism of Catherine I of Russia. In 1716, however, she was briefly suspected by the tsar of being involved in a conspiracy because of her nightly walks with her steward Bogdanov, who was exiled to Siberia. Catherine Alekseyevna of Russia Tsarevna Catherine Alekseyevna (; 27 November 1658 - 1 May 1718) was the fifth daughter of Tsar Alexis of Russia and Maria Miloslavskaya, sister