@alexmilman could you please go in for some educational work on stereotypes? Because your longposts on subject read much better than my longposts.
Long story short - Peter's reforms in many aspects were "reforms" in sence of mindless cosplay without genuine purpose. His Navy building, while impressive on paper, was just for a single war and rotted happily afterwards. Peter completely failed to create any proper merchant navy, and the export of Russian goods was still performed by Dutch/British traders.
The reforms were also done without any, if superficial, understanding of economics.
Just because he made the court cosplay Dutch fashions instead of Polish fashions that were in vogue in previous reigns, don't make him some uber-progressive. Later reigns (Anna Ioannovna, for example) had to apply a ton of fixes just to make this stuff work.
You did it quite well on your own.
To start with, Peter did not get any kind of an education even by the contemporary standards and in his youth was communicating mostly with the scumbags from the German Settlement (this does not mean that the settlers were scum, he was just picking ones as Lefort). Small wonder that for him advantages of the Western civilization were limited to the superficial trappings like civilian and military dress, smoking, etc.
The “West” had trade companies, fine, Russia must have ones and it did not matter that it lacked the notion of credit or the merchant class interested in a maritime trade (it seems that the most famous overseas enterprise was a ship with the Russian merchants arriving to Copenhagen to sell the wooden spoons
).
The “West” had ...er... “western style armies” so instead of continuing the earlier reforms in that area, let’s break everything and start from the scratch slavishly copying everything with a disregard to the cultural specifics, climate and other trifles (Russian soldiers got the overcoats only during the reign of Paul I). Needless to say that in the general organization, uniforms, tactics and weapons he always managed to chose the worst case available as a model.
As I understand, there was some underlying XVII philosophy about the state benefitting from a complete governmental control with the government acting upon the orders of a monarch who knows better for his subjects. So in that sense Peter was quite consistent, especially in his disregard of the annoying realities. Now, taking into an account that Russia was a very poor country with a very backward economy, development by a decree was not working as intended even if there were some short-/mid-term successes like creation of the metallurgy on Ural (and “Demidov Empire”) but it was producing and selling abroad the peg iron, not the finished goods.
Production of the woolen fabrics to which he paid a lot of attention (including order to buy and breed the “right” sheep) did not really pick up until the late XIX but, OTOH, the flax-based textile production, after surviving Peter’s (rather destructive) directives, became one of the fastest growing Russian industries (with the exports to the Asian markets) just because government mostly ignored it.
The ship construction, as you mentioned, was for a single war and even in that war the big ships proved to be almost useless because most of the naval operations had been conducted by the galleys (an excellent TL by
@Archduke is very flattering to the Baltic fleet
). Outside the ships purchased abroad, the Russian ships had been built out of a timber not dried properly (of course, Peter issued an order for using the high quality oak but, with an avalanche of other directives, these oak trunks had been laying on the River banks completely forgotten). The wharfs had been built in a low salt water area in conveniently located and then kept in a mouth of a major river, rotting within few years. Eventually (after Peter’s death) at least some of the wharfs had been transferred to the White Sea (among other things, Peter closed port of Archangelsk to promote St-Petersburg). Speaking of which, in his drive to create Russian navy Peter destroyed the only Russian naval culture by ordering settlers of the North to build their ships following the Dutch model, which, unlike the local “kotch”, was not suited for sailing in the icy waters.
With the military expenses amounting to the 80 - 90% of the state income, population had been heavily taxed but the model, while being extremely oppressive, was not producing the expected results (the attempt to change it had been made immediately after Peter’s death) and “solution” had been found in billeting the troops in private homes with the resulting endless extortions.
To promote science (and whatever else) Peter founded the Russian academy but forgot to provide money for the students. The young nobles sent abroad had been, presumably, learning some carpenting skills and other manual stuff but were not getting any regular education, especially in the areas needed by the officers, civic administrators, etc. Engineering (both military and civic) skills were in an extremely short supply with practically no local cadres getting the needed education and a complete reliance upon the foreigners like Munnich (who was, indeed, a very capable specialist but even his knowledge was not used for educating the locals). Hence the standard complaints about the “tyrany by the Germans” even at the times when most of the high-ranking positions had been held by the Russians: these “Germans” were practically the only people with a necessary education and/or willingness to do a thorough work in their area of responsibility (does not mean that they were less corrupt but this is a different issue).
And the list is going on in pretty much each and every aspect of life.
