Peter the Great

Russian Tsar who forcibly modernized Russia — traveling incognito through Western Europe to learn shipbuilding, founding St. Petersburg on swamp as a 'window to the West,' defeating Sweden at Poltava to make Russia a Baltic power, and transforming Russia from a medieval Muscovite tsardom into a European-style empire.

Created modern Russia by importing Western institutions, technology, and culture through coercive top-down revolution — the St. Petersburg founding, the Westernized court, the reformed army, and the Table of Ranks all represent the prototype of the modernizing autocrat who drags a society into a new era against its own conservatism.