Deadline:  19 March 2018 XI International Peter the Great Congress «PETER I AND THE EAST» St Petersburg, 1-2 June 2018 Every year St. Petersburg hosts International Peter the Great Congresses dedicated to the study of the Petrine epoch, preservation and promotion of its legacy and the development of cultural tourism. The Congresses are held under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the Committee of Culture of St Petersburg, and are organized by the State Hermitage Museum, the Peterhof State National Park Museum, the St Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Cultural Programmes, the Peter the Great Institute, and the Dmitry Likhachev Foundation. The year 2018 having been declared the Year of Japan in Russia and the Year of Russian-Indian Tourism, it was decided to dedicate the Eleventh Peter the Great Congress to the vast topic of Peter the Great and the East. In Peter’s time, numerous trade caravans and diplomatic missions traveled back and forth from Russia to the East – countries of Middle Asia, Persia, India and China. Peter the Great was the first to send out expeditions to study “the Russian East” – the Caspian Sea area, the Caucasus, Siberia, and Kamchatka. As the result of these expeditions the first collections of natural and man-made objects from Siberia and Eastern countries now held in the Hermitage, the Chamber of Curiosities and the Moscow Kremlin Museums were started in Russia. * * * Since the 17th century Astrakhan had been the centre of Russian commercial and political connections with Persia, India, countries of Middle Asia and through them with China. In Peter’s times Astrakhan’s role as “the Gate to the East” grew. The city had big colonies of Armenian, Persian, and Indian merchants, and the relations with the nomadic Kalmyk tribes wandering in the territories around Astrakhan were settled during Peter’s reign as well. One of Peter’s great initiatives was the scientific study of Russia’s geography. In 1698 soon after his return from the Grand Embassy Peter ordered to start mapping the Caspian Sea which was a real “mare incognitum” at those times. The work had been completed by 1721 and Peter sent a copy of the Map to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris. The idea of dispatching the first expeditions to explore...