Response to "Peter the Great is not a totalitarian dictator like Hitler"

I think that it is pretty obvious that "Peter the Great is not a totalitarian dictator like Hitler" as Danielle puts it, I mean, let's be honest, Hitler is the go-to person when you think about being a totalitarian dictator, so it's not entirely fair to say that Peter the Great was not as bad of a totalitarian dictator as Hitler and therefore was not a totalitarian dictator. In Danielle's post "My Group and Totalitarianism", she defines totalitarianism as: "a political system whereby a state regulates every aspect of public and private life". While I understand that Hitler took this to an extreme and he DID manipulate the public, I think that Hitler also had the means (such as through propaganda and mass-communication) to manipulate the public. Peter the Great didn't rule during a period in which it was so easy to manipulate the masses. While Peter the Great couldn't EASILY influence the masses as Hitler could, Peter the Great DOES control "public and private life"--he forced the nobility to forfeit their power and join the government in order to maintain/regain their status (through the Table of Ranks), after he gained the territory where he would put St. Petersburg he forced families to relocate and move to this inconvenient and foreign (to the people) location, and he eliminated many Russian traditions through his process of westernization.

I didn't mean to make it sound as if Peter the Great was some sort of super nice ruler who wanted to have a "good reputation" in history--he wanted to cement his name in history as a POWERFUL ruler and he completely changed the Russian identity and evolved the Russian presence in Europe in order to insure that his power was forever remembered.