The study investigates historical contextualization of digital modernization, which was proclaimed in Russia after 2007 as the main vector of national policy. We studied the applying of the Peter the Great image in Russian mass media as a precedent historical phenomenon. It is relevant not only for traditional media, but also for digital communication, because the most of the central political communities in Russia, in vk.com for example, "are related to the traditional media, which have the maximum communication resources to attract the attention of users"[1]: [73]. Based on a study of 639 media texts published in five major Russian newspapers from 2007 to 2020, we obtain the results, that this image was actualized by the current modernization (together with the images of Stalin and Ivan the Terrible) as "the actual past", to comprehend the socio-political realities of the present. We identify the main topic changes, the tonality transformations, as well as the periodization of the today Russian modernization communication.