This paper concerns and articulates the impact of Peter the Great (reigned 1682–1725) reform on formation of Russian accounting by studying one of the most valuable law act of the epoch. The study highlights the role of economic and legal doctrines of the time in the changes that affected the Petrine public administration. It has two main objectives. Firstly to reveal interrelation between historical phenomena of mercantilism, regular army and systematic accounting in the context of the eighteenth-century Russia. Then to discover the sources of Russian accounting and to trace its linkages with European patterns. The study proves that the first Russian accounting rules came from the French sources and provides a review of accounting procedures established by the Admiralty Regulation. It also recognizes military influences, which played an important role in the evolution of governmental and even private sector accounting in Russia in the eighteenth century. Accounting discourse supplements the conception of Peter the Great’s epoch, its reformative character.