The article analyses the formation of F. Tuglas’s translation strategy after 1940, during the Sovietisation of Estonian culture. It compares the main narrative techniques in Aleksey Tolstoy’s novel and the ways of their rendering in the Estonian translation. The conclusion is drawn that the forms of translating Russian classics that had been established in the 1930s continued to function in the Soviet period. In the translation of Peter I, these elements of the source text predominate that relate to the concept of Russian literature as part of Western European culture. Tuglas may have been interested in translating Tolstoy’s novel as a creative project for several reasons. First, translating the novel enabled him, primarily on the basis of his own creation, to actualise the linguistic and stylistic space of Estonian literature in the memory of the reader. Secondly, the translation of Peter I gave Tuglas an opportunity to continue linguistic and stylistic experiments.