History of Russia
The war ended in 1721 when an exhausted Sweden sued for peace with Russia. Peter acquired four provinces situated south and east of the Gulf of Finland, thus securing his coveted access to the sea. There, in 1703, he had already founded the city that was to become Russia's new capital, Saint Petersburg, as a "window opened upon Europe" to replace Moscow, long Russia's cultural center. Russian intervention in the Commonwealth marked, with the Silent Sejm, the beginning of a 200-year domination of that region by the Russian Empire. In celebration of his conquests, Peter assumed the title of emperor, and the Russian Tsardom officially became the Russian Empire in 1721.
Azerbaijanis in Russia
Diplomatic missions and merchants from Shirvan and the Safavid Empire first appeared in Russia in the fourteenth and fifteenth century. Despite the Russian Empire conquering what is now Azerbaijan in the early nineteenth century and its incorporation into the Soviet Union in 1920, the Azeri population did not tend to leave its traditional areas of settlement until the second half of the twentieth century. However, isolated communities of Azeris in Russia can trace their existence to the mid-nineteenth century.