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.
Romanov Empire (micronation)
Proponents of the new Russian Empire purport it to be the successor of the historical Russian Empire founded by Peter the Great in 1721. As such, the nation stakes its claim to unpopulated territory that belonged to the historical Russian Empire through "right of discovery", but which was not claimed by the Soviet Union after the 1917 Russian Revolution. It does not claim land that was part of the historical Russian Empire that is now part of Finland, Poland, or the former Soviet republics.