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.
First stamp of the Russian Empire
The stamps went on sale 10 December 1857, but officially people started to use them to pay internal correspondence in Russia on 1 January 1858, and on 1 March 1858 in the Caucasus, Transcaucasia, and Siberia. Since then, all private letters had been sent only with postal stamps that were cancelled with two crossed lines. This was because supply of the numerous post offices with postmarks took a while and the Postal Department ordered to cancel stamps with pen and ink following the previous practice of cancelling stamped envelopes. A total of 3,00,000 stamps were printed.