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.
Stenka Razin
Russia began the 17th century with the Time of Troubles, which lasted from 1598 to 1613. This time marked the end of the Rurik dynasty and the beginning of the Romanov dynasty (which would eventually end with the October Revolution and the execution of the last tsar, Nicholas II, and the tsarevich, Alexei Nikolaevich in 1918). Michael Romanov (tsar from 1613 to 1645) and his son Alexis (tsar from 1645 to 1676) both strove to strengthen the power of the tsar in order to stabilize the country after the turmoil of the Time of Troubles. As a result, the Zemsky Sobor and the boyar council, two other bodies of government in Russia, slowly lost influence. The Russian population went from fifteen years of "near anarchy" to the reigns of two strong, centralizing autocrats.