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.
History of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union (1917–27)
The history of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union reflects a period of change for both Russia and the world. Though the terms Soviet Russia and Soviet Union are synonymous in everyday vocabulary, Soviet Russia, in the context of the foundation of the Soviet Union, refers to the few years after the abdication of the crown of the Russian Empire by Tsar Nicholas II (in 1917), but before the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922. Early in its conception, the Soviet Union strived to achieve harmony among all people of all countries. The original ideology of the state was primarily based on the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In its essence, Marx's theory stated that economic and political systems went through an inevitable revolution based upon class struggle, by which the current capitalist system would be destroyed or abolished before achieving international cooperation and peace in a "Workers' Paradise," creating a system directed by what Marx called "Pure Communism." Marx favoured abolishment of the bourgeois state and to establish a new state, however not a copy of the old. A state is not supposed to exist forever and defend development of new class structures. The aim was to create a system with an internal logic and direction based upon spreading the class-struggle worldwide simply because the working class and working population just as the capitalist mode of production is international. Engels at first agreed with the aim to abolish the bourgeois state - but later in London 6 of March 1895 in the introduction to Marx' book 'Class struggle in France 1848-1850' he dismissed the idea of revolution. Engels instead favoured to reach socialism through elections in the capitalist parliaments and not in socialist revolution confronting the capitalist state.