In reality, the situation was quite different. Poland's problems extended beyond magnate quarrels with the king and with one another. The Cossack rebellion of 1648 and the subsequent wars had largely been fought on Polish territory, leading to economic catastrophe and demographic collapse. It did not regain its pre-1648 population (about 11 million) until the middle of the eighteenth century. Further, its crucial grain exports met increasing competition from improved farming techniques in Holland and England, its main markets. Polish cities stagnated after 1648, falling in population and prosperity The most ruthless government would have raised revenue with difficulty in this situation, but revenue for the army was almost entirely at the will of the diet (Polish parliament) and the szlachta (nobility) served in the army as volunteer cavalry or on the wages of great magnates. A modern infantry army was an impossibility. The king also could not fully control Poland's Baltic ports (Danzig and Elbing) nor could he build a navy.
Sweden was in much better shape, but also had weaknesses under the surface. The new naval base at Karlskrona made it possible to check the Danish navy and control at least the northern Baltic, as long as England or Holland did not intervene. Sweden's army was the best trained and organised in the area, for the system of cantoning the army (indelningsverk) on particular districts preserved it as a fighting force even in peacetime. Sweden's state organisation, formed under Gustavus Adolphus and count Axel Oxenstierna, gave the country an efficiency that was the envy of Europe. The 1680 proclamation of absolutism by King Charles XI gave, it appeared, the flexibility to the execution of policy that the need to consult the riksdag (Swedish assembly of estates) thwarted. The return of royal lands (the reduktion) seemed to ensure revenue for the absolute king.
This impressive structure was built on sand. Under the Swedish crown was a population of only about 1.8 million in Sweden and Finland and a few hundred thousands in the Baltic provinces and other possessions. These numbers were too small to sustain large armies, and it was always necessary to recruit outside of Sweden. This meant money, and that was in short supply. Sweden was simply too poor to provide enough money, particularly in cash. For most of the seventeenth century the single largest item of cash income for the crown were the Riga tolls. Nothing in Sweden proper could compare. Gustavus Adolphus had pursued his wars by confiscating the tolls in Polish and Ducal Prussia and subsidies from France. The economic situation had not changed in any major way by the 1690s, and furthermore those years were ones of poor harvests and famine. Sweden could win a war only by carrying the fight to other lands, exploiting their wealth and attracting subsidies. The brilliance of Swedish organisation, civil and military, made such a strategy possible, but a long war could create immense obstacles.
Russia's strength lay under the surface and the initial underestimation of Peter's chances by allies and enemies alike was entirely understandable. Russia's army was in the process of modernisation, and previous experience demonstrated how difficult that was. The use of mercenaries in the Time of Troubles and the Smolensk War (1632-4) was a failure. Later on Tsar Alexis used European officers to train Russian soldiers, infantry and cavalry, in the new techniques of warfare, fighting in formation and using pikes to supplement musket fire. The change was not complete, however, and Peter had to start anew in the 1690s. Older elements remained, such as the Russian gentry cavalry, even operating in considerable numbers through the early years of the Northern War. The speed of change meant a great lack of trained officers, whom Peter recruited abroad, but that system had its own difficulties. Unless the modernisation was thorough and rapid, the changeover could create even greater confusion, as the first battle of Narva demonstrated.
No one had a clear idea of Russia's economic resources, but everyone knew the distances were vast and communications very poor. It did not have extensive iron production, artisanal or otherwise, and imported weapons in large numbers. Russia had to maintain an expensive permanent army on the southern frontier against the Crimeans. It had no navy, and thus no experienced officers and sailors when Peter built one. The tsar and great boyars were wealthy, but the country as a whole was poor (if not as poor as Sweden) and the administrative structure inadequate. In the provinces the administrative structure was especially limited, leaving the provincial governors with tiny staffs to administer areas the size of several French provinces. The central government in Moscow was slow and cumbersome, operating according to unwritten traditional procedures. Russia lacked not only trained officers but men with a whole series of technical skills necessary to warfare, modern fortification, shipbuilding, mathematically precise artillery. It had no engineers to drain swamps or build canals, rendering the communication problem even worse. Finally, most ofthe Russian elite lacked the general education on which to base the acquisition of these skills. In the terminology of the time, Russia lacked the arts and sciences and was thus 'barbaric'.
Nevertheless, Russia had some crucial advantages of which even her leaders may not have been fully aware. One important advantage was demographic. In Peter's time, from the 1670s to 1719, the population grew from some 11 million to about 15.5 million. In the sixteenth century, Russia and Poland-Lithuania had been similar in population (6 -7 million), probably with an advantage to Poland. After the middle of the seventeenth century Russia had decisively pulled ahead of Poland, and compared to Sweden, it was becoming a giant. This population growth had been rapid after the end of the Time of Troubles, and was accompanied by a shift in settlement away from the western frontier and the centre towards the east, the Urals and the south-east, the Volga and the steppe. This shift also meant that labour was available for the salt wells and iron mines of the north and the Urals, and that better, richer, land was coming under cultivation in the south. Thus grain prices remained stable over a century of population growth. Russia's foreign trade grew throughout the century, primarily through Archangel. As the terms of trade were in Russia's favour, Dutch and English merchants came to the Dvina with their ships ballasted with silver that flowed into the Russian treasury directly at Archangel and indirectly through Russian fairs and market towns. The importance of this trade lay not in any larger economic transformation - Russia remained firmly agrarian - but in the flow of cash which it produced. The tsar, unlike the King of Sweden, had a ready supply of silver coins, coming in from the sales tax and the vodka monopoly. The trade also provided the merchants with modest capital, part of which was invested in iron mines and metalworking shops that supplied the army. None of the favourable economic factors was strong enough to allow Russia to fight a war without difficulty, but all were sufficient to allow protracted conflicts without major crisis. The old Russian administration had been fairly good at procuring resources, and Peter's new methods were even better. He was able to take the war into the territory of his enemies and neighbours, and at the same time Russia's very size and poor communications were immense obstacles to any invader.