Russia ended the seventeenth century in a strong position, despite Crimean failures. The 1686 Eternal Peace marked the moment when Russian power eclipsed that of the Commonwealth, and the Commonwealth's evident disarray promised further opportunities for Russia's Baltic and steppe ambitions.
RUSSIA AND THE WORLD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Through the eighteenth century, Russia's foreign policy concerns were shaped by its long-term trade aspirations and short-term opportunities. Booming European markets meant that competition for the Baltic would continue, as would Russia's focus on the Black and Caspian Seas. The eighteenth century was the century par excellence of "balance of power" politics, and Russia became a European geopolitical player. Common antagonism to both the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman empire shaped alliances with Austria, while Prussia proved a more problematic partner in its interest against the Commonwealth. Farther afield, Russia generally associated itself with Britain because of lively trade between the two countries.
Peter I (ruled 1682-1725) launched his diplomatic career incognito, traveling Europe on his Grand Embassy, recruiting engineers and military experts and meeting with rulers in Brandenburg, London, Saxony, and Vienna, trying to raise enthusiasm for an anti-Turkish coalition. Lacking that, he found interest in Saxony on a campaign against Sweden, which ultimately brought together in 1700 a coalition of Russia, Poland, and Denmark (joined by lesser powers Prussia, Hanover, and Saxony) against the dynamic Charles XII and the most modern military and navy in the Baltic arena. For what became known as the Great Northern War (1700-21), major powers flocked to support Sweden (Ottoman empire, England, Holland, France), with the Habsburgs watching nervously from the side. Russia's part in the war was primarily played out against Sweden in a few naval battles and on the plains of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Russia momentously defeated Charles at Poltava in 1709, by and large ending Russia's involvement in the Great Northern War, which continued on through the 1710s elsewhere. In the midst of it (1717) the Vatican fruitlessly proposed another church union and anti-Turkish alliance to Russia (an effort repeated again 1728-31). When it was all settled by the Treaty of Nystad in 1721, Russia had won Livonia (Livland and Estland) and parts of Karelia including the Gulf of Finland borderland where Peter had boldly founded St. Petersburg in 1703. Peter claimed the title of emperor in 1721 and Russia spent the next several decades winning European recognition for this upstart move: Prussia and Holland accepted it right away, Sweden in 1723 and Saxony in 1733, the Ottoman empire in 1741, Austria and Great Britain in 1742, and France and Spain in 1745. Poland held out until 1764.
The Great Northern War established Russia as a major force in central Europe and marked the beginning of Sweden's geopolitical decline. Subsequent Swedish- Russian wars (1741-3 and 1788-90) resulted in minor territorial gains in Finland for Russia but were not regionally significant. Russia's success on the Baltic masks the failures of Peter I's ambitions in the Black and Caspian Sea theaters. In the midst ofthe war in 1710, for example, Peter I threatened the Ottoman empire with war if they did not release the wounded Charles XII who was sheltering in Istanbul. The Ottomans called Peter's bluff, and in the following year inflicted a bitter defeat on Russia at Prut, forcing it to relinquish its fortress and claim to Azov (1711). Just as Peter's Black Sea acquisitions were short-lived, so were his efforts against the faltering Safavid empire. In 1715 Russia sent a trade mission to Persia and in 1722 declared war, winning Derbent and Baku and the south and southwestern shores of the Caspian. But Russia was forced to yield these gains in 1733 in return for Persian support for the first Russo-Turkish War (1737-9) of the century.
After Peter I's dynamic reign, Russia withdrew from so active a military policy to put its budget in order. Expansion across Siberia continued inexorably, as did Russian control in Bashkiria and into the steppe. But the most heated action was to the west. In the middle decades of the eighteenth century Russian rulers were sidetracked into disputes to defend dynastic ties in central Europe that Peter I had made, particularly with Holstein and Mecklenburg. Alliances shifted constantly as European powers sought equilibrium territorially and in regional influence. As a rule from the 1720s through the 1750s Russia maintained a close alliance with Austria, arrayed against the usual bedfellows of Sweden, France, and the Ottoman empire, but coalitions frequently shifted. By the 1750s Russia was drawn into the Seven Years War (1756-63), which aligned Russia with Saxony, Austria, and France against a new British-Prussian alliance that destabilized the European balance of power. The war went badly for Prussia, reassuring European powers that this aggressive upstart had been checked. At the peak ofhostilities, however, in 1762 Peter III upended the chessboard by pulling out of the war and signing an alliance with Prussia. He was motivated by dynastic (Holstein) and economic considerations (the Seven Years War had been cripplingly expensive), but his successor Catherine II realized the benefits in the new configuration. Russia's alliance with Prussia not only set in motion events that prevented Austria and France from aggrandizing too much territory and kept power on the continent "balanced," but also advanced Russia's interests on the Baltic and in westward expansion. For the rest of the century Catherine excelled at realpolitik, working her Prussian and Habsburg alliances to facilitate Russia's expansion into the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania and the Black Sea coast.
Russia was a great beneficiary of the weakness of the Commonwealth. Stunned by invasions and war in the second half of the seventeenth century, it had lost the Left Bank Hetmanate to Russia and its fractured political system opened it up to foreign interference. Russia, the rising state of Brandenburg-Prussia, the Habs- burgs, and France cooperated to subvert the Polish parliamentary process (Polish kings were elected by Parliament). Their goal was to prevent Poland from becoming an effective, modern state and military power; to that end Russia took a particularly direct role in controlling electoral politics, starting with the time of Peter I. In 1717 Russia staged the infamous "Silent Sejm," surrounding the Polish Parliament with Russian troops to force passage of a Russian program to stymie the power ofthe monarch, army, and noble government. Peter I went on to win treaties of cooperation—Prussia (1720), Turkey (1720), Sweden (1724), and Austria (1726)—to prevent reform in the Commonwealth, under the cynical guise of protecting its (decentralizing, politically paralyzing) "golden freedoms" from any meaningful reform. Throughout the century Russia and others manipulated elections of Polish kings and bribed noble factions to exercise the paralyzing liberum veto in Parliament or to stage revolts (confederations) supportive of Russian interests. Russian ambassadors in Warsaw systematically imposed obstacles to political and economic reform.
Prussia was an eager partner in this anti-Polish policy. Intent on geographically uniting its two halves—the Duchy of Brandenburg and Prussia—and expanding further by winning from the Commonwealth Royal Prussia, Gdansk, and Samo- gitia on the Baltic and some of Poland's fertile central plain, Prussia excelled at diplomatic maneuvering. It negotiated itself out of vassal status to Poland in 1657, for example, convinced the Habsburg emperor to award Brandenburg the title of "King in Prussia" in 1701 and elbowed its way into Habsburg/Polish/Russian politics from 1770 onward in order to win a share in each of the three partitions of Poland (1772, 1793, 1795). The Habsburgs were, meanwhile, less threatened by the Commonwealth, but cooperated to secure territory and support against the Ottoman empire.