sultan elsewhere, notably in Serbia and Montenegro. In July 1711, the tsar found himself at the head of an inadequate army in need of ammunition and supplies and surrounded by vastly superior Turkish forces near the Pruth river. Argument persists to this day as to why the Turks did not make more of their overwhelming advantage. Suggested answers have ranged from the weariness and losses of the Turkish troops to skillful Russian diplomacy and even bribery. In any case Peter the Great signed a peace treaty, according to which he abandoned his southern fleet, returned Azov and other gains of 1700 to the Turks, promised not to intervene in Poland, and guaranteed to Charles XII safe passage to Sweden. But, at the price of renouncing acquisitions to the south, he was enabled to extricate himself from a catastrophic situation and retain a dominant hand in the Great Northern War.
That war, decided in effect in 1709, dragged on for many more years. After Poltava, the tsar transferred his main effort to the Baltic, seizing
Viborg - or Viipuri - Riga, and Reval in 1710. St. Petersburg could be considered secure at last. The debacle of Charles XII in Ukraine led to a revival of the coalition against him. Saxony, Poland, Denmark, Prussia, and Hanover joined Russia against Sweden. In new circumstances, Peter the Great developed his military operations along two chief lines: Russian troops helped the allies in their campaigns on the southern shore of the Baltic, while other forces continued the advance in the eastern Baltic area. Thus in 1713-14 the tsar occupied most of Finland. The new Russian navy became ever more active, scoring a victory under Peter's direct command over the Swedish fleet off Hango in 1714.
It may be worth noting that the sudden rise of Russia came as something of a shock to other European countries, straining relations, for example, between Great Britain and Russia. It also led to considerable fear and worried speculations about the intentions and future steps of the northern giant; this was reflected later in such forgeries as the purported testament of Peter the Great which expressed his, and Russia's, aim to conquer the world. In 1717 the tsar traveled to Paris, and, although he failed to obtain any diplomatic results beyond the French promise not to help Sweden, once more he saw and learned much. In December 1718, Charles XII was killed in a minor military engagement in Norway. His sister Ulrika Eleonora and later her husband Frederick I succeeded to the Swedish throne. Unable to reverse the course of the war and, indeed, increasingly threatened, for Peter the Great proceeded to send expeditions into Sweden proper in 1719-21, the Swedes finally admitted defeat and made peace. In 1720-21, by the Treaties of Stockholm, Frederick I reached settlements with Saxony, Poland, Denmark, Prussia, and Hanover, abandoning some islands and territory south of the Baltic, mostly in favor of Prussia. And on August 30, 1721, Sweden concluded the Treaty of Nystadt with Russia.
By the provisions of the Treaty of Nystadt Russia acquired Livonia, Estonia, Ingermanland, part of Karelia, and certain islands, although it returned the bulk of Finland and paid two million rix-dollars. In effect it obtained the so-called Baltic provinces which were to become, after the Treaty of Versailles, the independent states of Estonia and Latvia and later the corresponding Soviet republics, only to recover their independence when the Soviet Union collapsed, and also obtained southeastern Finnish borderlands located strategically next to St. Petersburg and the Gulf of Finland. The capture and retention of the fortress of Viborg in particular gave Russia virtual control of the Gulf. At a solemn celebration of the peace settlement the Senate prevailed upon Peter I to accept the titles of 'Great,' 'Father of the Fatherland,' and 'Emperor.' In this manner Russia formally became an empire, and one can say that the imperial period of Russian history was officially inaugurated, even though some European powers took their time in recognizing the new title
of the Russian ruler: only Prussia and the Netherlands did so immediately, Sweden in 1723, Austria and Great Britain in 1742, France and Spain as late as 1745.
In modern European history the Great Northern War was one of the important wars and Poltava one of the decisive battles. The Russian victory over Sweden and the resulting Treaty of Nystadt meant that Russia became firmly established on the Baltic, acquiring its essential 'window into Europe,' and that in fact it replaced Sweden as the dominant power in the north of the continent. Moreover, Russia not only humiliated Sweden but also won a preponderant position vis-a-vis its ancient rival Poland, became directly involved in German affairs - a relationship which included marital alliances arranged by the tsar for his and his half-brother Ivan V's daughters - and generally stepped forth as a major European power. The Great Northern War, and the War of the Spanish Succession fought at the same time, can be regarded as successful efforts to change the results of the Thirty Years' War and to curb the two chief victors of that conflict, Sweden and France. The settlement in the north, it might be added, turned out to be more durable than that in the west. Indeed, because of the relative sizes, resources, and numbers of inhabitants of Russia and Sweden, Peter the Great's defeat of Charles XII proved to be irreversible.
Although the Great Northern War lasted for most of Peter's reign and although it had first claim on Russian efforts and resources, the tsar never forgot Turkey or the rest of Asia either. We have noted the two wars that he fought against the Ottomans, the first successful and the second unsuccessful in the midst of the hostilities with Sweden. After Nystadt, the emperor turned south once more, or rather southeast. In 1722-23 he fought Persia successfully, in spite of great difficulties of climate and communication, to obtain a foothold on the western and southern shores of the Caspian sea. This foothold was relinquished by Russia in 1732, shortly after Peter's death.
Earlier the tsar had shown a considerable interest in Central Asia, its geography, peoples - particularly the Kazakhs - and routes, and especially in the possibility of large-scale trade with India. Whereas most of the Russian contacts with Central Asia were peaceful, a tragic exception occurred in 1717 when a considerable force commanded by Prince Alexander Bekovich-Cherkassky was tricked and massacred by the supposedly friendly khan of Khiva. Peter the Great ordered young men to learn Turkish, Tartar, and Persian, assigning them for this purpose to appropriate diplomatic missions. He even established classes in Japanese, utilizing the services of
a castaway from that hermit island empire. The tsar sent a mission to Mongolia and maintained diplomatic and commercial relations with China, which resulted in the negotiation of the Treaty of Kiakhta shortly after his death, and in the permanent establishment of an important mission of the Russian Orthodox Church in Peking. He initiated the scholarly study of Siberia; and, indeed, the emperor's interest extended even to the island of Madagascar!
In regard to internal affairs during the reign of Peter the Great, we find that scholars have taken two extreme and opposite approaches. On the one hand, the tsar's reforming of Russia has been presented as a series, or rather a jumble, of disconnected
Yet a balanced judgment has to allow something to the opposite point of view as well. Although Peter the Great was preoccupied during most of his reign with the Great Northern War and although he had to sacrifice much else to its successful prosecution, his reforming of Russia was by no means limited to hectic measures to bolster the war effort. In fact, he wanted to Westernize and modernize all of the Russian government, society, life, and culture, and even if his efforts fell far short of this stupendous goal, failed to dovetail, and left huge gaps, the basic pattern emerges, nevertheless,
