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 of the 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 thefirst 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 of hostilities, 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 Common-
wealth 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 becom-
ing 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“SilentSejm,”surrounding the Polish
Parliament with Russian troops to force passage of a Russian program to stymie the
16 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801