At the end of the sixteenth century Muscovite territory covered about 5.4 million square kilometres and carried a population of about seven million inhabitants. During the Troubles its territory and population probably contracted significantly, for much of the north-west and west fell under Swedish or Polish occupation and Moscow’s control over much of the south was contested by rebel cossack bands and the Tatars. But by 1678 Muscovite territory had tripled and its population had recovered and expanded to about 10.5 million souls.

Much of this territorial expansion had occurred east of the Urals, on land that was sparsely populated and unable to mount much resistance. The real demonstration of revived Muscovite imperial power had been made on the southern steppe frontier and in the south-west and west. Through protracted war, military colonisation and more adroit diplomacy the government of the early Romanov tsars had recovered the lost provinces of Smolensk and Seversk, placed Kiev and eastern Ukraine under protectorate and moved the realm’s southern frontier from the forest-steppe zone into the depths of the steppe. In the process two traditional enemies of Muscovite imperial power, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Crimean khanate, found their own military and diplomatic power considerably reduced. Two more powerful challengers, Sweden and the Ottoman Empire, had also been fought, but for relatively brief periods and with mixed results (failure to wrest control of the Livonian coast, but success at deterring Ottoman attack on left-bank Ukraine). Recognition that Muscovy was becoming a great power in northern and eastern Europe was apparent in Swedish and Ottoman efforts in the 1620s–1630s to enlist her in coalition against the Commonwealth and German Empire and in Polish and Austrian efforts in the 1680s to bring her into the Holy League.