Russia in the 16th–18th centuries

At the start of the 16th century the Russian lands united around Moscow and a centralised state formed. In 1547 Ivan IV was the first to be crowned tsar; in 1549 he called a Zemsky Sobor, and a new law code, the Sudebnik, followed. In 1565–1572 the oprichnina — a policy of terror against the tsar’s opponents — did great harm to the country. The Kazan, Astrakhan and Siberian khanates were annexed to Russia. After the Rurik dynasty ended in 1598 the “Time of Troubles” began; a people’s militia under Minin and Pozharsky freed Moscow from the Polish army in 1612, and in 1613 Mikhail Romanov was elected tsar — the Romanov dynasty ruled until 1917. Peter I (on the throne from 1682, ruling alone from 1696) defeated Sweden in the Northern War of 1700–1721 and reached the Baltic, founded St Petersburg in 1703, and after the Peace of Nystad was proclaimed emperor in 1721. In the 18th century the Academy of Sciences was founded, and in 1755 Moscow University was opened on the initiative of M. V. Lomonosov; explorers such as Bering and Chelyuskin studied the north. But because serfdom remained, Russia fell behind Europe economically.