Vengeance for Stolbovo: Tsar Aleksei’s Quest for an Anti-Swedish Alliance with Denmark in the 1650s

• In Event: Three Studies of Russian Foreign Policy in the Early Modern Era

Abstract

In the summer of 1656, Tsar Aleksei dispatched Muscovite troops to seize Swedish Ingria and Livonia, predating the better-known (and more successful) ventures of his son in these territories during the Great Northern War (1700-21). Aleksei hoped to reverse a century of Russian misfortune at the hands of Stockholm, dating back to the disastrous Livonian campaigns of Ivan IV (1558-83) and the humiliating Treaty of Stolbova (1617). Integral to Aleksei’s plans was a proposed alliance with Denmark, which had also faced embarrassing losses to Sweden in the preceding decade. The Russo-Danish negotiations of the mid-1650s demonstrate not only the enduring place of the eastern Baltic in Moscow’s foreign policy, but also the important role Copenhagen played as a potential partner in the region.

Author

• Earl Joshua Hodil, Pomona College