Tsardom of Russia

Tsardom of Russia. Also known as the Tsardom of Moscow. The centralized Russian state from the assumption of the title of Tsar by Ivan IV in 1547 until the foundation of the Russian Empire by Peter the Great in 1721. The Tsar was akin to an Emperor.

From 1550 to 1700, Russia grew by an average of 14,000 sq mi per year. The period includes the upheavals of the transition from the Rurik to the Romanov dynasties, wars with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Sweden, and the Ottoman Empire, and the Russian conquest of Siberia, to the reign of Peter the Great, who took power in 1689 and transformed the Tsardom into an empire.