Signed | 10 September [ O.S. 30 August] 1721 |
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Location | Nystad, Sweden (Present-day Uusikaupunki, Finland) |
Original signatories |
The Treaty of Nystad ( Russian: Ништадтский мир; Finnish: Uudenkaupungin rauha; Swedish: Freden i Nystad; Estonian: Uusikaupunki rahu) was the last peace treaty of the Great Northern War of 1700–1721. It was concluded between the Tsardom of Russia and the Swedish Empire on 10 September [ O.S. 30 August] 1721 in the then Swedish town of Nystad (Finnish: Uusikaupunki, in the south-west of present-day Finland). Sweden had settled with the other parties in Stockholm (1719 and 1720) and in Frederiksborg (1720).
During the war Peter I of Russia had occupied all Swedish possessions on the eastern Baltic coast: Swedish Ingria (where he began to build the soon-to-be Russian capital of St. Petersburg in 1703), Swedish Estonia and Swedish Livonia (which had capitulated in 1710), and Finland.
In Nystad, King Frederick I of Sweden formally recognized the transfer of Estonia, Livonia, Ingria, and Southeast Finland ( Kexholms län and part of Karelian Isthmus) to Russia in exchange for two million silver thaler, while Russia returned the bulk of Finland to Swedish rule. [1] [2]
The Treaty enshrined the rights of the German Baltic nobility within Estonia and Livonia to maintain their financial system, their existing customs border, their self-government, their Lutheran religion, and the German language; this special position in the Russian Empire was reconfirmed by all Russian Tsars from Peter the Great (reigned 1682-1725) to Alexander II [3] (reigned 1855-1881).
Nystad manifested the decisive shift in the European balance of power which the war had brought about: the Swedish imperial era had ended; Sweden entered the Age of Liberty, while Russia had emerged as a new empire.
In pre-1917 Saint Petersburg, in the Vyborgsky district (relatively nearest to Russo-Finnish border) one of the thoroughfares (now Lesnoy prospekt) was named after the Nystad treaty (Nystadt Street, Rus. Ништадтская улица). [4] The district also houses a church commemorating the first Russian victory in the Great Northern war, the Battle of Poltava – St. Sampsonius' Cathedral.
Vyborg, Leningrad Region. October 7-8, 2021