In Russia, a new phase began with the defeat of Sweden at Poltava in 1709. The changes made by Peter the Great before that battle had been tentative and makeshift, dictated mostly by the immediate needs of war. When his victory at Poltava had freed Russia from the threat of invasion, he launched a programme of premeditated and consistent reforms, from which all his most enduring achievements emerged.

In the days of Peter the Great the chief source of Russia's wealth was her forests. The fertile steppe land of the south had not yet been brought under the plough. The spearhead of the southward colonisation movement was formed by the Don Cossacks, most of them deserters from the army, dissenters escaping persecution, or runaway peasants, all of whom despised the plough and lived a life of plunder along the rivers. In central Muscovy, which was the main agricultural area of Russia, some peasants continued the practice of burning tracts of forest, sowing their crops on the ashen soil for thirty to forty years and then moving off to repeat the process elsewhere. Even where the population was more permanent the peasants were reluctant to enrich the soil because their strips of land were redistributed every seven to twelve years. Most peasants used a light wooden plough with an iron share, but some still preferred a primitive hook plough that had been used in Russia for 700 years. Crops were harvested with the sickle in spite of Peter's efforts to introduce the scythe. Rye was the main crop in central Russia, but Peter induced the Baltic landowners to produce flax and hemp for export.