From 1598 to 1613 Muscovy experienced the most severe crises known as the Time of Troubles. Despite the ravages of civil war and foreign interventions which marked the Time of Troubles, some in the Muscovite government continued to attend dutifully to their daily routines and obligations. The local voevodas on the frontiers proceeded to govern their forts and towns and construct new ones. The Foreign Office in Moscow continued to receive and dispatch envoys to the peoples on the distant frontiers and churn out reports about them. The pace of Russian colonisation might have been slowed down but it did not stop. The ascension to the Russian throne of the Romanov dynasty in 1613 put an end to the Time of Troubles. Russia emerged from the Time of Troubles with a rediscovered sense of national identity and a newly found confidence in its incessant territorial expansion.

Throughout the seventeenth century the Russian government expended great resources and energy on consolidating its hold over annexed territories and moving into new ones. By the end of the century, Moscow could boast of enduring success in expanding further east, where the Russians reached the shores of the Pacific Ocean, and south and south-east, where the newly built forts and towns pushed the imperial boundaries further into the steppe. The seventeenth century also marked the beginning of Russia’s expansion in the west, where Moscow’s acquisition of territories in Ukraine added a new dimension to the Russian imperial foundation. No longer did Moscow expand into lands populated by non-Christians: Muslims, animists, and Buddhists.