great northern war

If Sweden won the Great Northern War they'd still eventually get curbed. Russia was already at this point far too big to be brought low by a single war, and the Swedes had alienated many of their neighbours that would take the slightest opportunity to bring them down. It doesn't really matter if Karl XII somehow pulls a victory out of this in the end... he'll just leave the matter to be settled in a few decades, or by his possible heir.

And by the time of Battle of Poltava the Swedish army was already running on zero supplies and morale and even if they somehow won the Russians would just withdraw deeper and force them to follow them. Eventually the army would disintegrate around Karl and that would be the end of him.
 
The entire war makes for a vast number of alternatives, but at 1709 much decisive stuff had already happened, such as the modernisation of the Russian army and its continuous trials against weaker but better Swedish forces, and the destruction of Estonia and Livonia.

Lesnaja in 1708 might be more interesting as a PoD than Poltava, at this stage. The main army had withdrawn from acting as a protective screen for the approaching Livonian supply army, and this opened the possibility for a successful Russian attack.

So, let us say that it had been a trap, and a covert Swedish force had traveled from the main army to surprise the Russians when they were busy in battle. The czar dies there and his army is fled.

A drawback is that we do not know what Charles intended, so any peace is hard to picture.

There could also have been a peace at Prut 1711, with Russia returning all conquests.

Even with a Swedish OTL defeat at Poltava, the loss of the main army was not a given. At Perevolochna, it could have battled the Russians and left, or it could previously have taken the direct route to Koloberda instead, and never been approached by the Russians. Then the army joins up with general Krassow in Poland, gets some more recruits, and everything still is in the balance.

Sweden was not that large, so to stay on as a power, it would have had to expand more, but its window of opportunity was in the 1620-1720 period when it was more efficient than the neighbouring states. When Denmark and Russia and Prussia had applied the Swedish system themselves, then things were not as easy for Sweden anymore.

Given a Swedish victory in that war, and some territorial changes, such as Sweden taking Courland and the Novgorod area, then this Swedish state might hold on to those borders definitely. It would still be a small state in the industrialised future (Sweden+Finland+Estonia+Latvia have less than 20 million inhabitants today) unless it unites with the Danish or the Dutch or the Prussians or the Saxons or the Hanoverians or the Lithuanians or the Poles, to form a bigger entity.

Russia could still be a great power even if it does not have a Baltic coast, or a Black Sea coast.
 
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