Topic: Diplomacy
One of the more interesting works of propaganda during the GNW is Petr Shafirov's A discourse concerning the just causes of the war between Sweden and Russia. The first Russian edition appeared in 1717 and it was later translated both into German and into English. A Discourse attempts to prove that the Czar was justified in attacking Sweden by cataloguing past Swedish aggression against Russia and listing recent transgressions, such as the bad treatment the Czar supposedly received during his vist to Riga.
I think it's fair to say that some of the statements cannot stand up to scrutiny, such as the version that the Czar only after patiently waiting for more than a year after the discussions with the Swedish embassy in 1699 decided that he would seek satisfaction through an alliance with Saxony and Denmark. Another example is the claim that Sweden attempted to influence the Sultan to continue the war against Russia through the Polish envoy Rafał Leszczyński. In this case it was rather the other way around. Leszczynski had been equipped with two instructions. One from King Augustus, which told him to try and facilitate an agreement between the Czar and the Sultan and another from the Polish Great Chancellor, which told Leszczynski to do the exact opposite. Apparently the envoy favored the second course of action, so he met with Mauritz Vellingk and attempted to persuade him to use Swedish contacts in France for the purpose of getting French assistance in Constantinople.
Other statements seem more plausible, such as the story that Major General Axel Sparre during a visit to Berlin (in 1706 or 1707) boasted that the Swedes would drive the Russians out of the world by using only their whips. Sparre also produced a letter of appointment signed by Charles XII to be Governor of the city of Moscow. Axel Sparre was one of the King's favorites and a great joker, who once send a bill to Charles for damages as a result of Sparre not (as the King had promised) having been killed in action. It is very likely that Charles, half jokingly, had actually signed such a letter in much the same vein as he once had paid Sparre's bill.
