ABSTRACT
The tsar, being in need of large military forces, had permitted a landowning class to develop in Central Russia, who acquired the right to conscript the peasants for the Tsar’s service. This was a break with the old Byzantine tradition that all classes in the state had the obligation to serve the Emperor, who was in turn their sole protector. The Byzantine tradition failed to help the state over the crisis because it did not create the psychological atmosphere for citizenship nor the machinery of state for dealing with tension between the classes. And the tension grew because of the needs of the Tsar to create an army and to find the peasants to till the soil and secure recruits and taxes. It was this vicious circle which now prepared the ground for what is known as the “Time of Troubles.”
