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Muscovy as the patrimony of the tsar, a great collectionof his manors that included among its assets all classesof the inhabitants. Another result was that, as thegovernment had broken down and the state was inchaos, local bodies acted for themselves, elected theirown councils, and joined together in concerted resistanceto the Polish invaders. The idea grew that the reconstitutionof Muscovy required the collaboration andsanction of 'the whole land.' Hence there developed anew national institution, the elected assembly of theland, analogous to the estates-general of western Europe,which for half a century played an important role and forten years (1613-22), when it was in almost annual session,shared in the reconstruction of the country.The assembly of the land had originated at least asearly as 1566, when Ivan the Terrible added to the oldcombined assembly of the council of magnates and thecouncil of the upper clergy selected members from thebackbone of his army and officials, the middling landowners,'the men of service' par excellence, somewhatcorresponding to the medieval English knights of theshire. It took on a new form when provincial membersof this class predominated in it and election, which wasat that time in wide use for various local governmentpurposes, replaced selection. It included as well electedrepresentatives of the merchants and burgesses andoccasionally of some classes of free peasants and certainother categories.The evidence as to its exact composition, competence,and procedure is limited, but it is clear that they did notbecome firmly fixed, and that the assemblies of theland varied in accordance with the different purposesfor which they were summoned. We find them beingconsulted upon war or peace, additions to the code oflaws, the Ukrainian question, taxation, the reconstructionof government after 1613, and, most striking of all,upon the succession to the throne. The representativeswere elected in varying numbers by the different classesseparately in the shires and towns; "from all ranks,from the best, the middling and the lesser, good anddiscreet men"; with the Russian equivalents of the