The Time of Troubles posed new challenges to the Muscovite historical, political, and cultural identity that had taken shape in the previous century and a half, following the end of Mongol rule. On the one hand, the crisis began the process of separating the person of the tsar from the state over which he ruled, laying the foundations for the early modern Russian nation. On the other hand, the patriotic reaction to the Polish invasion that accompanied and exacerbated the crisis closely identified loyalty to the tsar with loyalty to church and fatherland.
