Rostovtzeff firmly believes that the history of the past has a strong meaning and effect for the present. He believed that ancient civilizations exhibited similar characteristics to modern society and often argued that the economic systems of antiquity shared characteristics comparable to the economic aspects of the present. He had a strong interest in ancient times as he had written his academic thesis on the Roman Empire and the end of Antiquity according to the setting of pre-Soviet Russia. Rostovtzeff lived in Russia in the late 19th and 20th centuries, a country that was corrupt and, much like the ancient Roman Empire, in the process of collapsing. During this period there were multiple social conflicts within the oppressed lower classes as well as the mass population. Here we see many exact relationships between his life and the fall of the Roman Empire as in his life we ​​also see the conflict between “the masses” and the upper class elite as he himself experienced the same social stratification as the ancient Romans. In addition to this, there were also many moments in his life in which, even before the First World War, a Russian revolution was feared. The corruption and chaos of these times must have had a significant influence on his writings and interpretations of the Roman Empire. His emphasis on the conflict of assimilation between social classes, which he believes is the cause of decline, is evident both in his accounts of the end of antiquity, but also in his present.