Names of lands, states and empires are never innocent. That can be learned from the name Russia as well, which appeared in three regions on the maps of Münster and Mercator in this paragraph. First Galicia and Belarus and later Galicia and Muscovia were presented as Russia, as heirs to large parts of medieval Kyivan Rus' lands. But in the sixteenth century this common heritage was primarily dynastic, not one of nations. That started two centuries later, for example when Semen Divovych, a Cossack scribe of the Hetmanate (see the next paragraph), had in his poem A Conversation between Great Russia and Little Russia from 1762 Little Russia (Ukraine) declaring: "I know that you are Russia; that is my name as well. Why do you intimidate me? ... Do not think that you are my master. Your sovereign and mine is our common ruler."

The heritage of Kyivan Rus' was religious as well. Because of this, the first tsar could present Muscovia as successor to Byzantium at the end of the fifteenth century. That greatly enhanced his position because in Constantinople the Orthodox church was subordinate to the emperor. During the sixteenth century Moscow even became known as 'the third Rome'. The church of the first Rome had 'fallen into heresy' and Constantinople - to which the imperial and spiritual powers of the first Rome had migrated - had 'fallen into the hands of the Muslims'. Now the Russian empire was charged with saving the Orthodox faith. Hence, the tsar had in 1589 metropolitan Iov consecrated as 'Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus'. Thus loyalty to the Russian Orthodox Church got closely identified with loyalty to the tsar.