2) Many Russian-speakers that are technically #Russian ethnically, never identified with the #Muscovy / #Empire. Whole sub-ethnicities were persecuted and ran from it (think #OldBelievers, #Molokans, #Dukhobors, #Pomors, #Novgorod, you name it).

Inspired by this recent thread by Galeev that is surprisingly not bad, and shares some telling and in my opinion representative stories about defending his own #Tatar identity:
https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1601601620181422081