This is a tricky question to answer because the Question of the national identity of Russia was really only brought about by Peter the great. Essentially as peter the great went about re sculpting Russia, he created a great divide between the Russian population, those of the old and those of the new. The Old were the ones who supported the old way of being, with decentralized governance through the Nobility, a powerful church and a strongly traditional and superstitious way of life. The capital of the old was Moscow, full of traditional Russian buildings that set next to each other in an unplanned and messy maze of streets, basically the embodiment of the old Russia.

The faction of the New were the ones who were with the Tsar and sought to replace the old inflated Nobility with a large bureaucracy controlled by a Tsar with absolute power. They sought to beat the ancient, diverse, messy and over grown old Russia into a rigid mechanical and polished Nation. The epicenter of this "new" was St Petersburg, with planned streets, New Buildings and open to the world.

As the conflict between the two factions grew, the New became associated with being European and the old became associated with Asia. Prior to Peter the Great no questions of identity really existed for the Russian people, they were simply just subjects of the Tsar, The Church and the Nobility.