Since everyone else seems to be doing this, I wanted to ask the following question; was the Tsardom of Russia a continuation of the Roman Empire?
Personally, I believe that Russia has legitimacy in claiming to be 'the Third Rome'; Ivan III, the Grand Prince of Moscow from 1462-1505, had married Sophia Palaiologos; of course, the Palaiologoi (?) were the last dynasty to control the Byzantine Empire. Therefore, if you consider the Byzantines to be a continuation of the Roman Empire, the Russian Empire should also be considered a continuation. If your argument is that the Russians did not share many of the cultural practices of the Romans or Byzantines, remember that after Justinian, the Byzantine emperors largely spoke Greek as a primary language as opposed to Latin.