Almost from its inception, Russia has been a multinational state. Long before anyone spoke of the Russian Empire, a designation that dates from the latter part of Peter I's reign, a variety of ethnic groups lived in territories claimed by the Muscovite tsar. However, the very concepts of nations and nationality, now considered a central element of human identity, were largely absent in Imperial Russia, at least until the later nineteenth century. Tsar Nicholas I is perhaps best known for the tripartite formula Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality thought up by his minister of education, Sergei Uvarov. Tsarist policy in the post-1863 decades would aim to secure the Russian position in the Kingdom of Poland, or as it was now officially called, the Vistula Land, while limiting Catholic and Polish influences in the Western Provinces. This policy, both in this region and throughout the empire, has been described as Russification. The First World War in the east was fought in non-Russian regions.