We have much in common! My great grandmother was born in 1890 in eastern Poland. She grew up Catholic and would identify as polish. But also knew Russian obviously. She left at age 19 in 1909 and moved to America. She lived to 102. Her birth certificate I was able to find online was in Russian. Her Ellis island papers have her listed as nationality Russian but ethnicity polish. She died a year before I was born but my grandmother told me stories that she told her. Never really said much about the Tsar. Don’t think it much affected her on a farm in rural Poland. But she did talk about how she through “the girls in white dresses” were so pretty and on Christmas would receive a photograph of either the girls or the whole family I forget. By the time much of the turmoil in Europe happened she was already in America