ABSTRACT
Once political bodies beyond the boundaries of Western civilisation started being called empires, the number and variety of empires increased even further. Rulers of some political bodies beyond these borders translated their own "national" titles as "emperors", insisting on this translation as a matter of diplomatic protocol. According to contemporary Russian author Viktor Potapov, dynastic and political regime changes make it difficult to count empires: If we consider Vladimir Monomakh's Rus' the first empire, the period of rule of the Rurikid's as the second, 300 years of the Romanov dynasty the third, then the USSR can be considered the fourth empire. Historians use the concept of feudalism defined in one or another way in order to disclose certain similarities in socio-economic or political order between different countries. However, many scholars doubt that essentialism is a suitable philosophy for the social sciences and humanities.
