Peter Kropotkin and John Thomas Bealby

“ In the alpine tracts of the north the narrowness of the valleys and the steep stony slopes strewn with debris, on which only lichens and mosses are able to grow, make every plot of green grass (even if it be only of Carex) valuable. For days consecutively the horse of the explorer can get no other food than the dwarf birch. But even in these districts the botanist and the geographer can easily distinguish between the cherñ or thick forest of the Altai and the taiga of East Siberia. The lower plateau exhibits, of course, new characteristics. ”

“ The fairs of the government have lost much of their importance; that at Bekovo, however, in the district of Serdobsk, has held its ground, especially as regards cattle and animal products. The peasants are no better off than those of the other governments of south-east Russia (see Samara) . Years of scarcity are common, and many peasants leave their homes in search of work on the Volga and elsewhere. An active trade is carried on in corn, hides, tallow, oils, exported; the merchants of Saratov, moreover, are intermediaries in the trade between south-east Russia and the central governments. ”

“ The chief river of the province is the Syr-darya (q.v.) . The frontier touches the eastern shore of the Sea of Aral, and numerous small lakes, mostly salt, are scattered over the sandy plains. A few lakes of alpine character occur in the valleys of the hilly tracts.
The climate of the province varies greatly in its different parts. It is most severe in the mountain region; and in the lowlands it is very hot and dry. As a whole, the western parts of the Tian-shan receive but little precipitation, and are therefore very poor in forests. ”

“ Having direct railway communication with the fertile parts of southern and south-eastern Russia, Riga has become the second port for foreign trade on the Baltic, ranking next after St Petersburg. The port freezes on an average 127 days every year. The larger ships cannot reach Riga, and are unloaded at Ust-Dvinsk (formerly Dunamünde) . By no means all the trade with the interior is transported by the railways; no inconsiderable portion of the goods is carried by water. ”

“ Towards the Caspian, especially between Petrovsk and the river Sulak, the Cretaceous system is well represented, and upon its rocks rest marls, shales, and sandstones of the Eocene period. The country is altogether difficult of access, and only one military route leads up from the river Terek, while every one of the eleven passes known across the Caucasus is a mere bridle-path. The climate is severe on the plateaus, hot towards the Caspian, and dry everywhere. ”

“ Other buildings in the kreml are a magnificent monastery, built in 1556; an arsenal; the modern castle in which the governor resides; and the red brick Suyumbeka tower, 246 ft. high, which is an object of great veneration to the Tatars as the reputed burial-place of one of their saints. A little E. of the kreml is the Bogoroditski convent, built in 1579 for the reception of the Black Virgin of Kazañ, a miracle-working image transferred to Moscow in 1612, and in St Petersburg since 1710. Kazañ is the intellectual capital of eastern Russia, and an important seat of Oriental scholarship. ”

“ MOSCOW, (Russian Moskva) , the second capital of the Russian empire, and chief town of the government of the same name, in 55° 45′ N. and 37° 37′ E., on both banks of the river Moskva, a tributary of the Oka. It is by rail 400 m. from St Petersburg, 1017 from Odessa, and 814 from Warsaw. It lies to the north of the most densely peopled parts of Russia (the “black-earth region”) , whilst the country to the north of it is rather thinly peopled as far as the Volga, and very sparsely beyond that. ”

“ Primary education is in a very unsatisfactory state, and primary schools very scarce. The petitions for a university at Irkutsk, the money required for which has been freely offered to the government, have been refused, and the imperative demands of the local tradesmen for technical instruction have likewise met with little response. The Tomsk University remains incomplete, and has only 560 students. There are nevertheless eighteen scientific societies in Siberia, which issue publications of great value. ”

“ More dreaded than the frosts are the terrible burans or snowstorms, which occur in early spring and destroy thousands of horses and cattle that have been grazing on the steppes throughout the winter. Although very heavy falls of snow take place in the alpine tracts—especially about Lake Baikal—on the other side, in the steppe regions of the Altai and Transbaikalia and in the neighbourhood of Krasnoyarsk, the amount of snow is so small that travellers use wheeled vehicles, and cattle are able to find food in the steppe. ”

“ Piles of salt line the salt wharves on the Oka; farther down are the extensive storehouses and heaps of grain of the corn wharves; then comes the steamboat quay on the Volga, opposite the Kremlin, and still farther east the timber wharves. The fair is held on the flat sandy tongue of land between the Oka and the Volga, connected with the town by only a bridge of boats, 1500 yds. long, which is taken to pieces in winter. The shops of the fair, 4000 in number, built of stone in regular rows, are surrounded by a canal, and cover half a square mile. ”

“ The natural rate of increase of population is very slow as a rule, and does not exceed 7 or 8 per 1000 annually. The great mortality, especially among the children, is one of the causes of this, the birth-rate being also lower than in Russia. The climate of Siberia, however, cannot be called unhealthy, except in certain localities where goitre is common, as it is on the Lena, in several valleys of Nerchinsk and in the Altai Mountains. The rapid growth of the actual population is chiefly due to immigration. ”

“ An interesting feature of the Russian capital is the very high proportion of people living on their own earnings or income (“independent”) as compared with those who live on the earnings or income of someone else (“dependent”) . Only a few industrial establishments employ more than twenty workmen, the average being less than ten and the figure seldom falling below five. The large factories are beyond the limits of St Petersburg. Although 36% of the population above six years old are unable to read, the workmen are amongst the most intelligent classes in Russia. ”

“ The chief grain-producing regions of Siberia are—the Tobol and Ishim region, the Baraba, the region about Tomsk and the outskirts of the Altai. The Minusinsk district, one of the richest in Siberia (45,000 inhabitants, of whom 24,000 are nomadic) , has more than 45,000 acres under crops. Mining, the second industry in point of importance, is dealt with above. ”

“ Trade is principally in the goods enumerated above, but the city is also a centre for trade in corn, leather and coal, and its two fairs (wool and hops) have a great reputation throughout western Russia. The wholesale deportations of Warsaw artisans after the Polish insurrections of 1794, 1831 and 1863 considerably checked, but by no means stopped, the industrial progress of the town. The barrier of custom-houses all round Poland, and the Russian rule, which militates against the progress of Polish science, technology and art, are so many obstacles to the development of its natural resources. ”

“ Manufactures.—Though Siberia has within itself all the raw produce necessary for prosperous industries, it continues to import from Russia all the manufactured articles it uses. Owing to the distances over which they are carried and the bad organization of trade, all manufactured articles are exceedingly dear, especially in the east. The manufactories of Siberia employ less than 25,000 workmen, and of these some 46% are employed in West Siberia. ”

“ Moscow thus became the centre for nearly the entire trade of Russia, and the tsar himself engaged in large commercial operations. Situated at the intersection of six important highways, Moscow was the storehouse and exchange-mart for the merchandise of Europe and Asia. The opening of the port at St Petersburg affected its commercial interest unfavourably at first; but the Asiatic trade and internal trade of Moscow have since then enormously increased. ”

“ Agriculture.—Agriculture is the chief occupation both of the settled Russians and of the native population. South Siberia has a very fertile soil and yields heavy crops, but immense tracts of the country are utterly unfit for tillage. Altogether it is estimated that not more than 500,000 sq. m. are suitable for cultivation. The aggregate is thus distributed—192,000 sq. m. in West Siberia, 20,000 in Akmolinsk and Semipalatinsk, 100,000 in East Siberia, 85,000 in Transbaikalia, 40,000 in Amur, and 63,000 in Usuri. ”

“ From the 15th century onwards the villages around Moscow were renowned for the variety of small industries which they carried on; the first large manufactures in cottons, woollen fabrics, silk, china and glass in Great-Russia were established at Moscow in the 17th and 18th centuries. After 1830, in consequence of protection tariffs, the manufactories in the government of Moscow rapidly increased in number; but two-thirds of them are now concentrated in the capital. Moscow is in fact the principal manufacturing city in the empire, employing about 100,000 operatives in her mills and factories. ”

“ In 1591 the Tatars of the Crimea were again in Moscow and avenged their repulse from the Kremlin on the inhabitants of the unfortified town. Meanwhile the political influence of the boyars had gradually increased. The peasants, who settled on their lands, or on the estates which the prince bestowed upon his boyars, had become serfs; and the political tendency of the boyars, supported by the wealthier middle classes (which had also a rapid development in the same century) , was to become rulers of Russia, like the noblesse of Poland. ”

“ Bulgarian empire, at the confluence of the Volga with the Kama, was so powerful that for some time it was an open question whether Islam or Christianity would gain the upper hand among the Slav idolaters. But, while the Russians were driven from the Black Sea by the Khazars, and later on by a tide of Ugrian migration from the north-east, a stream of Slavs moved slowly towards the north-east, down the upper Oka, into the borderland between the Finnish and Turkish regions. After two centuries of struggle the Russians succeeded in colonizing the fertile valleys of the Oka basin ”

“ The Southern Urals introduce into the Cis-Caspian steppes the flora and fauna of middle Russia.
In the distribution of the races of mankind the Urals have played an important part. To the present day the Northern Urals are inhabited by Finnish races (Samoyedes, Syryenians, Voguls and Permians) who have been driven from their former homes by Slav colonization, while the steppes on the slopes of the Southern Urals have continued to be inhabited by the Turkish Bashkirs. ”

“ Owing to its great fertility, Samara usually has a surplus of grain for export, varying from 11/2 to 4 million quarters (exclusive of oats) annually. Notwithstanding this production, the government is periodically liable to famine to such an extent that men die by thousands of hunger-typhus, or are forced to go by thousands in search of employment on the Volga. The population have no store of corn, or reserve capital for years of scarcity, and some 210,000 males have each an average of only four acres of arable and pasture land. ”

“ Climatic, Geo-Botanical and Geo-Zoological Importance.—The importance of the Urals as a climatic and geo-botanical boundary can no longer be regarded as very great. Most European species of plants freely cross the Urals into Siberia, and several Siberian species travel across them into northern Russia. But, being a zone of hilly tracts extending from north to south, the Ural Mountains necessarily exercise a powerful influence in pushing a colder northern climate, as well as a northern flora and fauna, farther south along their axis. ”

“ In 1547 two conflagrations destroyed nearly the whole of the city, and a few days later the Tatar khan of the Crimea advanced against it with 100,000 men. He was compelled to retire from the banks of the Oka, but in 1571, taking advantage of the state into which Russia was brought by the extravagances of Ivan, he took Moscow and burned all the city outside the Kremlin. The gates of the Kremlin having been shut, thousands of people perished in the flames, and the annals record that of the 200,000 who then formed the population of Moscow, only 30,000 remained. ”

“ The industries are insignificant (chiefly tanning, distilling and tallow-melting) ; ironworks and cloth mills are still in their infancy. The export of cattle, hides, tallow, corn, flour, fish and furs to Russia, both from Tobolsk and from the Kirghiz steppe, is of some importance. Spirits are sent farther east to Tomsk; while all kinds of manufactured wares are imported from Russia. The fairs of Irbit and Ishim are the chief centres for trade. ”