Alfred Nicolas Rambaud

“ The flat and monotonous soil has no hold on its inhabitants; they will find as bare a landscape anywhere. As for their hovel, how can they care for their hovel? it is burned down so often. The Western expression, the “ancestral roof,” has no meaning for the Russian peasant. The native of Great Russia, accustomed to live on little, and endure the extremes of heat and cold, was born to brave the dangers and privations of the emigrant's life. ”

“ When the steppes of the south became the prey of Asiatic nomads, the Russian population flowed back in a vast wave, from the banks of the Dnieper to the Upper and Middle Volga. We see the princes of Souzdal calling to their aid the inhabitants of the banks of the Dnieper, while in the forests of the north new cities are constantly founded by the people of Novgorod. The Russia of Kief once destroyed, a new Russia begins to form itself, almost out of the same elements, at the opposite extremity of the Oriental plain. ”

“ Division of the Russians of to-day into three branches—How Russia was colonized In the time of Nestor (end of the 11th century) , the Russian Slavs confined between the Lithuanians on the west, the Finns on the north, and the Turks on the east, hardly occupied one-fifth part of Russia in Europe. To-day we see the Russian race extend from Finland to the Oural, from the Icy Ocean to the Caucasus and Crimea, amounting to 56,000,000 men, besides 3,000,000 colonists in the Asiatic provinces. The Letto-Lithuanians on the contrary are reduced to 2,420,000 souls ”

“ They belong to one of the great races of pioneers and backwoodsmen. All the history of the Russian people, from the foundation of Moscow, is that of their advance into the forest, into the Black Land, into the prairie. ”

“ Human sacrifices have been talked of. The worship of the dead inspired ideas which guide the savage everywhere. Men have preserved the custom of wife-capture, or buying brides from the fathers by paying the kalym; they practise agricultural communism. In a word, the life of these races of the Volga in the 19th century is the living commentary of the accounts of Nestor of the Russian Slavs of the 9th century. ”

“ The mountain keeps her own, the mountain calls her wanderers to return; while the steppe, stretching away to the dimmest horizon, invites you to advance, to ride at adventure, to “go where the eyes glance.” ”

“ There remain two Finnish peoples still to be spoken of, who, mentioned by Nestor, have at present disappeared, but who were far more remarkable than any of the preceding. These are the Khazars, who, although mingled with Turkish elements, were essentially Finnish. Remarkable for their aptitude for civilization, they had formed in the 9th century a vast empire, which embraced the regions of the Lower Dnieper, the Don, and the Lower Volga, round the Sea of Azof and the Caspian ”

“ The Russian Slavs, before taking possession of all the domain assigned to them by history, had to struggle in the north and east against the nations belonging to three principal races, the Letto-Lithuanians, the Finns and the Turks, in whom Finnish and Tatar elements were more or less mingled. The Finns and the Turks belong to that branch of the human family which has been named, from its twofold cradle of the Oural and the Altai, Ouralo-Altaic. ”

“ The Russian race, it is true, has the faculty of absorbing certain aboriginal stocks. The Little Russians assimilated the remnants of Turkish tribes, the Great Russians swallowed up the Finnish nations of the East. There must, however, be no religious barrier between the conquerors and the conquered, for the Tchoud, while still heathen, is easily assimilated; but once converted to Islamism, he is a refractory element that can scarcely be brought to order. A baptized Tchouvach inevitably becomes a Russian, a circumcised Tchouvach inevitably becomes a Tatar. ”

“ It seems probable that among all these peoples there may be some who have since emigrated westwards, and who may belong to the German and Gothic races. Others, again, may have continued to maintain themselves, under different names, in Eastern Europe, such as the Slavs, the Finns, and even a certain number of Turkish tribes. M. Rittich believes he can identify the Melanchlainai of Herodotus with the Esthonians, who still prefer dark raiment; the Androphagi with the Samoyedes, whose name is derived from the Finnish word suomeadnæ ”

“ A numismatist would make wonderful discoveries in these walking museums of medals. They drape their legs in a piece of tightly “tied back” black cloth, and think that modesty consists in never showing the legs, just as the Tatar women make a point of never unveiling the face. ”

“ They are the silver vase of Nicopol (government of Ekaterinoslaf) and the golden vase of Kertch, and date from the 4th century B.C., or about the period when Herodotus wrote his history, of which they are the lively commentary. The Scythians of the silver vase, with their long hair, their long beards, large features, tunics and trousers, reproduce very fairly the physiognomy, stature and costume of the present inhabitants of the same countries; we see them breaking-in and bridling their horses in exactly the same way as they do it to-day in those plains. ”

“ The Russians form six-sevenths of the population of Russia. The proportions are more than reversed. What a change has been wrought in ten centuries! The present Russians may be divided into three branches, deriving their names from certain historical circumstances. 1. The name of White Russia is given to the provinces conquered from the 13th to the 14th century by the Grand Dukes of Lithuania. ”

“ The report that the Tzar authorized the emigrations—a forged ukase, a rumor—anything was enough to uproot whole peoples from the soil. The peasant's passion for wandering explains the development of Cossack life in the plains of the south ”

“ In the tombs of the Scythian kings of what is now the government of Ekaterinoslaf, as well as in those of the Greco-Scythian princes of the Bosphorus, works of art have been found which show the genius of the Greeks accommodating itself to the taste of the barbarians, precious vases chiselled for them by Athenian artists, and all the jewels which at present enrich the museums of Kertch, Odessa, and St. ”