Northern Russia

“ Be the old legend true or false, it is certain that to this day the northern Mujik shows an even more marked religious enthusiasm than his brother of the central governments. Fanaticism, mysticism, and fatalism go ever hand in hand in Northern Russia. The Empire of the Tsars being so vast in area and so embracive of races affords space for all forms of belief, or want of belief, within her boundaries. All creeds are represented, from the pagan Samoyede of the tundras to the Mohammedan Tartar of the Steppes. ”

“ Nothing stands in Russia’s way, and she is always quietly colonising the empty East.
An interesting yearly chart might be issued by the Russian Government showing the waves of colonisation: the new spots in forests and deserts that have been given names, the new farms, the thickening of the population in the nearer-in districts, the efflorescence of Russian enterprise at the farthest-out points whither they have gone. Several hundred Russian families are settled in Northern Persia, several hundred also in Mongolia and China. ”

“ From this point of view, Russia may be defined as the Europe of plains, in opposition to the Europe of mountains.
Uniformity of surface is never quite complete, and Russia does present inequalities of soil, though these are far less notable than the depressions and elevations of the West. In the faintly-marked soil of Russia, we must notice, in the centre of the country, a kind of square table-land, called the central plateau, or the plateau of Alaoune, from the name of its northern part. The north-eastern angle is formed by the heights of the Valdaï plateau, where the hills are 300 feet high ”

“ It is not an exaggeration to say that four-fifths of the northern portions of Russia consist of the sandy plains and marshy forest-land I have already described, but, in the winter, it matters little what lies underneath the frozen snow.
From Archangel to St. Petersburg we passed hundreds of versts of this description of country. In these districts utter desolation reigns, scarcely a living thing is seen; even the birds have deserted them, and have flown to the neighbourhood of the towns, to find there the food their native woods can no longer afford them. ”

“ It must not be forgotten that the oldest Russia was formed mainly of lands which afterwards passed under the rule of Poland and Lithuania. ... The Dnieper, from which Russia was afterwards cut off, was the great central river of the elder Russia; of the Don and the Volga she held only the upper course. The northern frontier barely passed the great lakes of Ladoga and Onega, and the Gulf of Finland itself. It seems not to have reached what was to be the Gulf of Riga, but some of the Russian princes held a certain supremacy over the Finnish and Lettish tribes of that region. ”

“ The people in Russia have fair complexions, and are Greek Christians, paying tribute to the king of the Tartars in the west, on whom they border. In the eastern parts of Russia there is abundance of fine furs, wax, and mines of silver; and I am told the country reaches to the northern ocean, in which there are islands which abound in falcons and ger-falcons. ”

“ The northern or Baltic provinces of Russia are very largely populated by persons of German blood who have for many generations been Russian subjects. It is natural that these people, in a measure, should feel and understand German aspirations and aid and abet in their plans where possible. ”

“ In Russia all the northern provinces, from the frontier of Norway to the Ural Mountains, have been explored only superficially, and the only well-traced lines are those of the coasts and of the beds of the great rivers. ”

“ Russia is watered by numerous rivers, some running a course of thousands of miles. The Petchora, the Mezene, Northern Dwina, and Onega are the principal rivers of European Russia which send their waters to the Arctic Ocean; the Neva, Volkhoff, Svir, Narova, Velikaya, Duna, Niemen, and Vistula belong to the Baltic basin; the Black Sea basin comprises the Pruth, Dniester, Dnieper, and the Don; while the Caspian receives besides other rivers the Volga, the largest of all Russian rivers. Altogether Russia and Poland have 49,000 miles of navigable rivers. ”

“ The Scythians and Sarmatians of the Greek and Roman historians inhabited Russia in classic times. The Slavonians are believed to be the same people, and they founded the towns of Novgorod and Kief, which were the capitals of separate empires. These people were savage and warlike races, and were at war with similar tribes around them. The Varangians of the north attacked them, and were nearly overwhelmed, when they invited the Russian prince Rurik to Novgorod ”

“ Without having in view any acquisitions whatsoever in the northern part of the Peninsula, Russia is deeply interested in seeing to it that Germanic influence does not acquire preponderance there, because that influence, in its turn, has no aims save territorial acquisition. ”

“ It would seem that the great region we now call Russia was predestined to become one empire. No one part could exist without all the others. In the north is the zone of forests, extending from the region of Moscow and Novgorod to the Arctic Circle. At the extreme southeast, north of the Caspian Sea and at the gateway leading into Asia, are the Barren Steppes, unsuited to agriculture or to civilized living; fit only for the raising of cattle and the existence of Asiatic nomads, who to this day make it their home. ”

“ The topography of a country is to some extent a prophecy of its future. Had there been no Mississippi coursing for three thousand miles through the North American Continent, no Ohio and Missouri bisecting it from east to west, no great inland seas indenting and watering it, no fertile prairies stretching across its vast areas, how different would have been the history of our own land.
Russia is the strange product of strange physical conditions. Nature was not in impetuous mood when she created this greater half of Europe, nor was she generous, except in the matter of space. ”

“ In their qualities and in their defects they represent in Russia the eternal contrast of north and south. Their history is no less diversified than their nature; the first have their centre at Moscow, the second at Kiev. Stretching, the one to the northeast, the other to the southwest, these two unequal halves of the nation do not precisely correspond to the two great physical zones of Russia. ”

“ Northward of Petrograd and Kazan is North Russia, a vast sombre forest land with occasional marshes, more than half as large as all the region just defined as the Russian Homeland. North Russia has a population of less than two millions, or not three to the square mile. East of the Volga and Don, as far as the Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea, lies East Russia, about as large as North Russia, and with a population also of about two millions. ”

“ The first feature and the essential fact in the physical geography of Russia is the infinite plain, the uniform steppe and prairie, without any other undulations than the tumuli, or pre-historic tombs, or the high banks of streams, or the insignificant hills which separate the basins of the enormous, slow, aimless rivers. The chain of the Ural Mountains which separates Asiatic Russia from European Russia hardly breaks the continuity of the plain. ”

“ Yet there is a strange resemblance between the rough type and the handsome type analogous to that which a careful observer cannot fail to notice between the different types of Russian landscape. For though the steppe is grey, and the fields of Caucasia are green, yet both are animated by something that wears the same countenance, breathes the same purely Russian atmosphere, and is suffused with the same wonderful charm. It is the charm of perfectly balanced contrast. The soil of Russia has a soul like the soul of her children, for whom she cares and lives and breathes. ”

“ Although Petrograd is more primitive than Paris, yet it impressed me far more, with its wide arteries, its large quays, its superb Neva, like an arm of the sea.
Russia is the country of space, of dreams—the country of all that is magnificent. It gives one an unforgettable impression. ”

“ The sun was sinking over the low, hazy ridge of the Sparrow Hills as we left Moscow; and we enjoyed one more glimpse of the inexhaustible splendor of the city's thousand golden domes and pinnacles, softened by luminous smoke and transfigured dust, before the dark woods of fir intervened, and the twilight sank down on cold and lonely landscapes.
Thence, until darkness, there was nothing more to claim attention. Whoever has seen one landscape of Central Russia is familiar with three fourths of the whole region. ”

“ European Russia is an immense plain, its centre elevated scarcely three hundred feet above sea-level; the hills, few, low and unimportant. Lakes are plentiful, and great rivers with many ramifications flow slowly by tortuous channels—mostly towards the north-west or the south-east. Large tracts of forest and marsh in the centre terminate with frozen wastes to the north, and merge with rough, sandy pastures on the south. ”

“ Travelling over this line day and night for fourteen consecutive days, passing continuously through bleak, barren and almost unpopulated regions, crossing numerous wide rivers, an enormous lake and several mountain ranges, waiting sometimes for hours in sidings to allow homeward bound trains to pass, and seeing enough snow, even before winter had actually begun, to understand what difficulties heavy falls must occasion, I cannot help feeling that Russia’s position in the Far East is unnatural and even precarious. ”

“ Geographically, Russia is a vast plain. The Ural mountains are low and form no barrier against invaders. The rivers are broad but often shallow. It was an ideal territory for nomads.
While the Roman Empire was founded, grew in power and disappeared again, Slavic tribes, who had long since left their homes in Central Asia, wandered aimlessly through the forests and plains of the region between the Dniester and Dnieper rivers. ”

“ The greatest of these divisions, the Eastern, lies entirely within the boundaries of the Russian Empire. The sub-divisions of the Eastern group are as follows: The Great Russians occupying the vast inland territory and numbering alone between forty and fifty millions, the Little Russians inhabiting the entire south of Russia from Poland to the Caspian, and the White Russians, the least numerous of this division, in Smolensk, Wilna, and Minsk, the west provinces bordering on the Lithuanians and Poles. ”

“ It is not until the middle of the ninth century, that we obtain any really reliable information respecting the inhabitants of central Russia. They are described as a light-complexioned, flaxen-haired race, robust, and capable of great endurance. Their huts were cheerless, affording but little shelter, and they lived upon the coarsest food, often devouring their meat raw. ”

“ It is obvious that in a country so destitute of seaboard, its rivers must assume an immense importance. The history, the very life of Russia clusters about its three great rivers. These have been the arteries which have nourished, and indeed created, this strange empire. The Volga, with its seventy-five mouths emptying into the Caspian Sea, like a lazy leviathan brought back currents from the Orient; then the Dnieper, flowing into the Black Sea, opened up that communication with Byzantium which more than anything else has influenced the character of Russian development ”

“ Perhaps I am mistaken, but my impression is that a great many Americans think of Russia as an enormous, limitless field covered with eternal snow and ice, deserted, almost uninhabited, where severe Winter reigns all the time and where people can live only when dressed in heavy overcoats made of bear fur. ”

“ Petersburg to Moscow one proceeds through scenery of the most monotonous and, we must add, of the most melancholy character,—flat and featureless, made up of forests of fir-trees, interspersed with the white birch and long reaches of wide, cheerless, deserted plains. The dense forest forms a prominent feature of Russia north of the line of travel between the two great cities, covering in that region fully a third part of the surface of the country; indeed, the largest forest in Europe is that of Yolskoniki, near the source of the Volga. ”

“ These village republics are confined in practice to Great Russia, and the genuine Russ. In Finland, in the Baltic provinces, they are unknown; in Astrakhan, Siberia, and Kazan, they are unknown; in Kief, Podolia, and the Ukraine steppe, they are unknown; in the Georgian highlands, in the Circassian valleys, on the Ural slopes, they are equally unknown. In fact, the existence of these peasant republics in a province is the first and safest test of nationality. Wherever they are found, the soil is Russian, and the people Russ. ”

“ Far away in unknown realms, beyond the eastern boundary of Russia, where the gloomy waves of the Irtish, the Tobol, the Oural and the Volga flow through vast deserts, washing the base of fir-clad mountains, and murmuring through wildernesses, the native domain of wolves and bears, there were wandering innumerable tribes, fierce, cruel and barbarous, who held the frontiers of Russia in continual terror. ”

“ From the 11th to the 13th century, in passing from the basin of the Dneiper to the basin of the Volga, we can already watch the formation of Great and Little Russia. The principalities of Kief, Tchernigof, Novgorod-Severski, Riazan, Mourom, and Souzdal, situated on the side of the steppe with its devastating hordes, formed the frontier States, the Marches of Russia. ”