Russia under the Old regime

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an homogeneous, ethnically undifferentiated mass. This homogeneity began to break down after the Empire's collapse as a result of their being caught up in die vast population shifts caused by the influx of Asiatic barbarians. The Slav migratory movement seems to have begun towards the end of the fourth century, following the Hun invasion of Europe which led to the destruction of the neighbouring Gothic kingdoms, but it assumed major dimensions only in the sixth century after the onslaught of a fresh wave of Asians, the Avars. Following the Avar invasion, one group of Slavs spread south, into the Balkan peninsula, stopping only when they came up against the borders of Byzantium. Others moved east. Here there was no political or military power to stop mem, and they fanned out in small pockets all the way from the Black Sea to the Baltic, subjugating the exceedingly primitive Finns and Lithuanians and settling in their midst. It is during this time of migrations, i.e. between the sixth and tenth centuries, that the Slavic proto-nation fell apart. The Slavs initially split into three major territorial units (western, southern and eastern); in the second millennium of the Christian era they kept on splitting further into separate nationalities, a process which in some parts of the Slav world is still not fully completed.

Before one can begin to discuss die historic evolution of the eastern Slavs, from whom the Russians descend, it is necessary to describe in some detail the physical environment into which their migrations had carried mem. The contemporary western reader has little patience for physical geography, and understandably so, because science and technology have to an unprecedented degree liberated him from dependence on nature. But even that relative freedom from vagaries of the environment which modern western people have come to enjoy is an event of very recent date and narrowly confined in scope. As far as conditions of pre-modern life are concerned, the notion of independence from nature is irrelevant. To understand human life prior to the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions as well as outside the relatively limited part of the world directly affected by them, it is necessary to allow die natural environment a role much greater than tiiat of decorative backdrop. Men living in die pre-scientific and pre-industrial phases of history had and continue to have no choice but to adapt themselves to Uiat nature which provides them with all they need to sustain life. And since adaptation implies dependence, it is not surprising that the natural environment, the subject-matter of geography, should have had a decisive influence on the mind and habits of pre-modern man as well as on his social and political institutions. It is only when he began to feel emancipated from total subordination to nature that man could fantasize about being master of his own fate. In the case of Russia the geographic element is particularly important because (as will be pointed out below), the country is inherentiy so poor tiiat it affords at best a precarious existence. This poverty gives the inhabitants little latitude for action; it compels them to operate within a very narrow band of options.

In terms of vegetation, Russia can be divided into three main zones, which run, in belt-like shape, from east to west:1

1. the tundra: this region, north of the Arctic Circle, is covered with lichens and cannot support organized human life;

2. south of the tundra lies an immense forest, the largest in the world, which occupies much of the northern half of Eurasia from the Arctic Circle to between 45 and 50 degrees nordiern latitude. This forest can be further subdivided into three parts: A. The needle-leaved taiga in the northern regions, composed mainly of spruce and pine; B. The mixed forest, partly needle-leaved, partly broad-leaved: this is the central area of Russia, where stands Moscow and where the modern Russian state had its beginning; and, C. The wooded steppe, a transitional region separating forest from grassland;

3. the steppe, an immense plain stretching from Hungary to Mongolia: here no trees grow unless planted and cultivated; of itself, nature yields only grass and brush.

As concerns cultivable soil, Russia can be divided into two principal zones, the border between which roughly coincides with the line separating forest from steppe.

In the forest zone, the predominant type of earth ispodzol, a soil short of natural plant food; what there is of the latter lies in the subsoil and requires deep ploughing to be of use. In this region there are numerous bogs and marshes, as well as large stretches of sand and clay. In part of the wooded steppe and through much of the steppe proper the prevailing soil is the fertile black earth (chernozem), which owes both its colour and fertility to humus, the product of decayed grass and brush. The black earth has from 2 to 16 per cent humus spread in a layer two to six feet deep. Its surface covers approximately a quarter of a billion acres, which are the centre of Russian agriculture (Map 1).

The climate of Russia is of the so-called Continental type, that is, hot in the summer and very cold in the winter. The winter weather grows colder as one proceeds in an easterly direction. The coldest regions of Russia are to be found not in its most northern but in its most eastern parts: Verkhoiansk, the Siberian city with the lowest recorded temperature in the world has a less northerly latitude than Narvik, die ice-free port in Norway. The reason for this peculiarity of the Russian climate is that the warm air produced by the Gulf Stream, which warms western Europe, cools as it moves inland and away from the Atlantic coast. One of the consequences of this fact is that Siberia, potentially an inexhaustible