The Little Russians dwelling in the south have brown or dark chestnut hair, and are of purer race, dwelling nearer to the Occident; they pride themselves upon their comparatively unmixed blood, their more temperate climate, their less dreary land; they are a more imaginative, more dreamy, more poetic people than their neighbours of the north. It is in Little Russia that the Zaparogians belong, the most celebrated of those Cossack tribes which in the Ukraine or the southern steppes played so important a role between the Poles, the Tatars, and the Turks, and whose name will ever remain in Russia the synonym of freedom and independence. Even to-day the Zaparogian, with his liberal or democratic tradition, remains the more or less conscious and avowed ideal of the majority of the Little Russians. Another reason, in the history of the Ukraine, which makes for democratic instincts in the Little Russians is the foreign origin and denaturalisation of a great part of the higher classes among the Poles and Great Russians. From this double motive the Little Russian is perhaps more susceptible to political aspirations, more accessible to revolutionary seduction than his brother of Great Russia.
Of the Cossacks of to-day only those of the Black Sea transplanted to the Kuban between the sea of Azov and the Caucasus are Little Russians; the Cossacks of the Don and the Ural are Great Russians.6
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ORGANISATION
It is extremely difficult to draw an approximately correct picture of the life of the Russian Slavs even in its barest outlines. Among the widely scattered tribes there was hardly more Шэд one element tending towards union — that of language. Frequent contact with the populations living on their borders and wedged in between them, must of itself have produced considerable modifications in their mode of life.
The entire social organisation of the early Slavs, like that of all other Aryan and non-Aryan peoples, was based upon kinship or descent from a common ancestor.® Even in the Varangian period we can discover traces of this primeval organisation in clans among a few tribes. In time of peace these clans were in the habit of meeting together in order to discuss common affairs. The chroniclerh uses the expression "came together" when he wants to speak of decisions taken in common. This practice seems to have been known to all Slavonic peoples. Among the Russian Slavs these folkmotes were known under the name of vetcM, and they remained to the end of their existence a necessary part of the political institutions, not only in the northern city republics, Novgorod and Pskov, but also in nearly all the principalities of Russia, with the exception of one of the latest founded, Moscow.
Among these tribes we also find native princes or clan chieftains (kniaz), and it is also certain that as early as the ninth century there were among the Russian Slavs private owners of tracts of land who occupied an advantageous position as compared with the great bulk of the members of the community, and from whom the latter nobles (boyars) were descended. But on the whole the village community formed the nucleus of the entire political and economic organisation of the eastern or Russian Slavs. It was a world complete in
itself, self-sufficient and independent both economically and juridically. The community was the possessor of the soil, which was periodically redistributed among its component members; the separate patriarchal families, and the assembly of the heads of the families was the body that judged and decided all things pertaining to the community. It is thus that we are to understand the apparently contradictory reports of the Byzantine writers, who say, on the one hand, that the Slavs know of no government and do not obey any individual, and on the other hand speak of a popular government that has existed from ancient times, that discusses all things in common, and that has many petty princes at its head.
It is self-evident that a government adapted to the requirements of a village community must assume a different character as soon as the settlement gains in extent and assumes the character of a city. And cities grew up quite early in northern and southwestern Russia. Toward the end of the ninth century Kiev had a wide fame as a large and populous city. Con- stantine Porphyrogenitus also knows of Novgorod, Smolensk, Linbetch, Tchernigov, Vishgorod, and Vititchev; in the time of Igor more than twenty cities can be named. The question as to the origin of Russian cities has called forth much debate and an extensive literature.
The chief difficulty lies in a proper understanding of the so-called Bavarian geographer, a writer of the ninth or tenth century, who counts, in his description of the northern Slavs, some twenty peoples with more than 3,760 cities. These latter he calls now civitates, now urbes, without indicating that there is any distinction of meaning to be attached to these terms, so that we are left to conclude that both names denote settlements. The present consensus of opinion as to those old Russian cities is as follows:
The old word grad, (now gorod, city) denoted any space surrounded by a palisade or earthworks. Thus there were wooden and earthen cities built for protection in time of war, and every community had its city. But in the regions that offered a natural protection by their inaccessible and swampy character the need for these cities was not so urgent, so that the wooded and marshy north had fewer cities than the open south. Numerous remains of these ancient earth piles enable us to recognise the position and wide extension of these old Slavonic settlements. Sometimes they are circular in form, others consist of a double angular trench with outlying earthworks. These are to be distinguished from the wooden cities, which were originally built for trading purposes, and only later were fenced in and enclosed, so • that they could also serve for protective purposes. They were built in favourable situations, adjacent to some trade route. The more complex social relations that grew up in them demanded a more thorough organisation of social and political life, for which the village community did indeed furnish the basis, but which, in the long run, was found to be inadequate. The questions of general interest to the city were settled in the first place by the vetch4, which greatly resembled the village gathering of the family elders.
But the need of a power which should decide all questions that might arise while the vetcl^ was in abeyance, was more pressing in the cities, and favoured the development of the power — originally very limited, — of the kniazes or princes, who were elective and whose dignity was neither hereditary nor lifelong. The prince did not even have a permanent military following; his dignity was of a purely personal nature. It is certain that not he but the vetchЈ had the power to make laws. Our information concerning the political organisation of the earliest period of Russian history is very scanty, and we know more of what it lacked than of what it possessed. What strikes
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us most is the absence of a military organisation. In times of danger, those who could defend themselves took up arms, the remainder fled to places of safety.
Nor can we discern with certainty any social differentiation into classes. On the other hand we know that a thriving trade was being carried on in the ninth century along the route which led from the gulf of Finland through Lake Ilmen to the Dvina and down the Dnieper to the Black Sea and thence to Greece. The oldest wooden cities lay along the famous route of the Varangians to the Greek Empire, along which amidst many dangers, the raw products of the north were exchanged for the finished commodities of the
south. It is owing to these dangers that ( the trader had also to be a warrior, and it