(3) The two principalities of Tcheringov with Starodub and Lubetz and of Novgorod-Seversk with Putivl, Kursk and Briansk, which extended along the tributaries flowing into the Dnieper from the left — the Soj and the Desna swelled by the Seim. Tcheringov, extending towards the upper Oka, had thus one foot in the basin of the Volga; its princes, the Olgovitchi, were the most redoubtable rivals of those of Kiev. As for the princes of Seversk, they were ceaselessly occupied with wars against their dangerous rivals on the south, the Polovtsi. It is the exploits of a prince of Seversk against these barbarians which form the subject of a chanson de geste — The Song of Igor.
Laplander
^ (4) The duplex principality of Riazan and Murom, another state whose existence was maintained at the expense of ceaseless war against the nomads.
The principal towns were Riazan, Murom, Pereiaslavl-Riazanski, on the Oka; Kolomna, at the junction of the Moskva with the Oka; and Pronsk, on the Pronia. The upper Don bounded it on the west. This principality was established in the midst of Finnish tribes — the Muromians and the Meshtseraks. The warlike character and the rude and coarse habits attributed to the people of the principality doubtless resulted not less from the assimilation of the aborigines by the Russian race than from the continuous brutal strife of the inhabitants with the nomads.
The principalities of Suzdal — with their metropolitan towns of Tver/Suzdal, Rostov, Iuriev-Polski, and Vladimir on the Kliasma; of Iaroslavl and Pereiaslavl-Zaliesski — which were established on the Volga and the Oka, in the densest of the northern forests, surrounded by Finnish tribes — Mouromians, Merians, Vesses, and Tcherimisses. Though situated at the extreme limit of the Russian world, these principalities nevertheless exercised great influence over it. We shall see their princes now reducing Novgorod and the Russia of the lakes to a certain political dependence, the consequence of a double economical dependence; then victoriously intervening in the quarrels of the Russia of the Dneiper. The Suzdalians were of the same character as the Riazanians — rude and warlike. The characteristics of a new nationality were already noticeable among these two peoples. That which differentiated them from the Kievans and the Novgorod-Sev- erskans, who, like themselves, were occupied in the great struggle against the barbarians, was that the Russians of the Dnieper, sometimes mingling their blood with that of their enemies, became fused with Turkish tribes, nomadic and essentially mobile, while the Russians of the Oka and the Volga united with Finnish tribes, agricultural and essentially sedentary. This difference between the two foreign elements which entered into the blood of the Slavs, without doubt contributed to that marked difference in character between the two branches of the Russian race. During the period from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, as colonization advanced, from the basin of the Dnieper to the basin of the Volga, the divisions of Little Russia and Great Russia were formed.
The principalities of Kiev, Tchernigov, Novgorod-Seversk, Riazan, Murom, and Suzdal, which formed the marches of Russia on the borders of the steppe with its devastating hordes — constituting its frontier states. On the confines of the northwest, opposite the Lithuanians, the Letts and the Tchuds, the same role devolved on the principality of Polotsk, occupying the basin of the Dvina, and on the republican principalities of Novgorod and Pskov on the lakes of Ilmen and Petpus. The principality of Minsk was attached to that of Polotsk. It was situated in the basin of the Dnieper and, owing to that circumstance, its possession was frequently disputed by the grand princes of Kiev. The towns of Torzhok, Volok-Lamski, Izborsk, and Veliki Luki belonged to Novgorod; at times they were the capitals of individual states.
Southwestern Russia comprehended (1) in the fan-shaped territory formed by the Pripet and its tributaries — Volhinia, with Vladimir in Volhinia, Lutsk, Turov, Brest, and even Lublin, which is unquestionably Polish; (2) in the basins of the San, the Dniester, and the Pripet — Galicia proper, or Red Russia, whose ancient inhabitants, the white Croats, seem to have originated in the Danubian Slavs. Its principal towns were Galitch, founded by Vladimirko about 1444; Peremishl; Terebovlia, and Svenigorodka. The near neighbourhood of Hungary and Poland contributed to these two principalities distinctive characteristics, as well as a more advanced civilisation.
In the epic songs Galicia, the land of the hero Dvorik Stepanovitch, is a country of fabulous wealth. The Narrative of the Expedition of Igor gives an exalted idea of the power of its princes: "Iaroslav Osmomysl of Galicia," cries the poet addressing one of them, "high art thou seated upon thy golden throne! With thy iron regiments thou guardest the Carpathian mountains, thou shuttest the gates of the Danube, thou barrest the way to the king of Hungary; at will thou openest the gates of Kiev, and thine arrows reach far into the distance."
THE UNITY OF THE PRINCIPALITIES
The disposition of these fifteen or sixteen principalities confirms what has been previously stated concerning the essential unity of the configuration of the Russian soil. None of the river-basins forms a closed or isolated region; no line of heights establishes between them barriers or political frontiers. The greater number of the Russian principalities belonged to the basin of the Dnieper, but pushed their limits everywhere beyond. Kiev, with Pereiaslavl, is the only one strictly confined within it; but Volhinia puts the basin of the Dnieper in communication with those of the Bug in the south and of the Vistula; Polotsk connects it with the basins of the Niemen and the Dvina, Novgorod-Seversk with that of the Don, Tchernigov and Smolensk with that of the Volga. Between these principalities, watercourses everywhere establish communications. Russia, though divided into appanages, was already making toward a great united empire. The lack of cohesion among nearly all the states and their frequent dismemberments prevented their becoming actual nationalities. The principalities of Smolensk, of Tchernigov, of Riazan never possessed that definite historical existence so characteristic of the duchy of Brittany or the county of Toulouse in France, the duchies of Saxony, Swabia, or Bavaria in Germany.
The interests of the princes and their ambition to provide an appanage for each of their children, necessitated at the death of every sovereign a fresh distribution of Russian territory. Yet a certain cohesion was evident in the midst of these vicissitudes. There was visible a unity of race and language, the more marked, notwithstanding differences of dialect, in that the Russian Slavs, excepting in the southwest, were surrounded everywhere by entirely dissimilar peoples — Lithuanians, Tchuds, Finns, Turks, and Magyars. There was also unity of religion; the Russians were differentiated from nearly all their neighbours in that, in contradistinction to the Slavs of the west, the Poles, Czechs, and Moravians, they represented a distinct form of Christianity, acknowledging no tie with Rome and rejecting Latin as the church language.
There was also a unity of historical development, since hitherto the Russian Slavs had all followed the same destiny, had equally accepted Greek civilisation, submitted to Varangian conquest, and pursued in common certain great enterprises, such as the expeditions against Byzantium and the wars with the nomads. There was finally political unity, as among all — in Galicia as in Novgorod, by the Dnieper as in the forests of Suzdal — the same family sat upon all the thrones. All the Russian princes were descended from Rurik, from St. Vladimir, and from Iaroslav the Great. The civil wars which desolated the country affirmed anew this unity. No state in Russia could regard the rest as outsiders, when the princes of Tchernigov and Suzdal were seen to take up arms solely to decide which among them was the eldest — which held the right to the title of grand prince and to the throne of Kiev. There were descendants of Rurik who governed successively the most distant states in