A Woman of Yakutsk
In the west the Slavs fell under the influence of Rome; in the east, under that of Byzantium: hence the antagonism which during long centuries has set strife in the midst of the two chief Slavonic nations. United by theircommon origin and the affinity of their languages, they are, however, separated by the very elements of civilisation — religion, writing, and calendar; therein lies the secret of the moral and material strife between Russia and Poland — a strife which, after having nearly annihilated the one, actually cost the other its life; as though from the Carpathian to the Ural, on those vast even plains, there was not room at one time for two separate states.
In the northwest, on the banks of the Niemen and Dvina, appears a strange group, incontestably of Indo-European origin yet isolated amidst the peoples of Europe; harking back to the Slavs, yet forming a parallel branch rather than offshoot — the Letto-Lithuanian group. Shut away in the north by marshy forests, restricted by powerful neighbours, the Lithuanian group long remained closed to all outer influences, whether of East or West. Last of all the peoples of Europe to accept Christianity, its language even to-day is the nearest of European tongues to the Sanskrit. The bone of contention among the Germans, the Poles, and the Russians, who each in turn obtained a footing among them and left an influence on their religion, they found themselves divided into Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox.
Mixed with Poles and Russians, menaced on both sides with complete absorption, the Lithuanians and the Samogitians, their brothers by race and language, still number in ancient Lithuania nearly two million souls, Catholics for the most part; they formed the majority of the population of Vilna and Kovno. In Prussia some two hundred thousand Lithuanians constitute the representatives of the ancient population of oriental Prussia, whose name is derived from a people of that race which kept its language intact up to the seventeenth century;
The second existing group of this family, the Letts, crossed probably with Finns, number more than a million souls; they inhabit chiefly Courland, Yitetesk and Livonia; but, converted, subjected, and made slaves of by the Teutonic kinghts, they still live under the dominion of the German barons of the Baltic provinces, with whom they have nothing in common but their religion — Lutheranism. Like the Finnish tribes outside of Finland, the Letts and Lithuanians, scanty in number and widely scattered, are incapable of forming by themselves a nation or a state. Out of this intermixture of races by the assimilation of the ruder by the more civilised, was formed a new people — a homogenous nation. In fact, contrary to popular prejudice there is in Russia something more than an intermixture of diverse races — there is what we to-day call a "nationality" — as united, as compact, and as self-conscious as any nation in the world. Russia, notwithstanding all her various races, is yet no incoherent mass, no political conglomeration or mosaic of peoples. She resembles France in her national unity rather than Turkey or Austria.
If Russia must be compared to a mosaic, let it be to one of those ancient pavements whose scheme is a single substance of solid color edged with a border of diverse forms and shades — most of Russia's original alien populations being relegated to her borders and forming around her a sort of belt of uneven width.
It is in the centre of Russia that is found that uniformity of much more marked among the Russians than among all other peoples of Europe; from one end of the empire to the other the language presents fewer dialects and less localisms than most of our western languages. The cities all look alike; the peasants have the same customs, the same manner of life. The nation resembles the country, having the same unity, almost the same monotony as the plains which it peoples.
The Great Russians and the Little Russians
There are, however, two principal types, almost two peoples, speaking two dialects and wholly separated from each other: the Great Russians and the Little Russians. 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. This is due partly to nature, partly to history, which has hindered the development of the one and fostered that of the other. The southern steppes, open to every invasion, long arrested the expansion of the Little Russians, who for centuries were shut up in the basins of the Dnieper, the Bug, and the Dniester; while the Great Russians spread freely in the north and east and established themselves in the enormous basin of the Volga; masters of nearly all the forest regions and of the great Ural Lake, they took possession of the Black Belt and the steppes along the Volga and the Don.
The White Russian inhabits Mohilev, Vitebsk, Grodno, Minsk — a region possessing some of the finest forests in Russia, but whose soil is marshy and unwholesome. United politically with the Little Russian, the two have been classed under the name Western^ Russians. Subjected at an early date by Lithuania, whose dialect became its^ official language, White Russia was with the greater part of Little Russia united to Poland, and was for centuries the object of strife between that nation and the Muscovite czars, from the effects of which strife she still bleeds. Of the three Russian tribes this is perhaps the purest in blood; but thanks to the sterility of the soil and the remoteness of the sea, she has remained the poorest and least advanced in civilisation.
The Great Russians are the most vigorous and expansive element of the Russian nation, albeit the most mixed. Finnish blood has left its traces in their physique; Tatar dominion in their character. Before the advent of the Romanovs they formed alone the Muscovite Empire, and their czars took the title "Sovereign of all the Russias" long before Alexis, father of Peter the Great, justified this title by the annexation of the Ukraine. Hence Great Russia, under the name Muscovite, has been considered by certain foreigners the true, the only Russia. This is an error; since the Great Russian, the product of the colonisation of central Russia by the western Russians before the invasion of the Tatars antidates the state and even the village of Moscow. If, therefrom has emerged the Muscovite autocracy, it is impossible to cut the ties that bind it to the great Slav republic of the world whose name is still the active symbol of liberty — Novgorod.
Least Slav of all the peoples that pretend to the name, the Great Russian has been the coloniser of the race. His whole history has been one long struggle against Asia; his conquests have contributed to the aggrandisement of Europe. Long the vassal of the Tatar khans, he never forgot under Asiatic domination his European origin; and in the farthest limits of Muscovy the very name Asiatic is an insult to the peasant.
Conqueror over Asia, influenced morally and physically by all the populations assimilated or subjugated by him in his march from the Dnieper to the Ural, the Great Russian lost something of his independence, his pride, his individuality; but he gained in stability and solidity.
^ In spite of the obvious evidences of his mixed blood, the Great Russian is in perfect harmony with the Caucasian race by the exterior characteristics which distinguish it—his stature, his complexion, the colour of his hair and eyes. He is apt to be tall, his skin is white, his eyes are very often blue; his hair is usually blond, light chestnut, or red. The long heavy beard so dear to the heart of the moujik and which all the persecutions of Peter the Great failed to induce him to dispense with, is in itself a mark of race, as nothing could be smoother than the chin of the Mongol, the Chinese, or the Japanese.