As early as the 8th century, and probably still earlier, a stream of Slav colonization, advancing E. from the Danube, poured over the plains of S.W. Russia. It is also most probable that another similar stream—the N., coming from the Elbe, through the basin of the Vistula—ought to be distinguished. In the 9th century the Slavs occupied the upper Vistula, the S. of the Russian lacustrine region, and the W. of the central plateau. They had Lithuanians to the W.; various Finnish tribes, intermingled towards the S.E. with Turkish (the present Bashkirs); the Bulgars, whose origin still remains doubtful, on the middle Volga and Kama; and to the S.E. the Turkish-Mongol races of the Pechenegs, Polovtsi, Uzes, &c., while in the S., along the Black Sea, was the empire of the Khazars, who had under their rule several Slav tribes, and perhaps also some of Finnish origin. In the 9th century also the Ugrians are supposed to have left their Ural abodes and to have traversed S.E. and S. Russia on their way to the basin of the Danube. If the Slavs be subdivided into three branches—the W. (Poles, Czechs and Wends), the S. (Servians, Bulgarians, Croatians, &c.), and the E. (Great, Little and White Russians), it will be seen that, with the exception of some 3,000,000 Little Russians, now settled in East Galicia and in Poland, and of a few on the southern slope of the Carpathians, the whole of the E. Slavs occupy, as a compact body, W., central and S. Russia.
Like other races of mankind, the Russian race is not pure. The Russians have absorbed and assimilated in the course of their history a variety of Finnish and Turko-Finnish elements. Still, craniological researches show that, notwithstanding this fact, the Slav type has been maintained with remarkable persistency: Slav skulls ten and thirteen centuries old exhibit the same anthropological features as those which characterize the Slavs of our own day. This may be explained by a variety of causes, of which the chief is the maintenance by the Slavs down to a very late period of gentile or tribal organization and gentile marriages, a fact vouched for, not only in the pages of the Russian chronicler Nestor, but still more by visible social evidences, the gens later developing into the village community, and the colonization being carried on by large co-ordinated bodies of people. The Russians do not emigrate as isolated individuals; they migrate in whole villages. The overwhelming numerical superiority of the Slavs, and the very great differences in ethnical type, belief and mythology between the Indo-European and the Ural-Altaic races, may have contributed to the same end. Moreover, while a Russian man, far away from home among Siberians, readily marries a native, the Russian woman seldom does the like. All these causes, and especially the first-mentioned, have enabled the Slavs to maintain their ethnical purity in a relatively high degree, whereby they have been enabled to assimilate foreign elements and make them intensify or improve the ethnical type, without giving rise to half-breed races. The very same N. Russian type has thus been maintained from Novgorod to the Pacific, with but minor differentiations on the outskirts—and this notwithstanding the great variety of races with which the Russians have come into contact. But a closer observation of what is going on in the recently colonized confines of the empire—where whole villages live without mixing with the natives, but slowly bringing them over to the Russian manner of life, and then slowly taking in a few female elements from them—gives the key to this feature of Russian life.
Not so with the national customs. There are features—the wooden house, the oven, the bath—which the Russian never abandons, even when swamped in an alien population. But when settled among these the Russian—the N. Russian—readily adapts himself to many other differences. He speaks Finnish with Finns, Mongolian with Buriats, Ostiak with Ostiaks; he shows remarkable facility in adapting his agricultural practices to new conditions, without, however, abandoning the village community; he becomes hunter, cattle-breeder or fisherman, and carries on these occupations according to local usage; he modifies his dress and adapts his religious beliefs to the locality he inhabits. In consequence of all this, the Russian peasant (not, be it noted, the trader) proves himself to be an excellent colonist.
Three different branches can be distinguished among the Russians
from the dawn of their history:—the Great Russians, the Little
Russians (Malorusses or Ukrainians), and the White
Russians (the Byelorusses). These correspond to the two
currents of immigration mentioned above—the N. and S.,
Subdivisions
of Russians.
with perhaps an intermediate stream, the proper place of
of the White Russians not having been as yet exactly
determined. The primary distinctions between these branches
have been increased during the last nine centuries by their contact
with different nationalities—the Great Russians absorbing Finnish
elements, the Little Russians undergoing an admixture of Turkish
blood, and the White Russians submitting to Lithuanian influence.
Moreover, notwithstanding the unity of language, it is easy to detect
among the Great Russians themselves two separate branches,
differing from one another by slight divergences of language and
type and deep diversities of national character—the Central
Russians and the Novgorodians. The latter extend throughout
N. Russia into Siberia. Many minor anthropological differentiae
can be distinguished among both the Great and the Little Russians,
depending probably on the assimilation of various minor subdivisions
of the Ural-Altaians.
The Great Russians occupy in one compact mass the space enclosed by a line drawn from the White Sea to Lake Pskov, the upper courses of the W. Dvina and the Donets, and thence, through the mouth of the Sura, by the Vetluga, to the Mezeñ. To the E. of this boundary they are intermingled with Turko-Finns, but in the Ural mountains they reappear in a second compact body, and thence extend through S. Siberia and along the courses of the Lena and the Amur. Great Russian Nonconformists are disseminated among Little Russians in the governments of Chernigov and Mogilev, and they reappear in greater masses in Novoroissa (i.e. S. Russia), as also in N. Caucasia.
The Little Russians occupy the steppes of S. Russia, the S.W. slopes of the central plateau and those of the Carpathian and Lublin mountains, and the Carpathian plateau, that is, the governments of Podolia, Volhynia, Poltava, and Kiev. The Zaporozhian Cossacks colonized the steppes farther E., towards the Don, where they met with a large population of Great Russian runaways, constituting the present Don Cossacks. The Zaporozhian Cossacks, sent by Catherine II. to colonize the E. coast of the Sea of Azov, constituted there the Black Sea and later the Kubañ Cossacks (part of whom, the Nekrasovsty, migrated to Turkey). They have also peopled large parts of the government of Stavropol and of N. Caucasia.
The White Russians, intermingled to some extent with Great and Little Russians, Poles and Lithuanians, occupy the upper parts of the W. slope of the central plateau.
The Finnish races, which in prehistoric times extended from the Ob all over N. Russia, even then were subdivided into Ugrians, Permyaks, Bulgarians and Finns proper, who drove back the previous Lapp population from what is now Finland, and about the 7th century, penetrated to the S. of the Gulf of Finland, in the region of the Livs and Kurs, where they fused to some extent with the Lithuanians and the Letts. At present the races of Finnish origin are represented in Russia by the following: (a) the W. Finns; the Tavasts, in central Finland; the Kvaens, in N.W. Finland; the Karelians, in the E., who also occupy the lake regions of Olonets and Archangel, and have settlements in Novgorod and Tver; the Izhores, on the Neva and the S.E. coast of the Gulf of Finland; the Esths, in Esthonia and the N. of Livonia; the Livs, on the Gulf of Riga; and the Kurs, intermingled with the Letts; (b) the N. Finns, or Lapps, in N. Finland and on the Kola peninsula, and the Samoyedes in Archangel and W. Siberia; (c) the Volga Finns, or rather the old Bulgarian branch, to which belong the Mordvinians, and the Cheremisses in Kazañ, Kostroma and Vyatka, though they are classified by some authors with the following: (d) the Permyaks, or Cis-Uralian Finns, including the Votiaks on the E. of Vyatka, the Permyaks in Perm, the Syryenians or Zyryans in Vologda, Archangel, Vyatka and Perm; (e) the Ugrians, or Trans-Uralian Finns, including the Voguls on both slopes of the Urals, the Ostiaks in Tobolsk and partly in Tomsk, and the Magyars, or Ugrians.
The following are the chief subdivisions of the Turko-Tatars in European Russia:—(1) The Tatars, of whom three different branches must be distinguished: (a) the Kazañ Tatars on both banks of the Volga, below the mouth of the Oka, and on the lower Kama, but penetrating farther S. in Ryazañ, Tambov, Samara, Simbirsk and Penza; (b) the Tatars of Astrakhan at the mouth of the Volga; and (c) those of the Crimea, a great many of whom emigrated to Turkey after the Crimean War (1854-56). There are, besides, a certain number of Tatars in the S.E. in Minsk, Grodno and Vilna. (2) The Bashkirs, who inhabit the slopes of the S. Urals, that is, the steppes of Ufa and Orenburg, extend also into Perm and Samara. (3) The Chuvashes, on the right bank of the Volga, in Kazañ and Simbirsk. (4) The Meshcheryaks, a tribe of Finnish origin who formerly inhabited the basin of the Oka, and, driven thence during the 15th century by the Russian colonists, immigrated into Ufa and Perm, where they now live among the Baskhirs, having adopted their religion and customs. (5) The Teptyars, also of Finnish origin,
