GEOGRAPHY IN RUSSIAN HISTORY 7 



teenth and nineteenth centuries, but in the frequent struggles for the 

 mastery of the borderland, so poignantly driven home, even to us at this 

 distance, by the conflict now waging on the banks of the Vistula. 



The other point where the natural frontiers are absent is in the 

 southwest, towards the Danube. There the fact that the Carpathians 

 do not reach to the Black Sea but double back on themselves, leaves an 

 open and inviting road to the rich lands of the lower Danube, while the 

 Black Sea itself offers an even more attractive outlet by way of the Bos- 

 phorus and Constantinople as the gateway to the Mediterranean and 

 one of the world's great trade routes. And how many diplomatic 

 intrigues, wars, conventions and treaties have had their origin in this 

 simple geographic condition. 



According to the latest investigations by Eussian historians, the 

 Slavic race was, about the second century after Christ, swept by the 

 surging currents of racial migration into the region of the lower and 

 middle Danube. But they were not allowed to remain, for it was they 

 who received that terrible thrashing by Trajan's Eomans. As a result 

 of this, a large portion of them turned back, retraced their steps across 

 the Carpathians into the Eussian plain, and there on the banks of the 

 lower Dnieper at Kiev slowly organized into a state. Indeed it is this 

 little principality at Kiev that marks the beginning of the Eussian na- 

 tion. Its growth was stimulated by two great historic events. The first 

 was the coming of the Scandinavians under Eurik and the subsequent 

 assimilation, infusing into the Slav, especially the upper or commercial 

 class, some of the military spirit of the north. The second was the adop- 

 tion of Christianity about the year 1000. The conversion of the East- 

 ern Slav was a step of momentous importance, for it brought a new 

 force into his life. It also articulated, at least partially, his religion 

 with that of western Europe. Partially, for as might be expected, the 

 influence of geography told here, and the proximity of Kiev to Con- 

 stantinople led the Eussians to adopt the Eastern or Greek form of Chris- 

 tianity instead of the Western or Eoman. Indeed the adoption at this 

 psychological moment of the Byzantine religion and the Slavonic lit- 

 urgy may well be regarded as the most fateful moment in Eussian his- 

 tory. Later the marriage of Ivan III. with Sophia, the niece and heir 

 of the last of the Constantines, gave to Eussia not only the emblem of 

 Byzantium, the double-headed eagle, but a claim to Constantinople 

 itself. 



The glories of the early civilization of Eussia at Kiev, which even 

 chroniclers of the west say outshone that of Alfred or of Charles the 

 Great, can not delay us here. About the middle of the twelfth century, 

 it was, however, violently interrupted by a great invasion by the Tartar 

 hordes from Asia. The " Man of Eus," the Eussian, was conquered and 

 his civilization submerged. Kiev was abandoned in 1240 and those who 



