GEOGRAPHY IN RUSSIAN HISTORY u 



as well of the somber hues of the Great Eussian's attire, as of the 

 brightness and variegated colors of the Little Eussian. 



But despite these differences, the great plain dominates, and en- 

 vironment added to common history and a common religion, has pro- 

 duced a people of greater homogeneity than is Icnown anywhere else 

 on so large a scale. 



Among the races of the frontier, the differences are more striking, 

 not only between group and group but between each group and the 

 Eussian proper. They occupy the territory on the outer border; 

 Poland, the Baltic provinces, Finland, the foothills of the Urals, the 

 lower Volga, and the region of the Caucasus, and furnish almost 

 every variety of head formation, stature, color scheme and what goes 

 without saying, a veritable Babel of languages or dialects. The Eus- 

 sian Year Book for 1912 notes 101 languages or dialects, and there is 

 excellent authority for the statement that at Tiflis 68 of these are in 

 actual use. 



First among the non-Eussian peoples of the fringe are the Poles. 

 There are between seven and eight million Poles under Eussian rule, 

 and at "Warsaw one of the most tragic racial struggles of history has 

 been in progress for well-nigh a century and a half. The Poles are 

 Slavs but belong to the western branch of the race and are ardently 

 devoted to the Eoman Catholic instead of the Greek Catholic Church. 

 Generally speaking the ethnic type more nearly resembles the Little 

 Eussian, both in appearance and character. But the effect of pro- 

 longed oppression involving the elimination of a large proportion of 

 the best manhood is having its effects. This fact impresses itself more 

 emphatically on the casual visitor because of the presence in Poland 

 of millions of unfortunate Jews, forced into the country by the policy 

 of Eussian autocracy and necessarily living under conditions of the 

 most cruel and grinding poverty. 



To the north of the Poles and occupying the Baltic provinces, a 

 region of birch and pine with a poor soil, are two peoples, the Letts 

 and the Germans. The Letts with their chief center at Vilna consti- 

 -tute the lower class. They are at the same time the oldest remnant of 

 the Aryan stock. There are between three and four millions of them; 

 all belong to the peasant class and are a raw-boned race, simple in 

 language, taste and habits. They were the last of the Aryan peoples to 

 accept Christianity and their language is of interest because it is the 

 most ancient form of Aryan extant. As might be expected it has 

 scarcely any words to express abstract ideas, its vocabulary being con- 

 fined to words for concrete objects. The upper class in the Baltic prov- 

 inces is German. There are not a great many of them, but they are 

 the great landed proprietors, business and commercial men. The chief 

 cities are Eiga and Libau. Eiga in particular boasts of a history as- 



