210 proceedings: anthropological society 



per annum. As a result of the ' clearances/ the crofters and cotters have 

 had to move to the towns and their places have been taken by rich 

 men who have turned the country into 'sanctuaries' for deer and grouse. 

 The present day Scotch republicans, who represent a party which 

 came into existence at the time of the French Revolution, are now tak- 

 ing steps to see to it that the principle of 'self-determination' is applied 

 to Scotland." 



The 522nd meeting of the Society was held in the West Study Room 

 of the Pubhc Library, February 26, 1918, at 8 p.m. On this occasion 

 Dr. Peter Alexander Speek, of the Library of Congress, addressed the 

 Society on The 'problems of race and nationality in Russia. 



Pointing out the difficulties of a definition of the term ''nationality," 

 the lecturer stated that race is a perpendicular division of mankind, a 

 group of people separated according to ethnological and anthropologi- 

 cal differences which have resulted mainly from the natural surround- 

 ings in prehistoric times, and that nationality is a perpendicular sub- 

 division of a race or races, a group of people with common ways and 

 forms of life, but different from other groups because of histological 

 development under the influence of the different geographical condi- 

 tions and social forces. Thus nationality may be expressed more or 

 less in everything which is native to a human being and characteristic 

 of his existence, in physical form, in mental and spiritual develop- 

 ment, in economics, politics, science, arts, moral principles, customs, 

 and habits. 



The speaker described Russia as a conglomerate oT a large num- 

 'ber of highly varied countries, races, and nationalities united by con- 

 quests into one body politic, ruled up to the time of the revolution by 

 the same monarch and the same laws and institutions. 



In 1914 the population of Russia was nearly 180,000,000, the race 

 composition of which was as follows: Indo-European, about 80 per 

 cent; Ural-Altaic, 14 per cent; Semitic, 4 per cent; indefinite, about 2 

 per cent. The statistics of nationality were as follows: Indo-Euro- 

 pean race — Great Russian^, about 44 per cent; Little Russians, 18 per 

 cent; Polish, 6 per cent; White Russians, 5 per cent; German, about 2 

 per cent; Lithuanians, 1 per cent; Lettonian, 1 per cent; Armenian, 

 1 per cent — Ural-Altaic race: Turkish-Tartar, 11 per cent; Finnish, 2 

 per cent; Esthonian, 1 per cent — Semitic race: Jews, 4 per cent — other 

 minor nationalities of the above races, 2 per cent of the whole popula- 

 tion. The last Russian census shows that there were 123 different and 

 distinct nationalities living in Russia. The Great Russians, about 44 

 per cent of the population, ruled all the other subjugated nationalities, 

 i.e., 56 per cent of the whole population. 



The policy of the Russian monarchy was to Russianize the non- 

 Great Russian nationalities by violence. This policy is to be explained 

 in part by the teachings of Pan-Slavism. Pan-Germanism and Pan- 

 Slavism sprang from the teachings of the German historians and poli- 

 ticians, who emphasized the fact of the absorption of Slavs by Teutons 

 in northern Prussia and of Finns by Slavs in the northern part of 



