522 SLAVIC LITERATURE 



They came from the west, from the plains that stretch from the foot 

 of the Carpathians to the lower Danube. But neither the sedentary 

 settlements, of which Kiev was the most firmly established, nor their 

 political and commercial bonds of federation, checked the tide. 

 While certain of their tribes pushed on toward the north and north- 

 east, into Finnish territory, others, with an energy just reaching its 

 acme in the ninth century, pointed toward the south. But soon, at 

 the end of the tenth century, the resistance of the Turkish hordes 

 (Pechenegs, Ouzes, and later the Polovzi) obstructed the road toward 

 the south. A backward movement, more powerful each day, began 

 toward the north and northeast, a movement which even the inva- 

 sion of the Tatar-Mongols, in the thirteenth century, did not com- 

 pletely check. Moscow, destined to become the centre of gravity of 

 Russian dominion, was built in the very midst of Finnish territory. 

 The founding of Nizni-Novgorod established Russian supremacy over 

 all the valley of the middle Volga. This irresistible tide of movement 

 toward the east went on with a remarkable continuity during the 

 entire modern epoch; Kazan and Astrakhan, these two strongholds 

 of the Tatars, fell, the first in 1552, the second in 1554. Then, while 

 the movement toward the south was again taken up and assured 

 by the free outlaws of the Cossack countries, the conquest of Siberia 

 continued, a task of centuries, which, in spite of the great work of 

 colonization accomplished in the nineteenth century, is still far 

 from completion. Finally, in the nineteenth century, came the con- 

 quest of the Caucasus and the penetration into Central Asia. 



Carried on by this irresistible impulse, this Drang nach Ostcn 

 (eastward movement), the Russians, as they gradually became more 

 involved in the great events of which Europe was the theatre, had to 

 turn also toward the west. The empire of the Tsars broke up Lithuania, 

 conquered the Baltic Provinces, divided up Poland, and occupied 

 Finland. But, although an uninterrupted current of immigration 

 always followed the victorious advance of their armies toward the 

 east, the smallest part of this current could not be turned toward the 

 west. The Russification of the kingdom of Poland is only a term; it is 

 in units that the few families of Russian peasants settled in Lithuania 

 and in the Baltic Provinces should be counted. The rigorous measures 

 by means of which the Government of St. Petersburg has lately 

 thought to "assimilate" the Grand-Duchy of Finland seem destined 

 to prove a complete failure. 



It is therefore by the continuous movement of conquest and col- 

 onization that the Russian language has spread over the vast area in 

 which it is spoken to-day, from the large rivers of the north, tribu- 

 taries of the Arctic Ocean, to the Black Sea and the Kirgiz Steppe, 

 from the valley of the Dnieper to the Pacific. It is precisely to this 

 particular mode of propagation that Russian owes one of its most 



