NO. II THE RACES OF RUSSIA — HRDLICKA II 



Long- before this, however, the Russians spread over all the more 

 northern regions of their present European domain, to and beyond 

 the Urals, and even over Siberia. Expansion into the latter deserves 

 a few words by itself. 



Up to the sixteenth century the vast region now known as Siberia 

 was peopled exclusively by native tribes, of Ural-Altaic or Mongolian 

 extraction or with Mongolian admixture. They were all more or 

 less nomadic and in a primitive state of culture. There was never 

 any political unity; and many of the tribes whose forefathers had 

 probably participated in the westward invasions lapsed gradually 

 into a numerically and otherwise weakened condition. It was such 

 a state of affairs which awaited the ever progressing Russian tide. 



The first Russians crossed the Urals as early as the eleventh 

 century, but this led to no consequences of importance. The con- 

 quest of Siberia took place in 1580. Yermak, a Don Cossack in 

 disgrace, invaded the vast territory with 1,636 followers, and this 

 handful of men practically secured the conquest of a territory con- 

 siderably more than twice as large as the whole of Russia in Europe. 

 Within eighty years after that the Russians reached the Amur and 

 the Pacific ; and the rest is merely a history of a gradual disappear- 

 ance of the natives and of Russian immigration. 



The cultural progress as well as the racial aspects of southern 

 Russia was affected more by the great Tartar invasion of the 

 thirteenth century than by any or perhaps all the previous ones. 

 The descendants of the Tartars, together with other remnants, are 

 found to this day in numbers along the Volga and some of its tribu- 

 taries, and north of the Sea of Azov, as well as in Crimea and the 

 Caucasus; while some Tartar blood can be traced in not a few 

 Russian families. The effects of the resulting ethnographic changes 

 are felt even now and have been utilized by the enemies of Russia 

 against the interest of the country. This relates especially to the 

 region now known as Ukraina (the "border province") or Little 

 Russia. No such subdivision existed before this last Tartar invasion, 

 and the region of Kiev, now the capital of Ukraine, was the old 

 center and heart of Russia. The Tartar massacres in part depopu- 

 lated the region, and created a terror which resulted in large numbers 

 of the people fleeing westward into Galicia and Polish territory. 

 There are differences of opinion as to how great the depopulation 

 really was, but that it was severe, though perhaps not complete, is 

 indisputable. As all this is of particular importance at the present 



