20 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 69 



the Russians. During- the latter half of the nineteenth century 

 German colonization in important parts of Russia was, there are 

 valid reasons to believe, favored if not directed by the German 

 Government for economic and perhaps strategic reasons. 



The German nobles and landed proprietors in the Baltic provinces 

 date in the main from the time of the attempts by the German Knights 

 to forcibly " Christianize " the natives of these provinces, though 

 some were brought there later by the guileless Russians. 



A study of the German relations with Russia shows that the latter 

 has ever been a field for advancement and exploitation by Germany. 

 By most Germans at home, the Russians, together with the rest of 

 the Slavs, were looked upon as a desirable " fertilizer " fbr the 

 German stock ; but every care was taken that the Germans in Russia 

 should not disappear in the Russian mass and thus weaken Germany 

 to the advantage of her neighbor, the dreaded sleeping Samson, the 

 Russian Slav. 



CONCLUDING REMARKS 



Leaving aside all details and localized ethnic peculiarities, we find 

 that the racial problems of European as well as of Asiatic Russia, 

 are relatively fairly simple, (i) We find over a large portion of the 

 vast territory a thin substratum of Finno-Ugrians, who are of western 

 Asiatic origin and carry with them varying traces of Mongolian 

 admixture. (2) The southern portions of Russia from remote time 

 constitute a broad avenue for the movement of Asiatic peoples in a 

 westerly direction. These peoples are partly of Iranian, but in the 

 main of Turko-Tartar derivation ; and the Turko-Tartars like the 

 Finno-Ugrians are mixed peoples, partly white and partly Mon- 

 golian. Their influence, both racial and cultural, on the country 

 and its people is marked and in a measure persists even to the present 

 day. (3) Along the Baltic we find Finnish tribes in the north and 

 the Lithuanians, probably of mixed Slavic and Scandinavian com- 

 position, farther southward and westward. (4) All the rest of the 

 great region is Slav, Polish in the west, Russian in the center and 

 eastward. 



It is eminently true that Russia is essentially a Slav country, 

 which to-day is equally true of Siberia and in a large measure even 

 of the Caucasus. In Central Asia the Russian element is still con- 

 siderably exceeded by the Turco-Tartars. 



From the anthropological standpoint, the Russian stock is well 

 developed, virile, resistant, and full of potential force. It may 



