194 EUSSIA IN EUROPE. 



Latin transcriptions, E-uthenians, a name now specially restricted to tlie Little 

 Eussians of Austrian Galicia. The term Muscovite itself, frequently used, especi- 

 ally in a hostile sense, both west of the Niémen and south of the Balkans, is purely 

 conventional, and is historically incorrect even when applied to the Great Russians, 

 already forming a compact nation before the foundation of Moscow in 1147, and 

 especially before the political influence of the Great Russian rulers had brought to 

 Western Europe a knowledge of the " kingdom of Muscovy." 



On the other hand, the Great Russians will vainly lay claim to absolute purity 

 of blood, or to the hegemony on the ground of a pretended right of primogeniture 

 in the Slav family. The serious aspect of the question raised by the Polish 

 patriots arises from the fact that the Great Russian nationality has been formed 

 by the fusion of Slav colonists from the west and south-west with various Finnish, 

 Mongol, and Tûrki tribes. The tradition preserved by Nestor mentions the 

 Radimichi and Yatichi amongst the Slav settlers of the region which afterwards 

 became Muscovy, and, by a strange coincidence, these colonists would seem to have 

 come from Poland itself. Then followed the Novgorod settlers, Nestor's Sloveni, 

 those of the Dvina, Dnieper, and Dniester ; that is to say, of "White and Little 

 Russia. The chronicles speak of this colonisation, which is also proved by the 

 names of old towns in Central Muscovy, mere repetitions of Ukranian or Galician 

 nomenclature. However, the Muscovite ethnologists have never denied the mixed 

 origin of the dominant race, which to this very circumstance may be indebted for 

 its greater vital energies. 



During the long struggles of which their history consists, the Slav populations, 

 who have become the Russians of our days, absorbed many foreign elements 

 precisely on account of their preponderance. They gained inch by inch on the 

 indigenous peoples, but in doing so became mingled with them, partly assimilating 

 themselves to their physical features and usages, and adopting a few of their 

 words into the national speech. It is certain that the Russian type, especially in 

 the neighbourhood of the Finnish tribes, is distinct from that of the other Slavs, 

 differing in a marked manner from that of the Danubian and Illyrian branches, 

 speaking languages of like origin. Russians are often met with the flat features 

 and high cheek bones of the Finns, and the women especially have retained these 

 traces -of miscigenation. 



In the south other crossings have dcA^eloped other types. Here the Slavs 

 came in contact with Asiatic tribes arriving at the period of the general migra- 

 tions, and then with the Mongolians and the Tûrki peoples commonly known as 

 Tatars. A large number of Russian noble families h.ave sprung from Tatar 

 and Mongol chiefs, who accepted baptism to retain their power. The Zaporog 

 Cossacks, as well as those of the Don, the Volga, and the L^ral, were in the habit of 

 carrjdng off" Tatar women in their expeditions, and so it happened that through 

 their very victories the Slavs lost the purity of their blood. In those days they 

 occupied little more than one-fifth of the actual Russian territory, all the rest of 

 the land belonging to the Lithuanians, to the Finns, and to various nomad 

 and settled tribes, immigrants from the Asiatic steppes. Now they people four- 



