RUSSIA IN EUROPE 
11 
with the variet}’’ of races at a dinner in Piatigorsk, a watering 
place at the foothills of the Caucasus, given by an officer of the 
Pussian army. My host was a German; the other guests, his 
fellow-officers, were a Pole, a Jew, an Armenian, a Caucasian, a 
Georgian, a Tartar, a Mongolian, and, finally, a Russian, 
In a Tartar and Russian village there is no blending of races. 
Near one end stands the Mohammedan mosque ; at the other 
the Christian temple. In Finnish villages, on the oth^r hand, 
intermarriages of the Finns and Russians is causing the blend- 
ing of the two races. 
CH.\RACTERISTICS OF THE POPULATION. 
Russia in Europe, with a population of nearly 100,000,000, is 
very thinly populated, having only fifteen inhabitants to the 
square kilometer, while Germany has seventy-eight and England 
one hundred and fourteen. The population is increasing at a 
more rapid rate than in either of these countries. 
A recent writer says : “ The life that men live in the city gives 
the type and measure of their civilization. The word civiliza- 
tion means the manner of life of the civilized part of the com- 
munity — that is, of the city men, not of the country men, who 
are called rustics.” The cities of Russia, except St. Petersburg, 
are small, far apart, and have little connection with each other 
or influence on the population. The Russian peasant has there- 
fore little knowledge either of city life or of this civilization. He 
lives far removed from it, and there is little of it in Russia. Only 
one-third as many in proportion to population live in the cities 
of Russia as in the cities of the United States. 
Two-thirds of the population, including all the Great and Little 
Russians, live in the black zone, with Moscow as a center. It 
is estimated that over six-eighths of these are either serfs them- 
selves or are the children of serfs, while 6,000,000 of the re- 
mainder are Poles and 2,000,000 .Jews. 
It is impossible that in one generation such a population of 
freedmen should have made any considerable advance. Their 
life and habits are, therefore, mainly such as they were as serfs. 
It should also be borne in mind that while these are descendants 
from Aryans, yet this blood has from time to time and in very 
mau}'^ generations ])oen mingled with the blood of the Asiatics, 
and therefore with nations less civilized. 
The highly civilized man makes nature subordinate to his 
