THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



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Altogether they number about 80,000,000, a 

 homogeneous whole, numerous enough to con- 

 stitute a great State, inland except as it 

 touches the Arctic, with "No window upon 

 the West." They would be probably content 

 if a chain of buffer States from the Black Sea 

 to the Gulf of Bothnia should shut them off 

 from European connection. Tolstoi, Turgue- 

 niev, Dostoievski, Vereshchagin were all Great 

 Russians. 



THE UKRAINIANS * 



The Little Russians or Ukrainians number 

 about 30,000,000. Theirs is the territory es- 

 teemed most sacred in Russian eyes. 



To Kief, their principal city, Oleg, brother 

 and successor of the Varangian Ruric, trans- 

 ferred the royal dignity from abandoned Nov- 

 gorod. The life of Queen Olga, "The 

 Saintly," the subsequent conversion to Chris- 

 tianity of the King, Saint Vladimir, and of the 

 Russian people at Kherson, and all the heroic 

 history of the Russian Church, were wrought 

 in the Ukraine. Militant as well, expeditions 

 thence wrested tribute from the Byzantine 

 Empire, and Oleg, the king, suspended his 

 shield in triumph from the Golden Gate of 

 Constantinople. 



The proximity of Tatars and Turks and 

 the resultant strain of blood have rendered 

 the Little Russians more warlike than their 

 northern brethren. They are of slighter, 

 shorter figure, and less robust. Their darker 

 faces have more expression. They are less 

 plodding, more volatile and imaginative, love 

 music and are strongly attached to family and 

 home. Gogol, born at Poltava, gives many 

 attractive pictures of the Little Russians. 



Their country in 1320 was conquered and 

 annexed by the Poles, who called it Ukraine 

 or "barrier" against the Tatars. The part 

 east of the Dnieper was restored to Russia in 

 1686 and the western part in 1793. 



THE WHITE RUSSIANS 



The White Russians derive their name from 

 their pale faces or from the white clothes they 

 habitually wear. They number not over 5,- 

 000,000 and are found usually in the neighbor- 

 hood of the Lithuanians. They are not strong- 

 bodied or forceful, seldom exhaust themselves 

 by overwork and are generally poor. They 

 have no towns, hardly any villages, but live in 

 the woods. 



Always the victims of oppression, they show 

 its results in appearance and habits. Their 

 dialect differs greatly from that of the Great 

 or Little Russians. 



THE RESTLESS, EAITHEUL COSSACKS 



The southern Ukraine is "the savage," the 

 "boundless steppe," "The Wilderness" of 



* See also, in National Geographic Maga- 

 zine, "The Ukraine, Past and Present," by 

 Nevin O. Winter (August, 1918). 



Sienkiewicz' masterly romance, "With Fire 

 and Sword." Thither, when the Ukraine was 

 Polish territory, flocked thousands of escaped 

 serfs and outlaws, who gradually separated 

 into groups. Their headquarters were just be- 

 low the cataracts of the Dnieper. They were 

 called "Kazaki" from a Tatar word meaning 

 freebooters or adventurers. 



Proscribed by the Roman Catholic Polish 

 nobility, they often allied themselves with the 

 Tatars of the Crimea and later with the Rus- 

 sians, Eastern Orthodox like themselves. 

 They were the real masters of the Ukraine, 

 which their hetman, Chmielnicki, caused to be- 

 come again Russian. A later and traitorous 

 hetman, the Mazeppa of Byron's poem, en- 

 deavored in vain to deliver it to Charles XII 

 at Poltava. 



Always restless but always faithful to the 

 Tsar, they emigrated to the Crimea and then 

 farther east. They were made "Guardians of 

 the Frontiers." They now consist of ten dis- 

 tinct bodies, of which the Cossacks of the Don, 

 the Usuri, Orenburg and Astrakhan are the 

 most important. 



Their lawlessness has abated, but not their 

 warlike instincts or their loyalty. The fallen 

 Empire had no more faithful soldiers than its 

 320,000 mounted Cossacks. 



In time of peace they are farmers, cattle- 

 men, horse breeders, fishers, raisers of bees, 

 cultivators of vines. Among them popular 

 education stands on a higher plane than else- 

 where in Russia. Relatively they have more 

 schools and more children in them. Indus- 

 trious, thrifty, domestic, they do not deserve, 

 despite their origin, the opprobrium in which 

 they are held by Europe. 



THE RACES OF THE BALTIC 

 PROVINCES 



Upon the map, east of the Baltic, between 

 the Gulf of Finland and the river Niemen, a 

 territory of about fifty thousand square miles 

 is indicated, inhabited mainly by Esthonians, or 

 Esths, Letts and Lithuanians. This territory 

 forms a natural geographic unit. Command- 

 ing the eastern Baltic and the southern ap- 

 proaches to the Gulf of Finland, and hence to 

 Petrograd and interior Russia, it is of great 

 strategic importance. Probably no part of 

 northern Europe has seen fiercer fighting or 

 been more often drenched with blood. This 

 geographic unit corresponds in the main with 

 the famous Baltic provinces, which comprised 

 ancient Esthonia, Livonia, and Courland. It 

 forms a deep semicircle around the historic 

 city of Riga, its guardian and sentinel. 



In general the country is low and marshy, 

 dotted with innumerable lakes and covered 

 with dense forests wherever lake and marsh 

 permit trees to live. Toward the middle a little 

 scarred plateau rises a few hundred feet, which 

 the native poets called the "Livonian Switzer- 

 land." 



The entire population is not over 3,100,000, 

 of whom there are about 1,150,000 Esths, or 



