SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONSVOLUME 69, NUMBER 11
THE RACES OE RUSSIA(With 1 Map)
BYALES HRDLICKA
(Publication 2532)
CITY OF WASHINGTONPUBLISHED BY THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTIONMARCH, 1919
)t Horb ($aftttnore (preeaBALTIMORE, MD., U. S. A.


THE RACES OF RUSSIABy DR. ALES HRDLICKA,CURATOR, DIVISION OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUMThe subject of the races of Russia—the great Russia that wasyesterday and that must be again if the world is to know any peace
—
seems very baffling, and is in fact far from simple. Yet if the fieldis viewed from a higher horizon, with due historical and anthro-pological perspective, many of its irregularities disappear, and whereat first there seemed to be an almost hopelessly involved mosaic ofethnic differences there are seen great areas of fairly uniform racialcolor.So far as known to science, European Russia began to be peopledduring the latter phases of the paleolithic epoch and the following-neolithic times. Some skulls found in Russian Poland and south-western Russia show features that still remind the anthropologistquite strongly of those of the Neanderthal man, but on the wholethe type is already fairly modern. The remains from these earliertimes are, however, still rare and limited to territories into whichextension from the more southern and western parts of Europe waseasily practicable.A much more important peopling of European Russia took placeduring the latest neolithic, and the bronze and iron periods ; and itproceeded, as far as is now discernible, not only from the adjacentregions in Europe, but also over Caucasus and from the great steppesof Asia. The western Asiatic or Ural-Altaic elements, evidentlyquite early and numerous, overran and sparsely settled or roamedover perhaps as much as two-thirds of the great region of what isnow European Russia, reaching in the north to the limits of theland, in the west as far as Finland, Esthonia, Livonia, and approxi-mately the thirtieth meridian, and in the south below the latitude ofMoscow. At about the same time the southeastern and southernparts of Russia became peopled by Turanian and Iranian tribes,spreading over the Caucasus and from beyond the Caspian. Onlythe western and southwestern parts of the great territory receivedSmithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 69, No. 11


2 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 69the overflow from the adjoining countries of Europe. The southerngrassy plains became then a broad and important avenue for a longseries of movements of populations, directed principally from east towest, and the territory was gradually covered with remnants ofthese populations. This much is known, though the details of theseearlier ethnic movements in Russia are lost in the haze of antiquity,or preserved merely in historical fragments.The first tribes occupying part of the territory which is nowRussia, with whose specific name we meet in ancient chronicles, arethe Cimmerians, the people whose name is perpetuated in that oiCrimea ; and the Tauri, from whose name was derived that of
" Taurica," the other old name for the Crimean peninsula. Ouractual knowledge of these peoples is, however, very limited. Neitherreached great importance. The Cimmerians, who probably antedatedthe Tauri, occupied a part of Crimea and the territory north andnortheastward, extending to and about the Palus Maeotis (Sea ofAzov) ; they eventually came into contact with the Thracians andpossibly other European groups ; but their affinities seem to havebeen with the Caucasus and the Asiatic countries to the southward,rather than with Europe. They are said to have eventually dis-appeared into the regions south of Caucasus, being replaced, pos-sibly before 1000 B. C, by the Scythians. The Tauri, probablyof the Turanian stock and reputedly very barbarous, occupied thepeninsula up to the time of the Greek colonization, after which theirname gradually disappears.This brings us to the more strictly protohistoric times of theregion under consideration, the period of the Greek voyages andcolonization along the shores of the Euxine (Black Sea). At thistime the whole vast territory had already been subdivided amongvarious tribes.These protohistoric populations first became better known as aresult of the famous march into their country of Darius Hystaspes
—
the first Napoleon—about 512 B. C, and more especially throughthe writings of Herodotus, about 450 B. C. Of those populationsthat were mainly of Asiatic origin, by far the most prominent werethe " Scythians," whose territory embraced practically the wholepresent southern Russia below about 50 of latitude. Peoples ofrelated origin covered the country from the Urals to Finland andfrom the Volga to Esthonia. They were subdivided into numeroustribes and differed somewhat in blood, but all belonged to theTurkish, Tartaric, Finno-Ugrian, and Laplandic subdivisions of the
NO. II THE RACES OF RUSSIA—HRDLICKA 3great Ural-Altaic stock of Asia. All these peoples, including theScythians proper, had in common a greater or lesser admixture ofMongolian blood, many were nomadic or semi-nomadic, none beingstrictly agricultural, and except where in prolonged contact withother peoples, such as in the case of the Scythians with the Greeks,the Bulgars with the Khazars, or the Finns with the Scandinavians,their culture was of a low order.The more northern and less hospitable regions were only sparselysettled, developed no native political units of importance, and playedbut a secondary part in the history of European Russia. The moresouthern of these populations, on the other hand, were much morenumerous, showed greater virility, and, possibly under Iranianinfluence, greater powers of organization. They gave rise to theold Scythia ; they constituted for two thousand years the dreadsoutheastern background to the European peoples of Russia ; andthey were the sources, under one name or another (such as Huns,Avars, Turks, Tartars, etc.), of many disastrous invasions of southernRussia and even central Europe from the third to the thirteenthcenturies of our era.The term " Scythians " deserves a few remarks. Due to theirwarlike qualities and the direct intercourse with them by the earlierGreeks, few "barbaric" nations of the pre-Christian era have beenmore mentioned, and few peoples since have given rise to morespeculation as to their racial identity. On the basis of our presenthistorical and archeological knowledge it may, however, be safelysaid that the early Greeks applied the term Scythians not to a race,but to a mass or conglomerate of peoples, partly nomadic and partlyagricultural, who occupied the southern part of Russia when theGreeks began to explore and colonize the coasts of the Black Sea.1The main strain of the more eastern Scythians was undoubtedlyTartar or Turkish, but probably tinged with Iranian. To the westof the Borysthenes (Dnieper), however, and particularly in presentVolhynia, Bukovina, and Galicia, the principal strain and possiblyexclusive element of the population from the earliest times was evi-dently of European extraction, and this stock could have been in themain no other than Slav. To it belonged tribes such as the " Neuri "(Nestor, the earliest Russian historian, mentions " Norici, who arethe same with the Slavs ") ; the Alazones or Halizones (which inRussian would be Galitshani, after which Galicia) ; and possibly theBorysthenitae husbandmen.
1 Compare Ellis H. Minns—Scythians and Greeks, 4 , Cambridge (Engl.),I9I3-
4 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 69The true Scythians claimed to have occupied the country in whichthey were found by the Greeks for many centuries. As shown bytheir customs described by the Greeks, and by the remains of theirculture uncovered by archeological exploration, they were not whollya barbaric people ; and contrary to what may be observed with laterTartar tribes, their war-like activities were directed mainly towardPersia and Asia Minor rather than toward Europe. It was to avengetheir invasion of Medea and Persia that Darius undertook hismemorable incursion into their country. Proceeding- over Hellespontand the Danube he reached as far as. the " Oarus " (supposed tohave been the Volga, but more probably the Dnieper), only to find hisgreat effort against the nomads quite futile. He finally barely escapedback across the Danube with the famished remnants of his army.Scythia, which never formed a highly organized, cohesive politicalor national unit comparable to that of Persia or Greece, existed, withwaning vigor, until the early part of the Christian era, when it gaveway before the Gothic, Hun and Khazar invasions ; but the name,as applied both to the country and to its inhabitants, persisted formany centuries afterward.Scythia itself was subject to invasions, which deserve some con-sideration. Shortly after the commencement of the present era,there are noted in Europe, and between Europe and Asia, movementsof peoples which are commonly referred to as " the migrations ofraces," but which in the main were invasions for conquest or plunder,or were the results of displacements, not seldom forcible, of tribalgroups in regions where the density of population had surpassed theresources and the struggle for existence had become acute. Theydoubtless succeeded older movements of similar nature, of which wehave little or no knowledge. They followed two main directions
—
from the north southward and from the east westward. Russia thatwas to be, was in a large measure the avenue over which these migra-tions took place.The first of these invasions into what is now Russian territory ofwhich we have better knowledge is that of the Goths, though someindications make it possible that these were preceded by less impor-tant offshoots from the same stock of people. The Goths were ofScandinavian origin, coming originally perhaps from or over thelarge island in the Baltic which still bears their name (Gothland).From this they easily traversed the Baltic, known in the early Russianannals as the "sea of the Variags " or Scandinavians, and landedsomewhere on what is now the Prussian coast, in the vicinity of the
NO. I I THE RACES OF RUSSIA HRDLICKA 5Vandals and probably not far from the Vistula River. There theyremained for a time ; but when the number of people increasedgreatly, Filimer, their king", " decided that the army of the Gothswith their families should move from that region," and " in searchof suitable homes and pleasant places they came to the land ofScythia." (Jordanes, Getica, 551 A. D.) Whatever the details oftheir invasion, it is certain that by the beginning of the third cen-tury A. D., the Goths reached as far as the western parts of Scythia,to the Black Sea and the Danube, as well as to the south of theCarpathians. They then became known as the western and theeastern Goths, or Visigoths and Ostrogoths ; and the latter, withwhom alone we are here concerned, were found at the beginning ofthe fourth century ruling over the territory from the Carpathiansto the Sea of Azov. This rule they kept up until 375 A. D., whentheir state under Hermanric, together with the remainder of Scythia,was broken up by the invasion of the Huns. Most of the Ostrogothswho survived sought refuge in the southwestern part of Europe;while those who remained were subject to the Huns until afterAttila's death, or about 460, when they moved bodily into Pannonia,granted to them by the Romans.However, the Goth sovereignty in southwestern Russia shouldnot be viewed as an occupancy of a waste or depopulated region bya new race. The territories in question were peopled before, andremained so after the period of Goth domination. And their popula-tion was not Goth but in all probability Vendic or Slav, though thereare also mentioned the Callipidae (Gepidae), the Alans, and theHeruli, who may have been some of Alpine and some of Nordicextraction. The Goths were warlike northerners, who forcibly in-vaded Scythia in considerable force for the time, and brought withthem their families. Due to their favorable original geographicalposition and their sea activities they, much like the Germans ofto-day, were more advanced in culture and especially in military artand equipment, than the inland populations that so far were rela-tively only slightly affected by the rest of the world. As a conse-quence the northmen found little difficulty in overrunning greatareas occupied by the sedentary as well as the nomadic primitivetribes, which had little political unity and no adequate power ofresistance. Some such tribes could even be employed against others,though of their own blood, and the invader finished by becoming theruler. We have excellent illustrations of similar processes else-where, such as many centuries later on the American continent, in
6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 69Mexico and Peru. But the invaders, though they may create a stateunder their own banners, are seldom strong enough to give the con-quered people their language, and though their name may remain, ashas happened later in Bulgaria, the conquerors themselves disappear,either by being driven out or through rapid amalgamation. Thusthe Ostrogoths who gave way eventually before the Huns were inall probability merely the usurping and ruling class, together withtheir military ; and when they were driven westward they left little,if anything, behind them that would permanently affect the typeof the indigenous populations. Moreover, they doubtless carriedwith them, in their families, households, and the army, many ele-ments and perhaps even whole groups of these populations.The great Hun invasion which overcame and finally drove out theOstrogoths, and which was one of the most sustained and serious ofthe Asiatic invasions of all times, still further obliterated Scythiaand disorganized the whole region of the present Ukraina and Bes-sarabia. Some of the Scythians possibly remained under other'names, while others may have receded to Asia ; at all events theyvanished as a power and entity. They left thousands of kourgans orburial mounds over southern Russia, but probably also, like theGoths, affected in no great way its future population.The Hun swarm came from beyond the lower Don and Volga.In blood they were of " Tartar " or Ugrian derivation, and partly
—
perhaps largely—Mongolic. 1 Their language, like that of all thenative population east of the Slav Russia, belonged to the Ural-Altaic. From southern Russia they extended their incursions overmost of western Europe, reaching finally as far as northern France,where on the Catalaunian plain they met their Marne. Soon afterthis defeat, in 455, their dread chief Attila died, the power whichthey established in Pannonia and Central Europe rapidly crumbled,their confederates, among whom were some of the Germans andeven Ostrogoths, broke loose, and what remained of the horde, nolonger able to hold its ground, retraced their steps eastward beyondthe Dnieper and were lost to sight. Exactly what effect the Huninvasion and prolonged occupation had on the population of southernRussia is difficult to gauge, but it was probably more that of destruc-
1 It seems almost superfluous to state that racially the Germans have nothingin common with the Huns. The only present European relations of the Hunsare the Magyars and Turks, the blood of both of whom, however, is now somuch mixed with that of European or Asia Minor populations that the originaltypes are submerged.
NO. II THE RACES OF RUSSIA—HRDLICKA 7tion and dispersion than blood admixture. Yet remnants of theHuns may have remained in what was once Scythia for a long timeafter their original name disappeared.The Scythians, together with the problematical Sauromatae, theGoths, the Huns, and other early groups, became now graduallyreplaced in southern Russia by a new ethnic unit, the Khazars. TheKhazars were, according to many indications, of Caucasus or AsiaMinor extraction, and related to the Georgians and Armenians.There were with them, however, also the so-called " Black Khazars,"who may have been Huns. Their history in Russia extends over avery considerable period of time—from the end of the second to theeleventh centuries. • Between 600 and 950 their territory spreadfrom the Caspian Sea to the Don and later even into Crimea. Theywere relatively civilized people, who built towns and engaged exten-sively in sea trade, which earned them the name ot the " Phoeni-cians " or " Venetians " of the Caspian and Black Seas. In theearlier part of the seventh century their power was such that theycompelled the agricultural Slavs of the Dnieper and even those ofmore northern regions to pay tribute. About 740 they acceptedJudaism. But during the ninth and tenth centuries they were grad-ually overwhelmed by the Russians, and in the eleventh centurythey practically disappeared from the stage. Remnants of the Kha-zars probably still exist in the Caucasus. What effect this interestingethnic unit had on the blood of the Russian population it is hard toestimate, but at most it was not extensive.The Khazar occupation of the regions which now form south-eastern Russia was, however, far from uniform and continuouslypeaceful. The waves of invasion of the Turkish and Tartar tribesfrom farther east followed one another with greater or shorterintervals and over approximately the same roads, the broad opensteppes, traversed before by the Huns. Some of these invasions itis not necessary to enumerate in detail. The more important oneswere those of the Bolgars, in 482,1 of the Avars, in 557, and those ofthe Polovtsi (Kumans), Ugri (Magyars), Pechenegs, and relatedtribes, in the ninth and tenth centuries. Whatever the name underwhich they came, they were, so far as can at present be discerned,all of Tartar or Turkish or Ugro-Finnic extraction, which meansmixtures in differing proportions of the white (western Asiatic) and
1 These were the non-Slavic Bolgars from the Volga, who eventually lefttheir name to the Slavonic state south of the Danube.
8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 69yellow-brown (Tungusic or Mongolic) racial elements. All weremore or less nomadic and destructive, bent on spoliation, and onpenetration toward the richer more southern and central parts ofEurope, rather than on the conquest of Russia and the establishmentthere of a permanent new home ; though some, such as the Polovtsi,Pechenegs, and others, became for a greater or less period settledin Russian territory before they disappeared. Taken collectively,these invasions resulted in a great retardation of the settlement ofthe southern parts of Russia by the Slav people, as well as inseriously hindering the cultural advance of the Russians ; but thehordes did not colonize or mix readily, except through captives, andwhile some remnants of them and mixtures were doubtless leftscattered over the territory, they made no great impression on theeventual Russian population.Meanwhile, since as early as the times of Herodotus, we began tohear of tribes such as the " Budini," which reached far eastward inRussia, and may have been Slavonic. In the fourth century, accord-ing to Jordanes,1 the historian of the Goths, Hermanric conquered theYeneti, or Vends, which was the earlier generic name for the Slavs,the term " Slav " not appearing even in the Byzantine chroniclesuntil after the close of the fifth century. In Jordanes' time, orabout the middle of the sixth century, the "populous race of theYeneti dwell near the left ridge of the Alps (Carpathians) whichinclines toward the north and beginning at the source of the Vistula,occupying a great expanse of land. Though their names are nowdispersed amid various clans and places, yet they are chiefly calledSclaveni and Antes. The abode of the Sclaveni extends from thecity of Noviodunum and the lake called Mursianus to the Danaster,and northward along the Vistula. The Antes, who are the bravestof these peoples dwelling in the curve of the sea of Pontus, spreadfrom the Danaster to the Danaper, rivers that are many days'journey apart." In another part of the work of the same authorwe read that these new people " though off-shoots from one stock,have now three names, that is, Yeneti, Antes and Sclaveni." And
" they now rage in war far and wide, in punishment for our («. e.,Goth) sins," though once " all were obedient to Hermanric's com-mands."During the ninth and tenth centuries many Slav settlements oroutposts are mentioned in Russia as far north already as the Tchoud
1 Mierow's version, Princeton, i(
NO. II THE RACES OF RUSSIA HRDLICKA 9
country (Esthonia), and as far west as the region between the Donand the Volga. Since the sixth and seventh centuries, also, we havehistorical data indicating extensive and in a large measure solidSlavic population reaching from the Balkans to Pomerania, andfrom Bohemia and the Elbe over Poland, Galicia and western Russia.This population, the vital center of which seems to have been theterritory about and north of the Carpathians, is subdivided intonumerous " families," tribes, or nations, which form as yet no greatunits. The term Slavs (probably from slavit, to praise, to glorify)as applied to these people may possibly have originated from theirfrequent usage in personal names of the terminal " slav," as in Jaro-slav, glorifying the spring, Mstislav, extolling revenge, Boguslav,praising God, etc., which at that time was common to the wholepeople. Their earlier history and origin were lost in the mists ofuncertainty, and their western contingents were not always clearlydifferentiated from the Germanic tribes. Also, they bore as yetnone of those names under which they later became distinguished.The political unit of Russia did not come into existence until theninth century. At that time, according to the " Ancient Chronicle "of Nestor, the first Russian historian, there lived in the regions alongand west of the Dnieper and farther northward, the following Slavtribes : On the Ilmen, the Novgorodci ; on the upper Dnieper, Dvinaand Volga, the Krivitchi (who may, however, have been partly ofLithuanian origin); between Dvina and Pripet, the Dregovitchi
;
southeast of these, the Dierevliane (the woodsmen) ; from Teterevto Kiev, the Poliane (those of the flatlands) ; on the Bug, the Duliebiand Buzhane ; on the Dniester and Bug, the Tivertsi and Ulitchi ; inVolhynia, the Voliniane ; on the Sozha, the Radimitchi ; on the Oka,the Viatitchi ; and on the Desna and Seim, the Severiane (thenortherners).These tribes or local groups, however, were not yet united, and,according to Nestor, their dissensions finally led an influential elderto propose that they call some prince of foreign blood, of whomnone would be jealous, and under whom, in consequence, it mightbe possible to merge all the subdivisions into one strong Slav state.The wisdom of this advice was acknowledged and the envoys calledon certain princes of the Variags or Varangians, of Scandinavianorigin. These were three brothers, the oldest of whom was namedRurik. They were offered the privilege of becoming the rulers ofthe tribes and, accepting, the Slav territories were divided amongthem ; and the two younger brothers dying, perhaps not by natural
10 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 69
means, shortly afterward, the entire nation became united underRurik. But in the opinion of some modern Russian historians thereal facts were that the Slav and Tchoud tribes, suffering fromrepeated incursions of the much better armed and trained Scandi-navians, hired other " Variags " for their protection and these endedby usurping the ruling power over the tribes. Such was the birthof Russia. The term "Rus" appears at about the same time. Itis probably derived from " rusij," fair-haired, blond, and was appliedat first to blond non-Slavic elements, but after a time came to be usedby foreigners and then by natives for the whole new nation. TheVariags played a prolonged but subordinate and steadily diminishingrole in the Russian annals until they eventually disappeared, leavinglittle behind except some of their given names such as Oleg, Olga,etc., which are in frequent use among the Russians to this day.After Rurik the bulk of Russian history consists of internal accom-modations, not seldom violent; of defensive or retaliatory externalwars ; of endless, fluctuating life-and-death struggle in the south andsoutheast with the Asiatic hordes ; and of unceasing extension of theprolific Slav element in all directions where resistance was not in-surmountable. This was particularly toward the northeast and north-west, where gradually the Meria, Mordva and other primitive Finnictribes were replaced or in a large measure absorbed.Notwithstanding the many internal and external vicissitudes ofthe country, its elementary spread continued until 1226, when allsouthern Russia fell under the greatest plight that has yet afflictedit, through the final and overwhelming Tartar or " Mongol " inva-sion. This invasion covered all present Ukraina and beyond, andthence extended over parts of Poland, Galicia, and Hungary. Thesouthern Russians were slaughtered in large numbers and subjectedto the Tartar yoke, or forced to flee. The southern and south-western parts of Russia became seriously depopulated and wereoccupied by the roaming Tartars of the " Golden Horde " ; andRussia as a whole suffered from the effects of the invasion for overtwo centuries. The invaders established themselves over much of thesouthern part of the country, particularly in Crimea, where theybecame a fixed element and developed a political unity of their own,which remained ruled by their Khans until 1783, the year of theirfinal submission to the Russians. To this day, however, a largepart of the population of Crimea is more or less Tartar.
NO. II THE RACES OF RUSSIA—HRDLICKA IILong- before this, however, the Russians spread over all the morenorthern regions of their present European domain, to and beyondthe Urals, and even over Siberia. Expansion into the latter deservesa few words by itself.Up to the sixteenth century the vast region now known as Siberiawas peopled exclusively by native tribes, of Ural-Altaic or Mongolianextraction or with Mongolian admixture. They were all more orless nomadic and in a primitive state of culture. There was neverany political unity; and many of the tribes whose forefathers hadprobably participated in the westward invasions lapsed graduallyinto a numerically and otherwise weakened condition. It was sucha state of affairs which awaited the ever progressing Russian tide.The first Russians crossed the Urals as early as the eleventhcentury, but this led to no consequences of importance. The con-quest of Siberia took place in 1580. Yermak, a Don Cossack indisgrace, invaded the vast territory with 1,636 followers, and thishandful 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 andthe 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 southernRussia was affected more by the great Tartar invasion of thethirteenth century than by any or perhaps all the previous ones.The descendants of the Tartars, together with other remnants, arefound 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 theCaucasus; while some Tartar blood can be traced in not a fewRussian families. The effects of the resulting ethnographic changesare felt even now and have been utilized by the enemies of Russiaagainst the interest of the country. This relates especially to theregion now known as Ukraina (the "border province") or LittleRussia. No such subdivision existed before this last Tartar invasion,and the region of Kiev, now the capital of Ukraine, was the oldcenter and heart of Russia. The Tartar massacres in part depopu-lated the region, and created a terror which resulted in large numbersof the people fleeing westward into Galicia and Polish territory.There are differences of opinion as to how great the depopulationreally was, but that it was severe, though perhaps not complete, isindisputable. As all this is of particular importance at the present
12 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 69time it may be best to quote here from one of the foremost modernRussian historians who gave this question particular attention '
:
The exodus from Kievan Rus took two different directions, and flowed intwo different streams. Of these streams, one tended towards the West
—
towards the region of the Western Bug, the upper portions of the Dniesterand Vistula, and the interior districts of Galicia and Poland . . . This west-ward movement had a marked effect upon the fortunes of the two most out-lying Russian provinces in that direction—namely, Galicia and Volhynia.Hitherto their position in the political hierarchy of Russian territories hadalways caused them to rank as lesser provinces, but now Galicia—one of theremote districts allotted only to izgoi princes of the house of Yaroslav—roseto be one of the strongest and most influential in all the southwestern region.The " Slovo Polku Igorove" even speaks of the Galician Prince of its day(Yaroslav the Prudent) as " rolling back the gates of Kiev," while, with theend of the twelfth century, when Roman, son of Mstislav, had added theprovince to his own principality of Volhynia, the combined state waxed sogreat in population and importance that its princes became sufficiently richand powerful to gather into their hands the direction of the whole south-western region, and even of Kiev itself. In fact, the Ancient Chronicle goesso far as to describe Prince Roman as " the Autocrat of all the Russian land."Probably, also, this inrush of Russian refugees into Galicia and Poland, ex-plains the fact that annals of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries frequentlyrefer to Orthodox churches as then existing in the province of Cracow andother portions of the Southwest.The same migratory movement may serve to throw light upon a phenomenonof great importance in Russian ethnography—namely, the formation of theLittle Russian stock. The depopulation of Dnieprian Rus which began in thetwelfth century was completed during the thirteenth by the Tartar invasionswhich took place between the years 1229 and 1240. For a long period afterthe latter date the provinces of ancient Rus, once so thickly peopled, remainedin a state of desolation. A Catholic missionary named Piano Carpini, whotraversed Kievan Rus in 1246, on his way from Poland to the Volga to preachthe Gospel to the Tartars, has recorded in his memoirs that, although the roadbetween Vladimir in Volhynia and Kiev was beset with perils, owing to thefrequency with which the Lithuanians raided that region, he met with noobstacle at the hands of Russians—for the very good reason that few of themwere left alive in the country after the raids and massacres of the Tartars.Throughout the whole of his journey across the ancient provinces of Kiev andPeriaslavl, he saw countless bones and skulls lying by the wayside or scatteredover the neighbouring fields, while in Kiev itself—once a populous and spaciouscity—he counted only two hundred houses, each of which sheltered but a fewsorry inmates. During the following two or three centuries Kiev underwentstill further vicissitudes. Hardly had she recovered from the Tartar attacksdelivered prior to the year 1240 when (in 1299) she was ravaged afresh bysome of the scattered bands of Polovtsi, Pechenegs, Turks, and other bar-
1 A History of Russia, by V. O. Kluchevsky, late professor of Russian His-tory of the University of Moscow, 3 vol., 8°, Lond., 1911-13; I, 194-196.
NO. II THE RACES OF RUSSIA—HRDLICKA 1
3
barians who roamed her desolate frontiers. In that more or less grievousplight the southern provinces of Rus remained until well-nigh the middle ofthe fifteenth century. Meanwhile Southwestern Rus (now beginning to becalled in documents of the period " Malaia Rossia " or "Little Russia") hadbeen annexed to the combined state of Poland-Lithuania ; so that of theEmpire thus formed the region of the Middle Dnieper
—
i. e., old KievanRus—had now become the southeasternmost province or Ukraine. With thefifteenth century a new colonisation of the Middle Dnieper region began, towhich two circumstances in particular contributed: namely, (i) the fact thatthe Steppes of the South were becoming less dangerous, owing to the dis-persal of the Golden Horde and the rise of Muscovite Rus, and (2) the factthat the Polish Empire was beginning to abolish her old system of peasanttenure by quit-rent in favour of the barstchina system, which tended towardsserfdom and therefore filled the oppressed rural population with a desire toescape from the masters' yoke to a region where they might live more freely.These two factors combined to set on foot an active reflex exodus fromGalicia and the central provinces of Poland towards the southeasternmostborders of the Polish Empire
—
i. c, towards the region of the Dnieper andold Kievan Rus. The chief directors of this movement were the rich Polishmagnates, who had acquired enormous estates in that part of the world, andnow desired to people and reclaim them. The combined efforts of the immi-grants soon succeeded in studding these seignorial domains with towns,villages, hamlets, and detached homesteads ; with the result that we findPolish writers of the sixteenth century at once exclaiming at the surprisinglyrapid movement of colonists towards the Dnieper, the Dniester, and theEastern Bug, and lamenting the depopulation of the central provinces ofPoland to which that movement had given rise. All things considered, therecan be little doubt that the bulk of the settlers who took part in the recolonis-ing of Southern Rus were of purely Russian origin—that, in fact, they werethe descendants of those very Russians who had fled westwards from theDnieper during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and who, though dwellingsince among a Polish and Lithuanian population, had, throughout the twoor three intervening centuries, retained their nationality intact.The language of the new population of Ukraina developed cer-tain dialectical differences, while in other parts of Russia it was beinggradually affected in other ways by association with the Lekhs(Poles), Lithuanians, and the Finnish tribes. In addition therearose in the course of time, as could hardly be otherwise when thegreat territories over which the Russian people were spread aretaken into consideration, some differences in the richness and natureof folk tales, folk poetry, dress, etc. ; differences the perception ofwhich by the Ukrainians has for long before the present war beenassiduously fostered by the Germans and Austrians, on the basis oftheir cherished, old "divide et impera" principle. Finally thisregion has received, together with Bessarabia, the mass of the Jewish
14 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 69immigration into Russia, which could not but add to its separatism,for which anthropologically and outside of the Jews there is nosubstantial reason.At about the same time that the terms of Ukraina and Mala Rossia(" smaller Russia ") came into vogue, there also began to appear thoseof Velika and Biela Rossia (" Greater, and White Russia") , and thoseof Malorusi, Velikorusi and Bielorusi, which are applied to theirrespective populations. These terms, like those of Ugro-Rusi,Rutheni, Gorali, etc., are partly conventional, partly environmentalor geographical. The language and habits of the Bielorusi, whooccupy the westernmost part of Russia north of Ukraina, were grad-ually affected, though on the whole to but a moderate extent, bytheir relations with the Poles and Lithuanians ; while those of theVelikorusi or " Moskvali " (Muscovites) who spread over central,northern and eastern Russia, were modified somewhat in turn bytheir associations with the Tchouds, Finns, and various other peopleof the Finno-Ugrian stock with whom they mingled and whom theyfreely absorbed.Such were in very brief the origin and nature of the three greatsubdivisions of the Russian people with which we meet to-day. Theresulting differences between them, both cultural and somatological,are smaller than those between some of the tribes of Germany, andhad it not been for Russia's enemies in whose interest it was tofoment dissensions in the population, they would have remainedharmless and with growing culture would have disappeared. Butpowerful united Russia, such as it could have been and with the helpof the Allies may yet be, was an insupportable nightmare to bothAustria-Hungary and Germany.From the purely anthropological standpoint, the Russians belongoverwhelmingly to the great type of Slavs in general, which in turncan hardly be distinguished from the Alpine type. But, like alllarge nationalities, the Russians show in various localities more orless marked traces of admixture with the Nordic peoples on theone hand, and on the other with the Finnish, Turkish, Tartar, andIranian tribes.The modern Russian population represents a physically strong andvery prolific stock, freer as yet from degenerative conditions thanperhaps any other of the larger European groups. The total popula-tion of European and Asiatic Russia counted collectively at the com-mencement of the war 178,000,000, living in a continuous mass andincreasing yearly, through the natural excess of births over deaths
NO. II THE RACES OF RUSSIA HRDLICKA 15by over 1.67$, the highest rate of any more important white popula-tion. The Slavs constitute approximately 75$ of this population—81$in European Russia and Poland, 40$ in Caucasus, and 85^ in Siberia.As to the proportion of the separate Slav and other racial" elements,we have the following interesting and trustworthy estimates byProfessor Niederle 1 of Prague, the foremost authority on Slavmatters in general
:
ETHNOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION OF THE POPULATION OF RUSSIA
Russians (Slavs)Poles...LithuaniansFinnsGermansJews ,CaucassiansArmenians ,Turko-Tartars..
.
Mongols ,Others
EuropeanRussia RussianPoland Finlandpercent. percent.' percent.80.01.23-03-61.44.00.14-90.21.6
6.77i.83-30.14-313.5
0.10.2
0.2
13
Caucasus
per cent.34-00.3o. 1O. I0.60.426.212.020.20.25-9
Siberia
per cent.8l.O0-50.2I. I0. I0-5
8-36.2
CentralAsiaper eent.8.90. I0.2O.IO. I0. I85.50.24-8THE NON-RUSSIAN RACES OF EUROPEAN RUSSIAThese include the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Tchouds and Finns,the remnants of the Finno-Ugrian tribes of the interior, the Laps andthe Samoyeds, the Tartars, the tribes of the Caucasus, and finally theimmigrant Jews and Germans. In the first place, however, a fewremarks may be appropriate here regarding the Cossacks.The Cossacks.—The term Cossack has in the course of timebecome surrounded, even in Russia itself, with a semi-romanticand heroic halo, which is not wholly undeserved ; but the term itselfis seldom properly understood. The Cossacks of the present daymay be defined as a special class of irregular, privileged cavalry.The Kazaki (the Russian form of the term) of the fifteenth andsixteenth centuries were in part a class of irregular agriculturalhelp " who possessed neither a definite avocation nor a settled domi-cile," in part frontiersmen and adventurers, along the southernboundaries of the Russian settlements. The word Cossack came tosignify, in Kirghiz, a cavalier, in Tartar a freebooter, in Turkisha light-armed soldier; they were all this and more. They were
1 Lubor Niederle : Slovansky Svet, 8°, Praha, 1910 ; abstr. in Smithson. Rep.for 1910, pp. 599-612, with a map.
l6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 69
of Russian origin ; but being always settled on the outskirts of theadvancing empire and continuously in struggle or contact with theTurkish and Tartaric hordes, their blood has received in the courseof time more or less admixture. Some of the Cossacks now arerecruited in the main from non-Russians.The fighting Cossacks as far as traceable originated during thefourteenth or fifteenth century from among the Russian refugeesbefore the invading Tartars. They settled on certain islands in theDnieper River, were hunters, fishermen, and Tartar fighters, andgradually developed into a. strong, bold, and resistant group, lovingthe hard frontier life with its liberties and dangers. Similar bodiesdeveloped all along the border of the steppes and became the terrorof the Tartars and Turks, though frequently also a trouble to thePoles and even Russians. Their military value was, however, gen-erally recognized in time and led to the regulation and extension ofthe Cossack system over southern Russia, Caucasus, Central Asia,and Siberia, until the Cossack became the regular forerunner, scout,and protector of the Russian armies and Russian colonies from theDanube to the Pacific Ocean.There exist to-day about twelve subdivisions of the Cossacks, thebest known of which are those of the Don, Orenburg, Ural, andSiberia. Their free institutions, interesting customs, and especiallytheir exploits in the conquest of Siberia, the Napoleonic invasion,etc., made their name justly famous.The Poles.—The Poles, the old " Lekhi " and " Poliane;" are Slavsderived in prehistoric times, like the Russians, Czechs, etc,, from thecommon autochthonous Slav nucleus north of the Carpathians. Theyare admixed somewhat with the Russians and to some extent alsowith the Lithuanians ; slightly, perhaps, also with nordic and otherelements. At the commencement of the war they numbered inEuropean and Asiatic Russia approximately eleven millions, almostnine-tenths of which were in Russian Poland.1 Notwithstandingtheir thousand years of agitated history, they are still a " young
"
stock, full of energy, ability and spirits, and as prolific as theRussians.The Lithuanians.—The Lithuanian territory lay originally alongthe Baltic, between the Visla (Vistula) and Dvina, and at the time oftheir maximum power their influence reached from the Gulf ofRiga to Ukraina. They extend at present from Poland and eastPrussia to near Riga.
1 Those of Austrian-Poland counted in 1914 approximately 4,500,000; thoseof German-Poland approximately 4,000,000.
NO. II THE RACES OF RUSSIA—HRDLICKA 1
7
The Lithuanians are a strain of people whose racial identity hasbeen a matter of considerable controversy. Through their ancienttongue, which has many similarities with the Sanscrit and with theSlav, they are related most closely to the latter, but in physical typewhile resembling the Poles and Great Russians they also approxi-mate in part the Scandinavians on account of more frequent blond-ness. In all probability they have an admixture of all these elements.They are subdivided into three main branches, the Borussians (Prus-sians), the Latvis or Letts, and the Litvini or Lithuanians proper.Their total number at present is slightly over four millions, aboutequally divided among the Letts and Lithuanians. The Borussians,whose home was in eastern Prussia, were almost destroyed by theGermans in the thirteenth century, under the pretext of Christianiza-tion. In the words of one of the German writers himself (Schleicher,1852), " Never has a pagan people, good, brave and generous, beenmaltreated in a more cruel manner than the eastern Prussians ....The history of their death struggle against the Teutonic order mustbe mentioned as one of the most sinister episodes of mankind." Afew remnants of them still exist in Eastern Prussia.The Lithuanians, whose ethnographic limits are ill-defined, havebeen connected with Russia since 1797.The Livonians.—The true Livonians are practically extinct. Theircountry lies east of the Gulf of Riga and is now occupied partly byLetts and partly by Esthonians. Their language belonged to theFinnish or Finno-Ugrian family, and they were doubtless closelyrelated to the Esthonians.The Tchouds or Esthonians are a Finnish tribe occupying a largerpart of the territory between the Gulf of Riga and the Gulf of Fin-land. They have been united with Russia since 1030, but weretributary to the Russians much earlier. They number at present onlybetween five and six hundred thousand persons. Efforts by the Ger-mans since the thirteenth century at " Christianizing " Livonia andEsthonia, as they did Prussia, have been a failure, and " the Ehstsand Letts openly display their traditional hatred against the in-vaders."The Finns.—The Grand duchy of Finland was ceded by Swedento Russia in 1809. Its population consists at present of approxi-mately 2,700,000 Finns, 350,000 Swedes, 8,000 Russians, 2,000 Ger-mans, and 1,700 Laps. The Finns represent the westernmost exten-sion of the Finno-Ugrian Asiatic stock ; but while retaining theirlanguage their blood, especially in the south, has become much mixed
l8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 69
with that of the Scandinavians. The more northeastern subdivisionof the Finns, known as the Karelians, are better preserved.The Laps and Samoycds.—These are the most Mongolic-likenatives of European Russia and are undoubtedly of Asiatic origin.Their numbers are insignificant—collectively less than 20,000 in-dividuals. They occupy the northernmost limits of the Russianterritory, the Laps extending into Scandinavia.Finno-Ugrian tribes of the interior.—These are located principallyon the middle Volga and the Kama, and represent the dwindling rem-nants of the primitive native populations that once covered muchof central and eastern Russia. They have long been without anypolitical individuality and are in a more or less advanced stage ofabsorption into the Russian population. They are known principallyas the Mordva, Tcheremis, Voguls and Votiaks.The Turko-Tartars.—Of these there are approximately sevenmillions in European Russia and the Caucasus. They are dividedinto the Crimean Tartars, Kazan Tartars, the Bashkirs, the Tchuvashand the Kirghiz, with many minor units. They still occupy or wanderover a large portion of southeastern Russia and except within thediverse groups have no political or racial cohesion.Caucasus.—This region since ancient times has been the eddy andrefuge of remnants of nations, and there are in its fastnesses manyinteresting units which it is difficult to classify. By far the strongestelement of the Caucassian population to-day, however, is the Slav(approximately 40$ of the total), which is followed by the Turco-Tartar, Georgian, and Armenian. The total population of Cis- andTrans-Caucasia may be estimated at present at something over13,000,000.Siberian Natives.—To-day Siberia or more properly Asiatic Russia,possesses nearly eleven million inhabitants, considerably less thanone-tenth of whom are non-Russians. Of these approximately500,000 are Turko-Tartars, 300,000 Mongols, 70,000 Tungus, and35,000 Ghiliaks, Chukchis, Koriaks, Yukaghirs, Kamchadals, Es-kimo, and other smaller units ; but all these groups are more or lessmixed with the Russians, 1 and with the exception perhaps of those inTurkestan have no individualistic aspirations.
1 An excellent ethnographic map of Siberia has been published, together withtwo large volumes of descriptive text, by the Dept. of Agriculture of theRussian government in 1914 (" Etnograficheskaia Karta Asiatskoi Rossii").
NO. II THE RACES OF RUSSIA—HRDLICKA IO,THE JEWSThe Russian Jews are in the main, if not entirely, tne descendantsof refugees driven out of Germany during the persecution of therace in the middle ages. Some Jews penetrated into Poland andLithuania as early as the middle of the eleventh century, but by farthe larger number came later, particularly under the Polish king,Casimir the Great, whose wife was of Jewish extraction. FromPoland they spread to Lithuania, Courland, and what is now Ukrainaand Bessarabia. Peter the Great, and particularly Catherine II,opened to them the door of Russia.A small branch of the Russian Jews are known as the Karaites.They differ in many respects from the remainder, are settled inCrimea where they speak Tartar and in western Russia where theyspeak Polish, and are principally agricultural. Their origin is stillin dispute.The total present number of Jews in European Russia before thewar approximated 4,000,000, in Russian Poland 1,300,000, and inCaucasus 50,000. In addition there were about 50,000 in Siberia andCentral Asia.It is very interesting to note that physically the Russian Jews ofto-day resemble to a considerable extent the Russians themselves(compare Maurice Fishberg, The Jews, N. Y., 191 1). In Polandthe approximation of the two types of population is much lessapparent. The Karaites, whom some suppose to be the descendantsof the Khazars, show anthropologically some affinity with theTartars. THE GERMANSThe total number of Germans in the lands under Russian dominionamounted at the beginning of the present war to a little over 1,800,-000. They were scattered over practically all except the poorestparts of the empire, especially in the cities. In the Baltic provincesthey were the privileged landed proprietors. In southern Russiaand other agriculturally rich regions there were German agriculturalcolonies, some recent, some of older formation.The German influx into Russia started in the sixteenth centuryand was especially active during the reign of Peter the Great. Theycame as artisans and merchants, frequently on invitation ; and in1762 they were invited to settle in some parts of southern Russiain agricultural colonies, which gradually and in a scattered way ex-tended to the Don and the Caucasus. These colonies received specialprivileges, were practically self-governing, and fused but little with
20 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 69the Russians. During- the latter half of the nineteenth centuryGerman colonization in important parts of Russia was, there arevalid reasons to believe, favored if not directed by the GermanGovernment for economic and perhaps strategic reasons.The German nobles and landed proprietors in the Baltic provincesdate in the main from the time of the attempts by the German Knightsto forcibly " Christianize " the natives of these provinces, thoughsome were brought there later by the guileless Russians.A study of the German relations with Russia shows that the latterhas ever been a field for advancement and exploitation by Germany.By most Germans at home, the Russians, together with the rest ofthe Slavs, were looked upon as a desirable " fertilizer " fbr theGerman stock ; but every care was taken that the Germans in Russiashould not disappear in the Russian mass and thus weaken Germanyto the advantage of her neighbor, the dreaded sleeping Samson, theRussian Slav. CONCLUDING REMARKSLeaving aside all details and localized ethnic peculiarities, we findthat the racial problems of European as well as of Asiatic Russia,are relatively fairly simple, (i) We find over a large portion of thevast territory a thin substratum of Finno-Ugrians, who are of westernAsiatic origin and carry with them varying traces of Mongolianadmixture. (2) The southern portions of Russia from remote timeconstitute a broad avenue for the movement of Asiatic peoples in awesterly direction. These peoples are partly of Iranian, but in themain of Turko-Tartar derivation ; and the Turko-Tartars like theFinno-Ugrians are mixed peoples, partly white and partly Mon-golian. Their influence, both racial and cultural, on the countryand its people is marked and in a measure persists even to the presentday. (3) Along the Baltic we find Finnish tribes in the north andthe Lithuanians, probably of mixed Slavic and Scandinavian com-position, farther southward and westward. (4) All the rest of thegreat region is Slav, Polish in the west, Russian in the center andeastward.It is eminently true that Russia is essentially a Slav country,which to-day is equally true of Siberia and in a large measure evenof 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 welldeveloped, virile, resistant, and full of potential force. It may
NO. II THE RACES OF RUSSIA—HRDLICKA 21
truly be said to be the great human reserve of the European popula-tion. If it has not advanced in culture as much as the western andsouthern European nations, the causes if contemplated impartiallyare seen to have been not inherent or racial, but geographic andcircumstantial. It must not be forgotten that Russia by acting fromits inception as the buffer between the rest of Europe and Asia, andby becoming later the principal check of the Turk, has deserved adeep gratitude of the more western and more favorably situatednations.What will be Russia's future? Perhaps the anthropologist mayattempt to predict where others would hesitate.The Russian Slavs taken collectively, count to-day over one hun-dred millions, 1 and they are increasing yearly, by the excess of birthsover deaths by 1,700,000. This rate of increase is greater than thatof any other people in Europe except some of the other branches ofthe Slavs, and with the mass of the people belonging to the con-servative simple-lived rural population, cannot be expected to becomemuch reduced in the near future. Such a rate of increase of thisotherwise strong and able portion of the white stock, means a bio-logical momentum which in the end must prevail over all opposition.The Russian giant may have his Delilahs, internally as well as ex-ternally, but these will not be able to hold him forever. Russia can-not but have a future commensurate with her potential powers.
1 See author's article on " The Slavs " in the Nov., 1918, number of theCzechoslovak Review, II, Chicago, 180-187.