artVIChapter

Throughout Russian history one dominating theme has been the frontier; the theme of the struggle for the mastering of the natural resources of an untamed country, expanded into a continent by the ever-shifting movement of the Russian people and their conquest of and intermingling with other peoples.B. H. Sumner, A Short History of RussiaAt the same time that western Europeans were expanding overseas to all corners of the globe, the Russians were expanding overland across the entire length of Eurasia. The mastering of the continental expanses of Siberia is an epic story comparable to that of westward expansion across the United States to the Pacific. In fact, the ever-advancing frontier has left as indelible a stamp on the Russian character and Russian institutions as it has on the American. The Russians were not the only European peoples who were affected by a frontier. During the medieval period, large parts of central and eastern Europe were lightly populated (see Chapter 21, Section I). For centuries, various European peoples, and particularly the Germans, pressed a line of settlement eastward along the Baltic coast and down the Danube valley. But by the end of the Middle Ages, internal colonization no longer was a dominant movement. Overseas colonization took its place, and the peoples of western Europe concentrated their energies on opening and exploring new frontiers in new worlds. The Russian people, by contrast, continued to expand overland into the vast Eurasian plain stretching out from their doorstep. This was a stupendous undertaking, which continued for several centuries until the last of the Moslem khanates in central Asia was subdued in 1895. It is not surprising, then, that the frontier has been a major factor throughoutthe course of Russian history, as it has been throughout American history. In this chapter we shall examine the nature and the course of Russian expansion into Siberia and the Ukraine.I.GEOGRAPHY OF RUSSIAN EXPANSIONTo understand the remarkable Russian expansion across the plains of Eurasia we must first understand the geography of those plains. A glance at the map shows their staggering proportions (see map of Russian Expansion in Europe and Asia, p. 369). Russia encompasses a sixth of the land surface of the globe and is larger than the United States, Canada, and Central America combined. Another prominent characteristic of the Russian landmass is its remarkable topographical uniformity. It is in very large part a flat plains area. The Ural Mountains do run across the plains in a north-south direction, and they are commonly thought of as dividing the country into two separate parts—European Russia and Asiatic Russia. But the fact is that the Urals are a single, narrow, worn-down chain of mountains with an average altitude of only 2,000 feet. Furthermore, they do not extend further south than the fifty-first parallel, leaving a wide gap of flat desert country stretching down to the Caspian Sea. This topographic uniformity helps to explain why the Russians were able to spread so rapidly from the Baltic to the Pacific.The Eurasian plains that make up most of present-day Russia are surrounded by a natural southern boundary stretching from the Black Sea to the Pacific Ocean. This boundary consists of an uninterrupted chain of mountains, deserts, and inland seas; beginning in the west and moving eastward, they are the Caucasus Mountains; the Caspian Sea; the Ust Urt Desert; the Aral Sea; the Kizil-Kum Desert; the Hindu Kush, Pamir, and Tien Shan ranges; the Gobi Desert; and the Great Khingan Mountains, whichextend east to the Pacific Ocean. The ring of mountains surrounding the Eurasian plains keeps out the moisture-laden winds from the Pacific and the warm monsoons from the Indian Ocean and explains both the desert climate of central Asia and the cold, dry climate of Siberia. The whole expanse of Siberia, from the Baltic to the Pacific, has essentially the same continental type of climate, with short, hot summers and long, cold winters. The uniformity of climate, like that of topography, facilitated Russia's eastward expansion, for the frontiers people felt equally at home throughout the 5,000-mile expanse of plains. The central Asian deserts, on the other hand, seemed strange and forbidding. Moreover, they were held by militarily powerful Moslem khanates in contrast to the weak tribes in Siberia. As a result, the Russians did not master the central Asian deserts until 250 years after they had reached the Pacific further north.Russian expansion was affected by river systems as well as by topography and climate. Because of the flat terrain, Russian rivers are generally long, wide, and unencumbered by rapids Consequently they are invaluable as routes for commerce, colonization, and conquest. West of the Urals there are a number of outstanding rivers: the Western Dvina flowing into the Baltic; the Dniester, the Dnieper, and the Don flowing south to the Black Sea; and the Volga flowing first east and then south to the Caspian. East of the Urals the Siberian plains are watered by four vast river systems: the Ob in the west, the Yenisei in the center, the Lena in the northeast, and the Amur in the southeast. Since the whole of Siberia tilts downward from the massive Tibetan ranges, the first three of these rivers flow northward into the Arctic, whereas the fourth makes its way eastward to the Pacific. These rivers, together with their numerous tributaries, provide a natural network of highways across the plains. Thus the Russianfur traders were able to make their way eastward with few portages to the Pacific Ocean, just as French and English fur traders in the New World made their way westward along similar riverways to the same ocean.A final geographic factor in the pace and course of Russian expansion is the combination of soil and vegetation prevailing in various parts of the country. Four major soil-vegetation zones run in east-west layers across Russia. (See map of Soil and Vegetation Zones of Eurasia, p. 371.) In the far north, along the Arctic coast, is the barren tundra, frozen the year round except for a six- to eight-week growing period in the summer. To the south of the tundra is the taiga, or forest belt. The largest of the four zones, it is 600 to 1,300 miles wide and 4,600 miles long. It includes a fifth of the total forest area of the world. The Russians felt at home in the forests, and they were able to cross the whole of Eurasia without ever losing the familiar protective covering.On their southern edges the forests thin out, and the trees grow smaller until they give way completely to the open, treeless steppe. Here there is fertile black earth formed by millennia of decayed grass. Today it is the breadbasket of Russia, but for centuries it was a source o misery and woe. The steppe was the home of the marauding horse nomads of central Eurasia. When these nomads were sufficiently strong, they struck out along the line of least resistance—sometimes westward into central Europe or eastward into China. More frequently they attacked the vulnerable Russians in eastern Europe. A major theme of Russian history is this continued conflict between the Slavic peasants of the forest zone and the Asiatic nomads of the steppe. At first the nomads prevailed, and the result was two centuries of Mongol rule over Russia. But in the end the Slavic woodspeople became stronger, and they were able not only to win theirindependence but also to expand over the Eurasian plains.The fourth zone, the desert, is the smallest in area, starting in China but extending westward only to the Caspian Sea. We have seen that for various reasons—inaccessibility, severe climate, and the military power of the native peoples— the desert zone was not engulfed by the Russian tidal wave until the late nineteenth century.II.EARLY RUSSIAN EXPANSIONAbout 1,500 years ago, the Russians began their advance eastward from their place of origin in the upper reaches of the Dniester, Dnieper, Neman, and Dvina rivers. From there they fanned out in a great arc. The broad plains beckoned them on to the Arctic shores in the north, to the Black Sea in the south, and to the Urals and beyond in the east. Their subsistence type of agriculture could not support a dense population, so they lived in scattered homesteads and small hamlets rather than in compact villages or towns. The few towns that did appear grew up as trade centers along main river routes. This was the case with Kiev on the Dnieper River, which carried the north-south traffic, and with Novgorod on Lake Ilmen, which commanded the east-west commerce. This long-distance trade provided the basis for the first Russian state, which developed in the ninth century . The center was Kiev, but the state remained a loose federation of principalities strung out along the river routes. Kiev itself was extremely vulnerable to invasion because it was located at the point where the forest zone gave way to the steppe. Consequently, it was forced to wage a continual struggle for existence against the nomad peoples. Russian colonists were unable to settle more than 150 miles south and east of Kiev, for the threat of invasion by the nomads hung over their heads like the sword of Damocles.The sword descended in 1237 when the Mongols swept over the Russian lands as they did over most of Eurasia. The Mongols continued their devastating inroads into central Europe, to the gates of Italy and France. Then they withdrew voluntarily, retaining only the Russian lands in Europe. Their sprawling empire did not survive long as an entity. It broke up into regional fragments. One fragment, the so-called Golden Horde, includedthe Russian territories. The capital of the Golden Horde, and of Russia also for the next two centuries, was Sarai, near present-day Volgograd. The age-old struggle between the forest and the steppe had been settled decisively with the victory of the steppe and its nomad peoples.The Russians now surrendered their small enclaves on the steppe and withdrew into their forest fastnesses. There they were left alone as long as they recognized the suzerainty of the khan and paid him annual tribute. Gradually the Russians recovered their strength and developed a new national center—the principality of Moscow, located deep in the forest zone away from the dangerous steppe. Moscow had advantages other than its relative inaccessibility to the nomads. A number of rivers flowing in various directions came closest to each other in the Moscow region, so Moscow could profit from an inland water system. The principality also enjoyed the advantage of a line of rulers who were peaceful, frugal, and calculating. The rulers added to their possessions patiently and ruthlessly, until Moscow became the new national nucleus. Whereas at the opening of the fourteenth century the principality was made up of only about 500 square miles, by the mid-fifteenth century it had grown to 15,000 square miles. And a century later, during the reign of Ivan the Terrible (1533-1584), all the Russian principalities were brought together under Moscow's rule.This "gathering of the Russian lands" reversed the balance of power between the Russians and the Mongols or Tatars, as they were now more commonly known. Originally the Tatars had triumphed because they were united, in contrast to the strife-ridden Kievan state, and also because they were militarily more advanced with their fast-moving cavalries. But by the sixteenth century it was the Russians who were united under Moscow,whereas the Golden Horde had split into the three rival khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, and the Crimea, as well as the khanate of the Siberian Tatars to the east of the Urals. Furthermore, the Russians were also pulling ahead in military techniques, because they were able to profit from the great advances being made in western Europe, especially in firearms and artillery. Thanks to this military advantage, the Russians were able to overrun the whole Kazan Khanate. They swept down the Volga valley and in 1556 captured Astrakhan. To consolidate their gains, the Russians built a series of fortified posts along the banks of the Volga to its mouth at Astrakhan. Thus the Russians became the masters of the great Volga basin and reached the Caspian Sea in the south and the Urals in the east. The way now was open for limitless Russian expansion beyond the Volga and the Urals (see map of Russian Expansion in Europe and Asia, p. 369).III.CONQUEST OF SIBERIAThe Russian victories had eliminated the Kazan and Astrakhan khanates. But the Tatars in the Crimea and across the Urals remained independent and continued to harass the Russian colonists with frequent raids. For various reasons discussed later in this chapter, the Russians had to suffer the attacks of the Crimean Tatars until the late eighteenth century. But they were able to destroy the Siberian Khanate with little difficulty, and in doing so they began their epic march to the Pacific.The crossing of the Urals and the conquest of Siberia were largely the work of the rough-and-ready frontierspeople known as the Cossacks. In many respects they resembled the frontierspeople of the American West. Most of them were former peasants who had fled from Russia or Poland to escape the bonds of serfdom. Their refuge was the wild steppe country to the south, where they became hunters, fishers, and pas-toralists. Just as theircounterparts in America became half-Indian, so they became half-Tatar. They were a liberty-loving and equalitarian, but unruly and marauding, element, ever ready to turn bandit or freebooter if it seemed profitable to do so.A typical product of this frontier environment was Yermak Timofeevich. At the age of twenty-one he was condemned to death for stealing horses, so he fled to the Volga where he became the leader of a band of river pirates. He preyed indiscriminately on Russian shipping and Persian caravans until government troops began to close in.Yermak the robber now showed that he had in him the stuff of a great empire builder. He did for Russia in Siberia what Pizarro and Cortes had done for Spain in America. With the audacity of the conquistador, Yermak decided that the best defense was the offense. On September 1, 1581, he set out at the head of 840 men to attack Khan Kuchum on his own territory. Yermak, like his Spanish counterparts, had the great advantage of superior weapons. He was well equipped with firearms and cannon, and after stiff fighting, he captured the Khanak's capital, Sibir. The Russians now gave the name of the city to the entire trans-Ural area, which became known as Sibir, or, in its Anglicized form, Siberia. The road to the Pacific lay open.The Russian conquest of Siberia was a remarkable achievement. Like the Spaniards in America, the Russians in Siberia won a great empire in a few years with incredibly small forces. The pace of the Russian advance was staggering. Yermak campaigned between 1581 and 1584, at the same time (1584) that Sir Walter Raleigh landed on Roanoke Island in North Carolina. Within half a century, by 1637, the Russians reached Okhotsk on the Pacific Ocean, covering a distance half as much again as that between the Atlanticand the Pacific coasts of the United States. During that same period the English colonists had not crossed to the other side of the Allegheny Mountains.Various factors explain the rapidity of the Russian advance. The climate, the terrain, the vegetation, and the river systems were, as we have seen, all favorable to the invaders. The native peoples were handicapped by small numbers, inferior armaments, and lack of unity and organization. We must give credit also to the stamina and courage of the Cossacks, who—like the coureurs des bois, or fur traders, of French Canada—endured fantastic hardships and dangers in the wilderness. And the reason they did so may be summed up with one word—fur. The sable lured them ever eastward, from river to portage and on to new rivers.As the Cossacks advanced, they secured their communications by building fortified posts, or ostrogs, which were like the blockhouses of the American frontier. Thus they advanced from Sibir to the Ob River, to the Yenisei, and to the Lena, which they followed down to the Arctic coast in 1645. Two years later they reached the shores of the Pacific, where they built Okhotsk.Up to this point the Russians had not encountered any power capable of stopping them. But when they pushed down into the Amur valley they more than met their match. There they came up against the outposts of the mighty Chinese Empire, which then was at the height of its strength (see Chapter 19, Section III). It was hunger that drove the Russians to the Amur basin. The frozen north yielded furs but no food, and the distant granaries of European Russia might as well have been on another planet. So the Russians hopefully turned southward where, according to native lore, there existed a fabulous country with fertile soil and golden grain.The Cossack Vasily Poyarkov led the way down the Amur valley in 1643-1644. He was followed by a series of adventurers who captured the town of Albazin, built a string of ostrogs, and killed and pillaged in typical Cossack fashion. The Chinese emperor finally was sufficiently exasperated by these outrages on the fringe of his empire to send an expedition northward in 1658. The Chinese recaptured Albazin and cleared the Russians out of the whole Amur basin. After more skirmishes the two governments negotiated the Treaty of Nerchinsk (August 27, 1689). The frontier was fixed along the Stanovoi mountain range north of the Amur River, so that the Russians were forced to withdraw completely from the disputed river valley. In return, the Russians were given commercial privileges allowing subjects of both empires to travel freely across the frontier and buy and sell without hindrance. The trade that grew up in the following years, carried on by caravan, consisted of gold and furs which the Russians exchanged for tea. It was from the Chinese that the Russians obtained what was to become their national drink. The Russians soon became greater tea drinkers than even the English.With the signing of the Nerchinsk Treaty, the first stage of the Russian expansion in Asia came to a halt. For the next 170 years the Russians observed the provisions of the treaty and stayed out of the Amur basin. They did not resume their advance southward until the midnineteenth century, when they were much stronger than in the days of Vasily Poyarkov, and the Chinese were relatively weaker.IV.ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF SIBERIA The fur trade dominated Siberia throughout the seventeenth century. The government was the chief fur trader; indeed, fur was one of its most important sources of revenue. The government acquired furs by variousmeans: It collected tribute, or tax, from the natives in furs, and it took a 10 percent tax in the best furs from the Russian trappers and traders. In addition, it reserved the right to buy the best furs obtained by both the natives and the Russians. By 1586, the state treasury was receiving annually from these various sources 200,000 sables, 10,000 black foxes, and 50,000 squirrels, besides beavers and ermines. Furthermore, the government had a lucrative monopoly of the foreign trade in furs. Estimates of the revenue derived from Siberian furs in the mid-seventeenth century vary from 7 to 30 percent of the total income of the state. A leading student of this subject has concluded that "The government paid the administrative expenses in Siberia out of the fur trade, retained a large surplus, and added an immense region to the state."In the eighteenth century, the traders and trappers began to give way to permanent colonists who emigrated from European Russia to escape creditors, military service, religious persecution, and, above all else, the bonds of serfdom. Whereas serfdom had developed and spread through European Russia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it did not take root in Siberia at any time. The explanation seems to be that serfdom existed primarily to satisfy the needs of the nobility, who were essential for the functioning of the state. But the nobles did not migrate to Siberia, which offered no attractions comparable to those of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Consequently, Siberia escaped the nobility and thus also escaped serfdom. The growth of population in Siberia to 1763 is given in Table .It is significant that whereas only 420,000 Russians were living in Siberia by 1763, the population of the thirteen colonies in North America had risen by the same date to between 1,500,000 and 2 million, or aboutfour times as many. In other words, the Russians, who had been much faster in exploring and conquering, were now much slower in colonizing. One reason was that Siberia could draw only on Russia for immigrants, whereas the American colonies were receiving immigrants from several European countries. Even more important was the greater attractiveness of America for would-be colonists. Climatic conditions in Siberia were akin to those prevailing in Canada. It is no accident that by 1914 the populations of Canada and Siberia were about the same—8 million for Canada and 9 million for Siberia. By that same year the United States, smaller in area than either Canada or Siberia, had grown to a population of 100 million.REFLECTIONS ON CROSSING SIBERIAIn 1908 a young Russian diplomat crossed Siberia by railway en route to the embassy in Peking. His thoughts are revealing of Siberia as a country and as a class-divided society. *On my way to Peking I had to cross the whole of Siberia, Manchuria, and North China. No one can fail to be impressed by the journey through Siberia, especially the first time. The dimensions of Russia are staggering. You travel a day, you travel a week, you travel ten days, and you are still in Russia. Except for the Ural Mountains and a stretch near Lake Baikal, the country is absolutely flat.After you leave European Russia the population becomes very scarce; you pass hours and hours without seeing any village or habitation. Near the stations there are a few houses. Usually, when the express train arrives at the station, the entire local population comes to stare at the travelers. Especially in the evenings, when the train is brilliantly illuminated by electricity and the elegant figures of some inhabitants of Shanghai or other Far Eastern ports are visible inside, the travelers must appear to the local residents like men from another planet. What envy and dissatisfaction the exotic creatures in furs must provoke in the hearts of those doomed to spend their entire life in some miserable station!I imagine a young girl who has not yet lost the capacity to dream waiting on the station platform. She hears the express approaching and sees it all illuminated. The train stops for five minutes. The passengers, looking like people from a fairy land, jump on the platform; they laugh and joke. There is a whistle, the train with its passengers disappears, and darkness, emptiness, and dullness reign again.It is unjust that some should move from place to place in luxury, whileothers must remain in some forsaken place in misery. Small wonder that this should cause irritation and discontent. I am convinced that the Siberian express played an important part in the awakening of the population of Siberia and thereby hastened the coming of the revolution.The sight of unlimited space and the absence of life begins to affect you, and the passengers prefer to pass their time in the diner, drinking endless glasses of tea and playing cards....V.CONQUEST OF THE UKRAINEWe noted earlier that Ivan the Terrible's conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan in the mid-sixteenth century left two independent khanates—that of the Crimean Tatars in the south and of the Tatars across the Urals. The latter were subdued in a few years by Yermak and his successors, but the Crimean Tatars held out until the end of the eighteenth century. One reason for their survival is that they enjoyed the powerful support of the Ottoman Empire. But the Ottoman Turks were defeated by Catherine the Great, who forced them to accept the Treaty of Jassy (1792). This gave to Russia the entire north shore of the Black Sea from the Kuban River in the east to the Dniester River in the west.The whole of the Ukraine now was under Russian rule. The forest at last had triumphed over the steppe. The desert zone of central Asia still held out, but it also was destined to fall under Muscovy's sway during the following century. In this manner a small duchy in eastern Europe expanded through the centuries to become the world's largest state with dozens of minority peoples in addition to the original Slavs. Until 1917, this state was known as the Tsarist Empire; after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution it became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). This existed until its disintegration in 1991, when it was replaced by the Commonwealth ofIndependent States, as we shall see in Chapter 44, Section III.The dozens of minority peoples in the USSR preserved their sense of identity, despite the centuries they spent under Tsarist and then Soviet rule. Therefore they were able to establish independent states when the USSR fell apart in 1991. By contrast, the equally large number of ethnic elements comprising the United States have not demanded an independent existence. Why the basically different situation in the two countries One explanation is that the USSR was a mosaic of nationalities, while the United States is a melting pot of nationalities. The USSR was a mosaic because centuries ago, as we noted above, the Russians began conquering their neighbors all the way to the Pacific Ocean and then combined them into one empire, like a mosaic holding together many different-colored Pieces of glass. Just as each piece of glass in a mosaic retains its color, so the various nationalities in the Tsarist-Soviet mosaic retained their identity. In 1991 those broke off and became dependent states.The Americans also conquered the various Indian tribes all the way to the Pacific Ocean, just as the Russians conquered the Eurasian peoples all the way to the Pacific Ocean. But the number of Indians between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans was much smaller than the number of Eurasians between the Ural Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. So the Americans were able to push all the Indians into a few reservations. That cleared the ground for the immigration of millions of people from all over the world into the relatively empty lands of the United States. In those lands the immigrants "mixed up" so that today descendants of many different peoples often live side by side as neighbors in one American city block or in one apartment building, instead of a whole republic consisting entirely, or largely, of one people or another, as is the case with the fifteen SovietSocialist Republics (SSRs) that comprised the USSR. That is one reason why the many elements in the melting pot (Mexicans, Koreans, Chinese, Germans, African-Americans, and so on) are not demanding autonomy or independence in the United States, as did the Baltics, Armenians, Ukrainians, and various Moslem ethnic groups in the USSR. The illustration, "Ethnic Composition of Soviet Republic," on page 378 provides statistics that demonstrate why the USSR disintegrated as a mosaic, in contrast to the melting pot that has survived as the United States.。