elevation. The typical Russian landscape is flat-to-rolling countryside, the mountains relegated to the southern borders and the area east of the Yenisey River. The Ural Mountains, which divide Europe from Asia, are no higher than 6,200 feet (1,890 meters) and form a mere inconvenience to passing air masses and human interaction. Russia’s average elevation is barely more than 1,000 feet (333 meters).
Russia is a fusion of two geologic platforms: the European and the Asiatic. When these massive plates collided 250 million years ago, they raised a mighty mountain range, the low vestiges of which are the Urals. West of the Urals is the North European Plain, a rolling lowland occasioned by hills left by Pleistocene glaciers. One set of hills stretches between Moscow and Warsaw: The Smolensk-Moscow Ridge is the only high ground between the Russian capital and Eastern Europe and was the route used by Napoleon’s and Hitler’s doomed armies. Further north between Moscow and St. Petersburg are the Valday Hills, which represent the source of Russia’s major river systems: Volga, Dnieper, Western Dvina, and so forth. Where it has not been cleared for agriculture, the plain nurtures a temperate forest of broadleaf trees, which dominate in the south, and conifers, which prevail in the north. The slightly leached gray and brown soils of this region were first cultivated by the early eastern Slavs.
In the south, the North European Lowland merges with the Stavropol Upland of the North Caucasus Foreland between the Black and Caspian seas. Here the forests disappear, leaving only grassGEOGRAPHY
Bering Sea , PACIFIC Poluostrov~) _ „_, . _, Kamchatka OCEAN
Russia, 1992 © MARYLAND CARTOGRAPHICS. REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION. land, or steppe, the soils of which are Russia’s fertile chernozems. Along the western and northern shores of the Caspian Sea, desert replaces the grasslands. Farther south, North Caucasia merges with the Greater Caucasus Mountains, the highest peak of which is Mt. Elbrus (18,481 feet [5,633 meters]).
The northern part of the European Lowland supports a northern coniferous forest, known as taiga. The largest continuous stand of conifers in the world, the taiga stretches from the Finnish border across Siberia and the Russian Far East to the Pacific Ocean. Even farther north, flanking the Arctic Ocean is the Russian tundra. Permafrost plagues both the taiga and tundra, limiting their use for anything other than logging and mineral development. Soils are highly infertile podzols. Virtually all of Siberia and the Russian Far East consist of either taiga or tundra, except in the extreme southeast, where temperate forest appears again. East of the Urals is the West Siberian Lowland, the world’s largest plain. The slow-moving Ob and Irtysh rivers drain the lowland from south to north. This orientation means that the lower courses of the rivers are still frozen as the upper portions thaw. The ice dam causes annual floods that create the world’s largest swamp, the Vasyu-gan. The Ob region contains Russia’s largest oil and gas reservoirs. In southeastern Western Siberia is Russia’s greatest coal field, the Kuzbas. South of the Kuzbas are the mineral-rich Altai Mountains, which together with the Sayan, and the Yablonovy ranges, form the border between Russia, China, and Mongolia.
East of the Yenisey River is the forested Central Siberian Plateau, a broad, sparsely populated tableland that merges farther east with the mountain ranges of the Russian Far East. In the southeastern corner of the plateau is a great rift valley in which
GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS
lies Lake Baikal, “Russia’s Grand Canyon.” Equal to Belgium in size, the world’s deepest lake gets deeper with every earthquake. See also: CLIMATE
Lydolph, Paul E. (1990). Geography of the USSR. Elkhart Lake, WI: Misty Valley Publishing. Mote, Victor L. (1994). An Industrial Atlas of the Soviet Successor States. Houston, TX: Industrial Information Resources. Mote, Victor L. (1998). Siberia Worlds Apart. Boulder, CO: Westview. Shaw, Denis J. B. (1999). Russia in the Modern World: A New Geography. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Georgia [Sak’art’velo] is among the “Newly Independent States” to emerge from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its territory covers 69,700 square kilometers, bordered by the North Caucasus republics of the Russian Federation on the north, Azerbaijan to the west, Armenia and Turkey to the south and southwest, and the Black Sea to the east. It includes three autonomous regions: Adjaria, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia. The latter two have maintained a quasi-independent status for most of the post-Soviet period, and have been the scenes of violence and civil war. The capital city of Tiflis, located on the Mtkvari (or Kura) River in the heart of Georgia, has a population of 1.2 million, approximately 22 percent of the republic’s 5.4 million. Georgia’s head of state is a president. A unicameral parliament is Georgia’s legislative body.
The Georgians are historically Orthodox Christians, with some conversions to Islam during times of Muslim rule. Their language, with its own alphabet (thirty-three letters in the modern form), is a member of the Kartvelian family, a group distinct from neighboring Indo-European or Semitic languages. Speakers of Mingrelian and Svanetian, two of the other Kartvelian languages, also consider themselves Georgian. Laz, closely related to Min- grelian, is spoken in Turkey. Georgia has an ethnically diverse population: Georgian 70.1 percent, Armenian 8.1 percent, Russian 6.3 percent, Azeri 5.7 percent, Ossetian 3 percent, Abkhaz 1.8 percent, and other groups comprising 5 percent.
Georgian principalities and kingdoms began to appear in the last few centuries of the first millennium B.C.E, and existed alongside a well-traveled east-west route on the peripheries of both Persian and Greco-Roman civilizations. These influences were mediated through their Armenian neighbors who, with the Georgians, also maintained contacts with Semitic cultures.
Ancient Georgian culture was split into two major areas: east and west, divided by the Likhi mountains. The eastern portion, known as Kartli, or Iberia, had its center at Mtskheta, at the confluence of the Aragvi and Mtkvari Rivers. When not directly controlled by a Persian state, it still maintained ties with the Iranian political and cultural spheres. This connection lasted well into the Christian period, when the local version of Zoroas-trianism vied with Christianity.
Western Georgia was known by different names, depending upon the historical source: Colchis, Egrisi, Lazica. It had more direct ties with Greek civilizations, as several Greek colonies had existed along the Black Sea coast from as early as the sixth century B.C.E. Western Georgia was eventually more directly under the control of the Roman Empire, in its successive incarnations.
The conversion of the Kartli to Christianity occurred in the fourth century as the Roman Empire was beginning its own transition to Christianity. As with other aspects of cultural life, Armenian and Semitic sources were important. Mirian and his royal family, after being converted by St. Nino, a Cappadocian woman, made Christianity the official religion. Dates in the 320s and 330s are argued for this event. The conversion of the west Georgians land owes itself more directly to Greek Christianity.
The conversion of the Georgians was accompanied by the invention of an alphabet in the early fifth century. Scripture, liturgy, and theological works were translated into Georgian. This association of the written language with the sacred is a vital aspect of Georgian culture.
The Georgian capital was transferred from Mt-skheta to Tiflis in the fifth century, a process begun during the reign of King Vakhtang, called Gorgasali, and completed under his son Dachi. Vakhtang is portrayed in Georgian sources, in an
GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS
Georgian citizens wave flags and shout during an anti-government rally in Tiflis, May 26, 2001. © AFP/CORBIS exaggerated fashion, as one of the important figures in transferring Kartli from an Iranian orientation to a Byzantine one. This was a complex time of struggle in the South Caucasus, not only between Byzantine and Persian Empires, but also among various Armenian, Caucasian Albanian, and Georgian states vying for power.
These currents of conflict were drastically altered in the seventh century when Islam asserted its military and political power. Tiflis was captured by an Arab army in 645, a mere thirteen years after the death of Muhammad, and would remain under Arab control until the time of David II/IV (the numbering of the Bagratid rulers differs according to one’s perspective) in the eleventh century.
While Christianity was tolerated in Eastern Georgia, the political center shifted westward, where the Kingdom of Abkhazia grew to preeminence in the eighth century. This realm was one of mixed ethnic composition, including the Kartvelians of West Georgia (i.e. the ancestors of today’s Min-grelians and Svanetians) and, toward the northwest, the ancestors of the Abkhazian people.
