the Caspian. These rivers and their tributaries, together with other rivers and lakes, provide Russia with an excellent system of water communication. The low Valdai hills in northwestern European Russia represent a particularly important watershed, for it is there that the Dnieper and the Volga, as well as the Western Dvina and the Lovat, have their sources.
But while Russia abounds in rivers and lakes, it is essentially a landlocked country. By far its longest coastline opens on the icy Arctic Ocean. The neighboring seas include the Baltic and the Black, both of which must pass through narrow straits, away from Russian borders, to connect with broader expanses of water, and the Caspian and the Aral, which are totally isolated. Major Russian lakes include Ladoga and Onega in the European part of the country, and the huge and extremely deep Lake Baikal in Siberia. The Russian eastern coastline too is subject to cold and inclement weather, except for the southern section adjacent to the Chinese border.
Latitude and a landlocked condition largely determine Russian climate, which can be best described as severely continental. Northern and even
central Russia are on the latitude of Alaska, while the position of southern Russia corresponds more to the position of Canada in the western hemisphere than to that of the United States. The Gulf Stream, which does so much to make the climate of western and northern Europe milder, barely reaches one segment of the northern coastline of Russia. In the absence of interfering mountain ranges, icy winds from the Arctic Ocean sweep across European Russia to the Black Sea. Siberian weather, except in the extreme southeastern corner, is more brutal still. Thus in northern European Russia the soil stays frozen eight months out of twelve. Even Ukraine is covered by snow three months every year, while the rivers freeze all the way to the Black Sea. Siberia in general and northeastern Siberia in particular belong among the coldest areas in the world. The temperature at Verkhoiansk has been registered at as low as -90°F. Still, in keeping with the continental nature of the climate, when summer finally comes - and it often comes rather suddenly - temperatures soar. Heat waves are common in European Russia and in much of Siberia, not to mention the deserts of Central Asia, which spew sand many miles to the west.
Climate determines the vegetation that forms several broad belts extending latitudinally across the country. In the extreme north lies the tundra, a virtually uninhabited frozen waste of swamps, moss, and shrubs covering almost 15 per cent of Russian territory. South of the tundra stretches the taiga, a zone of coniferous forest, merging with and followed by the next zone, that of mixed forest. The two huge forested belts sweep across Russia from its western boundaries to its eastern shoreline and account for over half of its territory. Next comes the steppe, or prairie, occupying southern European Russia and extending into Asia up to the Altai mountains. Finally, the southernmost zone, that of semi-desert and desert, takes up most of Central Asia (now divided among five successor states to the Soviet Union). Being very wide if considerably shorter than even the steppe belt, it occupies somewhat less than one-fifth of the total area of the former Soviet land mass.
One important result of the climate and of this pattern of vegetation in Russia has been a relative dearth of first-rate agricultural land. Only an estimated one million square miles out of an area more than eight times that size are truly rewarding to the tiller of the soil. Other sections of the country suffer from the cold and from insufficient precipitation, which becomes more inadequate as one progresses east. Even the heavy snowfalls add relatively little moisture because of the rapid melting and the quick run-off of water in the spring. In Central Asia farming depends almost entirely on irrigation. The best land in Ukraine and Russia, the excellent black soil of the southern steppe, offers agricultural conditions comparable to those on the great plains of
Canada rather than those in warmer Iowa or Illinois. Russia, on the other hand, is fabulously rich in forests, more so than any other country in the world. And it possesses a great wealth and variety of natural resources, ranging from platinum to oil and from coal to gold. On the whole, however, these resources remained unused and even unexplored for a very long time.
Ever since Herodotus historians have been fascinated by the role of geographic factors in human history. Indeed the father of history referred to the broad sweep of the southern Russian steppe and to the adaptation of the steppe inhabitants, the Scythians, to their natural environment in his explanation of why the mighty Persians could not overcome them. Modern historians of Russia, including such leading Russian scholars as Kliuchevsky and especially his teacher S. Soloviev, as well as such prominent Western writers as Kerner and Sumner, have persistently emphasized the significance of geography for Russian history. Even if we reject the rigid determinism implicit in some of their views and refuse to speculate on such nebulous and precarious topics as the Russian national character and its dependence on the environment - speculations in which Kliuchevsky and others engaged in a fascinating manner - some fundamental points have to be made.
For instance, it appears certain that the growth of the Russian state was affected by the geography of the area: a vast plain with very few natural obstacles to expansion. This setting notably made it easier for the Moscow state to spread across eastern Europe. Beyond the Urals, the Russians advanced all the way to the Pacific, and even to Alaska and California, a progression paralleled only by the great American movement west. As the boundaries of the Russian empire ultimately emerged, they consisted of oceans to the north and east and, in large part, of seas, high mountains, and deserts to the south; only in the west, where the Russians merged with streams of other peoples, did the border seem unrelated to geography. The extremely severe climate contributed to the weakness of the tribes scattered in northern European Russia and of the various inhabitants of Siberia, leading to their utter inability to stem the Russian advance. Whereas the Russians could easily expand, they were well protected from outside attack. Russian distances brought defeat to many, although not all, invaders, from the days of the Persians and the Scythians to those of Napoleon and Hitler.
Occupied territory had to be governed. The problem of administering an enormous area, of holding the parts together, of co-ordinating local activities and efforts remained a staggering task for those in power, whether Ivan the Terrible, Nicholas I, or Stalin. And the variety of peoples on the great plain was bound to make such issues as centralization and federation all the more acute. One can appreciate, if not accept, the opinion of those thinkers, prominent in the Enlightenment and present in other periods, who related
the system of government of a country directly to its size and declared despotism to be the natural form of rule in Russia.
The magnificent network of Russian rivers and lakes also left its mark on Russian history. It is sufficient to mention the significance of the Dnieper for Kievan Russia, or of the Volga and its tributaries for the Moscow state. The landlocked position of the country and the search for an access to the waterways of the world made the Russians repeatedly concerned with the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Straits. Climate and vegetation basically affected the distribution of people in Russia and also their occupations. The poor quality of much agricultural land has led to endemic suffering among Russian peasants and has taxed the ingenuity of tsarist ministers and Khrushchev alike. Russian natural resources, since they began to be developed on a large scale, have added immeasurably to Soviet strength. Both the wealth of Russia and the geographic and climatic obstacles to a utilization of this wealth have perhaps never stood out so sharply as today.
The location of Russia on its two continents has had a profound impact on Russian history. The southern Russian steppe in particular served for centuries as the highway for Asiatic nomads to burst into Europe. Mongol devastation was for the Russians only the most notable incident in a long series, and it was followed by over two hundred years of Mongol rule. In effect, the steppe frontier, open for centuries, contributed hugely to the militarization of Russian society, a trend reinforced by the generally unprotected and fluid nature of the western border of the country. But proximity to Asiatic lands led also to some less warlike contacts; furthermore, it enabled Russia later in turn to expand grandly in Asia without the need first to rule the high seas. Recently the Eurasian school of historians, represented in the English language especially by Vernadsky, has tried to interpret the entire development of Russia in terms of its unique position in the Old World.
Russian location in Europe may well be regarded as even more important than its connections with Asia. Linked to the West by language, religion, and basic culture, the Russians nevertheless suffered the usual fate of border peoples: invasion from the outside, relative isolation, and retardation. Hence, at least in part, the efforts to catch up, whether by means of Peter the Great's reforms or the Five-Year Plans. Hence also, among other things,
