Ernest Ansermet, Serge Diaghilev, Igor Stravinsky, and Serge Prokofiev (New
York Public Library) Leon Trotsky (New York Public Library) Joseph Stalin (Sovfoto) Lenin (New York Public Library) Nikita Khrushchev (Sovfoto) Stalin's Funeral (Sovfoto) Soviet Leaders Celebrating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution
(Wide World Photos)
After page 598
Leaders of the communist world in Moscow, 1986 (Wide World Photos) Eastern Orthodox Christmas procession in Red Square (Agence France-Presse) Patriarch Aleksy II blessing Yeltsin (Wide World Photos) Yeltsin being inaugurated as president of the Russian republic (Wide World
Photos) Ethiopian youths standing on the toppled statue of Lenin (Agence France-Presse) Demonstrators pulling down the statue of Dzerzhinsky (Wide World Photos) Children playing on a toppled statue of Lenin following the failed coup (Wide
World Photos)
Gorbachev and Yeltsin at the Extraordinary Congress of People's Deputies
(Reuters/Bettmann) Yuri Luzhkov greets Patriarch Aleksy II at Christ Savior Cathedral (Corbis/Agence
France Presse) Evgeny Primakov (Corbis/Agence France Presse) Aleksandr Lebed (Corbis/Agence France Presse)
Part I: INTRODUCTI ON
1
Russia! what a marvelous phenomenon on the world scene! Russia - a distance of ten thousand versts * in length on a straight line from the virtually central European river, across all of Asia and the Eastern Ocean, down to the remote American lands! A distance of five thousand versts in width from Persia, one of the southern Asiatic states, to the end of the inhabited world - to the North Pole. What state can equal it? Its half? How many states can match its twentieth, its fiftieth part?… Russia - a state which contains all types of soil, from the warmest to the coldest, from the burning environs of Erivan to icy Lapland; which abounds in all the products required for the needs, comforts, and pleasures of life, in accordance with its present state of development - a whole world, self-sufficient, independent, absolute.
Loe thus I make an ende: none other news to thee But that the country is too cold, the people beastly bee.
AMBASSADOR GEORGE TURBEVILLE REPORTING TO ELIZABETH I OF ENGLAND
These poor villages,
This barren nature -
Native land of enduring patience,
The land of the Russian people!
The Russian empire, and later the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, represented a land mass of over eight and one-half million square miles, an area larger than the entire North American continent. To quote the leading Russian encyclopedia: "The Russian empire, stretching in the main latitudinally, occupies all of eastern Europe and northern Asia, and its surface constitutes 0.42 of the area of these two continents. The Russian empire occupies 1/22 part of the entire globe and approximately 1/6 part of its total land surface."
Yet, this enormous territory exhibits considerable homogeneity. Indeed, homogeneity helps to explain its size. The great bulk of Russia is an immense plain - at one time the bottom of a huge sea - extending from central and even western Europe deep into Siberia. Although numerous hills and chains of hills are scattered on its surface, they are not high enough or sufficiently concentrated to interfere appreciably with the flow of the mighty plain, the
* A versta is not quite two-thirds of a mile, or a little over a kilometer.
largest on the entire globe. The Ural mountains themselves, ancient and weather-beaten, constitute no effective barrier between Europe and Asia, which they separate; besides, a broad gap of steppe land remains between the southern tips of the Ural chain and the Caspian and Aral seas. Only in vast northeastern Siberia, beyond the Enisei river, does the elevation rise considerably and hills predominate. But this area, while of a remarkable potential, has so far remained at best on the periphery of Russian history. Impressive mountain ranges are restricted to Russian borders or, at the most, borderlands. They include the Carpathians to the southwest, the high and picturesque Caucasian chain in the south between the Black Sea and the Caspian, and the mighty Pamir, Tien Shan, and Altai ranges farther east along the southern border.
Rivers flow slowly through the plain. Most of them carry their waters along a north-south axis and empty either into the Baltic and the Arctic Ocean or into the Black and the Caspian seas. In European Russia, such rivers as the Northern Dvina and the Pechora flow northward, while others, notably the Dniester, the Bug, and the larger Dnieper, Don, and Volga proceed south. The Dnieper and the Don empty into the Black Sea, the Volga into the Caspian. Siberian rivers, the huge Ob and Enisei, as well as the rapid Lena, the Indigirka, and the Kolyma, drain into the Arctic Ocean. The exception is the Amur, which flows eastward, serves during much of its course as the boundary between Russia and China, and empties into the Strait of Tartary. South of Siberia in Central Asia both the Amu Daria and the Syr Daria flow northwestward to the Aral Sea, although the former at one time used to reach 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.