ON THE POPULATIONS OF THE RUSSIAN

EMPIRE.

No. II.

THE PARTS AROUND THE BLACK SEA.

We have taken cognizance of certain populations on the Baltic Sea, which, although they formed part of the Russian empire, were not Russian. What were they? Lithuanians and Fins, Fins and Lithuanians. Let us now turn southwards, towards another sea-coast, towards another seat of the present naval operations, and try to ascertain the character of the populations there found. They belong to Russia. The most ignorant Turk in the most unenlightened part of Turkey knows this. But are they Russian? They are Russian, just as the populations of the Baltic were Russian, i. e. only partially so. But they are neither Fins nor Lithuanians. We can scarcely expect that they should be. We have moved a thousand miles southwards, and are in the latitude of Northern Italy; of Venice and Turin; of the south of France. We are in the Italy of Russia, for this is what they call the Crimea. Now the Lithuanians and the more southern Fins were in the latitude of the Shetland Isles, or thereabouts,—a latitude of frost and snow, of damp and cold, of short summers and long winters; and the most northern of the Fins actually lay within the Arctic Circle itself. But the regions now under consideration lie a thousand miles south of St. Petersburg.

The intermediate parts are Russian,- the intermediate parts, but not the two extremities.

The intermediate parts are as truly Russian as Yorkshire and Lincolnshire are English; or the Isle of France, French.

And it is in these intermediate parts where the language, and the creed, and the Moscovite nationality of the Russian, are found in their most unmodified forms.

The Russian language is spoken by more than 50,000,000 human beings, and it is over these central parts of the empire that these fifty millions are distributed; central parts that we may, for the sake of illustration, call the "Midland Counties of Moscovy," remembering only that the smallest of them is as large as Wales, and the largest larger than all Great Britain. The better name, however, is “Government." Now, in the Government of St. Petersburg the population, other than Russian, is that of the first of the following tables; whereas, in the Government of Vladomir, it is that of the second :

:

(2.)

Germans

......

100

Gipsies.... 130 Total ...... 230

Such are the two extremes between the Russian parts of Russia in respect to the heterogeneous or homogeneous character of the population. In such Governments as Livonia, Esthonia, Archangel, &c., the difference is greater. These, however, are Russian only as Wales is English. St. Petersburg, on the contrary, is truly Russian; but how much more Russian is Vladomir - Voronetz, Orlov, Kaluga, Koursk, Moscow, Smolensko, Tula, and Kharkov, being in the same category. They are all Russian, with the exception of a few hundred Germans and Gipsies. If we look at the map, we find that all these Governments lie together, forming the

very nucleus of the empire. Move from this nucleus, and, whatever direction we take, we shall get, first, to a mixed, afterwards to a foreign, population,- foreign at least to Russia. Thus,—

a. Northwards, we get amongst the Fins, whom we first find in Jaroslav, Kostroma, Tver, and Novogorod.

b. Eastwards, we get amongst the Fins of Tambov (few in number), Penza, and Kazan, &c.; also amongst the Tartars of Kazan and Orenburg.

c. Westward, we get amongst the Poles; and

d. Southward, amongst the Tartars. Now the Tartars on the Euxine and in the parts under present notice take the same place, and command the same attention, that the Fins and Lithuanians took and commanded on the Baltic. The Crimea, in fact, the most important of the southern parts of Russia, is as little Russian as is Esthonia. But it is as much Tartar as Esthonia is Fin.

The Tartars. In respect to its ethnology, the Crimea is Tartar at the present moment; and there are men now living who remember when it was Tartar in respect to its political relations as well. We first find it as part of the Ottoman empire; then its allegiance became nominal; then null. Finally, it was annexed to Russia. The two last steps took place as late as the last quarter of the last century, for it was in 1778 that peace was concluded between Turkey and Russia, and the independence of the Khan of the Crimea of the Ottoman empire recognised.

Upon this, no fewer than 30,000 Greeks and Armenians emigrated to the country of the Don Cossacks, where they now occupy several villages between the Don and the Benda.

In 1783 the second of the two changes took place, and the Khanate of the Crimea, from being independent of Turkey, became subject to Russia. On this event, such

Tartars as chose were allowed to emigrate, and Anatolia and Rumelia were the countries that vast numbers of them sought. Ten years lasted these emigrations; and in 1784 alone no less than 80,000 Tartars left their country.

It is not easy to take the exact value of these evictions, inasmuch as the calculations of the numbers of the Tartars before the peace of 1778 vary; Georgi making the number of both sexes between 300,000 and 400,000, whereas Pallas raises it to 500,000.

Then the census of 1796 was inaccurate, and had to be taken over again. The highest number, however, that it gave was 90,000. In 1800 it had increased to 120,000. At present it is (as seen from the figures) more than twice as much. These give

The religion of these Tartars is the Mahometan; their speech a form of Turkish. Their whole nationality is Turkish also. In the hills they live as shepherds and herdsmen rather than as tillers of the ground. In the plains they exercise a moderate, but not discreditable amount of agricultural industry, in a country where the soil is grateful and the climate mild, where tobacco thrives, and where the grape ripens into a vinous flavour. The representatives of some of these great families still retain their own lands,-lands held under feudal or quasi-feudal conditions; but the family of the Khan himself removed to Asia Minor on the conquest of his Khanate. There are a few unimportant points of difference between the Tartars of the hill-country and the Tartars of the plains,-the herds

men and the cultivators,-the Highlanders and the Lowlanders. The Nogays belong to the same stock. They are chiefly the descendants of a colony planted in the western part of the Government of Taurida from the Steppes between the Don and the Caspian. There their brethren lead the life of the true nomade, with migratory flocks and herds, under black tents of felt. So that the Nogays represent the wandering portion of the Tartar stock, whereas the others are as truly stationary and as steadily fixed to their homes and farms as the Russian himself, the German, or the Englishman. And now let the hasty speculator take a warning against exaggerating the permanence of hereditary habits. So far from these descendants of the children of the desert being impracticable, migratory, and unsteady in their industry; so far from their preferring the tent to the village, and showing a repugnance to farming-work, the very converse is the fact. "The Nogais are, alas! the least numerous of the Tartars of the Crimea. They combine the taste for a nomadic life with the cultivation of the soil. They are the best agriculturalists in the Crimea, and they now begin to settle in villages and to deal in cattle. It is a pity that this laborious and agricultural population is too small for the cultivation of the Steppes."-Mémoires de l'Académie de St. Petersburg. Serie vi. tom. i. p. 36.

The farther we go eastward the more the Tartar population increases. In the Governments of Caucasus, Stavropol, Astrakhan, Saratov, Simborsk, and Orenburg, they are, more or less, migratory. In Kazan, as in the Crimea, they constitute the remains of an independent empire-an independent empire with a civilisation on the level of that of the present Turks. In Kazan they amount to more than 300,000.

The Kalmucs.-Tartar is an inconvenient word; but we must take it as we find it. It means, when laxly applied, any of the migratory tribes of Central Asia, Kirghis, Mongolians,