The Ethnology of Europe

by R. G. Latham

The Tartar provinces come next, or, to speak more correctly, the Turk. Tartar, however, is the usual term, and as Tartary is the recognised name of the country to the east of the Caspian, it is not likely to be got rid of; nor yet to be changed into the more correct form Tahtah. The stock, however, is that to which the Ottoman Turks of Turkey, along with numerous other powerful and important populations, belong. Kasan, Oremberg, and Astrakhan are the chief Turk provinces. A portion, too, of New Russia is Turk. The date of their introduction is the thirteenth century; the empire to which they belonged being that of the successors of Zengis Khan.

The peculiarities of the distribution of the Turks of Russia is explained by their history. Of Southern Russia, as well as of the south-eastern provinces, they were once the exclusive masters. This makes the Russian population of Kherson, Ekaterinoslav, the Don Kosak country, and the greater part of Taurida, of recent origin; indeed, it is not only recent but mixed, and it is called New Russian.

Podolia, Kiev, Pultava, Kharkhov, are what is called Malorussian, or Little Russian. The dialect differs notably from that of the Muscovite of the central governments, and has its affinities in a different direction, since it very closely resembles the Russniak of Gallicia. And in Gallicia it probably originated. At the same time the three dialects, the Russniak, the Maloruss, and the Muscovite (or Great Russian) are mutually intelligible. Between these two branches of the Russian family a strong national antipathy exists.

In Volhynia the dialect is the White Russian, and so it is in those parts of Lithuania where the Lithuanian is out of use.

The true and proper Russian of Great Russia, or Muscovy, the language of the capitals, and the language which the conquests of Russia have extended over all Northern Asia, and even into North-western America, circumscribed, as it has been shown to be, by the languages and dialects which have just been enumerated, is still spoken over a vast area—over all the central provinces of Russia, as well as on the Baltic and the Euxine, at St. Petersburg and at Odessa. It is generally, too, the language of the towns. But, for a language of so vast an area, it falls into a remarkably small number of dialects. In Olonetz it is mixed with the Fin, since the Fin is the original language of that government; and, in Vladimir, the Suzdal dialect exhibits certain peculiarities; but, with these, and, perhaps, a few other exceptions, the uniformity is complete.

This is primâ facie evidence of its introduction being recent; a fact which the whole history of ancient Russia confirms; indeed, it is highly probable that no truly Slavonic nation (not even the Malorussians) occupied any portion of their present possessions anterior to the fourth century of the Christian era. If so, how was the area first filled? By the Lithuanians and the Ugrians; by the Lithuanians extending from the west eastwards, and by the Ugrians extending from the east westwards. By this hypothesis the two populations met in some of the central provinces, though it is difficult to fix the absolute points of contact.

Nor were the Slavonians even the first invaders who disturbed this distribution; since Turk populations different from and earlier than the Turks of the thirteenth century were settled in Southern Russia in the fifth century B.C., i.e., at the very beginning of the historical period. Neither do I press the absolute exclusion of stocks other than the Lithuanian and the Ugrian so strongly as to deny the likelihood of the aborigines of the Crimea and some of the neighbouring districts having been members of the same stock as the Circassians and the other tribes of Caucasus. Little, however, depends on this.

Upon the early exclusion of the Slavonians a great deal depends; a great deal affecting not only the ethnology of Russia itself, but that of the whole area, real or imaginary, of the Slavonic stock; that of the parts west of the Elbe, that of Bohemia and Dalmatia, that of Wallachia and Hungary, that of Northern Greece, that of North-eastern Italy, that of even the Tyrol, Bavaria, and Switzerland. And the original extent of the Lithuanic area is more important still. Armenian, Persian, and Indian archæology are involved in it. It is not difficult to see how this happens. There are vast tracts of country along the Elbe, the Oder, the Vistula, and the Danube that good authorities deny to have been originally Slavonic. “They were German,” it is said, “or if not German, Keltic, or, perhaps, they belonged to some extinct stock.” “If so,” it is reasonably asked, “whence came the Slavonians, and where is the cradle of so vast a family?”

A common answer is “Russia.” But what if Russia be Ugrian, or if not Ugrian, Lithuanic? Surely the question is important.

Then as to the Lithuanians. They and the Slavonians are branches of the same Sarmatian family; so, of course, their languages, though different, are allied. But next to the Slavonic what tongues are nearest the Lithuanic? Not the speech of the Fin, the German, or the Kelt, though these are the nearest in geography. The Latin is liker than any of these; but the likest of all is the ancient sacred language of India—the Sanskrit of the Vedas, Puranas, the Mahabharata, and the Ramayana. And what tongue is the nearest to the Sanskrit? Not those of Tibet and Armenia, not even those of Southern India. Its nearest parallel is the obscure and almost unlettered languages of Grodno, Wilna, Vitepsk, Courland, Livonia, and East Prussia. There is a difficult problem here; a problem which every fact which brings the Lithuanic and Sanskrit areas nearer to each other, advances towards its solution.