The ancient names of the Slav tribes have entirely disappeared, or are preserved only in the names of towns—as, for instance, that of the Polotchanes in Polotsk; that of the Severians in Novgorod-Seversk. The elements in the composition of Russia were thus rather principalities than peoples. No more is said of the Krivitchi or of the Drevlians; we hear only of Smolensk or of Volhinia. These little states were dismembered at each new division among the children of a prince; they were then reconstituted, to be again divided into appanages. In spite of all these vicissitudes, however, some among them had an uninterrupted existence due to certain topographical and ethnographical conditions. Setting aside the distant principality of Tmoutorakan, established almost at the foot of the Caucasus in the midst of Turkish and Circassian tribes and counting eight different princes, the following are, from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, the principal divisions of Russia:
(1) The principality of Smolensk, which occupied the important territory which is in a manner the central point of the orographic system of Russia; it comprises the old forest of Okov, where the three greatest rivers of Russia, the Volga, the Dnieper, and the Dvina, have their rise. Hence the political importance of Smolensk, which is attested by the many wars undertaken against her; hence also her commercial prosperity. It is noticeable that all her towns were built on some one of the three rivers; all the commerce of ancient Russia thus passed through her bounds. Besides Smolensk it is necessary to cite Mozhaisk, Viasma, and Toropets, the capital of a secondary principality, the domain of two famous princes—Mstislav the Brave and Mstislav the Bold.
(2) The principality of Kiev, which was Rus—Russia in the strict sense of the term. Its situation on the Dnieper, the proximity of Greece, the fertility of its Black Lands, long assured to this state the supremacy over all other Russian principalities. To the south it was bordered by the Nomad tribes of the steppe. Against the inroads of these tribes the princes of Kiev were obliged to construct frontier fortresses; though frequently they ceded them lands and took them into their pay, constituting them into veritable military colonies. The principality of Pereiaslavl was a dependency of Kiev; Vishgorod, Bielgorod, Tripoli, and Torlshok were at different times constituted into appanages for princes of the same family.
Laplander
(3) The two principalities of Tcheringov with Starodub and Lubetz and of Novgorod-Seversk with Putivl, Kursk and Briansk, which extended along the tributaries flowing into the Dnieper from the left—the Soj and the Desna swelled by the Seim. Tcheringov, extending towards the upper Oka, had thus one foot in the basin of the Volga; its princes, the Olgovitchi, were the most redoubtable rivals of those of Kiev. As for the princes of Seversk, they were ceaselessly occupied with wars against their dangerous rivals on the south, the Polovtsi. It is the exploits of a prince of Seversk against these barbarians which form the subject of a chanson de geste—The Song of Igor.
(4) The duplex principality of Riazan and Murom, another state whose existence was maintained at the expense of ceaseless war against the nomads. The principal towns were Riazan, Murom, Pereiaslavl-Riazanski, on the Oka; Kolomna, at the junction of the Moskva with the Oka; and Pronsk, on the Pronia. The upper Don bounded it on the west. This principality was established in the midst of Finnish tribes—the Muromians and the Meshtseraks. The warlike character and the rude and coarse habits attributed to the people of the principality doubtless resulted not less from the assimilation of the aborigines by the Russian race than from the continuous brutal strife of the inhabitants with the nomads.
(5) The principalities of Suzdal—with their metropolitan towns of Tver, Suzdal, Rostov, Iuriev-Polski, and Vladimir on the Kliasma; of Iaroslavl and Pereiaslavl-Zaliesski—which were established on the Volga and the Oka, in the densest of the northern forests, surrounded by Finnish tribes—Mouromians, Merians, Vesses, and Tcherimisses. Though situated at the extreme limit of the Russian world, these principalities nevertheless exercised great influence over it. We shall see their princes now reducing Novgorod and the Russia of the lakes to a certain political dependence, the consequence of a double economical dependence; then victoriously intervening in the quarrels of the Russia of the Dnieper. The Suzdalians were of the same character as the Riazanians—rude and warlike. The characteristics of a new nationality were already noticeable among these two peoples. That which differentiated them from the Kievans and the Novgorod-Severskans, who, like themselves, were occupied in the great struggle against the barbarians, was that the Russians of the Dnieper, sometimes mingling their blood with that of their enemies, became fused with Turkish tribes, nomadic and essentially mobile, while the Russians of the Oka and the Volga united with Finnish tribes, agricultural and essentially sedentary. This difference between the two foreign elements which entered into the blood of the Slavs, without doubt contributed to that marked difference in character between the two branches of the Russian race. During the period from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, as colonization advanced, from the basin of the Dnieper to the basin of the Volga, the divisions of Little Russia and Great Russia were formed.
(6) The principalities of Kiev, Tchernigov, Novgorod-Seversk, Riazan, Murom, and Suzdal, which formed the marches of Russia on the borders of the steppe with its devastating hordes—constituting its frontier states. On the confines of the northwest, opposite the Lithuanians, the Letts and the Tchuds, the same rôle devolved on the principality of Polotsk, occupying the basin of the Dvina, and on the republican principalities of Novgorod and Pskov on the lakes of Ilmen and Petpus. The principality of Minsk was attached to that of Polotsk. It was situated in the basin of the Dnieper and, owing to that circumstance, its possession was frequently disputed by the grand princes of Kiev. The towns of Torzhok, Volok-Lamski, Izborsk, and Veliki Luki belonged to Novgorod; at times they were the capitals of individual states.
Southwestern Russia comprehended (1) in the fan-shaped territory formed by the Pripet and its tributaries—Volhinia, with Vladimir in Volhinia, Lutsk, Turov, Brest, and even Lublin, which is unquestionably Polish; (2) in the basins of the San, the Dniester, and the Pripet—Galicia proper, or Red Russia, whose ancient inhabitants, the white Croats, seem to have originated in the Danubian Slavs. Its principal towns were Galitch, founded by Vladimirko about 1444; Peremishl; Terebovlia, and Svenigorodka. The near neighbourhood of Hungary and Poland contributed to these two principalities distinctive characteristics, as well as a more advanced civilisation. In the epic songs Galicia, the land of the hero Dvorik Stepanovitch, is a country of fabulous wealth. The Narrative of the Expedition of Igor gives an exalted idea of the power of its princes: “Iaroslav Osmomysl of Galicia,” cries the poet addressing one of them, “high art thou seated upon thy golden throne! With thy iron regiments thou guardest the Carpathian mountains, thou shuttest the gates of the Danube, thou barrest the way to the king of Hungary; at will thou openest the gates of Kiev, and thine arrows reach far into the distance.”