A Tatar
(Russian)
St. Petersburg is, truth to tell, built in the midst of Finnish territory; the immediate surroundings are russified, and that quite recently: even half a century ago Russian was not understood in the hamlets lying at the very gates of the capital. To this Finnish branch belong the Livs, a tribe nearly extinct, which has given its name at Livonia; also the Lapps—the last, physically the ugliest, morally the least developed, of all the branches of this tribe.
The race is almost infinitely subdivided; its members profess all the religions from Shamanism to Mohammedanism, from Greek orthodoxy to Lutheranism. They are nomadic, like the Lapp; pastoral, like the Bashkir; sedentary and agricultural like the Esth and the Finn. They have adopted the customs and spoken the language of each and all, have been ruled by peoples of different origins, have been russified after having been partially tatarised—all these influences contributing to break up the race into insignificant fragments. As numerous as their Hungarian kindred, the Finns of the Russian Empire are far from being able to claim an equal political significance.
Is it true that the alliance with the Finns is for Russia an irremediable cause of inferiority? It is doubtful. In their isolation and disruption, hampered by the thankless soil upon which they dwell, the Finns have been unable to achieve an original development; as compensation, they have everywhere manifested a singular facility of assimilation with more developed races with which they have come in contact; they allowed themselves easily to be overwhelmed by a civilisation which they themselves were unable to originate: if they possessed no blood-ties with Europe, they placed no obstacles in the way of annexation by her. Their religion is the best proof. The majority have long been Christians; and it is principally Christianity which has led the way to their fusion with the Slavs and their assimilation into civilised Europe. From Hungary to the Baltic and the Volga, they have accepted with docility the three principal historical forms of Christianity; the most modern, Protestantism, has thriven better among the Finnish and Esthonic tribes than among the Celtic, Iberian, and Latin peoples.
If we seek in language an unmistakable sign of race and intelligence, it must be admitted that certain Finns—the Suomi of Finland like the Magyars of Hungary—have brought their agglutinated languages to a perfection which for power, harmony, and wealth of expression well bears comparison with our most complex flexional languages. If it is true that the Finns are related to the Mongols, they have certainly the virtues of that race, which holds its own so well in its struggle with Europe: they possess the same stability, patience, and perseverance; hence perhaps the fact that to every country and every state which has felt their influence the Finns have communicated a singular power of resistance, a remarkable vitality.
ETHNOLOGICAL DISTRIBUTION OF RELIGIONS
The Finn has become Christian; the Turk or Tatar, Moslem; the Mongol, Buddhist: to this ethnological distribution of religion there are few exceptions. Hereto are attributable the causes of the widely different destinies of these three groups—particularly the neighbouring Finns and Tatars. It is religion which has prepared the one for its European existence; it is religion which has made that existence impossible for the other. Islam has given the Tatar a higher and more precocious civilisation; it has inspired him to build flourishing cities like the ancient Sarai and Kazan, and to found powerful states in Europe and Asia; it has achieved for him a brilliant past, while exposing him to a future full of difficulties: while saving him from absorption into Europe, it has left him completely outside the gate of modern civilisation.