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 This invasion checked but did not stop the advance of the Russians down the Volga. Two centuries elapsed before the Russians covered the 300 m. which separate the mouths of the Oka and the Kama and took possession of Kazañ. But in the meantime a flow of Novgorodian colonization had moved eastward, along the upper portions of the left-bank tributaries of the Volga, and had reached the Urals.

With the capture of Kazañ (1552) the Russians found the lower Volga open to their boats, and eight years afterwards they were masters of the mouth of the river at Astrakhan. Two centuries more elapsed before the Russians secured a free passage to the Black Sea and became masters of the Sea of Azov and the Crimea; the Volga, however, was their route. During these two centuries they fortified the lower river, settled it, and penetrated farther eastward into the steppes towards the upper Ural and thence to the upper parts of the Tobol and other great Siberian rivers.

(P. A. K.; Author:John Thomas Bealby)  VOLHYNIA, a government of south-western Russia, bounded by the Polish governments of Lublin and Siedlce on the W., Grodno and Minsk on the N., Kiev on the E. and Podolia and Galicia (Austria) on the S., with an area of 27,690 sq. m. A broad, flat spur of the Carpathians—the Avratynsk plateau—which enters from the west and stretches out eastward towards the Dnieper occupies its southern portion, reaching a maximum elevation of 1200 ft.; another branch of the Carpathians in the west of the government ranges between 700 and 900 ft. at its highest points. Both are deeply grooved in places, and the crags give a hilly aspect to the districts in which they occur. The remainder of the government, which is quite flat, with an imperceptible slope towards the marshes of Pinsk, is known as the Polyesie (see ).

The population in 1906 was estimated at 3,547,500. Some three-fourths of the population are Little Russians; the other elements are White and Great Russians, Poles (5.2%), Jews (13.2%) and Germans (5.7%). The government is divided into twelve districts, the chief towns of which are Zhitomir, the capital, Dubno, Kovel, Kremenets, Lutsk, Novograd Volhynskiy, Ostrog, Ovruch, Vladimir Volhynskiy, Rovno, Staro-Konstantinov and Zaslavl. The conditions of peasant ownership differ from those which prevail in other parts of Russia, and of the total area the peasants hold approximately one-half; 42% of the total is in the hands of private owners, a considerable number of Germans having settled and bought land in the government.

Forests cover nearly 50% of the area in the north (that is, in the Polyesie) and 15% elsewhere. Agriculture is well developed in the south, and in 1900 there were 4,222,400 acres (24%) under cereal crops alone. In the Polyesie the principal occupations are connected with the export of timber and firewood, the preparation of pitch, tar, potash and wooden wares, and boat-building. Lignite and coal, some graphite and kaolin, are mined, as also amber, which is often found in big lumps. Manufacturing industries are not very highly developed. The factories are confined to sugar works, distilleries, woollen mills, and candle, tobacco, glass, cloth and agricultural machinery works. Domestic industry in the villages is chiefly limited to the making of wooden goods, including parquetry. The exports of grain and limber, chiefly to Germany and Great Britain, and of wool and cattle, are considerable.

Volhynia has been inhabited by Slavs from a remote antiquity. In Nestor’s Annals its people are mentioned under the name of Dulebs, and later in the 12th century they were known as Velhynians and Buzhans (dwellers on the Bug). From the 9th century the towns of Volhynia-Vladimir, Ovruch, Lutsk and Dubno were ruled by descendants of the Scandinavian or Varangian chief Rurik, and the land of Volhynia remained independent until the 14th century, when it fell under Lithuania. In 1569 it was annexed to Poland, and so remained until 1795, when it was taken possession of by Russia.  VOLK, LEONARD WELLS (1828–1895), American sculptor, was born at Wellstown (now Wells), Hamilton county, New York, on the 7th of November 1828. He first followed the trade of a marble cutter with his father at Pittsfield, Massachusetts. In 1848 he opened a studio at St Louis, Missouri, and in 1855 was sent by his wife’s cousin, Stephen A. Douglas, to Rome to study. Returning to America in 1857, he settled in Chicago, where he helped to establish an Academy of Design and was for eight years its head. Among his principal works are the Douglas monument at Chicago and the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ monument at Rochester, New York, and statues of President Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas (in the Illinois State Capitol at Springfield, Ill.), and of General James Shields (in Statuary Hall, Capitol, Washington), Elihu B. Washburn, Zachariah Chandler and David Davis. In 1860 he made a life-mask (now in the National Museum, Washington) of Lincoln, of whom only one other, by Clark Mills in 1865, was ever made. His son, Douglas Volk (b. 1856), figure and portrait painter, who studied under J. L. Gérôme in Paris, became a member of the Society of American Artists in 1880 and of the National Academy of Design in 1899.  VOLKSRUST, a town of the Transvaal, 175 m. S.E. of Johannesburg and 308 m. N.N.W. of Durban. Pop. (1904) 2382, of whom 1342 were whites. The town lies at an elevation of 5429 ft. just within the Transvaal frontier and 4 m. N. of the pass through the Drakensberg known as Laing’s Nek. It is the centre of a rich agricultural district. It was founded by the Boer government in 1888. As a customs port of entry it was of some importance, and it maintains its position as a distributing depot. It was created a municipality in 1903. Sandstone is quarried in the district.  VOLLENDAM, a small fishing village of Holland in the province of North Holland, adjoining Edam on the shores of the Zuider Zee. It is remarkable for the quaintness of the buildings and the picturesque costume of the villagers, who are of a singularly dark and robust type. Many artists have been attracted to settle here. Vollendam has its origin in the building of the great sea-dam for the new waterway to Edam in the middle of the 14th century. On the seaward side of the dike are some houses built on piles in the style of lake dwellings.  VOLLMAR, GEORG HEINRICH VON (1850– ), German Socialist, was born at Munich in 1850. He was educated in a school attached to a Benedictine monastery at Augsburg, and in 1865 entered the Bavarian army as a lieutenant in a cavalry regiment. He served in the campaign of 1866, and then entered the papal army as a volunteer. In 1869 he returned to Germany, and during the war with France served in the army railway department. He was severely wounded at Blois and pensioned. Permanently crippled by his wounds, he devoted himself to political and social studies. In 1872 he was converted to the principles of Social Democracy, and threw himself with great energy into political agitation. In 1877 he became editor of the party organ at Dresden, and under the Socialist law was repeatedly condemned to various terms of imprisonment, and was also expelled from that city. From 1879 to 1882 he lived at Zürich, then the headquarters of Social Democracy, when, besides attending the university, he took part in editing the Social Demokrat. In 1881 he was elected member of the Reichstag, and from 1883 to 1889 was a member of the Saxon diet. After 1885 he resided in Bavaria, and it was to him that was chiefly due the great success of the Socialists in the older Bavarian provinces. He identified himself with the more moderate and opportunist section of the Socialist party, decisively dissociating himself from the doctrine of a sudden and violent overthrow of society, and urging his associates to co-operate in bringing about a gradual development towards the Socialistic state. He refused to identify Social Democracy with the extreme views as to religion and the family advocated by Bebel, and successfully resisted attempts made in 1891 to expel him from