Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/77

 that of three Englishmen, but that five Russians require less wages than a single Englishman.

Look at the map of Europe. European Russia lies between the Baltic and the Black Sea. The whole economic history of Russia from the beginning of the process which led to the formation of a single Russian State is determined by this fundamental geographical factor, and, in considerable measure, consists in the advance of Russia towards those two seas. The two movements—advance to the Baltic and advance to the Black Sea—were parallel, nor can we say that one of them was more important than the other. All that can be said is that the cultural and political importance of the process is more evident in the northern movement than in the advance to the Black Sea. But on the other hand, this southern movement is of enormous economic importance. The European shores of the Black Sea, consisting of the most fertile provinces of European Russia, are in the economic sense the genuine creation of the Russian people, conquered by them from nomads and Nature. The relation which exists between the part of Russia which economically gravitates towards the Baltic and that which gravitates towards the Black Sea may be roughly compared to that existing between the Eastern and the Western States of the great American Commonwealth.