Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/519

 RUSSIA RUSSIA (LANGUAGE, &o.) 495 until the close of the 16th century, when they were "fastened" to the soil, that is to say, were no longer permitted to move from the places where the ukase found them. The ob- ject of this fastening of the peasants to the land on which they lived was not so much to enrich the landowners by giving them serfs, as to secure the revenues of the crown ; for as long as the peasants were free to move about, they actually formed a vast body of wanderers constantly avoiding all payment of taxes or any other contribution to the government. To take a census under such circumstances was impossible, and that is one of the reasons why the early statistical data concerning the popu- lation of Russia are so highly untrustworthy. Such lands as did not in the stricter sense be- long to the princes .or the nobles were at all times considered as constituting the property, not of individual peasants, but of whole com- munities. They were periodically, generally every nine years, divided among the families of the community, in equal lots, according to the number of heads, and without regard to for- mer tenantry; only the dwellings, cattle, and horses forming personal property. This sys- tem of division and rotation excluded both des- titution and a regular cultivation of the land ; and in it lies the explanation of the great favor which communistic views have at all times found in Russia. Trade and industry being at a very low stage of development, few private fortunes were accumulated as in other parts of the world. The wealth of representative men in Russia came mainly as the gift of the sover- eign, and from the large extent of territory, the want of proper communications, and the impos- sibility of gathering information concerning dis- tant regions, the princes very frequently made presents to the nobility of land not vacant, but belonging to one or more communities of peas- ants. The inherent right of peasants to own a certain portion of land was tacitly acknowl- edged by the legislation on emancipation; for instead of being simply declared free, every one of them was endowed, according to the fertility of the land, with from 5 to 25 acres, with a house and a bit of orchard attached to it, for which he is bound to pay, during a stated num- ber of years, a certain tax to the government, which undertook to compensate the landown- ers. The great result achieved by this reform is that there is now no agricultural laborer in any part of the empire who is not a small landowner and a householder. The agricultural classes are in so far incomparably better off than the arti- sans, mechanics, or even members of the libe- ral professions. Among the numerous works on Russia, besides those in Russian by Karam- sin, Polevoi, Pogodin, Ustrialoff, Solovieff, and others, the following are prominent : Strahl and Hermann, OescJiichte von Russland (6 vols., Hamburg, 1832-'60) ; J. G. Kohl, various books of travel through European Russia (1841 et seq.) ; Haxthausen, Studien uber die innern Zuttande, das Volksleben und insbesondere die 716 VOL. xiv. 32 landlichen Einrichtungen Russlands (3 vols., Hanover, 1847-'52) ; N. Turgeneff, La Russie et let Russes (3 vols., Paris, 1847) ; Schnitzler, Histoire intime de la Russie SOILS les empereurs Alexandre et Nicholas (2 vols., Paris, 1847), Les institutions de la Russie depuis les reformes de Vempereur Alexandre II. (2 vols., 1867), and other works ; Gurowski, " Russia as it is " (New York, 1854) ; Pauly, Description ethno- graphique des peuples de la Russie (St. Pe- tersburg, 1862) ; Golovin, fitudes et essais: Ri- chesse de la Russie, &c. (Paris, 1864), and other works ; Koppen, Statistische Reise in Russland (St. Petersburg, 1864) ; Buschen, Apercu statis- tique des forces productive* de la Russie (Paris, 1868) ; Eckardt, Die Baltischen Provimen Russ- lands (Leipsic, 1868), Baltische und Russische Culturstudien (Leipsic, 1869 ; both translated under the title of "Modern Russia," &c., Lon- don, 1870), and Russlands landliche Zustande seit Aufhebung der Leibeigenschaft (Leipsic, 1870); W. Hep worth Dixon, "Free Russia" (2 vols., London, 1870); Barry, "Russia in 1870 " (London, 1871) ; Mrs. Guthrie, " Through Russia from St. Petersburg to Astrakhan and the Crimea" (2 vols., London, 1874); Ralston, "Early Russian History" (London, 1874); and Lengenfeldt, Russland im XIX Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1875). Erman established in Berlin in 1841 the Archiv fur wissenscJiaftliche Kunde von Russland, a periodical exclusively devoted to the geography and history of Russia, and still (1875) continued. Dilke, Fadeyeff, Hellwald, Mitchell, Kinglake, Sarauw, Stumm, Trench, Vambery, Vincent, Wirgmann, and others have written upon Russia in central Asia and the Russian eastern question. RUSSIA, Language and Literature of. The Rus- sian language is the most widely spread and important idiom of the great Slavic family of languages, of which it forms the eastern- most branch. It is distinguished by regularity, flexibility, a fitting mixture of softness and force, and especially by copiousness, as it has assimilated and worked up an immense num- ber of Scandinavian, Tartar, Finnish, and other non-Slavic roots. The alphabet consists of 36 letters representing the following sounds or marks: A, a, It a; E, <5, &/ B, B, (also /); r, r, hard g (also h and ); A, fl, d; E, e, It. e (also ye, as in Eng. yell, and u, as in &*); >K, W, Fr. j (sh); 3, 3, e; M, H, It. ; I, i, J, the same; K, K, Tc; Jl, 4, I; M, M, m; H, H, n; O, o, It. o, also Eng. o, as in hot; H, v,p; P, P, r; 0, o, ; T, T, m, t; y, y, It. ; $, *, /; X, x, M (Ger. cK); U, Jj, tz (It. and Ger. 2); ij, i, tch (Pol. ); III, m, sh; III,, ill,, shtch (Pol.szcs); t, -b, mark of hardness; H, H, Ger. u (nearly; Pol. y) ; j >5 b, mark of softness;, -B, ye; 3, a, e; H), H), yu; a, a, ya ; 6, e, /; V, Y, It. * (also v) ; $, fl , y consonant (Ger. j). The grammatical structure is like that of the Polish, but the accent is varied. The fol- lowing examples will show some of the gram-