Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/38

12 and races has important bearings upon the origins of Kiev and Novgorod. It is unquestionable that Finnish and other European and Asiatic racial elements enter into the composition of the Russian people, but it is today impossible to ascertain with anything approaching precision, when, whence, and how these interminglings and Russifications occurred. In the present state of research it is extremely hazardous to make extensive use of theories of race and nationality to explain the characteristics of Kievic Old Russia.

As far as the epoch we have been considering is concerned, no clear light has hitherto been thrown upon the distinction between Great and Little Russia. The term "Little Russia" makes its ﬁrst appearance in fourteenth-century documents. It is uncertain when and how the linguistic separation of the Little Russians occurred; and we are quite unable to determine when, how, and to what extent the Little Russians underwent anthropological and ethnological differentiation from the Great Russians. It is possible that the Lithuanians, the Poles, and some of the Czechs (Aryan and direct Slavic stocks), have had a racial influence upon the Little Russians—but these are mere speculations. The differences in character between the Great Russians and the Little Russians are an actual fact, like the analogous differences between northerners and southerners in many nations occupying extensive tracts of territory; but it remains uncertain whether climatic influences, the character of the soil, and the methods of agriculture, have had more to do or less to do with the differentiation of the two stocks than a hypothetical racial divergence.

It is certainly possible that the distinction between Kiev and Novgorod in these earliest days was in some way related to the distinction between Little Russians and Great Russians. Gruševskii, the historian of Little Russia, regards the Antes as the ancestors of the Little Russians.

This indefiniteness is manifest in another direction. In speaking of the earliest epochs, the terms Slav and Russian are apt to be used as if they were interchangeable. It is generally assumed, in the case of the Russians as in the case of the other Slav nations of to-day, that in this remote period no notable differentiation had taken place among the Slavs. For the nonce the assertion is unproved. It may be true that in prehistoric times the Slavs, like the Teutons, etc., were a unitary race with an integral type of civilisation; but we