Russia: Territory and Population: A Perspective on the 1926 Census

FTER the discovery of America by Columbus a vast colonization movement sprang up among the nations of Europe in two directions, westward towards America and eastward to Asia. The late geographer, P. P. Semenov-Tian-Shansky, has calculated that of all emigrants beyond the Atlantic and the Asiatic frontier from the end of the fifteenth century to the end of the nineteenth 72 per cent, consisting principally of Europeans, went to America, and 28 per cent, chiefly Slavs, emigrated eastward to the interior of Eurasia (Alexander von Humboldt's term), if the ethnographic boundaries within the territory of the plain between the European and Asiatic nations of those days be taken into account-for Russia has never recognized the artificial division of the northern continent of the Old World into Europe and Asia. The importance of the great Slavonic colonization eastward into the interior of Eurasia has not been duly appreciated in Europe and America. And yet if there had not been this movement, Europe would have been obliged to spend so much energy in fighting the Asiatic hordes of invaders from the East that sufficient strength would not have been left to colonize America. It was only under cover of the Slavs on the east that Europe was able to retain the classical purity of its civilization. This is confirmed by the famous invasion of the Huns in the fifth century, which caused a panic throughout all Europe, as also by later ones, the strength and impetus of which are so vividly described by the traveler G. E. Grum Grzhimailo (in a new work of capital importance, Western Mongolia and Uriankhai ) that even now, several centuries after these nomads' invasions have ceased, we shudder in reading of them. The repeated attempts of Europe to vanquish the specter of Russian Imperialism, so-called (I604-I617, 1700-1721, I812, 1854-1855, 1904-1905, I918-I920), were ill-advised and invariably amounted to little, even when Russia was defeated, for they were attempts against the natural geographical conditions of the country, rather than its population. Napoleon's campaign to Moscow in I812 is illustrative. The situation was well expressed by an Austrian prisoner sent to eastern Siberia in 1916. Appalled by the great distance he said: You 616