In conclusion it should be noted that Russian soil scientists, while regarding climatic zoning as a predominant factor in the formation of soil types emphasise the complicated interplay of other factors, parent rock, relief and its evolution, geological history, biological factors, and so on.
Dokuchaiev also considered that the age of the parent rock and the length of time during which soil formation in particular con ditions had been in progress were both important factors, thus podzolisation tends to end in the production of podzol from cher nozyom, while saline soils represent the youthful stage of alkaline soils. The concept of finality is, however, very rarely tenable in the complex and interdependent relations of organism and environment.
(For a discussion of Fauna and Flora see the articles on the continents of EUROPE and AsIA.) The population of Russia, huge though it is, is small in com parison with the vast area over which it is spread, averaging about 18 per sq.m. This is partly due to the vast extent of land un suitable for settlement, the great tundra expanse fringing the north, with the taiga belt south of it, and the huge deserts of Central Asia, and partly to the fact that Russia is an agricultural and not a manufacturing country. Dense agricultural populations exist in the monsoon lands of south-east Asia, but Russia lies too far north and is too much exposed towards the north to per mit of all-the-year-round agricultural production, and therefore the possible density of her agricultural population is strictly lim ited by climatic conditions. The saturation point of agricultural population is, however, very far from having been reached. Many areas of land which could be cultivated are empty, and in the cultivated areas production is hindered by poor methods of farm ing the land, by the illiteracy of the peasant and by lack of trans port facilities. Lack of transport facilities is perhaps the greatest drawbadc to agriculture: the effects of the construction of the trans-Siberian railway on grain-production and dairying were marked. Weak development of industry also limits agricultural progress, since large towns encourage a meat and dairy industry and intensive market-gardening. Russia has great mineral wealth and the construction of railways is increasing year by year so that her potential industrial development is great. The reasons for its retardation and for the poor stage of cultural development in the country and possibly even for the misgovernment and crises through which she has passed are partly historical.
It is to the Slav colonisation of the Russian plains and to the long Slav struggle with nomadic invasions from Asia that Western Europe owes her comparative freedom to develop a certain cul tural unity. The role of buffer state was not voluntary, but the debt is none the less great, and the heroic struggle of the Slav races against repeated plunder and invasion, in hard climatic con ditions, should command the respect and admiration of the world Many times in the long history of recurrent plunderings and invasions, of terrible famines, of misgovernment, of enslavement at home and by Eastern races (serfdom existed till 1861 and even in the i9th century Russian slaves were sold in Oriental markets) the inhabitants of Russia must have felt what the r2th century historian records of the men of the Kiev steppe : "Men began to ask themselves whether life was possible under such conditions." Vital Statistics.—The first Russian census, taken in 1897, recorded a population of 129,200,200. In 1926, in spite of the loss of some of its most densely peopled areas on the west, and of the deaths resulting from war and famine and the epi demics which followed in their wake, it numbered 146,989,46o, and in Jan. 1933 it was estimated at 165,847,100. The birth rate is high, about 47 per i,000, and the death rate, 3o per I,000, is also high. Infant mortality is specially high, and it is calculated that 450 out ,of every r,000 children born die within the first five years of life. The mortality of women in the prime of life has been high since the revolution. According to the 1897 census, the proportion of men and women was fairly even. In the 192o census the ratio of men to women was 100:115-5, the excess of women being largely due to war deaths among men. In 1926, though there was much fighting in the period 1920-22, the ratio was roo : ro8. Professor Semenov Tian-Shansky in an article "Russia : Territory and Population" in the American Geographical Review of October, 1928, attributes this to the loss of man power, which has resulted in burdening women beyond their strength. It
may, however, be also connected with the prolonged food short age, for nutrition is of vital importance to the expectant and nursing mother. An interesting phenomenon, possibly due to the greater liability of male infants to catarrhal disorders in a cold and damp climate, is that the numerical predominance of women in the 1897 census in European Russia was chiefly to the north of the line of the annual isotherm of 7° C The high mortality in Russia results from complex factors, amongst which are the general poverty, resulting in insufficient and monotonous diet, peculiarly unfortunate in a country where resistance to climatic conditions demands food of high nutritive value, the lack of any medical help for large sections of the popu lation, unhygienic conditions, including overcrowding in the cities and lack of sanitation and pure water supply in the country, and in many towns, and the general illiteracy of the population. This latter factor makes it impossible to instruct the population in methods of preserving health and avoiding the spread of the epidemic diseases so common in Russia The complete absence of isolation hospitals in most rural districts and the custom of admitting animals into the huts for the sake of warmth in winter add to the difficulties of prevention In some districts, especially in the administrative unit known as the Central Black Earth Area, verminous conditions are ram pant in the crowded peasants' huts and though the peasants con sider their weekly steam bath a necessity, poverty compels them to resume their verminous garments. The Soviet government has achieved much in city centres in its struggle against child mor tality: in Moscow the death rate fell from 23 per r,000 in 1913 to 13 per i,000 in 1925, this figure has declined chiefly since 1922 having naturally been high during the war and revolution The mortality of children in their first year of life fell from 177 per i,000 in 1924 to 135 per i,000 in 1925. This has been achieved, in spite of wretched housing conditions, mainly through the establishment of creches and maternity hospitals and through a campaign of pictorial as well as written instruction in hygiene A darker side of the picture is the suicide record; between 1923 and 1926 the number of suicides in the U.S.S.R increased by 50%. Progress in rural districts and in the autonomous areas and republics is necessarily slow and in some regions there are fewer medical facilities than previously An interesting experiment is the recent establishment of a centre in Leningrad where men and women from remote areas receive instruction in the rules of hygiene and first aid so that they may return to their villages and thus act as pioneers The gathering in Moscow of repre sentatives from all parts of the U.S.S.R every year for con gresses must help to spread hygienic and cultural ideals Ethnic Groups.—In ethnographic character the population of Russia is remarkably varied. The Russian Academy of Sciences calculates that Russia is inhabited by 169 ethnic groups, divided into ro major divisions as follows:—Indo-Europeans 36 groups, Caucasian (now classified as Japhetic) 40, Semites 6, Finns 16, Samoyedes I, Turks 48, Mongols 3, Tungus-Manchurian tribes 6, Palaeo-Asiatics 9, and groups of tribes from the Far East, with an ancient culture 4. Of these one quarter have a yellowish tinge in the skin, the rest may be considered white, thus racially as well as geographically Russia is Euro-Asiatic rather than Euro pean Numerically Great Russians form 52.9% of the population Ukrainians 21 2%, Finns 3 3%, White Russians 3.2%, Uzbeks and Turkmen 2-4%, Tatars 2%, Jews 1.8%, Georgians 1.2%, Greeks and Armenians 1.3%. No other nationality numbers i%. Thus the three branches of the Slays form 77.3% of the population, while no other nationality reaches 4%. On the whole Turkic tribes occupy the most important role after the Slays. These ratios vary very much in different districts The Slav population is most dense in European Russia, in Asiatic Russia it has spread in a dense belt along the cultivable prairie land lying south of lat. 50° N. as far as the Yenisei river, along which a ribbon of Slav penetration has reached the Arctic, following the same line as Ugro-Samoyede peoples of long ago ; in the same way a ribbon of Slav settlements accompanies the Ural river to the Caspian. East of the Yenisei Slav colonisation is mainly in ribbons along the rivers, or in islands in mining districts or on patches of fertile soil Similarly south of the main wedge of colonisation, islands of Slav settlement exist among the Turkic peoples. These Turkic peoples, Uzbeks, Turkmen, Kirghiz, etc., are most continuous in the Central Asiatic Republics, i.e , in the region lying west of the Dzungarian Gate from Mongolia to Eurasia and thus being the first to receive the impact of Turkish invasions under the stress of Mongolian attack. The Tatar Republic of the Volga with Bashkiria to the south-east, represents the most north-westerly extension of a solid wedge of Turkic settlement. The Mongol peoples are mainly to be found south and east of Lake Baikal; the Kalmuck region (q.v.) on the Lower Volga is a Mongol intrusion far to the west, separated from its original base by a wedge of Turkic settlement. The Yakuts of the Lena represent a north eastern spread of the Turkic element, now much intermingled with Slavic blood.