Russia

Peasant industries are less developed here in view of the shorter winter and the better agricultural guarantee for the peasant. Health resorts dot the limans of the Black Sea coast with their curative muds and the southern shores of the Crimea, where the climate is mild and the beech and pine forests fringe the moun tain slopes. The seasonal nature of the grain crop and the variable quantity of the amount for export, depending on recurrent spring drought, have created a class of unemployed dock hands in the seaport towns.

( o) The Lower Volga Area consists of the Saratov province, the German-Volga republic, Stalingrad and Astrakhan provinces and a small part of the east of the North Caucasian Area. The area is sub-arid, and the soils vary from chernozyom in the north to the salted light brown clays and sands of the semi-desert and to the desert near the Caspian Sea. Steppe prevails in the region except for a little forest in the north on the right bank of the Volga.

The population diminishes markedly from north -vest to south east, in dependence on increasing aridity. The only mineral wealth of the region is the salt of the Elton and Baskunchak lakes. Fac tory industry consists of the steam flour-mills of Saratov, the metal works, including manufacture of agricultural machinery, at Stalingrad (Tsaritsyn) and numerous sawmills working on timber floated down the Volga from the north. Agriculture is severely hampered by drought and by the prevalence of weeds due to the primitive fallow system. Moreover the lack of transport makes it impossible to export the surplus of wheat in good years and difficult to help the scattered population in years of drought and famine. Since 1921 efforts have been made to encourage the sow ing and use of maize, which is drought resisting and which would provide winter fodder for cattle and sheep. Wheat and rye are the chief crops, and oats, millet, barley, sunflower seed and potatoes are grown. The vine, apricot and other fruits are grown on the alluvial well watered banks of the Volga, and melons, water melons, cucumbers and vegetables are also cultivated. Mustard resists drought well and is increasingly sown, especially in the German Volga republic, where agricultural methods are better and where irrigation works are being extensively constructed. The Kalmucks of the right bank steppe of the Volga are still in a nomadic stage. Sheep-rearing is their main occupation, but they make no provision of winter food or shelter for their flocks and many die of hunger in that season or perish in the terrible wind and snowstorms (burans) to which the steppe is liable. The fish

ing industry of the lower Volga and the Caspian provides seasonal occupation for the peasants, but has diminished markedly as a result of careless exploitation. Many peasants are seasonally em ployed on the Volga steamers and as dock labourers. The mak ing of homespun woollen and felt goods, and of articles of house hold necessity is a peasant industry to supply local needs, but the peasant cotton weaving of the German Volga republic has an export character.

(I I) The Central Black Earth Area.

(See BLACK EARTH.) The above regions cover European Russia and the Ural and pre Ural Area of Western Asiatic Russia. The North Caucasian Area is described in a separate article. The varied nature of the occu pations of trans-Caucasia is described under the separate repub lics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Daghestan and Georgia, with their dependencies. In Asiatic Russia there extends north and south of the railway as far as the Altai a belt of grain cultivation and intensive dairying. (See SIBERIAN AREA.) Kazakstan (q.v.) is a region of mixed agricultural and semi-nomad stock-raising. In the Central Asiatic Republics, especially in Uzbekistan and Turkmen istan, cotton, grain and fruit growing, dependent on irrigation from glacier fed streams are the main occupations, with crafts manship in metal, and in textiles such as silk and carpet weaving, as subsidiary occupations. To the south-west of them are the thinly peopled mountain republics and autonomous areas of the nomad and semi-nomad hill tribes. The Buriat-Mongol republic (q.v.) shows an interesting combination of mining, semi-nomad cattle-breeding and settled agriculture along the sheltered river valleys. The north of the Siberian Area (q.v.) and the whole of the Yakutsk republic (q.v.) lie in the tundra and taiga regions and have sparse native populations depending on fishing and hunting, many being reduced to an exclusive fish diet, often none too well preserved, for the winter months. Russian traders and hunters are scattered in small settlements, and in Yakutsk there is some cattle breeding on the podzol-alkali patch east and west of the town of Yakutsk. The Skoptsi, religious refugees, settled in and near Yakutsk and have succeeded in growing vegetables and scanty grain crops. There are also Russian mining settlements in Yakutsk and in the Far Eastern Area. For the complex life of the latter see FAR EASTERN AREA and KAMCHATKA.