settled among the Tatars and Bashkirs in Samara and, Vyatka.
The Bashkirs, Meshcheryaks and Teptyars rendered able service
to the Russian government against the Khirgiz, and until 1863 they
constituted a separate Cossack army. (6) The Khirgiz, whose true
abodes were in Asia, in the Ishim and Khirgiz steppe. One section
of them crossed the Urals and occupied the steppes between the
Urals and the Volga; the remainder belong to Turkestan and
Siberia.
The Mongol race is represented in Russia by the Kalmucks, who inhabit the steppes of Astrakhan between the Volga, the Don and the Kuma. They are Lamaists by religion and immigrated to the mouth of the Volga from Dzungaria, in the 17th century, driving out the Tatars and Nogais, and after many wars with the Don Cossacks, one part of them was taken in by the Don Cossacks, so that even now there are among these Cossacks several Kalmuck sotnias or squadrons. They live for the most part in tents, and support themselves by breeding live stock, and partly by agriculture.
The Semitic race is represented by upwards of 5,000,000 Jews. They first entered Poland from Germany during the era of the crusades, and soon spread through Lithuania, Courland, the Ukraine, and, in the 18th century, Bessarabia. The rapidity with which they peopled certain towns (e.g. Odessa) and the whole provinces was really prodigious. The law of Russia prohibits them from entering Great Russia, only the wealthiest and best educated enjoying this privilege; nevertheless they are met with everywhere, even on the Urals. Their chief abodes, however, continue to be Poland, the W. provinces of Lithuania, White and Little Russia, and Bessarabia. In Russian Poland they constitute 1312% of the total population. In Kovno, Vilna, Mogilev, Grodno, Volhynia, Podolia, Minsk, Vitebsk, Kiev, Bessarabia and Kherson, they constitute, on the average, 12 to 1712% of the population, while in the cities and towns of these governments they reach 30 to 59% of the population. Organized as they are into a kind of community for mutual protection and mutual help, they soon become masters of the trade wherever they penetrate. In the villages they are mostly innkeepers, intermediaries in trade and pawnbrokers. In many towns most of the skilled labourers and a great many of the unskilled (for instance, the grain-porters at Odessa and elsewhere) are Jews.
The Jews of the Karaite sect differ entirely from the orthodox Jews both in worship and in mode of life. They, too, are inclined to trade, but they also carry on agriculture successfully. Those inhabiting the Crimea speak Tatar, and the few who are settled in W. Russia speak Polish. They are on good terms with the Russians.
Of W. Europeans, the Germans only attain considerable numbers in European Russia. In the Baltic provinces they constitute the ennobled landlord class, and are the tradesmen and artisans in the towns. Considerable numbers of Germans, tradesmen and artisans, settled at the invitation of the Russian government in many of the larger towns as early as the 16th century, and to a much greater extent in the 18th century. Numbers were invited in 1762 to settle in S. Russia, as separate agricultural colonies, and these have since then gradually extended into the Don region and N. Caucasia. Protected as they were by the right of self-government, exempted from military service, and endowed with considerable allotments of good land, these colonies are much wealthier than the neighbouring Russian peasants, from whom they have adopted the slowly modified village community. They are chiefly Lutherans, but many of them belong to other religious sects—Anabaptists, Moravians, Mennonites. During the closing years of the 19th century great, numbers of Germans flocked into the industrial governments of Poland, namely, Piotrkow, Warsaw and Kalisz.
The Rumanians (Moldavians) inhabit the governments of Bessarabia, Podolia, , Kherson and Ekaterinoslav. In Bessarabia they constitute from one-fourth to three-fourths of the population of certain districts, and nearly 50% of the entire population of the government. On the whole the Novorossian governments (Bessarabia, Kherson, Ekaterinoslav and Taurida) exhibit the greatest variety of population. Little and Great Russians, Rumanians, Bulgarians, Germans, Greeks, Frenchmen, Poles, Tatars and Jews are mingled together and scattered about in small colonies, especially in Bessarabia. The Greeks inhabit chiefly the towns, where they are traders, as also do the Armenians, scattered through the towns of S. Russia, and appearing in larger numbers only in the district of Rostov.
The Lithuanians prevail in Kovno, Vilna and Suwalki; and the Letts, who are, however, more scattered, are chiefly concentrated in Vitebsk, Courland and Livonia.
In the Baltic provinces (Esthonia, Livonia and Courland) the prevailing population is Esthonian, Kuronian or Lettish, the Germans being respectively only 3.8, 7.6 and 8.2% of the population. The relations of the Esths and Letts with their landlords are anything but friendly.
The governments of St Petersburg (apart from the capital), Olonets and Archangel contain an admixture of Karelians, Samoyedes and Syryenians, the remainder being Great Russians. In the E. and S.E. provinces of the Volga (Nizhniy-Novgorod, Simbirsk, Samara, Penza and Saratov) the Great Russians prevail, the remainder being chiefly Mordvinians, Tatars, Chuvashes and Bashkirs, Germans in Samara and Saratov, and Little Russians in the last named. In the Ural governments of Perm and Vyatka Great Russians are in the majority, the remainder being a variety of Finno-Tatars. In the S. Ural governments (Uralsk, Orenburg, Ufa) the admixture of Turko-Tatars—of Kirghiz in Uralsk, Bashkirs in Orenburg and Ufa, and less important races—becomes considerable.
The state religion is that of the Orthodox Greek Church (Orthodox Catholic or Orthodox Eastern Church). Its head is the tsar; but although he makes and annuls all appointments, he does not determine questions of dogmatic theology. The principal ecclesiastical authority Religion. is the Holy Synod, the head of which, the Procurator, is one of the council of ministers and exercises very wide powers in ecclesiastical matters. In theory all religions may be freely professed, except that certain restrictions, such as domicile,[1] are laid upon the Jews; but in actual fact the dissenting sects are more or less severely treated. According to returns published in 1905 the adherents of the different religious communities in the whole of the Russian empire numbered approximately as follows, though the heading Orthodox Greek includes a very great many Raskolniki or Dissenters. Indeed it is estimated that there are more than 12,000,000 Dissenters in Great Russia alone.
| Orthodox Greek | 87,123,600 |
| Dissenters | 2,204,600 |
| Armenian Gregorians | 1,179,240 |
| Armenian Catholics | 38,840 |
| Roman Catholics | 11,468,000 |
| Lutherans | 3,572,650 |
| Reformed | 85,400 |
| Baptists | 38,140 |
| Mennonites | 66,560 |
| Anglicans | 4,180 |
| Other Christians | 3,950 |
| Karaite Jews | 12,900 |
| Jews | 5,215,800 |
| Mahommedans | 13,907,000 |
| Buddhists | 433,860 |
| Other non-Christians | 285,300 |
| Total | 125,640,020 |
The ecclesiastical heads of the national Orthodox Greek Church consist of three metropolitans (St Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev), fourteen archbishops and fifty bishops, all drawn from the ranks of the monastic (celibate) clergy. The parochial clergy are celibate in so far as they must be married when appointed, but if left widowers may not marry again.
All Russians, with the exception of a number of White Russians who belong to the United Greek Church (see Roman Catholic Church), profess the Orthodox Greek faith or belong to one or other of the numberless dissident sects. The Poles and most of the Lithuanians are Roman Catholics. The Esths and all other Western Finns, the Germans and the Swedes are Protestant. The Tatars, Bashkirs and Kirghiz are Mahommedans; but the last-named have to a great extent maintained along with Mahommedanism their old Shamanism. The same holds good of the Meshcheryaks, both Moslem and Christian. The Mordvinians are nearly all Orthodox Greek, as also are the Votyaks, Voguls, Cheremisses and Chuvashes, but their religions are, in reality, modifications of Shamanism under the influence of some Christian and Moslem beliefs. The Moguls, though baptized, are in fact believers in fetishism as much as the unconverted Samoyedes. Finally, the Kalmucks are Lamaite Buddhists.
In his relations with Moslems, Buddhists and even fetishists the, Russian peasant looks rather to conduct than to creed, the latter being in his view simply a matter of nationality. Indeed, towards paganism, at least, he is perhaps even more than tolerant, preferring on the whole to keep on good terms with pagan divinities. The numerous outbreaks against the Jews are directed, not against their creed, but against them as keen business men and extortionate money-lenders. Any idea of proselytism is quite foreign to the ordinary Russian mind, and the outbursts of proselytizing zeal occasionally manifested by the clergy are really due to the desire for “Russification,” and traceable to the influence of the higher clergy and of the government.
- ↑ The restrictions on domicile were to some extent relaxed in the beginning of 1907.
