The numbers of the latter class were very great, especially in the early times, and, such immigrants were generally known as "samovolny" or voluntary immigrants. Their coming was largely brought about by the social conditions which at that time existed in European Russia. The growth, of feudal serfdom, which began in the seventeenth century and continued through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, caused the stronger and more independent members of society to become fugitives, and to seek new fortunes in Siberia, where the remoteness and isolation of the country was their refuge. They came in waves corresponding with the severity of the spasmodic feudal oppression which continued in European Russia all through these times and they were accompanied to some extent by the members of certain persecuted religious sects and by dissenters from the Pravo-Slav faith. These religious and voluntary exiles settled in the remote comers of Siberia, as far as possible from the hand of officialdom, and founded communal colonies as in European Russia. They intermarried with the Cossacks and even with some of the native Tartars and Finns, and so their descendants formed the Siberian branch of the Slav race, a strong and independent, though rough and primitive, people, who, while retaining their customs and habits as Russians, have lost their true Russian national sentiment. The samovolny, however, were not favourably regarded by the Russian Government, who, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, did all they could to stop these wandering immigrants and voluntary exiles. But the vast size of the country made the control of immigrants, exceedingly difficult, and it was not
