geological map tells us the revolutions of the crust of the earth. Tchoudes and Tchouvachs, Tatars and Tcheremissans, Kalmouks and Khirgiz, Finns and Samoyedes, Georgians and Lesghians, Persians and Armenians, Jews and Roumanians, Germans and Swedes, Poles and Lithuanians, Great Russians, White Russians, Little Russians—each unit of this Babel of nations is a living witness of a tragic past.
II
At first sight the geographical distribution of races seems to contradict the political lessons of physical and economic geography. Physical and economic geography proclaim the unity of the Russian Empire and the historical necessity of a strong central government. Ethnography, on the contrary, seems to proclaim the infinite diversity of the Tsar's dominions and the necessity of autonomy. It seems as if so many heterogeneous races could not possibly live under one power and one law.
But let us observe that these races are not only different, but irreconcilably hostile. And the instinctive hostilities of race are complicated by differences of language, of religion, and of habits. To compel all those races
