Natural and climatic factors and peculiarities of russian historic process

Abstract

Natural and climatic factors had always a very large influence on the historical development of Russia. Soils of low fertility, low crop levels and extremely short agricultural work cycle made a big contribution to the differences between Russia and the Western Europe. From here come the specific historical differences bet ween the Europe's West and East concerning the type of property, the form of economy and the type of state. The historiography dealing with the problems of the Russian feudalism's socio-economic history has done much for the study of the agriculture and peasantry history. But little attention has been given to some significant features of this history. First of all these are the processes characteristic for the territories forming the historical nucleus of the Russian State, which became united at the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th centu ry. It is well known that all this territory had soils of low fertility, mainly turfy and podzol, podzol and podzol-morassic. Only here and there, in the valleys of floody rivers, comparatively small areas exist of alluvial soils, and to the South of the lake Beloye there is a small massive of turfy-humus soils. As for the mechanic properties, most of the soil are mainly loams, alu minas difficult to cultivate, sometimes silty grounds alternating with sandy loams. Sandy soils exist,too. The vastest areas of them are in the Vladi mir-Suzdal plains and in some other regions. To the south of the Oka, in its closest vicinity the grey forest soils, and, partially, the degraded and podzoled black earths were predominant. All these types of soils were rapidly ?ploughed out? during their use, i.e., they were losing their fertility and could not yield even a minimal harvest without manuring. The traditional support of fertility in Russia was done with the help of archaic methods of agriculture; slash-burn clearing and fallow. Beginning from the far off times a farmer, by removing the wood * Address all communications to L. V. Milov, Department of History, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Leninprospect, 32 A, 117334, Mos cow, USSR.