ABSTRACT
The Slav Russians emerged as a recognizable people in the ninth century from a welter of tribal movements, Scythian, Sarmatian, Hunnish and Bulgar. The great Russian plain which stretches from the Arctic circle to the Carpathian mountains, from the Baltic and the rocky hills of Livonia to the north south line of the Urals, is not entirely featureless: it is a series of low plateaux. Russia's population lived in the forest lands: theirs was the stubborn conservatism of a people who lived by lumbering, cultivating patches of land cleared by fire for a few years, then moving on, always circumscribed by the immensity of the forests. In 1696, after the capture of Azov, work was begun on the naval base ofTaganrog. When Charles XII invaded Russia in 1707, he no doubt hoped to be able to repeat the victory of Narva.
