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CHAPTER ITHE FRONTIER1. Types of FrontierTHE Soviet Union—four times the size of Europe, butwith less than half its population; as large both inextent and numbers as the whole of the North Americancontinent—is the outcome of revolution on an immensescale and in all spheres of life. Despite the break withthe past and just because of the very extent of itssuccess, the Soviet Union has inherited from the Russianempire two of its most pervasive features: it continuesto be a land of many peoples and to be a land ofcolonization. Throughout Russian history one dominatingtheme has been the frontier; the theme of thestruggle for the mastering of the natural resources of anuntamed country, expanded into a continent by the evershiftingmovement of the Russian people and theirconquest of and intermingling with other peoples.For many centuries the frontier played the same partin the history of western Europe, but owing to itsdiminutive size internal colonization for the most partceased to be a dominating theme after the later MiddleAges; overseas colonization took its place, and thepeoples of Europe struggled with new frontier conditionsin new worlds. In contrast, Russian expansion hasalways been into contiguous lands and, owing to vastsize and the material level of the people, internalcolonization, even ^vest of the Urals, has remained rightdown to the present day an outstanding element inRussian life.The political frontier is the consequence of theBolshevik triumph after three years of the most bitter,swaying civil war (1918-20), at the end of which the newSoviet state had gained almost exactly the same frontiers,except on the west, as those of the Romanov empirebefore its disruption through the First World War.On the west the Bolsheviks failed to restore the oldboundaries. The emergence of Finland and the three9