Untitled - OUDL Home

CHAPTER VITHE SEA1. The BalticTHE immense land mass of the Soviet Union, like thatof the Russian empire, is washed by five seas—the Baltic,the Black Sea, the Caspian, the Arctic, and the Pacific.The first three are landlocked. All are, in whole or inpart, icebound for varying portions of the year, as arethe great river systems draining into them that haveplayed so large a part in Russian histpry. No otherpower shares the fifteen thousand miles of polar coastlineof the Arctic, but the four other seas have always beencontrolled or disputed by other peoples, Greek, Turkish,Iranian, Scandinavian, German, Chinese, or Japanese.The coastlands of the White Sea have been Russiansettled for some nine centuries. Those of the other seashave either been never effectively Russian settled or onlyso within the last two hundred years (with certainexceptions). On the far Pacific shores, Russian settlementfrom the mid-seventeenth century was almostconfined to a few fur and fishing outposts until theacquisition from China of the lower Amur and Vladivostokas late as i860 (cf. pp. 33 and 300). TheBlack Sea steppes, after the sustained but unsuccessfulchallenge of Kiev Russia to the nomads (see pp. 33-36),were lost to the Russian people for some six centuries,during which the Black Sea was in the main a Tataror a Turkish lake, save for privileged Genoese andVenetian merchantmen and later the pirate 'seagull'galleys of the Cossacks. It was only from the time ofCatherine the Great (reigned 1762-96) that the Russiansouthward expansion swept over the Black Sea steppes,from the Danube to the Caucasus (see pp. 46and 273-274).The Baltic coastlands, won between 1700 and 1809,almost entirely lost to the Soviet Union in 1919, mostlyregained in 1940, have never been Russian settled butalways peopled by Lithuanians, Letts, Estonians, and249