There are now in the museum at St. Petersburg two priceless works of
art found in recent years in a tomb in Southern Russia. They are two
vases of mingled gold and silver upon which are wrought pictures more
faithful and more eloquent than those drawn by Herodotus. These
figures of the Scythians, drawn probably as early as 400 B. C.,
reproduce unmistakably the Russian peasant of to-day. The same
bearded, heavy-featured faces; the long hair coming from beneath the
same peaked cap; the loose tunic bound by a girdle; the trousers tucked
into the boots, and the general type, not alone distinctly Aryan, but
_Slavonic_. And not only that; we see them breaking in and bridling
their horses, in precisely the same way as the Russian peasant does
to-day on those same plains. Assuredly the vexed question concerning
the Scythians is in a measure answered; and we know that some of them
at least were Slavonic.

But the passing illumination produced by the approach of Greek
civilization did not penetrate to the region beyond, where was a
tumbling, seething world of Asiatic tribes and peoples, Aryan, Tatar,
and Turk, more or less mingled in varying shades of barbarism, all
striving for mastery.

This elemental struggle was to resolve itself into one between Aryan
and non-Aryan--the Slav and the Finn; and this again into one between
the various members of the Slavonic family; then a life-and-death
struggle with Asiatic barbarism in its worst form (the Mongol), with
Tatar and Turk always remaining as disturbing factors.

How, and the steps by which, the least powerful branch of the Slavonic
race obtained the mastery and headship of Russia and has come to be one
of the leading powers of the earth, is the story this book will try to