Russia’s geographical environment
of varied species but declining richness and variety as one moves south into
the steppe.
Within the wooded parts of the forest steppe it proved possible for peas-
ants to pursue many of the same agricultural activities as characterised the
mixed forest. Initial settlement was typically along river valleys where there
was ample water, woods could be cleared for agriculture or exploited in other
ways, water meadows and other areas provided hay or grazing, and other pro-
ductive environments could be utilised. As greater use began to be made of the
grasslands with their rich soils, however, other measures became necessary
including long fallow(perelog)and shifting cultivation(zalezh). On manywater-
sheds, settlement was initially difficult because of lack of available water and
sometimes because of the difficulties of ploughing the tough steppe grasses.
However, in the early days the steppe environment provided an abundance
of wildlife. Metropolitan Pimen, who travelled through the European steppe
in the fourteenth century, for example, reported seeing a multitude of beasts,
including wild goats, elk, wolves, foxes, otters, bears, beavers and birdlife –
eagles, geese, swans, cranes and others.
14
In addition to the species typically
found in the wooded areas of the forest-steppe – bears, elk, roe deer, squirrel,
marten and others – were those which characterised the steppe – marmot,
jerboa, bobac. In the early days of settlement various ‘hunting lands’ were
demarcated and rented out to different individuals or monasteries.
15
Later,
once the nomadic problem had been contained but before significant settle-
ment, the grasslands were often used for grazing.
During the centuries considered by this book, the aboveenvironments were
gradually modified by their human inhabitants. Thus forests were cleared for
settlement and agriculture, soils were eroded, steppe grasses were burnt, ter-
ritories were hunted over for their valuable fauna (and sometimes entirely
denuded of their resources, especially in consequence of the fur trade), rivers
and streams were fished and occasionally dammed, and numerous other
inroads on nature were made. The impacts of human activity (and of asso-
ciated activities like that of domestic livestock) on hydrology, soils, flora and
fauna were sometimes profound, and not always reversible. Of course such
impacts pale by comparison with what came later under industrialisation and
the Communist attempts to transformnature,butshould not be ignored. They
were inherent to the process whereby Russians adapted and appropriated the
14 PSRL, vol. XI (St Petersburg: Tipografiia I. N. Skorokhodova, 1897), p. 96.
15 See e.g. L. B.Veinberg and A.A. Poltoratskaia,Materialydlia istorii Voronezhskoi i sosednikh
gubernii, vol. ii (Voronezh, 1891), pp. 139–41.
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