Note 390 — Chapter VII · —Geographical Boundaries

The spirit of the colonial frontier is the spirit of freedom, the spirit of men who have traveled far, who are surcharged with energy, enterprise and self-reliance, often with impatience of restraint. A severe process of elimination culls out for the frontier a population strikingly differentiated from the citizens of the old inhabited centers. Then remoteness of location and abundance of opportunity proceed to emphasize the qualities which have squeezed through the sieve of natural and social selection. This is the type bred upon our own frontier, which, West beyond West, has crossed the continent from the backwoods of the Allegheny Mountains to the Pacific. The Siberian frontier develops much the same type on the eastern edge of the Russian Empire. Here army officers find a compensation for their rough surrounding in the escape from the excessive bureaucracy of the capitals. Here is to be noted the independence, self-reliance and self-respect characteristic of other colonial frontiers. The Russian of the Asiatic border is proud to call himself a Siberian: he is already differentiated in his own consciousness. The force of Moscow tradition and discipline is faint when it reaches him, it has traveled so far. Even the elaborate observances of the orthodox Greek Church tend to become simplified on the frontier. The question naturally arises whether in the Russian Empire, as in the United States, the political periphery will in time, react upon the center, infuse it with the spirit of progress and youth.390