Note 654 — Chapter XI · —The Anthropo-Geography Of Rivers

The possibility of radial expansion, which we have found to be the chief advantage of a central location, is greatly enhanced if that central location coincides with a hydrographic center of low relief. The tenth century nucleus of the Russian Empire was found about the low nodal watershed formed by the Valdai Hills, whence radiated the rivers later embodied in the Muscovite domain. Here In Novgorod at the head of the Volchov-Ladoga-Neva system, Pskof on the Velikaya, Tver at the head of the navigable Volga, Moscow on the Oka, Smolensk on the Dnieper, and Vitebsk on the Duna, were gathered the Russians destined to displace the primitive Finnish population and appropriate the wide plains of eastern Europe. Everywhere their conquests, colonization, and commercial relations have followed the downstream course of their rivers. The Dnieper carried the Rus of Smolensk and Kief to the Euxine, into contact with the Byzantine world, and brought thence religion, art, and architecture for the untutored empire of the north. The influence of the Volga has been irresistible. Down its current Novgorod traders in the twelfth century sought the commerce of the Caspian and the Orient; and later the Muscovite princes pushed their conquest of the Tartar hordes from Asia. The Northern Dwina, Onega, Mesen and Petchora have carried long narrow bands of Slav settlement northward to the Arctic Ocean. [See map page 225.] Medieval Russian trade from Hanseatic Pskof and Novgorod, and later Russian dominion followed the Narva and Neva to the Baltic. "The Dnieper made Russia Byzantine, the Volga made It Asiatic. It was for the Neva to make it European."654