No wonder that an unconquerable optimism — the true American "western spirit" — pervades the population of these favoured lands. In the clear air and flooding sunlight of the old steppes the northern Russian peasant nature expands with renewed activity. The strong force of "passive resistance," so characteristic of the fatalistic North- Slav civilization, is transformed into a source of boundless physical energy. Even the great workshops and foundries set down among the smiling landscape of fields and orchards lose much of the grim enslaving aspect which characterize the roaring mills of the commercial quarters of Petrograd and Moscow. In the promised land of the old Cossack "Republic of the Don" a new commercial proletariat is arising — a new race of workers who seem to have absorbed some of the sturdy traditions of freedom of the early inhabitants.
Kharkov is a city of about 200,000 inhabitants. The ancient architectural features of the old Ukranian capital have all but disappeared. German influence is evident on every hand. A hideous Lutheran Church of raw red brick raises its towers next to the bulbous cupolas of the Russian cathedral, while long streets are lined with houses and shops in the "modern style" of Munich and Carlsruhe. Indeed, the threat of German commercial domination was the direct cause of the early revolutionary movements which broke out in Kharkov in 1917. Another reason for this hostile attitude to the German influence at Petrograd lay in the fact that Kharkov had a large population of Poles from German Poland, who had settled here in the freer commercial atmosphere of Russia.
A few hours ride beyond Kharkov brings the traveller to the first stanitzi of the Don Cossacks. The first view of these villages shows them to belong to a different ci\ilization. Comparison with the settlements of the moujik workmen who have invaded their territon," since the opening of the great modem factories of the Donetz makes this contrast the more remarkable. For the moujik^ even in new surroimdings, long remains true to type.
Even where there is little to prevent their villages from spreading at their ease across the steppes, ataWsm, or love of each other's company, keeps them crowded about the great red-brick factory buildings, in much the same way that their ancestors huddled about the fortresses of their overlords in the Tartar-raided pinewoods of the north.
The villages inhabited by the true natives of the soil present a far different appearance. The first view of the Cossack stanitza shows that their inhabitants take interest not only in the outer appearances, but also concerning questions of cleanliness and sanitation. Another significant fact: schoolhouses begin to appear beside the churches. Each neat fenced garden is of precisely the dimensions prescribed by its owner's military rank in the Cossack polk. Even the favourite sunflowers of Little Russia, which stand sentinel about every modest doorway, seem to have been manoeuvred into place at the drillmaster's command.
Orchards whose boughs are nearly breaking with their weight of fruit, and an occasional vineyard producing the heady Cossack wine, show the suitability of this rich steppe land for any kind of agriculture. There is, however, another side to the picture. Often for miles at a stretch, the land lies fallow or is left in luxurious pasture for herds of cattle, sheep and sturdy little Cossack horses, among whom occasionally appears the gaunt apocalyptic silhouette of a camel mother and her ungainly offspring. Now and again the sight of a wheat-field stretching in its broad shimmering expanse to a misty horizon gives an insight into the true agricultural possibilities of the Don country, but this latter method of farming "wholesale," reminding one of America or the Canadian provinces of the West, is in no way indigenous to the soil. Even the implements used in this form of husbandry are American, or the cheaper and flimsier German imitation of American models. Cossack capital is often interested in the development of these grain-lands, yet even the well-to-do Cossack proprietor still infinitely prefers to do his farming by hand. The owner of many such broad acres is more likely to be found hoeing the garden before his own door, or, better still, if his wealth permits, he likes to ride about among his patriarchal flocks and herds. The exploitation of his steppe heritage he leaves to the more mechanically minded farmer of an alien race. Thus the richest profits of the "black earth" belt are garnered by North Russian moujiks, or even Tartars or Armenians, rather than by the native Donskoi.