population
may emigrate to foreign lands, as the Scandinavians did in the ninth
century, and as we ourselves are doing in a more peaceable fashion
at the present day. The other alternative may be effected either
by extending the area of cultivation or by improving the system of
agriculture.

The Russo-Slavonians, being an agricultural people, experienced this
difficulty, but for them it was not serious. A convenient way of escape
was plainly indicated by their peculiar geographical position. They
were not hemmed in by lofty mountains or stormy seas. To the south and
east--at their very doors, as it were--lay a boundless expanse of thinly
populated virgin soil, awaiting the labour of the husbandman, and ready
to repay it most liberally. The peasantry therefore, instead of exposing
their infants, selling their daughters, or sweeping the seas as Vikings,
simply spread out towards the east and south. This was at once the most
natural and the wisest course, for of all the expedients for preserving
the equilibrium between population and food-production, increasing the
area of cultivation is, under the circumstances just described, the
easiest and most effective. Theoretically the same result might have
been obtained by improving the method of agriculture, but practically
this was impossible. Intensive culture is not likely to be adopted so
long as expansion is easy. High farming is a thing to be proud of when
there is a scarcity of land, but it would be absurd to attempt it where
there is abundance of virgin soil in the vicinity.

The process of expansion, thus produced by purely economic causes,
was accelerated by influences of another kind, especially during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The increase in the number of
officials, the augmentation of the taxes, the merciless exactions of the
Voyevods and their subordinates, the transformation of the peasants
and "free wandering people" into serfs, the ecclesiastical reforms and
consequent persecution of the schismatics, the frequent conscriptions
and violent reforms of Peter the Great--these and other kinds of
oppression made thousands flee from their homes and seek a refuge in the
free territory, where there were no officials, no tax-gatherers, and
no proprietors. But the State, with its army of tax-gatherers and
officials, followed close on the heels of the fugitives, and those
who wished to preserve their liberty had to advance still further.
Notwithstanding