St. Petersburg and Kyiv in the west to the southern Urals, this mixed forest triangle
enjoyed slightly milder winters and warmer summers than did the taiga. Its
deciduous trees created a richer, less acidic soil that was also more porous and less
boggy. As one moves south the forest grows more deciduous, soil color changes
from brown to grey, and soil fertility rises. Around Vladimir is an unprecedented
patch of loess soil (the Vladimir Opole), accounting for its role as historic center of
settlement in the upper Volga. With adequate rainfall appropriately timed for the
growing season, in this forested zone rye and flax can be grown at least at
subsistence level (three-to-one yield), especially with the two-field and three-field
systems with fallowing that supported somewhat more dense settlement. Even so,
villages were small, often two or three households, with larger ones upwards to
20 – 30; historically these lands combined farming with forest exploitation and
eventually manufacturing for livelihoods.
Moving south, mixed forest blends into forested steppe, then steppe. The
forested steppe (See Figure 1.1) stretches east–west in a line from Kyiv to Ufa in
the southern Urals to western Siberia; it extended south in a 200-mile wide band
in the west, narrowing towards the Volga and Urals. These became thefirst grain
surplus-producing lands in the empire (the provinces of Kaluga, Orel, Tula,
Riazan’, Kursk, Tambov, Voronezh, Penza), as trees yield to prairie grassland or
Figure 1.1 An 1853 statue of Grand Prince and St. Vladimir, who accepted Orthodox
Christianity for the Kyiv Rus’state in 988, looks across to the Left Bank of the Dnieper
River and the vast prairie of the Eurasian steppe. Photo: Jack Kollmann.
24 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801