RUSSIA AND THE INDEPENDENT HEARTLAND - The Revenge of Geography - page 116

colder climate than do the Canadians, who live mainly along the U.S. border. “Because of
latitude, remoteness from open seas, the barrier effects of mountains, and continentality,”
writes geographer Saul Cohen, Russia's climate leaves much of it both too cold and too dry
for large-scale, permanent settlement. 2 But the Caucasus, along with the parts of the Rus-
sian Far East that are close to the North Korean border, are the exceptions to this principle:
so that another attraction of the Caucasus is their relatively mild temperatures at the 43rd
parallel. 3 Truly, the Russian climate and landscape are miserably rugged, and as such hold
the keys to the Russians' character and to their history.
The intense cold seems to have developed in the Russians “a capacity for suffering, a
certain communalism, even a willingness to sacrifice the individual for the common good,”
writes historian of Russia Philip Longworth, who explains that the short growing season of
the high northern latitudes required “interdependence between farmers,” as well as “frenet-
ic, strenuous effort, long hours in the field, and the mobilization of children,” because both
sowing and reaping had to be done in haste. Moreover, low surpluses because of the cold
encouraged the elites of the emerging Russian state to control wide areas, killing the incent-
ive of farmers to work harder without compulsion, and contributing to a “violent tendency”
in daily life. 4 Russian communism, as well as a certain disdain for personal freedom until