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French 6 years later. Since Dokuchaev recognized soils as natural bodies in evolu-
tion, he played a similar role parallel to Darwin's discovery of the evolution of liv-
ing organisms, and it is universally accepted to call him the Darwin of soils.
It was not just by a chance that Dokuchaev formulated soil as a system in evolu-
tion and as the product of actions of several dynamic factors. We should not forget
that Dokuchaev started his professional career as a PhD student in mathematics and
physics where objectives and formulations belong to procedures for verifying objec-
tive analyses of specifi c systems. When he continued as a university employee of
mineralogy and Pleistocene research, he followed those rational principles.
Consequently, when he began investigating alluvial soils in the steppe region of
Russia, he devised exact defi nitions and realistic sequential components for the
basis of their evolutionary development within the alluvial landscape.
Today it seems reasonable for us to expect that any new body appearing on the
boundary between lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere should
carry the signs of infl uence of each of the spheres. But we should remember that our
view has been formed by generations of soil scientists who aimed their studies at the
recognition of factors clearly defi ned by Dokuchaev.
Dokuchaev's fate did not belong every time to lucky endings. He was appointed
by the administration to organize a soil science expedition to the steppe regions of
Nizhniy Novgorod and Poltava. The aim of the expedition was to classify the vari-
ous soils in the region and develop criteria for taxation in accordance with soil
qualities. Since it was the time of a great famine, his task was to answer two addi-
tional questions: why were the yields sinking and why did the famine start? As he
crossed the terrain working diligently within each and every local landscape, he
planned and founded unexcelled fi eld experimental research stations without global
parallel. But when Dokuchaev had all fi eld stations ready to collect the data and to
profi t from the evaluated observation of the small soil hydrologic cycle, the long-
lasting period of famines ended and the top bureaucrats behaved in the same way as
they are behaving nowadays everywhere. Low yields ended, taxes were again read-
ily paid, there was no longer a loss of anticipated state income, poor workers as well
as poor farmers in the countryside no longer had their homes burned down owing to
long-lasting extreme weather conditions, and no luxurious houses of the rich were
in danger of fl ames - the countryside was again quiet.
With the top bureaucrats not wanting to spend any more of their discretionary
money supporting research of soils even for the benefi t of farmers and others in the
countryside, all money supporting the fi eld research was locked. “No money avail-
able,” declared the government. Coming just when the fi rst results of his inventive,
truly comprehensive fi eld study were to be expected, Dokuchaev was deeply disap-
pointed by the declaration. In spite of it, he wrote in 1892 the topic,
Russian Steppes:
Study of Soils in Russia, Their History and Presence
. And he did not abandon the
idea of soil evolution. However, thereafter he sank into depression and alcoholism
due to the lack of fi nancial support of his promising fi eld research, and he died in
1903. His importance for our understanding of soil evolution as well as soil proper-
ties and processes during the evolution is comparable to the importance of Darwin
and his theory of evolution for living organisms. The formulation of evolutionary
