Page 123 - Russian History Viewed through Distorted Mirrors, Vol. 1

Nicolai Levashov. Russian History Viewed through Distorted Mirrors. Vol. 1

begins to warm up and, as it warms, the motion of underground waters is reestab-
lished, without which the development of abundant flora is impossible.

We can have a clear picture of the land from which the glacier has recently re-
treated, if we observe the arctic and tundra soils. Their location near the North Pole
and as a result of this, short summer, does not allow these soils to warm up, therefore,
they give us an idea of how the soil looked one thousand years after the glacier had
retreated. The vegetation is poor, mainly lichens and plants with the fibril root sys-
tem. The fibril roots grow in breadth, instead of in depth, because at a depth of twenty
to thirty centimeters the soil is not warmed up and the permafrost begins there.

In the far northern latitudes the permafrost still remains, because the soil does
not have enough time to warm up to any depth during the short spring-summer period
before the onset of the cold time of year again. The winter lasts almost eight months
with a long arctic night when the temperature sometimes times reaches - 60° C. As a
result of this the earth freezes again, and this process repeats every year. The only dif-
ference is in the depth of thawing. In a hotter summer the soil thaws several centime-
ters deeper and that is all. Thus, we have a unique opportunity to get a picture of how
the earth looked after the retreat of the glacier approximately ten thousand years ago,
when the last ice-age ended and the glaciers slowly began to retreat to the north.

We also should bear in mind that the glaciers retreated very slowly. In warmer
years they could step back by several dozen centimeters per year, in colder ones —
only a few centimeters and in very cold years the glacier came back, re-conquering its
positions. But, nevertheless, the glacier slowly, but surely retreated under the rays of
the Sun. Tundra was slowly formed in place of the melting glacier, but many hun-
dreds of years had to pass before the earth could be warmed to the full depth. When
that took place, bogs appeared in place of the permafrost and plants and animals
gradually began to develop them. Brooks which turned into rivers were engendered in
these bogs; they took away the excess water to seas and oceans. The bogs gradually
dried; numerous shallow lakes were overgrown with plants and turned into bogs. Co-
niferous forests “came” to these lands, and animals followed forests, and man fol-
lowed animals.

But several thousand years had to pass before the podsolic soils of coniferous
forests appeared in place of the rock left after the glacier retreated. When the average
annual temperature increased by one to two degrees, deciduous trees changed the for-
ests to mixed ones and formed grey forest soils. Again a rise in temperature resulted
in change, this time to broad-leaved deciduous forests and brown forest soils were
formed. The next temperature rise and diminishing humidity resulted in the appear-
ance of forest-steppes and the forming of black earth. Steppes gradually ousted for-
est-steppes and only then did full-fledged black earths in which the humus layer
achieved an optimum thickness appear. In other words, nature required no less than
eleven thousand years to recreate sod-podsolic soils in the areas which the glacier
left.

It would seem that soils and the glacier have no relation to history; on the face of
it — none. But this is only on the face of it; in reality this all has the most direct rela-

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