Entwistle W.J., Morison W.A. Russian and the Slavonic languages

Faber & Faber, 1974. — 408 p. — (The Great Languages).Something like two hundred million souls use Russian as their maternal, their official, or their auxiliary tongue. The last group contains many of the fifty million speakers of the other Slavonic languages. The westward frontier of their influence stands, at the time this is written, where it did in the tenth century of our era, on a line descending from Mecklenburg to Trieste. Ten centuries ago the eastern limit scarcely advanced beyond the Dnieper; it now reaches to the frozen waters of the Sea of Okhotsk, so as to include within the Russian domain half of Asia, with immense resources as yet scarcely tapped. This is the centre of gravity of the land masses of the globe as. much as London is the midpoint of the world’s land and water connections. Few countries are so unlike in their situation and strength as Britain and Russia, but they are complementary and have much to do with each other.