(5) The principalities of Suzdal--with their metropolitan towns of Tver, Suzdal, Rostov, Iuriev-Polski, and Vladimir on the Kliasma; of Iaroslavl and Pereiaslavl-Zaliesski--which were established on the Volga and the Oka, in the densest of the northern forests, surrounded by Finnish tribes--Mouromians, Merians, Vesses, and Tcherimisses. Though situated at the extreme limit of the Russian world, these principalities nevertheless exercised great influence over it. We shall see their princes now reducing Novgorod and the Russia of the lakes to a certain political dependence, the consequence of a double economical dependence; then victoriously intervening in the quarrels of the Russia of the Dnieper. The Suzdalians were of the same character as the Riazanians--rude and warlike. The characteristics of a new nationality were already noticeable among these two peoples. That which differentiated them from the Kievans and the Novgorod-Severskans, who, like themselves, were occupied in the great struggle against the barbarians, was that the Russians of the Dnieper, sometimes mingling their blood with that of their enemies, became fused with Turkish tribes, nomadic and essentially mobile, while the Russians of the Oka and the Volga united with Finnish tribes, agricultural and essentially sedentary. This difference between the two foreign elements which entered into the blood of the Slavs, without doubt contributed to that marked difference in character between the two branches of the Russian race. During the period from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries, as colonization advanced, from the basin of the Dnieper to the basin of the Volga, the divisions of Little Russia and Great Russia were formed. (6) The principalities of Kiev, Tchernigov, Novgorod-Seversk, Riazan, Murom, and Suzdal, which formed the marches of Russia on the borders of the steppe with its devastating hordes--constituting its frontier states. On the confines of the northwest, opposite the Lithuanians, the Letts and the Tchuds, the same rôle devolved on the principality of Polotsk, occupying the basin of the Dvina, and on the republican principalities of Novgorod and Pskov on the lakes of Ilmen and Petpus. The principality of Minsk was attached to that of Polotsk. It was situated in the basin of the Dnieper and, owing to that circumstance, its possession was frequently disputed by the grand princes of Kiev. The towns of Torzhok, Volok-Lamski, Izborsk, and Veliki Luki belonged to Novgorod; at times they were the capitals of individual states.