Main Racial Elements in Russians

V.V. Bunak, "Method and Program of Study of Descriptive Characters in Anthropology and the Necessity for their Revision," in Contributions to the Physical Anthropology of the Soviet Union, Russian Translation Series of the Peabody Museum of Arcaheology and Ethnology, Vol.1 No.2, p. 130:

"One of the most important conclusions resulting from the anthropological study of the Russian population, consists of the identification of three basic types, most clearly represented at present as well as in past periods of time in zones adjacent to the northern Urals, in the eastern Baltic area, and in the Black Sea Provinces of the North Caucasus and the Balkan peninsula, and which, for this reason, have been termed the Ural, the Baltic and the Pontic types. These three basic types, as well as some others less distinctly represented, are distinguished by a complex of characters: by the pigmentation of the iris, hair color, beard growth, structure of the eyelid, and possibly also by one or two distinguishing characters of the nasal structure. One would suppose that there are also distinctions in other descriptive characters, but these distinctions have not yet been established. However, this fact has not prevented the identification of basic anthropological elements and of their numerous subdivisions."