THE RUSSIAN APPROACH TO SOIL CLASSIFICATION AND ITS RECENT DEVELOPMENT

Summary Due largely to the conditions in which they were working, Russian pedologists were the first to establish pedology as an independent science. From the beginning they regarded soil as an independent body with a definite morphological organization, expressed mainly in the structure of the profile, and resulting from pedogenetic processes determined and directed by environmental factors. This concept of soil led them to adopt a genetic approach to problems of soil classification. Russian soil classifications differed according to the basis accepted, whether bioclimatic, geographical conditions, factors of pedogenesis, pedogenetic processes, or soil evolutionary history. In recent years attempts have been made to construct classification systems based on all these aspects of pedogenesis. The current Soviet trends in soil taxonomy must be regarded mainly as a further development of the traditional approach. Measures are taken to standardize soil nomenclature and improve methods of recognizing (diagnosing) and describing soil types, which are regarded as basic taxonomic units. The evolutionary‐genetic approach is considered the only proper approach to soil‐classification problems. The importance of organic aspects of soil evolution and formation processes is emphasized. More attention is given to the genetic subdivision of soil types into smaller and better defined soil groups. Interest in the systematics of cultivated soils is also growing.