BOOK II

ANTHROPOGEOGRAPHY

ETHNOGRAPHIC BOUNDARIES OF UKRAINE

NUMBER AND GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF UKRAINIANS

To give the ethnographic boundaries of a Western or Central European nation is very easy, for they have long since been determined and investigated, and it would be hard to find anyone who might try to efface or disregard them, least of all to falsify them. But with the Ukrainians it is quite different. They possess neither political independence, as for example, the Germans, French, Italians, etc., nor political influence, as for instance, the Poles and Czechs in Austria. The Ukrainians inhabit parts of two states, Austria-Hungary and Russia, and have some political significance in the former, while in the latter they are not even recognized as a racial entity.

Accordingly, the real boundaries of the National territory of the Ukraine are insufficiently known. They are best known within Austrian territory, altho the statistics, especially those of Galicia, are very poor. Even less exact in respect to the distribution of the Ukrainians are the Hungarian statistics. In Russia the condition is worst of all. The first real census here was taken on January 28, 1897. All earlier calculations and estimates are of very questionable worth. For instance, all the Pinchuks, the Ukrainian inhabitants of the Polissye, have been erroneously counted with the White Russians, the Ukrainians in the vicinity of Mhilin and Starodub with the Great Russians. Besides, very many Ukrainians were registered under the general heading of “Russians.”

For this reason, it is impossible at the present time to give the boundaries of the Ukrainian racial territory as exactly as those of the Western and Central European countries. The boundaries here given, however, are drawn from official statistical sources, and only very conspicuous and generally acknowledged errors have been corrected.

The western boundary of the compact Ukrainian national territory begins on the shores of the Black Sea at the delta of the Danube, where part of the descendants of the Zaporogs are still devoted to their traditional vocation of fishing. Here the neighbors of the Ukrainians are the Roumanians and Bulgarians. The Ukrainian-Roumanian boundary line then goes thru Bessarabia, Bukowina, and Northeastern Hungary.

In Bessarabia the border passes thru Ismail, Bilhorod, the mouth of the Dniester at its liman, then up the Dniester to Dubosari, running in adventurous windings past Orhiev and Bilzi until it reaches the Prut-Dniester divide, and leaving this province near Novoselitza. Innumerable ethnographic islands lie on both sides of this boundary; Roumanians on Ukrainian territory and Ukrainians on Roumanian territory. Only within the past centuries has the land been settled more thickly and the main body of Roumanians has been so dotted with this medley of races as to form a veritable ethnographic mosaic.

In the Bukowina, the boundary of the Ukrainian territory, running along the national border at first, reaches the cities of Sereth and Radivtzi. Then it turns with a sharp bend to Chernivtzi and passes in a wide curve toward the southwest and west, thru Storozhinetz, Vikiv, Moldavitsia and Kirlibaba to the White Cheremosh, where it extends over into Hungary. In the Bukowina, too, the ethnographic boundary of the Ukrainians is not of great antiquity (the Cheremosh region excluded).

The boundary is all the older in Hungary, for the Ukrainian people have had a place here since the early middle ages. This boundary extends along the Visheva, and then the Tissa, past Sihot to Vishkiv. At this place the border crosses to the left bank of the river and, passing along the Gutin Mountain Ridge, reaches the river Tur near Polad. Here the Roumanian-Ukrainian boundary ends and the neighboring country of the Magyars begins.

The boundary of Ukrainian territory here runs in a generally northeast direction, touching Uylak, Beregszasz, Mukachiv (Munkacs), Uzhorod (Unghvar), Bardiiv (Bartfa), Sabiniv (Kis Szeben), Kesmark. At Lublau the boundary crosses the Poprad River and reaches Galicia. Between Unghvar and Bartfeld, the Slovaks become the neighbors of the Ukrainians. The boundary between Slovaks and Ukrainians is very indistinct, and only the investigations of Hnatiúk and Tomashivsky have succeeded in determining it and in proving that thru the centuries the borders of Ukrainian territory have been subject to comparatively slight changes.

In Galicia, the Ukrainians are neighbors to the Poles. The Polish rule of over 500 years’ duration, has forced the Ukrainian element eastward to a great extent into the hill country and the plain. Only in the mountains has the Ukrainian element preserved itself and the Ukrainian territory here forms a peninsula extending far to the west.

The Ukrainian-Polish boundary in Galicia begins at the village of Shlakhtova, west of the Poprad Pass, and extends eastward, touching the small towns of Pivnichna, Hribov, Horlitzi, Zmigrod, Dukla, Rimanov, Zarshin, as far as Sianik, whence it follows the general direction of the San as far as Dubetzco. Here it turns toward the northeast, reaches the San River again near Radimno, and runs along the left shore past Yaroslav, Siniava, Lezaisk, reaching Russian-Poland at Tarnogrod.

In Russian Poland, the Ukrainians inhabit the newly-created Government of Kholm, and for five centuries they have had to ward off the eastward expansion of the Poles. Nevertheless, the Polonizing of the country began to progress under Russian rule, as a result of the inconsiderate Russification policy of the authorities and the sympathy of the Ukrainian population with the Greek-Catholic faith, ruthlessly suppressed by the Russians, to which the Ukrainians of the Kholm country still belonged half a century ago, a sympathy which is not yet extinct.

The boundary line between Poles and Ukrainians in the Kholm country has, on both sides, a more or less wide zone of a mixed population and numerous ethnographic islands. It passes thru Tarnogrod, Bilhoray, Shteshebreshin, Zamostye, Krasnostav, Lubartiv, Radin, Lukiv, Sokoliv, Dorohichin and Bilsk, reaching the Narev River in the Government of Grodno. Here the borders of the Ukrainian and the Polish national territory meet the White Russian border and the northern border of the Ukraine begins.

The Ukrainian-White Russian boundary extends thru the Governments of Grodno and Minsk, at first along the Narev River, up to its source in the Biloveza Forest. Then the line passes Pruzani over to the Yassiolda River, turning off near Poriche toward the northeast and reaching the lake of Vihonivske Ozero. From here it turns toward the southeast and reaches the Pripet River at the mouth of the Zna. Then this river forms the boundary up to where it joins with the Dnieper. Only below Mosir the White Russians push forward in an obtuse salient to the right bank of the Pripet. It should be observed that the White Russians along the boundary described form a transition in respect to language and ethnology between the real White Russians and the real Ukrainians, who, in this region, are called Pinchuki. The transition zone is 30 to 50 kilometers in width.

The Dnieper forms the boundary of the Ukraine only along a short stretch in the Government of Chernihiv, from the mouth of the Pripet to the mouth of the Sol near Loüv. Then the border runs northeast past Novosibkiv, Nove misto and Suraz, as far as Mhlin, where the White Russian country ceases and the Russian begins.

To sketch accurately the boundary of the Ukraine toward Muscovy is not easy, even tho there is by no means a gradual transition here, as there is on the White Russian border. The boundary of the Ukraine is even much more sharply defined here than in the region where it separates the Ukrainians from the Poles, Roumanians and Magyars. But it is hard to determine without detailed investigation on the spot, for the official Russian statistics have been compiled very much in favor of the ruling race. In addition, it must be observed that the districts along this border were not thickly settled until the 17th and 18th Centuries. The settlers came from the Ukraine on the one side and from Muscovy on the other, and established themselves in separate settlements. To this day a purely Ukrainian village or small town often borders on one made up entirely of Russians, and the number of ethnographic islands is rather large on both sides.

The boundary of the compact Ukrainian territory in the Governments of Kursk and Voronizh passes thru Putivil, Rilsk, Sudza, Miropilia, Oboian, the sources of the Psiol, and Vorskla, Bilhorod, Korocha, Stari Oskol, Novi Oskol, and Biriuch, and reaches the Don River near Ostrohosk. The Don forms a smaller part of the border of the Ukraine than the Dnieper. The boundary line leaves the river at the mouth of the Icorez, cuts the Bitiuh River and, passing Baturlinivka and Novokhopersk, reaches the Khoper River in the country of the Don Cossacks. Here begins the eastern boundary of the Ukrainian country. It extends first along the Khoper River southward, crosses the Don perpendicularly at the mouth of the Khoper, passes along the Kalitva and the Donetz, crossing the Don for the third time near Novocherkask, and, pursuing a wide curve along the Sal River, reaches Lake Manich. Right opposite, on the left bank of the Don, the Ukrainians confront the Kalmucks, the advance guard of the sub-Caucasian and Caucasian medley of races. Among these thinly scattered and culturally inferior tribes, a strong flood of Ukrainian and Russian colonization has been pouring in the course of the past century. The Ukrainian element is gradually predominating in the entire region of Ciscaucasia and is constantly pushing forward toward the east and southeast. New islands of Ukrainian-speaking people are forming and are growing constantly and uniting to form larger complexes.

From Lake Manich, the border of the Ukraine country runs southward thru the district of Medveza of the Government of Stavropol, as far as the sources of the great Yahorlik. Then it turns eastward past Stavropol, Alexandrivsk and Novohrihoryvsk. In a narrow strip the Ukrainians here reach the Caspian Sea. It was only suggested in the census of 1897, but proved beyond doubt by the reports of the new settlements of the Ukrainian element in these regions, that the Ukrainian area here shows a great increase.

The southern boundary of the Ukraine in the Caucasian lands passes thru the Terek, Kuban and Black Sea Governments by way of Nalchic, Piatihorsk, Labinsk and Maikop, reaching the shore of the Black Sea between Tuapse and Sochi. In this region the Ukrainians have as neighbors besides the Russians, the Kalmucks, Kirgizians, Norgaians, Chechenians, Cabardines, Circassians, Abkhasians and Caucasian Tartars.

The further course of the southern border of the Ukraine, as far as the delta of the Danube, is indicated on the whole by the coasts of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azof. Only Crimea has, until recently, remained outside the ethnographic confines of the Ukraine. To the extent that the Crimean Tartars have begun to emigrate to Turkey, however, the Ukrainian element has gained strength thru constant reinforcements from the Central Ukrainian districts, so that today only the mountain region and the south coast of Crimea are considered Tartar country.

These boundaries enclose the compact country which is inhabited by the Ukrainians. This country includes North and West Bukowina, Northeastern Hungary, East Galicia and the southwestern part of West Galicia, the newly-created Government of Kholm (the eastern districts of the Governments of Lublin and Sidlez in Russian Poland), the southern part of Grodno and Minsk, all of Volhynia, Podolia, Kiev and Kherson, besides the southeastern and northwestern districts of Bessarabia. To the left of the Dnieper, the borders of the Ukraine include the Governments of Chernihiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, Katerinoslav, Tauria (with the exception of the Yaila) and the entire Kuban region, the chains of high mountains excepted. In addition, the following belong to the territory of Ukraine: The southern third of the Government of Kursk, the southern half of Voroniz, the western third of the Don Cossack country, the southern half of Stavropol, the northern border of the Terek region, and, finally, the northwestern part of the Government of the Black Sea. For Europe it is a very spacious territory, being second in size only to the Russian (Muscovite) national territory. The area of the Ukrainian national territory is 850,000 square kilometers, of which only 75,000 square kilometers lie within the borders of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the remaining country of 775,000 square kilometers being subject to Russian rule.

Beyond this compact Ukrainian national territory, the Ukrainians live in numerous great homogeneous patches, scattered over wide areas of the Old and New Worlds. In Bessarabia we meet with a whole series of these Ukrainian language areas or islands along the Prut River and the Russian-Roumanian boundary, in the Roumanian Dobrudja, and in the delta of the Danube. In the Bukowina there are Ukrainian language islands at Suchava and Kimpolung, in Hungary in the Backza, at Nyregihatza, Nagi-Caroli, Göllnitz, etc., in the Kholm country between Lukov and Zelekhov, between Sidletz and Kaluszin, and near Sokolov. Along the White Russian border, where the transition is gradual, no real language islands are found in the intervening zone before mentioned. We find all the more of them in Ukrainian-Russian borderlands, where the two nationalities are very sharply separated and there are no transitions. In the Government of Kursk we find a whole chain of well-defined Ukrainian language islands in the midst of the Russian territory; at Fatiez, between Dmitriev and Oboian, and also at the sources of the Sem. In the Government of Voroniz there are several language islands at Siemlansk and Borisoglebsk. A few scattered Ukrainian settlements extend to the district of Tambov and Yelez. The Don country, for a long time practically closed to settlers because of its Cossack organization, was a valuable thoroughfare for the Ukrainian colonization movement in its expansion in the central Volga district. Here there lived (1910) over 600,000 Ukrainians in the Governments of Saratov, Samara and Astrakhan. Here lie, in closest proximity to numerous German colonies, great Ukrainian language islands, near Balashov, Atkarsk, Balanda, on the Eman and Medveditza, at Nikolaievsk, Khvalinsk, Samara and Boguruslan. From Khvalinsk on, the Ukrainian colonies on the left bank of the Volga take up as much space as the Russian. We find the Ukrainian colonies here opposite Saratov, Kamishin, Dubivka, Chorni Yar, and at Zarev. Besides these there are, at a greater distance from the Volga, Ukrainian language islands in the country around the source of the Yeruslan and the Great Usen, on Lakes Elton and Baskunchak, on the Ilovla and the Yergeni hills. In the Orenburg Government, on the Ural River, more than 50,000 Ukrainian colonists now dwell. In general, the Ukrainians in the year of 1897 comprised 13% of the population of the Government of Astrakhan (District of Zarev 38%, Chornoyar 43%), more than 7% in the Government of Saratov, nearly 5% in Samara. At present, considering the active Ukrainian colonization of the past decades, these percentages must be much greater.

In the Caucasus lands we likewise find a goodly number of Ukrainian Colonies. According to the results of the census of 1897 the Ukrainians comprised 17 to 19% of the “Russian” population in the Governments of Erivan, Kutais, Daghestan and Kars, 7,5% in Tiflis and 5% in Yelisavetpol and in Baku each.

Thru the Volga and Caucasus lands, the tide of Ukrainian emigrants reached Russian Central Asia. The establishment of Ukrainian settlements in this region only began toward the end of the past century and has continued to this day. In the year 1897 the Ukrainians already comprised 29% of the “Russian” population in the province of Sir Daria and 23% in the province of Akmolinsk. In the Provinces of Transkaspia, Siemiriechensk, Turgai, Samarkand and Ferghana, the Ukrainians comprised 10% to 20% of the “Russian” population; in the Province of Siemipalatinsk, 5%.

But Ukrainian colonization in Siberia appears on the largest scale of all. In a long line of thousands of kilometers, Ukrainian language islands and detached colonies stretch along the southern border of this land of tomorrow. The highest percentages of Ukrainians are found among the “Russian” population of the coast province near Vladivostok (over 29%) and the Province of Amur (over 20%), the greatest absolute numbers in the southern districts of the Governments of Tomsk, Tobolsk and Yeniseysk.

Besides these colonies and language islands in Eurasia, we find settlements of considerable size in America. More than half a million Ukrainians are scattered in small groups over the spacious area of the United States. They are, for the most part, mine and factory workers, who usually return, with the earnings they have saved, to their fatherland. Pennsylvania is especially rich in Ukrainian emigrants, who sometimes take root here, but usually lose their nationality in the second generation. Agricultural colonies have been established by the Ukrainians in Canada. Here we find Ukrainian language islands of some size in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, and smaller groups of settlements in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia. The number of the Ukrainians in Canada exceeds 200,000, and the steady character and compactness of the settlements preserve the Ukrainian element from rapid denationalization. The same kind of agricultural colonies have been established by the Ukrainian peasants in Brazil. They are located chiefly in the State of Parana, also in detached groups in Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and São Paulo, as well as in the adjacent lands of Argentina. These rapidly increasing settlers, about 60,000 in number, form an important cultural element here among the indolent Luso-Brazilians.

But we do not desire, in this small work, to write a geography of the Ukrainian colonies. All are branches severed from the mother-tree, which, considering the low grade of culture of the settlers, must sooner or later be assimilated by the foreign race. Only the Asiatic colonies have some (though rather slight) prospects of preserving their national individuality into the remote future. The constant addition of new arrivals from the home country, as well as the higher culture of the Ukrainian people as opposed to the Russian masses, will preserve the Ukrainian colonists in Asia from rapid denationalization.

What is the total number of Ukrainians, and how many of them live in the compact Ukrainian national territory?

The answer to this question is not easy—for the same reasons which do not permit us to draw accurately the boundaries of the Ukrainian country. The political subjugation of the Ukraine on the one hand, and the size of the nation and its territory on the other, cause the ruling governments to falsify the statistics, thus concealing the true state of affairs. To a great extent, also, the ignorance of the organs performing the census bear the blame for the unreliability of the statistics collected in Ukrainian territory. The Ukrainians are either simply registered as members of another (usually the ruling) nationality, or forced, by various means, to deny their inherited nationality.

In Hungary entire villages are sometimes set down as Magyar, Slovak or Roumanian, altho their population is wholly, or for the most part, Ukrainian. In the Bukowina, too, a great many Ukrainians are registered as Roumanians. In Galicia, all Roman-Catholic Ukrainians are regularly entered as Poles, altho, as a rule, they have not even a mastery of the Polish language. Nevertheless, the Austro-Hungarian statistics allow the possibility of determining very closely the true condition. The Russian census of 1897, which gives us the sole materials for statistics on a racial basis in the Ukraine, was carried out greatly to the disadvantage of the Ukrainian element. In the cities, only the smallest minority of the Ukrainians are registered as such, all the rest being counted as Russians. The same has been the case in all the Ukrainian colonies and language islands scattered thru the great space of the gigantic Russian Empire. Even so, we are omitting from consideration those Ukrainians who, because of lack of national consciousness or for fear of persecution, have denied their nationality.

Despite all these shortcomings of the official statistics, we shall make their statements the basis of our calculations. Only the most marked falsifications or errors can be considered and corrected. As the basis of our calculations, we shall take the figures of the census in Austria and Hungary of the year 1910, as well as the Russian calculations of the same year. As the latter lack any statement as to the relative proportions or percentages of the nationalities, we must apply the percentages of the enumeration of 1897 to the totals of 1910. This process, of course, gives us only approximate values, but it is the only available method.

We shall begin our statistical view of the Ukrainian lands with Northeastern Hungary. Here the Ukrainians inhabit a compact territory of over 14,000 square kilometers. The greatest part of it lies in the Carpathian Mountains and includes the northern three-quarters of the County of Marmarosh, the northeastern half of the County of Ungh, the northern borderlands of the Counties of Semplen and Sharosh, and the northeastern borderlands of the County of Zips. The total number of Ukrainians in Hungary was 470,000 in 1910, a number which, because of the insufficient Hungarian statistics, may be confidently raised to a half a million, if we consider the fact that even the doctored Greek-Catholic figures of the eighties gave approximately the latter number. The percentages of the Ukrainians in different counties, according to official reckoning, are as follows: In Marmorosh 46%, Uhocha 39%, Bereg 46%, Ungh 36%, Sharosh 20%, Semplen 11%, Zips 8%. In the east the Roumanians form small scattered language islands, in the west the Slovaks. Amid the Ukrainian population, scattered, but in considerable numbers, live Jews; in the cities, Magyars and Germans besides. The Ukrainians inhabit all the mountainous, sparsely settled parts of the counties, hence the percentage of them is small, despite the extent of the country they inhabit. The Ukrainian people in Upper Hungary consist almost exclusively of peasants and petty bourgeois. The lack of national schools causes illiteracy to grow rampant. The upper strata of the people are three-fourths denationalized; the common people are stifled in ignorance, and in the consequent poor economic conditions, which the Hungarian Government is vainly trying to relieve.

In the Bukowina the Ukrainians, over 300,000 in number (38% of the total population of the land), inhabit a region of 5000 square kilometers, situated mostly in the mountainous parts of the country. The Ukrainians inhabit the following districts: Zastavna (80%), Vashkivtzi (83%), Viznitza (78%), Kitzman (87%), and Chernivtzi (55%), half the District of Sereth (42%), a third of the District of Storozhinetz (26%), besides parts of the Districts of Kimpolung, Radautz and Suchava. Amid the Ukrainian population a great many Jews are settled, scattered, and in the cities many Germans, Roumanians, Armenians and Poles besides. The degree of education and the economic state of the Bukowina Ukrainians are incomparably better than those of the Ukrainians of Hungary. From the rural population a numerous educated class has sprung, which has taken the lead of the masses in the economic and political struggle.

In Galicia (78,500 square kilometers, 8 million inhabitants) the Ukrainians, 3,210,000, that is 40% of the total population (with 59% of Poles and 1% of Germans) occupy a compact space of 56,000 square kilometers, in which they comprise 59% of the population. These figures are taken from the census of the year 1910, which, because of its partisan compilation, is perhaps unique among the civilized states of Europe. For not only are all the Jews (who speak a German jargon) listed as Poles, but also all the Ukrainians of Roman-Catholic faith, of whom there is more than half a million, and 170,000 pure Ukrainians of Greek-Catholic (united) faith. Basing our calculations, not on these statistics of the vernacular, but on the statistics of faith, which, too, are not unobjectionable, we obtain the following results: For the Greek-Catholic Ukrainians 3,380,000 (42%), for the Roman-Catholic Poles 3,730,000 (47%), and for the Jews 870,000 (11%). According to religious convictions, then, Ukrainian East Galicia would contain 62% of Ukrainians, over 25% (1,350,000) Poles, and over 12% (660,000) Jews. As a matter of fact, the number of Ukrainians in Galicia, according to the investigations of Dr. Okhrimovich, should be raised to at least 3,500,000, and, adding the Roman-Catholic Ukrainians of East Galicia, the number is 4,000,000. We shall retain the figure 3,380,000, however, but for the following view of the districts, the percentages will be taken from the much more justly compiled census of the year 1900. The greatest percentage of the Ukrainian population, that is 75–90%, is found in the Carpathian Districts of Turka, Stari Sambir, Kossiv, Pechenizin; the sub-Carpathian Districts of Bohorodchani, Kalush, Zidachiv; the Pocutian Districts of Sniatin and Horodenka, besides the District of Yavoriv in the Rostoche. The percentage of Ukrainians vacillates between 67 and 75% in the Districts of Lisko, Dobromil, Striy, Dolina, Nadvirna, Tovmach, Salishchiki, Borshchiv, Rohatin, Bibrka, Zovkva and Rava. More than three-fifths of the population (60–66%) is made up of Ukrainians in the Districts of Drohobich, Sambir, Rudki, Mostiska, Horodok, Kolomiya, Sokal, Kaminka, Brody, Sbaraz Zolochiv, Peremishlani, Berezani, Pidhaytzi, Chorytkiv, and Husiatin; 50–60% Ukrainians are found in the Districts of Chesaniv, Peremishl, Sianik, Ternopil, Skalat, Terebovla, Buchach and Stanislaviv. In only two districts the percentage of Ukrainians falls below 50%: in the districts of Lemberg (49%) and Yaroslav (41%). In the city of Lemberg the Ukrainians comprise only one-fifth of the population, and in other larger cities of East Galicia, too, their percentage is not great. Consequently, the total percentages of the Ukrainians in the districts are influenced very unfavorably thru the addition of the city population. Besides, the East Galician cities, inhabited chiefly by Jews and Poles, are the chief centers of the Polonizing efforts. Only in the most recent times is the percentage of Ukrainians in the larger cities of East Galicia becoming greater, as a result of the continued flocking in of the Ukrainian rural population. In the fifty smaller cities of East Galicia, on the other hand, the Ukrainians comprise absolute majorities, e.g., Yavoriv, Horodenka, Tismenitza.

In West Galicia only the District of Horlitzi (Gorlice) has more than 25% Ukrainians, the remaining four (Yaslo, New Sandetz, Krosno, Hribov) only 10–20%.

The Ukrainian population of Galicia consists nine-tenths of peasants and petty bourgeois. From them a numerous educated class has sprung in the past century, which has taken the political and cultural leadership of the masses. For this reason, too, national consciousness has advanced most among the Ukrainians of Galicia.

In the compass of the Russian State the Ukrainians occupy a compact national territory of almost 775,000 square kilometers. The actual size of this territory will be accurately determined only when we possess an accurate ethnographic map of the Ukraine. Until then the size of the various Ukrainian sections can only be estimated.

The following statistical information is taken from the calculation of 1910, the percentage of Ukrainians from the Russian census of 1897. But the Pinchuks, in the Government of Minsk, were counted as belonging to the Ukrainians by the common opinion of all Russian and non-Russian ethnographers, altho the official statistics have designated them as White Russian.

We shall begin at the western border region, at the Kholmshchina (Kholm land), which was recently organized by the Russian Government as an independent Government apart from Russian Poland, and includes the eastern areas of the Governments of Lublin and Sidletz. In the Government of Lublin (16,800 square kilometers, 1,500,000 inhabitants) the Ukrainians comprise 17% of the population (250,000), in the Government of Sidletz 14% (140,000). The region inhabited by the Ukrainians in both Governments together, amounts to 10,000 square kilometers. Poles and Jews inhabit not only the cities in the Kholm country, but to a great extent villages as well, and comprise a considerable percentage of the population near the western border of the Ukraine. The percentage figures of the Ukrainians and Poles (in parentheses) are in the various districts of the Government of Lublin: Hrubeshiv 66 (24), Tomashiv 52 (37), Kholm 38 (38), Bilhoray 22 (68), Zamostye 9 (83), Krasnostav 6 (83); in the districts of the Government of Sidletz: Vlodava 64 (20), Bila 48 (38), Konstantiniv 22 (55), Radin 5 (87). In these districts the Jews comprise 5–13% of the population, the Germans 14% in the District of Kholm. The number of Ukrainians in the generally Polish-Jewish cities is not insignificant, even comprising the absolute majority in Hrubeshiv.

In the Government of Grodno (38,600 square kilometers 1,950,000 inhabitants), the Ukrainians comprise 23% of the population and inhabit the districts of Berestia (81% Ukrainians), Kobrin (83%), Bilsk (42% relative majority), and the border of Pruzani (7%), altogether 14,000 square kilometers, with a Ukrainian population of 440,000. The Poles and White Russians comprise 2–3% in the first two of these districts, the Poles 37% in the District of Bilsk, the White Russians 79% in Pruzani, the Jews 9–11% in all districts.

In the Government of Minsk (91,000 square kilometers, 2,800,000 inhabitants), the Ukrainians (Pinchuks) comprise 14% of the population. They inhabit the entire District of Pinsk and the half of the District of Mosiv, situated on the right bank of the Pripet River, altogether 17,000 square kilometers, with a Ukrainian population of 390,000.

The Government of Volhynia (71,700 square kilometers, 3,850,000 inhabitants) is a central Ukrainian region. The Ukrainians (2,700,000) here comprise over 70% of the population, the Jews 13%, the Poles over 6%, the Germans about 6%, the Russians 3%, the Czechs 1%. These foreign peoples live scattered, or as colonists, and chiefly in the cities of Volhynia, in all of which (Kremianetz excepted) they are more numerous than the Ukrainians. In the country it is different. The percentages of Ukrainians in the districts of Volhynia are very high: Kovel 86%, Ovruch 87%, Ostroh 85%, Zaslav 82%, Kremianetz 84%, Starokonstantiniv 80%. Somewhat smaller are the percentages in the following districts: Zitomir 73%, Dubno 73%, Volodimir Volinsky 68%, Rivne 65%, Lutzk 62%.

In the Government of Kiev (51,000 square kilometers, 4,570,000 inhabitants) the Ukrainians comprise over 79% (3,620,000) of the population. This percentage takes into account the city population, of which the majority are Jews and “Russians.” In the districts, as Chihirin, Svenihorodka, Uman, Tarashcha, the percentage of Ukrainians exceeds 90%, in Radomishl 80%. The chief foreign element are the Jews (12%), then the Russians (over 6%), and the Poles (2%). In the city of Kiev the Ukrainians comprise more than one-fifth of the population, as much as the Jews and Poles together. An absolute Ukrainian majority exists in the cities of Vassilkiv, Kaniv, Tarashcha, Zvenihorodka and Chihirin. In Berdichiv, Cherkassi, Uman, Lipovetz, Skvira and Radomishl the Jews predominate.

The Government of Podolia (42,000 square kilometers, 3,740,000 inhabitants) has over 81% of its population Ukrainian (3,030,000). In some districts the percentage is much higher, as for example in the District of Mohiliv, 89%. The Jews are the largest foreign element (12%) then the Russians (3%), and the Poles (2%), who live principally in the cities. Only the smaller Podolian cities, e.g., Olhopol, Yampol, Stara Ushitza, Khmelnik, have a Ukrainian majority. In Haisin, Vinnitza, Litin and Bar the number of Ukrainians equals the number of Jews; in Kamenetz, Balta, Bratzlav, Letichiv, Mohiliv and Proskuriv the Jews predominate.

The Government of Kherson (71,000 square kilometers, 3,500,000 inhabitants), just as the three last discussed, is part of the compact Ukrainian national territory, altho the population of this region appears much more mixed. The Ukrainians (1,640,000) here comprise barely 54% of the population. The chief cause of this is the fact that in the large cities of this Government, Jews and Russians predominate, and then there are a great many Roumanian, German and Bulgarian colonies. Despite this, however, the Ukrainians constitute an absolute majority in most of the districts (e.g., the District of Alexandria 88% of Ukrainians, Yelisavet 73%, Kherson 70%, Ananiiv 63%), a relative majority in the rest (Odessa 47%, Tiraspol 38%). The Russians comprise more than 21% of the population, the Jews 12%, the Roumanians over 5% (District of Tiraspol 27%), the Germans nearly 5%, the Bulgarians and Poles 1% each. Odessa is a city of many languages. Russians and Jews predominate; the Ukrainians comprise barely one-eleventh of the population, besides which there are Germans, Roumanians, Bulgarians, Poles, Greeks, French, English, Albanians, etc. In Mikolaiv the Ukrainians are only one-thirteenth of the population, in Kherson one-fifth, in Yelisavet one-fourth. In the following cities the Ukrainians possess an absolute majority over the Russians: Alexandria, Ananiiv, Bobrinetz, Vosnesensk, Olviopol, Ochakiv, Berislav, Dubosari.

The Government of Bessarabia (46,000 square kilometers, 2,440,000 inhabitants) has only its northwest tip and its coastal region within Ukrainian national territory. The Ukrainians (460,000) comprise barely 20% of the population of this Government, which consists principally of Roumanians. The territory inhabited by the Ukrainians amounts to 10,000 square kilometers. The Ukrainians comprise an absolute majority only in the District of Khotin (56%), along with 25% Roumanians and 13% Jews. In the District of Akerman the Ukrainians make up 24% of the population, the Bulgarians the same, the Germans and the Roumanians 18% each, the Turks 4%. The Ukrainians settle on the sea-coast and the Dniester. In the District of Ismail there are 17% Ukrainians, 47% Roumanians, 11% Bulgarians, 9% Turks, 3% Germans; in the District of Soroki 17% Ukrainians, 67% Roumanians, 11% Jews. In other districts of Bessarabia there are much fewer Ukrainians; in the district of Biltzi 12%, Benderi 9%, Orhiiv 6%, Kishinev only 2%. In the cities Jews, Russians and Roumanians predominate. The Ukrainians possess an absolute majority only in Akerman, a relative majority in Ismail and Kilia.

In our survey of the Ukraine on the left Dnieper bank we shall begin with the border regions, coming gradually to the central parts.

In the Government of Kursk the Ukrainians (670,000) comprise over 22% of the population and inhabit the following districts: Putivl (55% Ukrainians), Hraivoron (61%), Novo Oskol (56%), and the southern parts of Sudga (44%), Rilsk (33%), Korocha (35%), Bilhorod (24%). Besides that, the Ukrainians are scattered in large and small language islands over the Districts of Oboian (12%), Stari Oskol (9%), and Lhov (5%). The area of the compact Ukrainian territory in the Government of Kursk may be estimated at 12,000 square kilometers. The only neighbors and co-inhabitants of the Ukrainians here are the Russians, who, even in many cities of the purely Ukrainian territory, comprise majorities. However, there are a number of Ukrainian cities in the Kursk country. Miropilia has 98%, Sudza 65% Ukrainians, Hraivoron and Korocha are half Ukrainian.

In the next following border region, the Government of Voroniz (65,000 square kilometers, 3,360,000 inhabitants), the Ukrainians inhabit the Districts of Ostrohosh (94% Ukrainians), Bohucha (83%), Biriuch (70%), Valuiki (53%), and the southern parts of Pavlovsk (43%), Bobrovsk (17%), Korotoiak (17%), Novokhopersk (16%). Ukrainian language islands are found chiefly in the District of Semliansk (4%). The total percentage of Ukrainians in the Government of Voroniz is 36%, their number over 1,210,000, the surface they inhabit 29,000 square kilometers. The only neighbors of the Ukrainians here are the Russians, who also comprise the majority in all cities. Only in Biriuch, Bohuchar, Ostrohosh, do the Ukrainians predominate.

In the Government of the Don Cossack army (164,000 square kilometers, 3,500,000 inhabitants) the relation of the Ukrainians to the population is similar to that in the Governments of Kursk and Voroniz. Just as the Ukrainian districts there border on the adjacent central Ukrainian lands of Poltava and Kharkiv, so the Ukrainian parts of the Don country touch the central Ukrainian lands of Kharkiv and Katerinoslav. The Ukrainians (980,000) comprise 28% of the population of the Don country and inhabit 45,000 square kilometers. Most thickly populated by Ukrainians are the southern districts: Tahanroh (69%), Rostiv (52%), the western half of the Donetz District (40%). The statistics show far less Ukrainians in the Districts of Cherkask (23%) and Sal (31%). In the Districts of Don I (12%), Don II (4%), Ust Medvedinsk (11%), Khoper (7%), the Ukrainians form language islands in the midst of a Russian population. In the District of Sal the relative majority is credited to the Kalmucks (39%), but beyond that only Russians are the neighbors of the Ukrainians. But all this data is not unobjectionable. It has long been an established fact that the lower “Don Cossacks” are for the most part of Ukrainian nationality. At the same time we see, from the official census of 1897, that none of the Don Cossacks were counted as members of the Ukrainian nation. In the cities of the Don country the number of Ukrainians is very small, e.g., in Rostiv hardly greater than one-fifth. Only the city of Osiv (Azof) is predominantly Ukrainian.

The Kuban country (92,000 square kilometers, 2,630,000 inhabitants) has a relative Ukrainian majority (over 47% = 1,250,000), along with 44% Russians and 9% Caucasus races.

In this land the purely Ukrainian country embraces over 56,000 square kilometers. Three of the districts have an absolute Ukrainian majority: Yask (81%), Temriuk (79%), and Katerinodar (57% Ukrainians, 27% Russians, 11% Circassians). In the Caucasian District there are 47% of Ukrainians and as many Russians, in the District of Maikop 31% Ukrainians, 58% Russians, 6% Circassians, 2% Kabardines, in the Labinsk District 28% Ukrainians, 77% Russians, in the District of Batalpashinsk 28% Ukrainians, 39% Russians, 13% Karachaians, 5% Abkhasians, 4% Kabardines, 3% Nogaians, 2% Circassians. It should be observed, however, that perhaps nowhere have so many Ukrainians been entered as Russians in the census as in these very Caucasian lands. For this reason the entire Kuban country may be considered Ukrainian territory, except the chains of high mountains.

In the Government of Stavropol (60,000 square kilometers, 1,230,000 inhabitants) the Ukrainians comprise 37% (450,000). They inhabit a region of nearly 22,000 square kilometers in the west and south of the Government, where the border of the Ukrainian settlements, which reaches the Caspian Sea, begins. The District of Medveza has 48% Ukrainians (in the west), the District of Stavropol 13% (in the extreme south), the District of Olexandrivsk 40%, Novotvihoriiosk 54% (chiefly in their southern halves). The neighbors here are Russians and Nogaians.

In the Terek region (69,000 square kilometers, 1,183,000 inhabitants) the Ukrainians officially comprise only 5% of the population (50,000), altho it is generally known that an appreciable part of the Terek Cossacks belongs to the Ukrainian nation. A large percentage of Ukrainians (14%) is found only in the District of Piatihorsk; outside of that the Ukrainians are united in a narrow seam of settlements extending to the Caspian Sea. 29% of the population in the Terek region is Russian; the absolute majority is made up by various Caucasian races (Kabardines, Tatars, Ossetians, Ingushians, Chechenians, Avaro-andians, Kumikians, Nogaians).

The small Government of the Black Sea (7000 square kilometers, 130,000 inhabitants) has only 16% Ukrainians who live, 10,000 in number, in the northwestern part of the extended coast region. In the District of Tuapse there are 27% Ukrainians; in the District of Sochi 8%. Their neighbors are Russians, who do not form an absolute majority at any place, then Armenians, Circassians, Greeks, Turks, etc.

The most important border country in the south, however, is, without doubt, the Government of Tauria (60,000 square kilometers, 1,800,000 inhabitants). The Ukrainians here comprise the relative majority of the population (42%—790,000), with 28% Russians, 13% Crimean Tatars, over 5% Germans, about 5% Jews, about 3% Bulgarians, about 1% Armenians, etc. The Ukrainians comprise an absolute majority in the Districts of Dniprovsk (76%), Berdiansk (64%), and Melitopol (57%), and large minorities in the Districts of Eupatoria (27%) and Perekop (24%), the northern parts of which they inhabit. The entire mainland part of the Government and the northern part of the Crimean peninsula, consequently belong, without doubt, to the compact Ukrainian national territory, while the number of Ukrainians in the southern regions of Crimea appears much smaller (District of Feodosia 13%, Simferopol 10%, Yalta 2%). The chief foreign element in Tauria is composed of Russians (Dniprovsk 16%, Melitopol 32%, Berdiansk 18%, Perekop 24%, Eupatoria 17%), and Tatars (Yalta 71%, Simferopol 51%, Feodosia 45%, Eupatoria 40%, Perekop 24%). To the extent that the Tatars emigrate to Turkey, however, the settled area and the number of the Ukrainians of Tauria constantly increase, so that the time does not seem far off when the Ukrainian element will have gained the entire Crimean peninsula for its national territory. Besides, one must entertain strong doubts concerning the actual number of the Russians mentioned in the statistics, for the Rittich map of 1878 gives almost no Ukrainians in Tauria, and calls even the mainland parts of Tauria Russian. And twenty years later came the just-mentioned figures of the official statistics. We may then, confidently consider the entire Government of Tauria a Ukrainian district, with considerable colonization by foreign-speaking people. The most important of the foreign settlers are without a doubt the Germans. They are 24% of the population in the District of Perekop, 12% in Eupatoria, 8% in Berdiansk, 5% in Melitopol; the Bulgarians make up 10% of the population in Berdiansk.

Next to be considered, after these borderlands, are the four central regions of the Ukraine which lie on the left bank of the Dnieper. In the Government of Katerinoslav (63,000 square kilometers, 3,060,000 inhabitants) the Ukrainians 2,110,000 in number, comprise 69% of the total population, with 17% Russians, 5% Jews, 4% Germans, 2% Greeks, 1% each of Tatars, White Russians and Poles. Detached districts of the land have very high percentages of Ukrainians, e.g., District of Novomoskovsk 94%, Verkhnodniprovsk 91%, Olexandrivsk 86%, Pavlohrad 83%. In the large cities the number of the foreign elements is very great, hence, the District of Katerinoslav has 74% Ukrainians, and when the city is counted in, only 56% Ukrainians, with 21% Russians, 13% Jews, 6% Germans, 2% Poles. The smallest percentage of Ukrainians is found in the southeastern districts of the region, where populous settlements of foreign elements exist. The District of Bakhmut, for instance, has 58% Ukrainians with 32% Russians, the District of Slavianoserbsk 55% Ukrainians besides 42% Russians, the District of Mariupol 51% Ukrainians besides 20% Greeks. In the City of Katerinoslav the Ukrainians comprise barely one-seventh of the population, while in Olexandrivsk, Verkhnodniprovsk, Novomoskovsk and Bakhmut, they predominate over the Russians, and are equal to them in Slaviansk and Pavlohrad.

In the Government of Kharkiv (54,000 square kilometers, 3,250,000 inhabitants) the Ukrainians make up 70% of the total population, or 2,275,000. As a result of considerable Russian colonization (28%), forming several language islands in the midst of Ukrainian territory, the percentage of Ukrainians in several districts varies appreciably (e.g., Smiiv 66%, Vovchansk 75%, Starobilsk 84%, Kupiansk 87%). But we note for the first time, here, the remarkable fact that in all the district cities the Ukrainians are much more numerous than the Russians. Only in the capital city, Kharkiv, are they in the minority, and comprise little more than one-fourth the population.

The Government of Poltava (50,000 square kilometers, 3,580,000 inhabitants) may be considered the heart of the Ukraine. The Ukrainians here comprise 95% of the population, or 3,410,000, beside 4% Jews and 1% Russians. The percentage in detached districts varies between 88% (District of Konstantinohrad) and 99% (District of Sinkiv). The Russians and Jews live principally in the cities, where they are always second to the Ukrainians, however, except in the city of Kreminchuk, where the Jews comprise the majority.

In the Government of Chernihiv (25,000 square kilometers, 2,980,000 inhabitants) the Ukrainians comprise 86% of the population (2,450,000), beside 5% White Russians, 5% Jews, and 4% Russians. With the exception of the northern districts, Suraz (Ukrainians 19%, White Russians 67%, Russians 11%), Novosibkiv (Ukrainians 66%, Russians 30%, White Russians 2%), and Starodub (Ukrainians 75%, Russians 22%), all the districts of the region have from 88% (Horodnia) to 99% (Krolevetz) of Ukrainians. All the district cities, except Novosibkiv, Starodub, Suraz and Mhlin, have an absolute Ukrainian majority; the capital, Chernihiv, only a relative one.

The number of Ukrainians within the compact national territory in Russia, then, amounts to almost 28½ millions. Excluded in this estimate are the Ukrainians of the Government of Astrakhan (190,000), Saratov (220,000), Samara (150,000), Orenburg (50,000), as well as the Ukrainians of all Asiatic-Russian lands, whose number is not placed too high at 500,000. We may therefore estimate the number of Ukrainians in the entire Russian Empire as 29½ millions.

This figure, which was gained thru a critical survey of the statistical material of the individual administrative units of Russia, is approached with remarkable closeness by the figure which may be gotten in another, more general way. In the year of 1897 the number of Ukrainians in the Russian Empire was 22,400,000; that is, 17.4% of the total population of 129,000,000. Applying the same percentage to the numerical estimate of 1910, we get 28,900,000 Ukrainians in a total Russian population of 166,000,000. Adding the Pinchuks (390,000) who, in the official statistics were erroneously counted as White Russians, we receive for the number of Ukrainians of Russia (1910) 29,300,000.

Now, adding up all the Ukrainians of the globe, we receive (for 1910) an amount of 34½ millions; 32,700,000 of it in the compact Ukrainian country. This figure is a minimum value, for in calculating it the intentional errors of the official statistics were taken into the bargain. Nevertheless, this figure shows us that the Ukrainians occupy the sixth place, numerically, among the nations of Europe, the five above them being the Germans, Russians, French, English and Italians. Among the Slavic races they stand in the second place.

How this great numerical strength of the Ukrainian nation can be brought into harmony with its political and economic weakness we shall try to show in the sections following. Now let us turn briefly to the density of population of the Ukraine.

The 850,000 square kilometers of solid Ukrainian national territory are inhabited by approximately forty-five million people (1910), of whom, according to official estimates, 73% are Ukrainians. The general density of the Ukraine, consequently, amounts to 53 inhabitants to the square kilometer. The Ukraine is also the transition from the thickly populated countries of Central Europe to the thinly-peopled northeast and east of the globe. This transition may easily be followed out within the Ukraine also. The western border regions are the most thickly settled. Galicia has a density of 102, the Government of Lublin 90, the Government of Kiev 90, Podolia 89, Bukowina 77, Poltava 72. We see a wide zone of dense population, then, extending along the 50th parallel of latitude, from the Carpathians to the Dnieper. To the north of it, the first more thinly peopled zone extends: Sidletz 69, Grodno 51, Minsk 39, Volhynia 54, Chernihiv 57, Kursk 65, Voroniz 51. On the south of the thickly peopled zone lies the second more sparsely settled zone: Bessarabia 53, Kherson 49, Tauria 31, Katerinoslav 48. Most thinly settled, however, are the eastern borderlands of the Ukraine: Kuban 28, Don and Stavropol each 21, Chornomoria and the Terek region each 17.

Within these extensive regions, too, the density of population varies greatly. Sometimes districts very close together have a widely different density. These differences, however, are largely only seeming differences and are caused by the city populations. Thus, for example, the marked density of the Districts of Stanislaviv (184), Ternopil (161), Peremishl (160), Kolomia (156), is caused by the presence of the populous cities of the same names. Therefore the Pokutian District of Sniatin (147) seems very thickly settled, because of the smallness of the district cities. The average density of Ukrainian East Galicia is only 98; in the mountainous Districts of Dolina and Kossiv it only attains 45. The same conditions exist in Russian Ukraine. The District of Kharkiv has a density of 164 inhabitants to the square verst; the District of Kiev 152. Considering only the rural population, however, these figures sink to 81 and 75 respectively. Therefore, the District of Kaniv with its 117 inhabitants to the square verst, (113, or not reckoning in the inhabitants of the cities), appears to be the best-populated district of the Russian Ukraine. Many districts besides, in Podolia, Kiev, Poltava, Kharkiv and South Volhynia (without counting the cities), have a density of 75 and 100, while other districts of the same region vary between 50 and 75. In the forest swamp regions of Northern Ukraine the density figure falls a great deal. The District of Ovruch, in Northern Volhynia, attains a density of only 29; the Polissian Districts of Pinsk and Mosir 26 and 17 respectively. The steppe country of Southern Ukraine is likewise very thinly settled in places. The density of population of most of the districts of Southern Ukraine varies between 30 and 50, but the Districts of Eupatoria and Perekop, for example, have only 11 inhabitants per square verst, the second Don District 12, the Sal only 6, the District of Batalpashinsk in the sub-Caucasian country only 17.

From these figures we see that the Ukraine, as regards its density, is a genuine Eastern European land. But in comparing its density of population with that of the Russian Empire, or even of Russia in Europe, we perceive that the Ukraine is the most thickly settled part of the giant Russian Empire, after Poland. Even the most thinly settled southeastern border regions have a greater population to the square kilometer than Russia’s average (25 per square kilometer). Almost one-fourth of the enormous human reservoirs of Russia are found on Ukrainian territory. And yet the Ukraine, despite its great size, is only one-twenty-ninth of the giant Russian Empire.

From these figures we see, furthermore, that trade, industry and commerce have, to this day, been unable to influence the density of population of the Ukraine. The Ukraine has remained in the original stage of development, in which only the age of settlement and the fertility of the soil form the basis for increase in the density of population. The history of the Ukraine has, to this day, influenced the country’s density of population. The former central districts of the old Ukrainian state of Kiev and Halich are still the most thickly settled; the southern and eastern border regions, which have suffered most from the 500 years of the Tartar scourge, the most thinly settled. This is the reason that Galicia, one of the poorest regions of the Ukraine in natural resources, where industry and trade are so little developed, is at the same time the most thickly populated region.

Similarly primitive, and betraying a low grade of culture, is the relation between the city and country population of the Ukraine. Only a very insignificant fraction of the population inhabits the cities and towns of the Ukraine. In Galicia (1910) only 14½% of the population lives in places whose population is more than 5,000; only 9½% in cities of over 10,000. Similar conditions prevail in Russian Ukraine. Very rarely does the city population exceed 10% of the total number of people, usually keeping below this percentage, which is typical for all of Russia. Podolia has only 7% city population, Volhynia 8%, Chernihiv 9%, Poltava 10%, Kuban 11%, Katerinoslav 12%, Kiev 13%, and Kharkiv 14%. Only the regions colonized within the last century in Southern Ukraine, with their large cities, have a large percentage of city population (Tauria 20%, Kherson 29%).

More glaringly still does the low grade of culture of the Ukraine stand out when we give the percentage of the Ukrainian population in the cities of the Ukraine. Only in Galicia do 14% of the Ukrainian people of the country live in the cities. In the Government of Kharkiv only 10% of the Ukrainians of the district belong to the city population, in Kherson only 9%, in Kuban 8%, in Chernihiv 7%, Poltava 6%, Tauria 5%, Kiev and Katerinoslav each 4%, in Podolia 3%, and in Volhynia actually only 2%. It is true that, especially in the cities, the official estimates were “made” very unfavorably to the Ukrainian element, but, nevertheless, they show clearly enough that the Ukrainian people, clinging to their agrarian state, have left the cities, those centers of cultural and economic life, in the hands of foreign elements. Only within very recent years have these conditions begun to improve. The foreign-speaking cities are gradually coming to be Ukraine-ized, and the very rapidly growing percentage of Ukrainians in Galicia and the Russian Ukraine justify us in hoping that the Ukrainian element, in its continuous stream from the surrounding country, will, in time, absorb the foreign-speaking elements which now command the cities of the Ukraine.

THE UKRAINIAN NATION AS AN ANTHROPOGEOGRAPHIC UNIT

GENERAL SURVEY

In the first chapter of our little book we mentioned the reasons which compel us to regard the Ukraine as a physico-geographic whole. We emphasized the fact that the geographic units of the great uniform country of Eastern Europe could not, for obvious natural reasons, appear so well-defined and individualized as the different sections of Western and Central Europe. The same is true of the anthropogeographic conditions of Eastern Europe as well.

The anthropogeography of Eastern Europe is so unfamiliar a part of geographic science that even such pioneer geographers as Ratzel, Kirchhoff and Hettner entirely misunderstood and misrepresented the anthropogeographic conditions of Russia, and especially the racial conditions of this giant empire.

There are two reasons for the universal ignorance of the anthropogeographic conditions of Russia which exists even in the ranks of renowned scholars. The first cause lies in the sources from which scholars, and subsequently publicists, draw their knowledge of the subject. Now the official Russian sources on the basis of which an anthropogeography of Eastern Europe would have to be written are not immune from serious criticism. The ranks of Russian scholars have always worked in the interests of the Russian political idea, and latterly, caught by the mighty wave of Pan-Slavic-Russian nationalism, they are doing their best to represent as actual fact whatever Russian governmental politics would desire to be fact. Russian geography, ethnography, statistics, history, have always worked in accordance with approved “unifying” designs. Hence, European learning involuntarily sees all that exists and is coming into existence in Russia thru the spectacles put on it by official Russia. The same official Russia comes to meet the European traveler upon every step of his journey, and guides him in such a way that he may be sure not to see below the general official Russian varnish what is actual and true. Besides, there is the Russian censorship, which even now, after the introduction of the constitution, takes very good care to veil everything from the view of the outside world, which, in the interest of the Russian political idea, should remain hidden.

The second cause of ignorance as to the anthropogeography of Russia lies in the subject itself. The Eastern European family of races inhabiting Russia is so different from that of Western and Central Europe in its evolution and composition, that the anthropogeographical laws and methods which (as far as civilized peoples are concerned) are based upon Western European conditions, do not apply in the least in Eastern Europe. A difficulty confronts anthropogeography here, analogous to the difficulty which confronted geologic science when, fitted out with European stratigraphy, it sought to explore South Africa or India. The geologists, as representatives of a natural science, were readily able to find the way out, but the anthropogeographers, whose field is more that of a psychic science, have lost themselves in false assumptions and in commonplaces.

We must not wonder, therefore, if every critical reader of the preceding chapter is assailed by a host of questions: Why in the world are the Ukrainians, this second largest Slavic nation of the whole world, so utterly unknown? Perhaps Ukraine is only an ethnographic conception, and the Ukrainians only a branch of the Russian race, just as the Bavarians or Saxons are branches of the German people? Or are the terms “Ukraine,” “Ukrainian”, only outgrowths of the idle imagination of a few belated enthusiasts, who rave about a glorious past and a brilliant future, and represent what they are striving after as a fait accompli, and so forth.

Such questions, based upon deep ignorance of the anthropogeography and history of Eastern Europe, come up in this very 20th Century, even in the learned circles of scholars, publicists and politicians. To answer these and similar questions correctly, this little book has been written.

The Ukrainians are quite as independent a Slavic nation as the Czechs, Poles, White Russians, Russians, Serbs or Bulgarians. The historic roots of the Ukrainian nation extend just as far back into the early middle ages as the roots of the German, French or English nations. The old Ukrainian Empire of Kiev is of the same age as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. But, while the evolution of the great European nations was steady and uninterrupted, the Ukrainian Nation was hindered in its development by reason of its geographical position on the threshold of Asia. The Mongolian attack in the 13th Century shattered the state of Kiev and introduced the 500 years’ Tartar scourge. Weakened by the continual expeditions and slave-hunts of the Crimean Tatars, the Ukraine fell under the rule of Lithuania and Poland, who not only could not relieve the land of the Tatar menace but even added national, social and religious pressure. The instinct of self-preservation led the Ukrainian nation, in that troubled time, to create the splendid military organization of the Ukrainian Cossacks, and about the middle of the 17th Century, in a victorious war, to shake off the Polish yoke. Thus, the second Ukrainian state, the Cossack Republic, came into existence. By the Treaty of Pereyaslav (1654) it was ceded as a vassal state to Russia, which was related to it in religious faith. But Russia broke the treaties of suzerainty, shared the desolated Ukrainian land with Poland, and, after a century and a half, changed the autonomy of the Ukraine into abject serfdom. After Russia, in the partitions of Poland, had united almost the entire Ukrainian territory under its rule (with the exception of Eastern Galicia, Northwestern Bukowina, and Northeastern Hungary), it set all forces to work to destroy the national independence of the Ukrainians as well. In the 17th and 18th Centuries the Ukrainian Nation lost its upper classes—the aristocracy, the lesser nobility, the wealthy burghers—first thru Polonization, then thru Russification. It had left only its minor clergy, its lower middle class, and a completely downtrodden peasantry. Thus, at the end of the 18th Century, it seemed as if the last hour of the Ukrainian people had struck.

It is therefore easy to explain that in the 19th Century, when the national question became one of the most important problems of humanity, the two neighbor nations of the Ukraine, the Poles and the Russians, believed they had solved the “Ukrainian question.”

The views of Poles and Russians coincide absolutely in emphasizing one statement: “There is no such country as the Ukraine; no such people as the Ukrainians; there are only Poland and Russia; a Polish nation and a Russian nation.”

This complete agreement of both nations, whose giant states fought for two centuries for domination in Eastern Europe, may be easily understood. The Ukraine has always been the richest region of Eastern Europe in natural resources, the Ukrainians the second largest nation, the Ukrainian question the most important problem in every state commanding Eastern Europe. Now the Ukrainian nation was completely exhausted by half a thousand years of Tatar oppression and an equally long period of serfdom. So that it seemed an easy matter to the mighty neighbor nations to even deny the existence of the Ukrainian nation, to hold up its development, and gradually to absorb it.

The Poles, since their country lost its independence, have made heroic attempts to win back their freedom by armed uprisings. Despite all defeats, they have never given up their hopes of re-establishing the Polish Kingdom. But these hopes were never confined to the ethnographic territory of the Polish nation. The future Polish Kingdom was to have the old boundaries of the historic Poland—the Baltic and the Black Sea. Hence, the geographical conception of Poland, even to the scientific Polish geographers, still includes, besides the entire Polish ethnographic territory, Lithuania, White Russia and all of the Ukraine, as far as the Dnieper River and the Black Sea.

How could this historico-geographical conception of Poland be made to harmonize with the ethnographic conception of the Ukraine? The solution of this question seemed very easy to the Polish scholars and politicians. They simply proved that the Ukrainians constituted a part of the Polish nation, that their language was a provincial dialect of the Polish language, and that only the religious faith, a number of manners and customs, songs, etc., were slightly different from those of the Poles; these slight differences the common country folk might retain, likewise the educated Ukrainian might be permitted to keep his language and customs in private life, but in his political sentiments, in his culture, in his literary language, he must be and remain a Pole.

This Polish solution of the Ukrainian question is derived from the Polish “state-idea” of a Polish Empire extending from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Despite the fact that the history of the national relations of Eastern Europe clearly proved this solution false in the second half of the 19th Century, the opinion prevails in all important Polish circles, that the Ukrainian people merely constitutes an ethnographic mass which shall make a good foundation for the expansion of Polish culture and power.

This Polish theory in the Ukrainian question has not been detrimental to the development of the Ukrainian nation. That the Ukrainians are not a Polish people was quite clear to every Ukrainian at the very beginning of the relations of the two nations (11th Century). Among the masses the feeling of independence was always lively and strong, and only those of the educated Ukrainians credited Polonophile theories, who were the few members of Polish secret societies, plots, uprisings (1831, 1863), etc. Polonization, in former centuries, demanded many victims from among the educated Ukrainians; in the past half a century it has only very slight successes to show, altho the Ukrainians of Galicia still continue to be under the political and cultural influence of the Poles.

Much more dangerous for the Ukrainians was the other solution of the Ukrainian question. It, too, is derived from a state-idea, namely, from the idea of a Russian state which should unite all Slavdom, or at least, all of the one-time Empire of Vladimir the Great, under its scepter. In order to attain this end the “Theory of the Unity of the Russian Nation” was formed, as far back as the times of Peter the Great, who transformed the old Muscovite Czar state into an imperial Russian government, and later this doctrine was further developed. According to this theory the Russian nation consists of three tribes: the Great Russians, the Little Russians, and the White Russians, whose tongues differ from one another only dialectically. A common literary language, Russian, connects all the tribes; race, customs, history, political aspirations are the same for all three. Ukraine, Ukrainian, are only local names, which, however, bear a strong taint of separatism, and must, therefore, appear dangerous and inadmissible.

In the spirit of this theory of the unity of the Russian nation, the politics of the Russian state have, for more than two centuries, aimed incessantly to hinder the development of the Ukrainian nation, by means of the most ruthless oppression, and to degrade it to an ethnographic mass which, thru its increasing denationalization, should strengthen the Russian state and support its political expansion.

In a later section we shall be able to follow the individual phases of Russian state politics in regard to the Ukraine. We shall turn, now, to consider the great injury which the Russian unity theory has done to the progress of the Ukrainians as a nation.

The internal injury of the Russian unity theory to the Ukrainian peasantry is comparatively slight. The Ukrainian peasant in Russia is much more highly conscious of his national individuality as opposed to the Russian than as opposed to the Pole. The ethnologic culture of the Ukrainian peasantry is so much higher than that of the Russian, that the Ukrainian looks down with contempt upon the “rough Katzap.” This, as it were, ethnologic feeling of independence has protected the Ukrainian peasantry from Russification, not only within its national territory, but even in its distant Siberian or Turkestan colonies. Only a small part of the so-called village aristocracy, e.g., pensioned soldiers, village mayors, notaries, former city workmen who have learnt some Russian, try to murder the Russian language and to pass for Russians. The same is true of a part of the city proletariat. But the great mass is opposed to the Russian language and customs, and preserves its national individuality unchanged.

Far more serious injuries has the Russian unity theory caused among the upper classes of the Ukrainian nation. For the sake of office, honors and gifts of land, the Ukrainian nobility has, in the last two centuries, permitted itself to be Russified for the most part; likewise a host of government officials, military men, clergymen, etc. In the second half of the 19th Century the Russification of the educated Ukrainian circles has slackened its pace, altho, even now, there are in Russia a great many of the educated Ukrainians by birth who are completely Russified and the worst enemies of their own nation.

The Russian unity theory, in the sixties of the 19th Century, found its way into Austria-Hungary too, and founded the so-called “Russophile Party.” Its educated retainers, with few exceptions, do not even command the Russian language. Nevertheless, they call themselves Russians, propagate “the unity of the Russian People from the Carpathians to the Kamchatka,” and call their Ukrainian mother-tongue “a dialect of the Carpathian herdsmen and swineherds.” They speak and write a remarkable jargon consisting of Ukrainian, Russian and Church-Slavic words (the so-called Yazichiye); only in very recent years have they begun to use a bad Russian. Supported by considerable subsidies of money from Russia, the educated Russophiles are developing an active agitation among the peasants of Eastern Galicia, the Bukowina and Northeastern Hungary. The Russophile peasants of these countries, whose number is insignificant, to be sure, constitute a remarkable type of a seduced mass. They also try to speak the Yazichiye, use the old-fashioned “thousand-year-old” orthography, which is entirely analogous to the Russian and, at least, partly hides the differences between the Ukrainian and Russian languages, live in the illusion that the Czar speaks the same language that they speak, use the Russian national colors, and hate everything Ukrainian with the passion of the renegade.

These internal injuries of the Russian unity theory and the Russophile tide it has created are becoming slighter year by year. Ukrainian national consciousness is continually growing in the masses of the Ukrainian nation, and the Russophile wave would long since have disappeared if it were not for the Russian subsidies, and if certain Polish circles, frightened by the rapid advance of the Ukrainian national idea, were not working with all their might to prevent the fall of Russophilism.

Much more important are the external injuries done to the Ukrainian national idea by the Russian unity theory. They may be expressed in a single sentence: As a result of the absolutism of the Russian unity theory in the history, geography and statistics of Eastern Europe, the civilized world does not know that there exists in Europe a large country which is called “Ukraina,” and that in this country there lives a nation with a separate individuality, a nation of over thirty million souls, which bears the name “Ukrainians.”

It is true that, from time to time, since the beginning of the present century, magazine articles and pamphlets in various leading languages have appeared, which aim to inform the world about the Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. But these journalistic efforts have only an ephemeral value. Politicians only occasionally interest themselves in the Ukrainian question when it is brought to their notice. And scholars, however well-disposed, can not give such publications preference over the official Russian sources.

The young Ukrainian learning has thus far been unable to spread true information on the Ukrainian nation, and to establish the Ukrainian nation in the scientific world as an independent unit among the Slavic nations. Only in the historical field the independent position of the Ukrainians among the nations of Eastern Europe has been demonstrated, thanks to the compositions of a Kostomariv, Antonovich, Drahomaniv, Hrushevsky. In the fields of philology, anthropology, ethnology, ethnography and folk-lore, there are many treatises relating to these sciences, but there is no systematic exposition of the Ukrainian nation as a uniform whole in relation to these branches of science. In the anthropogeographic field the present lines constitute the first effort. In addition, all these treatises have appeared only in Ukrainian or Russian, and, consequently, remain inaccessible to the overwhelming majority of the European world of scholarship.

For these reasons science must depend upon the official statements. The official Russian geography considers the Ukrainians only as one of the three tribes of the unified Russian people. The official Russian statistics report this to the world. Hence, German, French and English geographic science, too, usually accounts for the Ukrainians as Russians. The names Kleinrussen, Petits Russes, Little Russians, do not mean an independent nation, but a tribe of the Russian nation. Such erroneous views may be found in all the general encyclopedias and lexicons, in all handbooks of geography and statistics. The Austro-Hungarian Ukrainians, who are mentioned in the official statistics as Ruthenians, are also to a great extent taken for a part of the Russian people which differs from the mass of Russians only in its Catholic faith, or more remarkably still, for an entirely independent little nation called Ruthenia, and differing both from the Little Russians and the Russians.

The results of such ignorance of the Ukrainian Nation in the scientific world are disastrous for the Ukrainians. Every appearance of the Ukrainians in the political and cultural arena remains enigmatic to the whole world. Enigmatic remains the struggle of the Ukrainians against Russia and particularly against its Russification policy. In case after case it is explained by far-fetched political, social and economic causes, but never by national-cultural reasons. For almost no one in Europe knows that in the Ukraine a great independent nation is struggling for its national life, and not a political or social party for its significance in the state. The struggle of the Austrian Ukrainians against the predominance of the Poles in Galicia seems hardly more reasonable to the foreigner than the striving of the Russian Ukrainians. Most incomprehensible here appears the struggle of the Ukrainians against the Russophile movements. For a long time it was regarded as insincere, or even as non-existing, and this circumstance has brought the Ukrainians innumerable political injuries.

From these briefly stated observations we see what obstacles are impeding the Ukrainians in their efforts to bring their Ukrainian nation to a point where it will be respected as an element of equal worth with the other nations of Europe. The two neighboring nations, the Polish and the Russian, politically and culturally stronger, are trying to divide the Ukrainians between themselves, and are refusing them the right to exist as an independent nation. Against these appetites for conquest the comparatively small army of educated Ukrainians is fighting with might and main, supported semi-consciously by the mass of the Ukrainian People. The Ukrainian peasantry has for centuries defied all attacks upon its ethnographic-national independence. It refuses, even in its most distant Eastern Siberian colonies, to be assimilated by the Russians. This characteristic has made the Ukrainians the subject of a proverb with their Russian neighbors: “Khakhol vsyegda khakhol”—the Ukrainian remains a Ukrainian everywhere.

In the following sections we shall discuss briefly all the foundations of the independence of the Ukrainians as a nation. The chief foundations of an independent nation are, proceeding from the less important to the most important: Independent anthropological characteristics, a distinct, independent language, uniform historico-political traditions and aspirations for the future, an independent culture, and, especially, a compact geographical territory.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE UKRAINIANS

Anthropology is a comparatively recent science. Barely a century has elapsed since the beginning of its serious work. The material thus far collected by anthropological science, while it might seem immense to some, is, nevertheless, still small, and what is even more important, irregular. Concerning some races and peoples the science has many thousands of measurements at its command, while other races and peoples are known from very few measurements. For this reason the science of anthropology is still a long way removed from an exact knowledge and perfect description of different races and peoples. Even in Europe, where anthropological investigations have been based on a study of the greatest number of human individuals, the distribution of various anthropological racial characteristics in different peoples and tribes of the continent were, until recently, very hard to interpret and to understand. It is the pioneer work of investigation of Deniker, Hamy and others, that has made it possible to divide the population of Europe into so-called anthropological races.

Pure-blooded peoples, all of whose individuals possess the same anthropological characteristics, exist nowhere. Hardly in the most inaccessible corners of the globe, are small primitive peoples found who approach the ideal of pure-bloodedness. The great civilized peoples of the earth are all of them more or less heterogeneous peoples, and show no uniform anthropological type. This is true especially of the Western and Central European cultured peoples: French, English, Spanish, Italians, even Germans. Continued commixtures, which can certainly be proved historically, have entirely eradicated the original anthropological characteristics of these civilized nations. No wonder, then, that anthropogeography, in view of these most apparent examples, has almost given up designating anthropological characteristics as the characteristics of nations.

But, in considering an Eastern European nation, such misgivings of anthropogeographical science cannot be justified. Just as the physico-geographic conditions of Western and Central Europe are measured by other standards than those of Eastern Europe, so the anthropogeographical problems of this region, too, must be approached differently. Just as the physico-geographical variety of Western and Central Europe gives way to Eastern European uniformity in Ukrainian territory, so the anthropological variety gives place to greater unity. Vast areas of the Ukraine, even without any great natural hindrance, were always unfavorable to separation into classes, and did not encourage the development of physical differences. And foreign admixtures are almost out of the question. For the foreign peoples which, since the earliest beginnings of history, traversed or even dominated the region of the Ukraine, were first of all too small in number to make any noticeable impression on the anthropological type of the Ukrainians. And, besides that, the foreign races—almost all nomad peoples—came into the land as fierce enemies, with whom there existed no voluntary peaceful relations. For these reasons the Ukrainian nation reveals a much greater uniformity in its anthropological aspect than the nations of Western and Central Europe, which, in the course of history, were visited by innumerable peoples of the most varied anthropological types, who stayed there and were assimilated. If, therefore, in these peoples, anthropological characteristics can have no particular significance, the matter is quite different with the Ukrainians and many other Eastern European nations. Here, anthropological peculiarities still have considerable weight as distinguishing characteristics of nations.

Investigations concerning the anthropology of the Ukrainians began more than half a century ago. But they were made, without any system, in different regions of the great national territory selected, quite without a plan, and for a long time gave no acceptable results. Not until the 20th Century was enough material gathered to at least make it possible to determine the main anthropological type of the Ukrainians. The most important investigators in this field are: Hopernitsky, Protzenko, Welker, Popov, Hilchenko, Krasnov, Petrov, Erckert, Emme, Talko Hrincewich, Diebold, Biloyid, Anuchin, Ivanovsky, Vovk and Rakovsky.

To be sure, according to these investigations, the Ukrainians, too, are anthropologically a mixed race, just as the other nations of Europe. But the formation of this mixed race took place in a very distant prehistoric past and later admixtures have been too insignificant to visibly change the original racial type of the Ukrainians. From the Vislok to the Kuban, from the Pripet to the Black Sea, the Ukrainian people constitute a uniform anthropological type. This type has preserved itself in its purest state in one wide zone which embraces the Ukrainian Carpathian Mountain lands, Pokutye, Podolia, Dnieper Plateau and Dnieper Plain, the Donetz Plateau and the Kuban sub-Caucasus country. Tall stature, with long legs and broad shoulders, strongly pigmented complexion, dark, rich, curly hair, rounded head and long face with a high and broad brow, dark eyes, straight nose, strongly developed elongated lower part of the face, medium mouth and small ears; that is the type. Outside the described main zone of distribution of the Ukrainian racial type, these characteristics become less and less sharply defined, altho at all parts of the ethnographic boundary the anthropological differences of the Ukrainians from their neighbors, especially from the Poles, White Russians and Russians, are very clearly marked.

The mean stature of the Ukrainians is 1670 mm. Consequently the Ukrainians are among the tallest peoples of Europe, and in this respect they surpass their neighboring nations by a great deal. The average height of the White Russians is only 1651 mm., the Poles 1654 mm., the Russian 1657 mm., of 100 individuals among the Ukrainians, 53 are taller than the average, 47 shorter; among the Poles and Russians 51% taller and 49% shorter. Right here we see a great difference between the Ukrainians and their neighbors, as well as a great similarity of these three peoples.

The tall stature of the pure Ukrainian racial type is pretty regular in the above-mentioned main zone. The tallest stature is that of the Kuban Ukrainians of the sub-Caucasus country (1701 mm.). It is due to the fact that the Ukrainians of that region are, to a great extent, descendants of the Zaporog Cossacks, who for centuries represented the flower of the physical power of the Ukrainian people. Barely below that is the stature of the Hutzuls (1693 mm.), of the Podolians, Volhynians and Dnieper dwellers. In Central Galicia, Podlakhia, Polissye, in the Don country, that is in direct proximity to the Poles, White Russians and Russians, the stature of the Ukrainians decreases appreciably. But, even in these border countries, the Ukrainian people form a strong contrast, with their higher stature, to their neighbors, especially to the Russians, with their heavy mixture of the small grown Finnish-Mongolian elements. Anuchin emphasizes expressly that in those parts in any Russian “Government” into which the smallest tip of Ukrainian territory extends, the average height of the recruits is noticeably increased. Because of their fine stature many Ukrainians in Russia are stationed in the regiments of the guard.

In the Ukrainians, the tall slender form is coupled with breadth of shoulders and great chest-measurement. From the material gathered by Ivanosky, it is evident that in this respect the Ukrainians surpass all their neighbors. The average chest-measurement of the Ukrainians is 55.04% of the length of the body, of the Poles 54.11, of the White Russians 53.84, of the Russians only 52.18.

In respect of length of arms and legs, the Ukrainians again occupy an independent position among the nations of Eastern Europe. In the White Russians, the length of the arms is 45.1% of the length of the body, in the Poles and Ukrainians 45.7, in the Russians 46.0. The length of the legs is greatest in the Ukrainians (53.6%), much less in the Poles (52.1) and White Russians (51.7), and least in the Russians (50.5), which again indicates considerable mixture of Finnish-Mongolian blood. (The length of leg of the Mordvines is only 49%, that of the Altaic Tartars 48.6).

The most important anthropological characteristic was for a long time thought to be the shape of the skull. The Ukrainians belong (as do all Slavs, for that matter) to the class of Brachicephalites (short heads). The average skull index in the Ukrainians amounts to 83.2. Among the neighboring peoples, the Poles (82.1) are least short-headed, then follow the Russians, almost the same as the Poles (namely 82.3), and then further away the Ukrainians (83.2). The greatest Brachicephalousness appears in the White Russians (85.1). The height of the skull is greatest in the Ukrainians (70.3), smaller in the Russians (70.1), smallest in the White Russians (66.1).

The skull index of the Ukrainians shows a similar territorial distribution as the stature. The greatest brachicephalousness is found in the Hutzuls; it decreases continually as we go northeast and east, so that in the Don and Kuban region the skull index is smallest. Besides, the shortness of head of the Ukrainians decreases regularly on the Polish and Russian borders, as a result of centuries of proximity. In the Russians the shortness of head is much less marked than in the Ukrainians, because of the Finnish strain, in the Poles because of the commixture with Finns and a primeval European long-headed and light-haired race.

Just as in the shape of the skull, so also in the form of the nose, the Ukrainians reveal distinct differences from their neighbors. In the Ukrainians the nose is usually straight and thin. The nasal index is 67.7, and consequently somewhat greater than in the Poles (66.2). Then follow the Russians (68.5) and the White Russians (69.2).

The width of the face in the Ukrainians is on the average 180, that of the Poles 181, of the Russians 182, of the White Russians 186; the facial index in the Ukrainians 78.1, in the White Russians 76.2, in the Poles 76.3, in the Russians 76.7. Here, too, we note the great difference of the Ukrainians from their neighbors and the similarity of these to one another.

The color of hair and eyes is by far not so sure an anthropological characteristic as the above-mentioned, yet constitutes an important complement. In this respect, too, the position of the Ukrainians among their neighbor nations is just as independent as in regard to the above discussed characteristics. Among the Ukrainians dark shades predominate, so that out of 100 individuals only 29.5% have light hair and eyes, 35% medium color, and 35% dark. In the Russians the percentages run 37% light, 41% medium, 22% dark; in the Poles 35% light, 46% medium and only 19% dark. Thus the light type is much more common in the neighboring races than in the Ukrainians.

In the distribution of color of eyes and hair in the Ukrainians the same territorial law holds as in the distribution of stature and shape of skull. In the main zone of the Ukrainian racial type, but especially in the southwest, the color of hair and eyes is most characteristically represented. Near the Polish, White Russian and Russian borders, the Ukrainian type loses much of its peculiarity.

This short anthropological sketch of the Ukrainians, despite its scanty and general character, enables us to perceive very clearly that the Ukrainians show extremely little anthropological similarity to the Poles, White Russians and Russians. On the other hand, all of these neighboring races of the Ukrainians are very similar, and closely related to each other. The Pole, the White Russian and the Russian, stand very close to one another, while the Ukrainian is very different from all his neighbors and, from an anthropological point of view, holds an entirely independent position.

The vanity of the impression that the Ukrainians are Polonized Russians or Russified Poles, therefore, becomes apparent at once. The “unity theories,” Polish and Russian, which are based on perverted historical and philological phrases, are here opposed by a natural science, with its exact results of investigations.

But anthropology discredits not only these theories which are still dominating European science. Several Polish historians have recently evolved a new theory of the origin of the Ukrainians and spread it thru Europe. According to this theory the Ukrainians are a mixture of Slavs and the Mongolian-Turkish nomad tribes which traversed and commanded the Ukrainian steppes for centuries; they are a semi-nomadic steppe people, incapable of culture, whose development might bring with it the greatest dangers for European civilization.

The science of anthropology, however, robs this theory of its very foundation. The Mongolian-Turkish nomad tribes were almost all distinguished by low stature, short legs, long arms and round heads. The same characteristics should therefore appear very distinctly in the Ukrainian racial type. But the Ukrainians have a higher stature than any of the neighboring peoples, the longest legs, and arms of medium length. And the brachicephalousness of the Ukrainians is least just in the east, where mixing with the Mongolian tribes could proceed most easily.

The anthropological type of the Ukrainians, then, reveals complete individuality as opposed to the Polish, White Russian and Russian type, and betrays no noticeable trace of a Mongolian admixture. The difference of the Ukrainian type from the types of other Eastern Slavs caught the attention of the great geographer, Reclus, in the eighties of the past century. At that time he noticed the closer relationship of the Ukrainians to the Southern Slavs. Toward the end of the 19th Century, Hamy divided all the Slavs into two large groups, a tall brachicephalous group with dark hair, and a short, less brachicephalous group with light hair. In the first group he included the Serbians, Croatians, Slovenes, Czechs and Ukrainians; in the second the Polabians, Poles, White Russians and Russians. A similar division was accepted also by Deniker. According to his view the Ukrainians belong to the so-called Adriatic (Dinaric) Race, while the Poles and the Russians belong to the two closely related races, the Vistula Race and the Oriental Race, respectively. The Adriatic Race has recently come to be considered by many the specifically Slavic Race. However, it has remained comparatively pure only in the case of the Southern Slavs and the Ukrainians, while the Northern Slavic races reveal strong foreign admixtures.

Anthropology shows us, in the Ukrainians, a finely grown, physically sturdy race of men. Another characteristic of the Ukrainian People is its great fecundity. Wherever the Ukrainian People has not yet degenerated thru social pressure and the spread of pauperism, it shows remarkably high birth figures, which, despite the high infant mortality resulting from the low grade of culture, occasion a very rapid increase in population. The birth rate and rate of increase (1900–1904) for the central districts of the Ukraine in European Russia are on the average yearly: Volhynia 4.5% and 2%, Podolia 4.3% and 1.8%, Kiev 4% and 1.4%, Kherson 4.5% and 2%, Tauria 4.2% and 1.9%, Katerinoslav 5.6% and 2.8%, Chernihiv 4.6% and 2%, Poltava 4.3% and 1.9%, Kharkiv 4.9% and 2%. Galicia, in the early years of the century, has had a yearly increase in population of 1.6 to 1.8%. These figures, which are much higher than the corresponding figures in Polish or Russian national territory, constitute one of the less agreeable facts which enable us to look with confidence toward the future of the Ukrainian nation. For the greater increase of the Ukrainians is not due to a higher state of culture of the neighbor nations. The Polish and Russian peasantry is not only not superior to the Ukrainian in respect to culture, but, on the contrary, inferior. The greater increase of the Ukrainians is connected only with their superior racial qualities.

THE UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE

Language is not an absolutely necessary distinguishing characteristic of a nation, as is shown by the examples of the Swiss, the North Americans, and the Spanish and Portuguese daughter-nations in America. If the Ukrainians, determining to be considered an independent nation, had the remaining characteristics of an independent nation, they would certainly be one even if their language were identical with the Russian, White Russian or Polish.

But, in this regard, the Ukrainians are in the favorable position of really calling an independent language their own. To be sure, the opinion has been to a great extent spread thruout Europe that the Ukrainian language is a rural dialect of the Polish language, and official Russia is still encouraging the view that there is only a “Little Russian dialect” of the Russian language; European science and publicism opened the doors to both the above-mentioned unity theories, and the Russian unity theory has become the solely dominating one even in German science.

Slavic philology passes a different judgment. With the exception of a few Pan-Russian philologists (Florinsky, etc.), who, as a matter of fact, are not capable philologists at all, the entire philological profession is decided on the point that the Ukrainian language is related to the Russian and the Polish only to the extent that the Serbian and Bulgarian are, for instance, or the Polish and Czechic. The investigations of Miklosich, Malinovsky, Dahl, Maksimovich, Potebnia, Zitetsky, Ohonovsky, Shakhmatov, Broch, Baudouin de Courtenay, Fortunatov, Korsh, Krimsky, Satotsky, and others, have proved beyond a doubt that the Ukrainian language is not a dialect of the Russian language, but an independent language of equal rank with the Russian. The same opinion has been expressed most forcibly by the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in its famous official decision, “Concerning the Removal of the Restrictions on Little Russian Publications, St. Petersburg, 1905.” The Academy emphasized expressly that the Russian and Ukrainian languages are two independent languages of equal rank. The Russian written language is not built up on a general East Slavic, but only on a Great Russian foundation. Hence, it cannot be forced upon the Ukrainians, since they have a completely developed written language at their command.

It is very likely that, in a far distant prehistoric time, all Eastern Slavic tribes, the ancestors of the present Ukrainians, White Russians and Russians, spoke a common tongue. But soon after the beginnings of historical life in Eastern Europe we see these Slavic races divided lingually into three groups. In the 11th Century, the differences between the language spoken in Kiev or Halich on the one hand, and Vladimir on the Klasma or Sugdal on the other, were already distinct. The political unification of all the Eastern Slavic tribes in the Kiev Empire could not eradicate these differences between North and South, and they are very evident in the literary monuments of that time. The disruption of the Empire of Kiev into loosely connected principalities, the formation of the Muscovite political center, the decline of Kiev—all went to strengthen the lingual antitheses between the ancestors of the Ukrainians and those of the Russians. The Tatar oppression finally separated the Muscovite group permanently from the Ukrainian, forcing each to lead a separate historical life. The Ukraine fell under Lithuanian, then Polish rule; Muscovy gradually developed into the Russian Empire. The differences in language, which in the 14th Century were already appreciable, increased so strongly thru the independent development of each language that in the 18th Century, when Russia received the greatest part of the Ukraine beneath her dominion, the Russian and Ukrainian languages confronted one another as entirely independent languages.

According to the investigations of Stotzky and Gartner, the Ukrainian language, from a philological point of view, is related to the Russian only to about the same extent that it is related to the Polish or Czechic. Of all Slavic languages the nearest to the Ukrainian is the Serbo-Croatian. From this it follows that the Ukrainians must at one time have had a much closer community with the Serbo-Croations than with the Russians.

We see here a fine example of how relationship of languages goes hand in hand with anthropological relationship. (Incidentally, proof is herewith presented that the anthropological characteristics in the peoples of Eastern Europe have an entirely different significance from the same in Western and Central Europe). This coincidence of two sciences, entirely independent of one another, causes the Ukrainians to appear to us a very peculiar independent unit in the Slavic family of races. Only the restriction of the knowledge of Ukrainian among Slavists, the interpretation of Eastern European history always from the Russian point of view, the common church language, which, for a long time, was the basis of the written language as well, the unfortunate confusion due to the name Russ, Russki, which as ancient state designations for the Empire of Kiev were usurped by the Muscovite Empire and applied to all Eastern Slavic nations; these things have made it possible to conceal the real state of affairs from the eyes of European science and have helped establish the Russian unity theory.

That the Ukrainian language is independent and entirely different from Russian or Polish is known to every illiterate peasant from one end of the Ukraine to the other. He does not understand the Pole and the Russian; likewise his language is unintelligible to a Pole or Russian. Polish is the more easily understood by the uneducated Ukrainian, since the living together of the Poles and Ukrainians for centuries in the Polish-Lithuanian state resulted in important influences in both directions, especially in the vocabulary. But Russian, with its strange vocabulary and phonetic character, different manner of word-building, declension and conjugation, is for a Ukrainian a difficult foreign language. How much trouble must the Ukrainian peasantry endure at every step because the unintelligible Russian language is used exclusively in administration, court, school and church! The educated Ukrainian who has been trained in Russian schools has had much trouble to learn his Russian, and he never has so complete a command of it that a Russian could not immediately recognize “the Khakhol in him.” For an educated Ukrainian trained outside of Russia, Russian is as hard to learn, if not more so, than the Polish, Czechic or Serbian. Such obvious facts convince us of the independence of the Ukrainian language, perhaps, more forcibly than the arguments of learned philologists.

The Ukrainian language, like every other great European language, is not uniform. Because of the great extent of the Ukrainian territory and the great population, favorable conditions have always been present for the formation of dialects and idioms. The Ukrainian language has four dialects,—the South Ukrainian, the North Ukrainian, the Galician (Red Ruthenian), and the Carpathian mountain dialect. The South Ukrainian dialect embraces the south of the region of Kiev, Kursk, Voroniz, the entire regions of Poltava, Kharkiv, Kherson, Katerinoslav, Tauria, Don and Kuban. It possesses three idioms;—the northern, which constitutes the basis of the present Ukrainian literary language, the central, and the southern or steppe idiom. The North Ukrainian dialect includes the Chernihov country, the northern part of the Kiev district, Northern Volhynia, the Polissye along the Pripet, and the northern part of the Pidlassye. Its idioms are the Chernihov, the North Ukrainian proper, the Polissian, and the Black Ruthenian. The Galician or Ruthenian dialect takes in: Galicia (outside of the mountains), the Kholm region, Southern Volhynia and Western Podolia, and possesses two idioms,—the Podolian-Volhynian and the Galician (Dniester) idiom. The Carpathian Mountain dialect includes the entire Ukrainian Carpathian country and has four idioms,—the Hutzulian, the Boikish, the Lemko idiom, and the Slovak-Ruthenian border-idiom.

The Ukrainian dialects and idioms differ very little from one another, as indeed is the case with all the dialects and idioms of all the Slavic languages. A comparison of the Ukrainian dialects and idioms with the German, for instance, is entirely impossible. The Kuban Cossack or the Boiko, an Ukrainian inhabitant of Polissye or of Bessarabia, understand one another without the slightest difficulty. Only the Lemko idiom and Ruthenian-Slovak border-idiom show greater differences than other Ukrainian idioms. Beyond that, a great uniformity of language prevails thruout the wide areas of the Ukraine. A popular tale taken on a phonograph in the Kuban sub-Caucasus country is heard with the same understanding in a peasants’ reading society in the neighborhood of Peremishl, as if it came from a neighboring village, instead of a border country of the Ukraine thousands of kilometers distant. The same folk-songs, proverbs and fairy tales are found in Pidlassye and along the Manich, at Chernihiv and Odessa, on the Don and on the Dniester.

The Ukrainian language is distinguished by advantages which insure it a high place among Slavic languages. The great wealth of vowels, the full tone, the softness and flexibility, the transition of many vowels to the i-sound, the absence of the massing of several consonants in one syllable, make Ukrainian the most melodious Slavic language. After the Italian language the Ukrainian is best adapted for singing. Most important, however, is the great richness of the Ukrainian language. This richness is all the more remarkable in that it did not come about thru centuries of development of the language in literature and science. The common people have collected and preserved the treasures of the Ukrainian language. While the vocabulary of an English farmer, according to Ratzel, does not include more than three hundred words, the Ukrainian peasant uses as many thousands. And, incidentally, the purity of the language is remarkable. Barely a few borrowed words have been introduced into the language of the people thru the centuries of contact with neighboring peoples. They disappear entirely amid the wealth of pure Ukrainian words. What interests us geographers and natural scientists most of all is the wonderful wealth of the colloquial language in very striking names for surface forms, natural phenomena, plants and animals. The construction and codification of the Ukrainian terminology of natural sciences and geography was, therefore, very easy. The infant science of the Ukraine possesses a terminology which, for example, far surpasses the Russian.

The most important proofs of the independence of the Ukrainian language are Ukrainian literature and Ukrainian science. The Ukrainian language has given proof, thru its development of a thousand years, that it is capable of giving expression to the loftiest products of human feeling and human intellect.

Ukrainian national literature cannot possibly be compared with the literature of a Provençal or Low German dialect, which represents the daily life of a small group of people. Ukrainian Literature is the versatile literature of a great nation; a literature which looks back upon a history of a thousand years and continues to develop in spite of all obstacles. A strong foundation is furnished it in the remarkably rich, popular poetry, which has not a counterpart in the entire civilized world.

Ukrainian Literature holds a high place among Slavic literatures. Only Russian and Polish Literature surpass it in the number and greatness of their works.

The history of almost a thousand years of Ukrainian Literature begins at the time of the fullest development of the Kiev Empire, when the so-called Chronicle of Nestor originated, the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle, the powerful Epic of Igor and other important monuments of Ukrainian Literature (the works of Ilarion, Serapion, Kirilo Turivsky, etc.). Their language is built up upon the Church-Slavonic dialect, but presents great linguistic departures, as early as the 11th Century, from the literary works simultaneously produced in the Russian territory to the north.

This promising beginning of the old Ukrainian Literature was almost completely crushed by five centuries of Tatar barbarism. The continuous state of war, the loss of their independent political organization, the crushing foreign yoke, permitted only a weak vegetating of Ukrainian Literature for five centuries. Legal, theological, philosophical and polemic literary monuments and the beginnings of the drama, written in a Macaronic language made up of a mixture of Ukrainian and Church-Slavonic, can at the most be considered proof that the educated Ukrainians of that time had too little leisure and opportunity to devote themselves to artistic literature.

But these times of decline of the written literature are at once the times of the greatest flourishing of the unwritten literature of the people. The old pre-christian religious and secular songs and tales were not forgotten, and the active, warlike life of the nation created an immense mass of epic folk-lore dumy, which was sung by by wandering minstrels (kobzar, bandurist). Toward the end of the 18th Century, when the political and national destruction of the Ukrainian nation seemed inevitable, the Ukrainian popular literature reached such a high stage of development that it awoke the educated classes of the nation to new literary life.

Through the introduction of the pure popular speech into Ukrainian Literature (by Kotlarevsky, in 1798), and thru the great influence of the popular literature, the foundation was laid for an unanticipated rise of Ukrainian Literature. In the course of the 19th Century the history of Ukrainian Literature has a number of great poets and prose writers to show, who would be a credit even to the greatest literatures of the world (Shevchenko, Vovchok, Kulish, Fedkovich, Franko, Mirni, Kotsiubinsky, Vinnichenko and others), as well as a considerable number of lesser poets. Great versatility characterizes the works of Ukrainian Literature in the 19th Century, and in the 20th Century its development in all directions is making giant strides.

The second half of the 19th Century was also marked by a very active study of the sciences, leading to the founding of two learned bodies very much along the plan of the so-called “Academies” (in Lemberg and Kiev). In every branch of human knowledge the Ukrainians can already point to publications, books and dissertations in their own language.

The versatility and richness of Ukrainian Literature assure it a prominent place among Slavonic literatures, thus furnishing proof, if any is needed, that the Ukrainian language is not a mere dialect, but a civilized language in every sense of the word; and the testimony of Ukrainian scholarship strengthens the case beyond a doubt. For surely nobody could discuss problems of higher mathematics, biology or geomorphology in a dialect analogous to the Provençal or Low German.

The rise of the Ukrainian literary language from the speech of the common people makes clear that it will be an admirable means of educating the race, in view of its well-known intelligence, into an enlightened and progressive nation. But the Russian government has been thoroughly aware of this, and for fear of national separatism, has left no stone unturned in its efforts to stop the development of Ukrainian Literature and, finally, by the famous ukase of the Czar of the year 1876 has forbidden absolutely the publication of any writings in the Ukrainian language. None but a really living and significant literature could have survived these thirty years (1876–1905) of repression, and Ukrainian Literature has stood the test!

HISTORICO-POLITICAL TRADITIONS AND ASPIRATIONS OF THE UKRAINIANS

Anthropological and lingual distinguishing characteristics are not sufficient to make a race into a nation. An individual nation, whether it be a Staatsnation or a Kulturnation, must have its own historical tradition, its own sacrifices and heroes, its own historical griefs and joys. These are the basis of the united aspiration to an ideal of the future, of that constant plebiscite which E. Renan regards as the thing which makes a race into a nation.

Now it is really the historico-political traditions which are very strongly developed in the Ukrainians. The story of his fatherland, full of the most terrible catastrophes, with the frightful Tatar menace and the oppression enduring for centuries, still lives in the consciousness of even the most uneducated Ukrainian. How few happy moments does the history of the Ukraine present, and yet no people in the world so dearly loves its past and so piously honors its national heroes as the Ukrainian People. And in this connection I do not mean the educated Ukrainians who know the history of their country, but the illiterate peasant, who recalls in his songs the naval expeditions to Constantinople, the old princes of the Kiev dynasty, the hetmans, and the great commanders of the Cossack period.

It is the historico-political tradition, living even in the lowest ranks of the nation, that gives the Ukrainians their most important indications of separate national existence. And, had it not been for the dense ignorance that prevails in Western Europe regarding the history of the eastern half of the continent, and for the advertising carried on to this very day by Russian scholars in behalf of their propaganda for “Russian” history, which has worked its way into all the history books, this real condition of affairs could never have been obscured so long. We shall now attempt to determine the main lines of the Ukrainian historical tradition, basing our exposition on the works of Kostomariv, Antonovich, Drahomaniv, Hrushevsky and others.

The historical life of the Ukrainian Nation has been of an entirely different type from that of the Poles or Russians. Hence, the historical traditions and, consequently, the present political aspirations of the three nations, are entirely different.

The Ukrainian historical tradition has its roots in the ancient Kingdom of Kiev. Altho the historians of Eastern Europe are still undecided as to whether the so-called Old Russian Kingdom was founded by the Varangians in the present Northern Russia, or by the Eastern Slavic tribes of the south in Kiev, I have no doubt that the latter view should be approved. Anthropogeography knows no instance of a pirate band, at most a few thousand strong, which, within a few decades, could constitute a kingdom embracing half a continent. The Normans, to be sure, were able to found governments in Normandy, Naples and Sicily; they were even able to conquer the England of their day and to settle there, because everywhere they could take advantage of already existing state organizations and modify them to suit their purpose. Whenever the state organization was just in its beginnings, as for instance, in their own country, the Normans exhibited no particular capacity for state-organization.

The ancient Kingdom of Kiev, which is called “Old Russian” in all historical works, was a state organized by the southern group of the Eastern Slavic races, particularly the Polan race around Kiev. The tribal chiefs, who had grown rich thru commercial relations with Byzantium, founded the State of Kiev. This government was already in existence in the beginning of the 9th Century. With the aid of mercenaries from Scandinavia (Varangians) who, since the middle of the 9th Century, had been serving in the armies of the princes of Kiev, the Kingdom during the 10th Century gave remarkable evidences of a very unusual activity of expansion. The Northern Slavic tribes, the forbears of the Russians of today, were subjugated, the nomadic tribes of the steppes were driven back, commercial and cultural relations were established with the Byzantine Empire. In the year 988 the Great Prince of Kiev (Vladimir the Great), together with all his peoples accepted Greek Christianity—with Slavic rites. There ensued, especially under his successor, Yaroslav the wise, a great advance in the material and spiritual civilization of the ancient Ukrainians.

The fact that the ancient state of Kiev, as well as its civilization, was produced by the ancient Ukrainians, is evident, not only from the fact that the most ancient literary monuments of Kiev already show specifically Ukrainian peculiarities of language. A still more important piece of evidence is the constitution of the Kingdom of Kiev, which originated thru the amalgamation of the newly organized royal power with the original republican constitution of the Ukrainians.

The ancient clan constitution has been of as fundamental importance for the historico-political tradition of the Ukraine as the Kingdom of Kiev itself.

All the power of government rested originally in the hands of the general assembly of all freemen, whose decrees were executed by elected officials, consisting in part of the war-chieftains (probably the later princes). In the ancient Kingdom of Kiev there was constant opposition between the power of the princes, which originated later and rested on military might, and the power of the clan assembly, sanctioned by long tradition. The Prince, his retainers, and the Boyar nobility, which gradually developed out of the body of retainers, were never liked by the people. The Kingdom of Kiev grew out of the union of trade, and was a union which at that time was necessary. The governmental system established by the princes of the Kiev dynasty, on foreign models, was inherently alien to the original social-political system of the Ukrainian People, so that the amalgamation of these two elements was difficult, in fact, almost impossible.

Altho, as time passed, the General Assembly (viche—a name that is applied to all political assemblies of the Ukrainians to this day) partly regained their former power, and, altho at the same time various provisions of the original constitution sifted into the new governmental organization, monarchy, nevertheless, always remained something extraneous and unpleasant to the people. There is no wonder, therefore, that the State of Kiev never attained a power in keeping with its great territory and population. The people ostensibly supported everything which tended to weaken the power of the government. Thru the entire existence of the ancient Kingdom of Kiev, its Great Princes were forced to wrestle with the Boyar nobility and the people for absolute power. This limitation of the monarchic power turned out to be a disaster for the Kingdom of Kiev. By applying the practice of succession to the throne, in accordance with a principle known as that of “seniority,” there resulted the formation of numerous petty principalities, all rather loosely, perhaps only nominally, subject to the authority of the Great Prince of Kiev. The Boyar caste and the people were very persistent in their labors to aid in the formation and maintenance of these petty principalities thruout the southern portion of the Kingdom of Kiev.

At the same time, it is very probable that if the ancient State of Kiev had survived a longer time, the Ukrainian People would gradually have become accustomed to a constitution founded on caste and privilege. It would also have been possible, as early as the Middle Ages, for the Ukrainian People to attain a constitutional monarchy. But things happened differently.

The Kingdom, weakened by partitions, was soon confronted by a powerful enemy in the young Muscovite State which was formed by the northern petty principalities of the Kingdom. In a series of bloody wars with the Muscovite State, Kiev was so permanently weakened that the headquarters of Ukrainian political life had to be shifted southward, in the 13th Century, to Halich on the Dniester.

Then, the situation of this Kiev country was such as to expose it to continuous invasion on the part of the nomadic warlike tribes which infested the steppes of the Ukraine. But the nation managed to hold them in check during this weary term of warfare. When, however, the hosts of the Mongol potentate, Djingis Khan, appeared in the Pontian steppes, the resources of Kiev and Halich were no longer equal to the pressure. In the three days’ battle on the Kalka (1224) their army was annihilated, and in 1240 the city of Kiev was razed to the ground. The principality (later kingdom) of Halich survived it by almost a century, but could not withstand the continued aggressions of the Tatars on the one side and of the Poles and Lithuanians on the other; in 1340 it was incorporated with Poland by right of succession, and thus ended the first national organization of the Ukrainian People. All the Ukraine, excepting the forest regions in the northwest, had been completely devastated.

The Polish-Lithuanian state treated the Ukraine as conquered territory. Being now dissenters in the midst of a Catholic state, the Ukrainian nobles were limited in their prerogatives, and deserted their faith and their nationality, in order to have a share in the golden freedom of Poland. The burgher class was tyrannized (as was the practice all over Poland); the peasant became a serf. The splendid task of an ecclesiastical union with Rome was solved (Florence, 1439; Brest 1596) in an unsatisfactory manner and bore little fruit at the time. Every Ukrainian was made to feel the iron hand of the Polish government, and their dissatisfaction expressed itself in numerous rebellions. And yet the Polish-Lithuanian State was far too weak to protect the Ukraine against the onslaughts of the Tatars. Every year these hordes of riders sallied forth from the Crimea, pushing their invasions even as far as Galicia and Volhynia, devastating the country and depopulating it by seizures of slaves, conducted according to a systematic plan. The victims of this slave trade filled the markets of the Orient for centuries.

It was inevitable that this sorely-tried nation should take steps to defend itself. And its efforts were successful in that they led to the formation of a new independent state, but unsuccessful in that they exhausted its resources and later had a tragical outcome.

The constant state of warfare on the Tatar border forced the Ukrainian population in those parts to adopt a policy of continual “Preparedness.” These fighting people of the marshes led a precarious life, but they had access to the virgin lands of the borders with all their natural treasures, and the exploiting Polish officials did not dare venture forth into these dangerous districts. These armed farmers, hunters and fishermen led an independent life and called themselves Cossacks, i.e., “free warriors.”

In the 16th Century there arose among these Ukrainian Cossacks a military state organization, the center of which was a strongly fortified position below the rapids of the Dnieper (the Zaporog Sich). The Zaporog warrior state, compared by some to a religious order of knights (because of their compulsory celibacy and their wars against unbelievers), by others to a communistic republic, shows us most clearly what has always been the goal of the Ukrainian “political idea.” In the Zaporog organization, absolute equality of all citizens in all political and social rights prevailed above all else. All authority was vested in the General Assembly of all the Zaporogs, and their decisions were enforced by elective officers who were, at the same time, officers of the army. The liberty of the individual was very great, but had to yield to the will of the whole. And when, in time of war, the General Assembly delegated unlimited dictatorial power to the highest official, the Hetman, it gave him a degree of authority with which the power of any one of the absolute rulers of Europe at the time could not be compared.

In the aristocratic state organization of Poland there was no room for such a lawless democratic state as that of the Zaporogs was in Polish eyes. The entire Ukrainian nation regarded the Zaporog Cossacks as their natural defenders against the terrible Tatar peril, and likewise as their sole hope as opposed to the oppression practiced by the Poles. An ominous discontent prevailed thruout the Ukraine, and after the Poles had naturally taken severe measures, a number of Cossack revolts occurred in rapid succession, beginning toward the end of the 16th Century and filling the first half of the 17th. In these revolts the Cossacks were supported by the oppressed peasantry. But the Polish Kingdom was rather deficient, always, as far as its standing army was concerned, and was obliged to appeal to the Ukrainian Cossack organization, which it could not possibly destroy, to aid in its wars against the Turks, the Russians and the Swedes.

Finally, in 1648, the Ukrainian Cossacks, aided by the entire people, from the Dnieper to the San, raised the standard of rebellion, and under the leadership of Bohdan Khmelnitsky, succeeded in annihilating the Polish armies. Thus the Ukrainian Nation fought for and won its independence again after three hundred years of a foreign yoke.

Khmelnitsky, after his victory over the Poles, extended the Cossack organization beyond the narrow bounds of the Zaporoze, over the entire huge area of the Ukraine.

Surrounded by enemies on all sides, the new state needed calm and quiet to enable it to achieve the necessary internal organization. Much time was needed to organize the new order completely in so enormous a country, to bring to a successful conclusion the fight against the Polish social-political order, which had prevailed here so long and was so different from the Ukrainian. It required much time to work out new constitutional forms, which were inevitable, now that the Zaporog organization was extended over great areas. Khmelnitsky negotiated with all the surrounding governments and peoples, with the Poles, the Transylvanians, the Swedes, the Turks, and finally, in 1654, concluded the treaty of Pereyaslav with Russia, with which they were related by ties of religion. This treaty provided that the Ukraine should retain a complete autonomy, as well as their Cossack organization, the latter under the suzerainty of the Czar. The Hetman, who was to be elected by the votes of the General Assembly, was even to retain the right of conducting an independent foreign policy.

But Russia had no mind to respect the treaty that bound it in dual alliance with the warlike Ukrainian nation. The democratic form of government in the Ukraine was an abomination to Russia, just as it was to aristocratic Poland.

Once the Cossack republic was under the control of Moscow, the Russian government felt that not a stone must be left unturned to destroy this dangerous national organism. Taking advantage of the untimely death of Khmelnitsky (1657), and the incompetence of his immediate successors, Russia began her political machinations in the Ukraine. The Cossack generals were inspired with prejudice against the Hetman, the common Cossacks against their superior officers, and the common people against all who were wealthy and in authority; huge sums of money were spent, successfully, and vast tracts of land granted as fiefs; and Russia thus fished in troubled waters to very good advantage. At every successive election of a new Hetman the autonomy of the Ukraine was cut down, and in the Peace of Andrussovo (1667) with Poland, the country was partitioned. Of the two sections, one, that nearest to Poland, which had been dreadfully devastated and depopulated, was ceded to that country, and this section very soon lost its Ukrainian form of government and its Cossack organization. The section on the other side, the left side, east of the Dnieper, under its dashing Hetman, Mazeppa, made an effort, during the Scandinavian War, to throw off the Russian yoke. Mazeppa made an alliance with Charles XII of Sweden. But the Battle of Poltava (1709) buried all his hopes. He had to flee to Turkey with Charles XII, and the Ukrainian rebellion was put down by Peter the Great with the most frightful atrocities, and finally the guaranteed autonomy of the Ukraine was abolished. To be sure, the title of Hetman was again introduced after the death of Peter the Great, but it had only a wretched semblance of life. Even this shadow of autonomy was destroyed in 1764; in 1775 the last bulwark of the Ukraine, the Zaporog Sich, fell into the hands of the Russians thru treachery, and was destroyed by them. The peasants became serfs.

Russia thus succeeded, in the course of about a century and a half, in completely wiping out the later, second Ukrainian state. The devious policy Russia was simultaneously carrying on in Poland, led also to the latter’s downfall. In the successive partitions of Poland (1772–1795), the entire part of that nation which was inhabited by Ukrainians, with the exception of Eastern Galicia and the Bukowina, which fell to Austria, became the property of Russia.

But Russia was not satisfied with political domination alone. Russia already understood, in the 17th Century, that the Ukrainians differed entirely from the Russians in language, customs and views of life. The Russian government, therefore, inaugurated a policy of rigid repression of all these points of difference. As early as 1680 it prohibited any use of the Ukrainian language in ecclesiastical literature. In 1720, the printing of any Ukrainian books at all was forbidden. All Ukrainian schools were closed. In the middle of the 18th Century there were, in the province of Chernihov, 866 schools that had been founded during the period of Ukrainian autonomy; sixty years later not one of these was in existence. This, together with the attempt to introduce the Russian language, which none of them understands, is the cause of the overwhelming percentage of analphabets among the Ukrainians. The Ukrainian orthodox church, which enjoyed absolute autonomy, with a sort of loose subordination to the Patriarch of Constantinople, was made subject to the Patriarch of Moscow (later to the Holy Synod) and became completely Russified. The Greek-United faith, which had many adherents in the Western Ukraine, was completely suppressed by the Russian government, and all who confessed it were obliged, by the most terrible persecutions, to “return to the orthodox belief.” The Ukrainian people became completely estranged from their former national church, which now is a tool wielded for purposes of Russification.

The bloody wars for independence which the Ukrainian nation waged against Poland and Russia consequently brought no realization of its political ideals of liberty, equality, and a constitutional, democratic form of government. Instead came a terrible political, social and national oppression, which threatened to bring about the downfall of the tortured nation.

But the Russification of the Ukraine seemed to be making very little headway. To be sure, many educated Ukrainians, for the sake of personal advantage or for other considerations, did renounce their nationality, and some in fact, like Gogol, became great lights of Russian Literature. Yet there always remained the feeling of national independence, together with a living historical tradition, which continued to groan despite all obstacles. The rise of Ukrainian Literature did most to aid this great movement.

The idea of working for national independence was revived first in the Russian Ukraine, and found its logical starting point in the tradition of the one-time autonomy of the country. As early as the forties of the 19th Century, the national ideology of the modern Ukrainian movement was complete in all essential respects. It then made its way very rapidly to the Austrian Ukraine, and Galicia, particularly, soon became a national Piedmont to the Ukrainian people, who were so ruthlessly oppressed in Russia.

The present-day political efforts of the Ukrainian nation are a direct continuation of the former efforts, and a logical result of the historical tradition of the Ukraine. The ideal of these efforts was, and is, liberty and equality and the participation of all in government and legislation. Not until the present time has this ideal ceased to be an anachronism; only the present has opened to the Ukrainian nation a field of political activity; only in the present have these forms of political life, which the Ukrainian nation strove for, without success, so many centuries, become the common possession of the entire civilized world. Hence, we may look with confidence toward the future. Now, at last, the times have come in which the Ukrainian nation may freely develop its political life; the times in which the political ideals which have been sacred to this nation for centuries, have become the common goal of civilized humanity.

The idea of the revival of the Ukrainian state developed gradually from a movement with modest aims to one of larger aims. It was generally recognized that the free development of the Ukrainian Nation could take place only outside of Russia. Hence, in the 20th Century, an independent democratic Ukraine, enclosed in its ethnographic boundaries, became the highest national ideal. Toward this goal all political parties of the Ukraine are striving today. The path leading to this goal is the fight for the autonomy of the Ukrainian territory in the frame of the states dominating it. In Russia, the efforts of the Ukrainians are almost hopeless. On the other hand, the Ukrainians place much hope in Austria, who has afforded her Ukrainians opportunities for political and cultural development.

The historico-political traditions of the Ukrainians are entirely different from those of the nations adjacent to them. The Polish tradition is a tradition of a one-time great kingdom, which was probably built up upon a local constitution similar to that of the oldest Ukrainian State. But fate permitted Poland to live thru the sorrowful period of partitions and civil wars, while, at the same time, the old Kingdom of Kiev was destroyed by the Mongols. Poland consolidated into a strong united kingdom, western influences destroyed the old local constitution entirely, the common people became serfs, and the classes of the aristocracy, nobility and bourgeoisie were formed. Thru wars, and particularly thru its union with Lithuania, Poland increased considerably in size, for a time including almost the entire bridge of land between the Baltic and the Black Seas, and, in the 15th Century, became the most powerful state of Eastern Europe. At that time the Poles became the dominant race over the Lithuanians, White Russians, and Ukrainians. The entire ideology of the dominant caste became a characteristic of the Poles. In this very property of a ruling people lies the basis of the aristocratic nature of the historico-political tradition of the Poles. This aristocratic quality has a more important foundation in the historical development of Polish society. The middle class in Poland declined very rapidly, and the nobility and the magnates dominated the entire political, social and intellectual life of the country, so that Polish society, in the last centuries of the existence of the Polish kingdom, was purely aristocratic, and was supported on the backs of the completely submerged peasant and middle classes. Even tho, in the patrician republic, when the power of the kings was extremely limited, mobocracy or even anarchy very often prevailed, these forms also were aristocratic. This aristocratic tradition is responsible for the fact that democratic currents still find little encouragement among the Poles. Even the social democrats are obsessed with the Great-Polish state-idea.

From these facts, we perceive that the historico-political traditions of the Poles are entirely different from those of the Ukrainians. Just as great is the difference in their present aspirations. The Poles, with an endurance that is worthy of admiration, and awakens universal sympathy, are striving for the reorganization of their independent state. But not with ethnographic boundaries like the Ukrainians, but with ancient historical boundaries from the Baltic to the Dnieper and the Black Sea. To attain this goal, the Poles are trying, above all, to hinder the adjacent peoples, the Lithuanians, White Russians and Ukrainians, in their national progress, and, whenever possible, to assimilate them. These efforts are responsible for the very sharp conflicts of the present day between the one-time rulers and their one-time subjects.

The Russian historico-political traditions are quite as different from and as opposed to those of the Ukrainians as the Polish, but in another direction. The Muscovite State was created out of the petty principalities which the ancient Kiev dynasty had founded among the Eastern Slavic races and the Finnish tribes of the north. From the blending of the Slavs and the Finns came the foundation of the present Russian or Great Russian (Muscovite) Nation. The name “Russian” was derived from the name of the dynasty. But the state was in reality simply Muscovite, for the Muscovite people gave this state a substance which was entirely different from the substance of the old Kingdom of Kiev. As early as the 12th Century we observe the Muscovite people striving for centralization and absolute power for the princes in their state. It was to the advantage of the prince to undermine the influence of the Boyar nobility and the clergy, and to attain absolute or even despotic power in the state. Not equal rights and liberty for all citizens as with the Ukrainians, or for certain classes as with the Poles, but the despotic authority of the Great Prince (later Czar), is the basis of the historico-political tradition of the Russian people. The absolute power of the ruler, that everlasting bugbear of the Poles and Ukrainians, becomes a sacred object to the Russian nation, and makes it possible for them to establish a Russian Empire which devours Poland and the Ukraine. For a comparison of the three adjacent states, the second half of the 16th Century affords the best illustration. At the same time that the radical-democratic Cossack republic originated in the Ukraine, and Poland was a paradise of golden freedom for the aristocrats and the nobility, with a powerless kingship and a suppressed people, we witness in Russia the bloody orgies of the despotism of Ivan the Terrible.

The historico-political tradition of the Russian people places the Czar only slightly below God. The entire people, without class distinction, are slaves (kholopi) of the Czar, his property. The individual counts for nothing; everything must be sacrificed to the general good, which is embodied in the Czar. The reforms of Peter the Great, altho they gave Russia the external appearance of a civilized state, had no significance for the historico-political tradition of Russia. At most, they even strengthened the prestige of the absolute rule of the Czar, thru arguments repeated after the Western European absolutism. Even the Russian revolution of 1905 could not weaken this historico-political tradition. At best the revolution undermined its significance in some spheres of the Russian intelligenzia (numerically small). And, even in these spheres, it meant only the modification of the authority for which the Russian national spirit retains an immutable respect.

The present-day aspirations of the Russian Nation are hardly definite in their outlines. Nevertheless, it can already be clearly seen that they will follow the beaten path of the century-old tradition. The greatest possible expansion and strengthening of the Empire and the assimilation of all foreign peoples (including the Ukrainians too), will constitute the main substance of these aspirations. The Muscovite world has always been extremely intolerant of divergencies in faith, language and customs. This intolerance has always existed, and always will exist, even tho it may sometimes conceal itself behind a very cleverly adjusted mantle of commonplaces.

UKRAINIAN CULTURE

When we speak of culture as a distinguishing mark of a specific nation, we mean, of course, not culture in the widest sense of the word, but those well-known cultural peculiarities which characterise every European nation.

The Ukraine lies wholly within the confines of the greater European cultural community. But its distance from the great culture-centers of Western and Central Europe has, of course, not been without profound effect. The Ukraine is at a low stage of culture, and must be measured by Eastern European standards.

The Ukraine, which in the 11th Century caused great astonishment among travelers from Western Europe, because of its comparatively high culture, can now be counted only as one of the semi-cultural countries of Europe. The very low stage of material culture, to which the economic conditions of the country bear the best witness, is characteristic of the Ukraine in its entire extent. The intellectual culture of the people appears frightfully low. The number who know how to read are 172 out of a thousand in Volhynia, 155 in Podolia, 181 in Kiev, 259 in Kherson, 184 in Chernihiv, 169 in Poltava, 168 in Kharkiv, 215 in Katerinoslav, 279 in Tauria, and 168 in Kuban. These hopeless figures, to be sure, are only a result of the exclusive use of the Russian language, which is unintelligible to the Ukrainians, in all the schools. Even in the first school-year, it is not permitted to explain the most unintelligible words of the foreign language in Ukrainian. This frightfully low grade of education of the people permits of no progress in the economic life of the country. Even the most well-meaning efforts of the government or the Zemstvo, break on the brazen wall of illiteracy and ignorance of the Russian language. And Ukrainian books of instruction and information are forbidden as dangerous to the state. No wonder, then, that the Ukrainian farmer tills his field, raises his cattle, carries on his home industries, cures his ills, etc., just as his forefathers used to do. There is a small number of the educated who are still cultivating literature and art, feebly enough for the size of the nation—but how could one speak of a distinct, independent culture here?

And yet it exists. For the low stage of culture which every foreign tourist, who only knows the railroads and cities, immediately notices, applies only to the culture created in the Ukraine by the ruling foreign peoples, together with the small mass of Ukrainian intelligenzia. (The intellectual culture of the Ukrainian educated classes will be discussed later). In the same way, every hasty observer would consider the Ukrainian peasant as a semi-European, standing on a very low level of culture. And yet this illiterate peasant possesses an individual popular culture, far exceeding the popular cultures of the Poles, Russians and White Russians. The settlements, buildings, costumes, the nourishment and mode of life of the Ukrainian peasant stand much higher than those of the Russian, White Russian and Polish peasant. Hence, the Ukrainian peasant easily and completely assimilates all peasant settlers in his own land. The rich ethnological life, the unwritten popular literature and popular music which, perhaps, have no counterpart in Europe, the highly developed popular art and standard of living, preserve the Ukrainian peasant from denationalization, even in his most distant colonies. The power of opposition to Russification is particularly great. The Ukrainian peasant never enters into mixed marriages with the Russian muzhik, and hardly ever lives in the same village with him. The ethnological culture of the Ukrainian people is, by all means, original and peculiar; entirely different from the popular cultures of all the neighboring peoples.

Even in prehistoric times, Ukrainian territory was the seat of a very high culture, the remains of which, now brought to light, astonish the investigator thru their loftiness and beauty. In ancient times the early Greek cultural influences flourished in the Southern Ukraine, then the Roman, and in the Middle Ages the Byzantine. Byzantine culture had a great influence upon ancient Ukrainian culture, and its traces may still be seen in the popular costume and in ornamentation.

The most important element in Ukrainian culture, however, is entirely peculiar, and independent of these influences. The entire view of life of the common man, to this day, has its roots in the pre-Christian culture of the ancient Ukraine. The entire creative faculty of the spirit of the nation has its source there; all the customs and manners and very many of the songs and sayings. Christianity did not destroy the old view of life in the Ukraine, but was adapted to it. This accommodation was all the easier, because the character of the ancient faith and philosophy of life of the Ukrainian people were not so gloomy and cruel as was the case with many of the other peoples of Europe.

Outside of the prehistoric, Byzantine and Christian body of culture, we observe extremely few foreign influences in the popular culture of the Ukraine. It is highly independent and individualized. The Polish and Muscovite influences are very insignificant, and appear only here and there in the borderlands of the Ukraine.

It would require the giving of a detailed ethnological description of the Ukrainian people if we wished to draw a complete picture of its peculiar culture. Such a description has no place in geography, and certainly none in a book of such general nature as this. Therefore, I shall discuss but briefly the various phases of the popular culture of the Ukraine, so that in this respect, too, the independent position of the Ukrainians among the peoples of Eastern Europe may appear in the proper light.

The Ukrainian villages (with the exception of the mountain villages, which consist of a long irregular line of farms) are always built picturesquely, in pretty places. The huts of a typical Ukrainian village are always surrounded by orchards, which is hardly ever the case among the Russians and White Russians, and very rarely so among the Poles. These neighbors of the Ukrainians plant orchards only in the few regions where professional fruit-growing has developed. In a Ukrainian village, the green of the orchards is considered absolutely necessary. The Russian will not endure trees in the neighborhood of his hut; they obstruct his view. In the Ukraine an orchard is an indispensable constituent part of even the poorest peasant homestead. And the separate farms, in which very much of the spirit of the glorious national past still lives, are hidden in the fresh green of fruit orchards and apiaries.

The Ukrainian house is built of wood only in the mountains and other wooded areas. In all other regions it is made of clay and covered with straw. The front windows are always built facing the south. In this way, different sides of the houses face the street, and in general, too, street life does not play so important a part in a Ukrainian village as it does in Polish, White Russian or Russian villages. The Ukrainian houses are always well fenced in, altho not so strongly and so high as the Russian houses in the forest zone, or as the White Russian houses. They usually stand (except in Western Podolia) rather far apart. Thus, the danger of fire is less than in the Russian villages of the Chornozyom region, where the huts lie very close together. As a result, the insurance companies, for instance, charge smaller premiums in the Governments of Kursk and Voroniz for insuring Ukrainian village properties than for Russian.

The general external appearance of the Ukrainian huts, which are always well whitewashed and have flower gardens before the windows, is very picturesque, and contrasts to advantage with the dwellings of the neighboring races, especially the miserable and dirty Russian “izbas.” All the houses of the Ukrainians, excepting, of course, the poorest huts, are divided by a vestibule into two parts. The division into two we do not find in the typical huts of the Poles and White Russians. A further characteristic in which the Ukrainian house differs from the houses of the neighboring peoples, is its comparative cleanliness. Particularly does it differ in this respect from the Russian izbas, which are regularly full of various insects and parasites, where sheep and pigs, and, in winter, even the large cattle, live comfortably together with the human inhabitants. The well-known authority on the Russian village, Novikov, relates a very characteristic little story in this connection. Several Russian families settled in a Ukrainian village. Naturally, cattle were kept in the living room. And when the Ukrainian village elders expressly forbade the keeping of cattle in the huts, the Russians moved out, because they could not become accustomed to the Ukrainian orderliness. It happens very seldom that the Russians live together with the Ukrainians in one and the same village. In such a case, the Russian part of the village lies separate, on the other side of a ravine, a creek, or a rivulet. In the regions of mixed nationality we see, adjoining one another, purely Ukrainian and purely Russian villages.

The interior arrangement of the houses and the arrangement of the barnyard differentiate the Ukrainian very sharply from his neighbor. Still more decidedly does he show his individuality in his dress. The mode of dress is quite varied thruout the great area of the Ukraine, and yet we observe everywhere a distinctness of type and individuality as opposed to the dress of neighboring peoples. Only the dress of the Polissye people bears some trace of White Russian influence, on the western border of Polish influence, in Kuban of Caucasian influence (Russian influence appears nowhere). But all these influences are slight. Ukrainian dress is always original and esthetic. No one can wonder, therefore, that the Ukrainian costume is surviving longer than the Polish, White Russian and Russian, and is giving way very slowly to the costume of the cities.

The description of even the main types of Ukrainian costume would take us too far afield; similarly, we cannot discuss the diet of the people in detail, altho in this respect, too, the Ukrainian race retains its definite individuality, those cases excepted, of course, in which economic strain forces the people to be satisfied with “international” potatoes and bread.

We now come to the intellectual culture of the Ukrainian people. If the material culture of the Ukrainians, despite its originality and independence is not at a strikingly higher level than that of the neighboring peoples, the intellectual culture of the Ukrainian people certainly far outstrips all the others.

The Ukrainian peasant is distinguished, above all, by his earnest and sedate appearance. Beside the lively Pole and the active Russian, the Ukrainian seems slow, even lazy. This characteristic, which is in part only superficial, comes from the general view of life of the Ukrainians. According to the view of the Ukrainian, life is not merely a terrible struggle for existence, opposing man to hard necessity at every turn; life, in itself, is the object of contemplation, life affords possibilities for pleasure and feeling, life is beautiful, and its esthetic aspect must, at all times and in all places, be highly respected. We find a similar view among the peoples of antiquity. In the present time, this view is very unpractical for nations with wide spheres of activity. At all events this characteristic of the Ukrainian people is the sign of an old, lofty, individual culture, and here, too, is the origin of the noted “aristocratic democracy” of the Ukrainians. Other foundations of the individuality of the Ukrainian are the results of the gloomy historical past of the nation. It is the origin, first of all, of the generally melancholy individuality, taciturnity, suspicion, scepticism, and even a certain indifference to daily life. The ultimate foundations of the individualism of the Ukrainian are derived from his historico-political traditions; preference for extreme individualism, liberty, equality and popular government. Proceeding from these fundamentals, all the typical characteristics of the Ukrainians may be logically explained with ease.

The family relations reflect the peculiarity of the Ukrainian people very clearly. The comparatively high ancient culture, coupled with individualism and a love of liberty, does not permit the development of absolute power in the head of the family (as is the case among the Poles and Russians). Likewise the position of woman is much higher in the Ukrainian people than in the Polish or Russian. In innumerable cases the woman is the real head of the household. Far less often does this state of affairs occur among the Poles, and only by exception among the Russians. A daughter is never married off against her will among the Ukrainians; she has human rights in the matter. Among the Russians, this business is in the hands of the father, who takes the so-called kladka for his daughter, that is, he sells her to whomever he pleases. Grown sons among the Ukrainians, as soon as they are married, are presented by their fathers with a house and an independent farm. The dwelling under one roof of a composite family (a family clan), as is usual among the Russians, is almost impossible among the Ukrainians, and is of exceedingly rare occurrence. The father has no absolute power in this case (as among the Russians) to prevent discord in the family.

It is part of the peculiarity of the Ukrainians that they seldom form friendships, but these are all the more lasting, altho reserved and rarely intimate. The Russians make friends among one another very easily, but they separate very easily, too, and become violent enemies. The Poles form close friendships easily and are true friends, too. Enmity is terrible among the Russians; among the Poles and Ukrainians it is less bitter, and is, moreover, less lasting. The capacity for association is very considerable in the Ukrainians. All such association is based on complete equality in the division of labor and profit. A foreman is elected and his orders are obeyed, but he receives an equal share of the profits and works together with the rest. Among the Russians, the bolshak selects his workmen himself, does not work, and is simply an overseer. Still he receives the greatest part of the profits, Among the Poles the capacity for association is but slightly developed.

At this juncture we may also discuss the relation of the Ukrainians to their communities. The Ukrainian community (hromada) is a voluntary union of freemen for the sake of common safety and the general good. Beyond this purpose the Ukrainian hromada possesses no power, for it might limit the individual desires of some one of the hromada members. For this reason, for example, common ownership of land which has been introduced, following the Russian model, chiefly in the left half of the Ukraine, is an abomination in the eyes of the Ukrainian people, and is ruining them, economically, to a much greater extent than the division of the land in the case of individual ownership. The Russian “mir” is something entirely different. It is a miniature absolute state, altho it appears in the garb of a communistic republic. The mir is completely a part of the Russian national spirit, and the Russian muzhik obeys the will of the mir unquestioningly, altho its will enslaves his own.

The general relation to other people has become a matter of fixed form to the Ukrainians; a form developed in the course of centuries. The ancient culture and the individualistic cult have produced social forms among the Ukrainian peasantry which sometimes remind one of ancient court-forms. The proximity and influence of cities and other centers of “culture” have, to a great extent, spoiled this peasant ceremonial. But in certain large areas of the Ukraine it may still be observed in its full development. Great delicacy, courtesy and attention to others, coupled with unselfish hospitality, these are the general substance of the social forms of our peasants. These social forms are entirely different from the rough manners of the Polish or Muscovite peasants, which, in addition, have been spoiled by the demoralizing influence of the cities.

The relation of the Ukrainian people to religion is also original and entirely different from that of all the adjacent nations. To the Ukrainian, the essence of his faith, its ethical substance, is the important factor. This he feels deeply and respects in himself and others. Dogmas and rites are less significant in the Ukrainian’s conception of religion. Hence, despite differences in faith, not the slightest disharmony exists between the great mass of the orthodox Ukrainians of Russia and the Bukowina, and the 4,000,000 Greek-Catholic Ukrainians of Galicia and Hungary. From the ancient culture and consideration of the individual comes, also, the great tolerance of the Ukrainians toward other religions, a tolerance which we do not find among the Poles and Russians. The spirit of the Ukrainians has, likewise, been very indifferent toward all sects and roskols. Among the Poles, sects flourished very luxuriantly in the 16th Century; among the Russians, there are to this day any number of sects, often very curious ones, and more are constantly arising. Among the Ukrainians, a single sect has been formed, the so-called stunda (a sort of Baptist creed). This sect is not the result of rite formalism, however, but merely an effect of the Russification of the Ukrainian national church. In order to be able to pray to God in their mother-tongue, more than a million of the Ukrainian peasantry is persevering in this faith, which came over from adjacent German colonies, despite harsh persecution on the part of the Russian clergy and government.

The worth of Ukrainian culture appears, in its most beautiful and its highest form, in the unwritten literature of the people. The philosophical feeling of the Ukrainian people finds expression in thousands and thousands of pregnant proverbs and parables, the like of which we do not find even in the most advanced nations of Europe. They reflect the great soul of the Ukrainian people and its worldly wisdom. But the national genius of the Ukrainians has risen to the greatest height in their popular poetry. Neither the Russian nor the Polish popular poetry can bear comparison with the Ukrainian. Beginning with the historical epics (dumy) and the extremely ancient and yet living songs of worship, as for example, Christmas songs (kolady), New Years’ songs (shchedrivki), spring songs (vessilni), harvest songs (obzinkovi), down to the little songs for particular occasions (e.g. shumki, kozachki, kolomiyki), we find in all the productions of Ukrainian popular epic and lyric poetry, a rich content and a great perfection of form. In all of it the sympathy for nature, spiritualization of nature, and a lively comprehension of her moods, is superb; in all of it we find a fantastic but warm dreaminess; in all of it we find the glorification of the loftiest and purest feelings of the human soul. A glowing love of country reveals itself to us everywhere, but particularly in innumerable Cossack songs, a heartrending longing for a glorious past, a glorification, altho not without criticism, of their heroes. In their love-songs we find not a trace of sexuality; not the physical, but the spiritual beauty of woman is glorified above all. Even in jesting songs, and further, even in ribald songs, there is a great deal of anacreontic grace. And, at the same time, what beauty of diction, what wonderful agreement of content and form! No one would believe that this neglected, and for so many centuries, suppressed and tormented people could scatter so many pearls of true poetic inspiration thru its unhappy land.

This peculiarity of the poetical creative spirit enables us, just as do the other elements of culture, to recognize the vast difference between the Ukrainian and the Russian people. The Russian folk songs are smaller in number and variety, form and content. Sympathetic appreciation of nature is scant. The imagination either rises to supernatural heights or sinks to mere trifling. Criminal monstrosities and the spirit of destruction are glorified as objects of national worship. The conception of love is sensual, the jesting and ribald songs disgusting.

Like their popular poetry, the popular music of the Ukrainians far surpasses the popular music of the neighboring peoples, and differs from them very noticeably. Polish popular music is just as poor as Polish popular poetry, and almost thruout possesses a cheerful major character. Russian popular music has many minor elements in addition to the major elements. But the Russian popular melodies are quite different from the Ukrainian. They are either boisterously joyous or hopelessly sad. The differences in the character of the melodies are so great that one need not be a specialist to be able to tell at once whether a melody is Ukrainian or Russian.

Popular art, in our people, is entirely original and much more highly advanced than in the neighboring peoples. The remains of the ancient popular painting are still in existence in the left half of the Ukraine. Wood carving has developed to a highly artistic form among the Hutzuls (there are the well-known peasant-artists Shkriblak, Mehedinyuk, and others). The chief field of Ukrainian popular art, however, is decoration. Two fundamental types are used; a geometric pattern with the crossing of straight and broken lines, and a natural pattern, which is modelled after parts of plants (as leaves, flowers, etc.). In the embroideries, cloths and glass bead-work, we find such an esthetic play of colors, that even tho each individual color is glaring, the whole has a very picturesque and harmonious effect. The decorative art of the Russians is much lower. It is based on animal motifs or entire objects, e.g., whole plants, houses, etc., and evinces an outspoken preference for glaring colors, which are so combined, however, as to shock the eye. Among the Poles, the art of ornamentation is very slightly developed. As for colors, they prefer the gaudy, not many at a time; usually, blue is combined with bright red.

For the sake of completeness, we must still say something about Ukrainian manners and customs. In this aspect, too, the Ukrainian peasantry is richer than its neighbors. Only the White Russians are not far behind them. The entire life of a Ukrainian peasant, in itself full of need and poverty, is, nevertheless, full of poetic and deeply significant usages and customs, from the cradle to the grave. Birth, christening, marriage, death, all are combined with various symbolic usages, particularly the wedding, so rich in ceremonies and songs, so different in its entire substance from the Russian or Polish. The entire year of the Ukrainian constitutes one great cycle of holidays, with which a host of ceremonies are connected, most of which have come down from pre-Christian times. We find similar ceremonies among the White Russians, some also among the Poles, e.g., Christmas songs, songs of the seasons, but among the Russians, on the other hand, we find no parallel to the Ukrainian conditions. Among the Russians, neither the Christmas songs (kolady) are customary, nor the ceremonies of Christmas eve (bohata kutya), neither the midwinter festival (shchedri vechir), with its songs (shchedrivki), nor the spring holidays (yur russalchin velikden) and spring songs (vesnianki), nor the feast of the solstice (kupalo), nor the autumn ceremonies on the feast-days of St. Andrew or St. Katherine, etc. The entire essence of the popular metaphysics of the Ukrainians is quite foreign to the Russians, and almost entirely so to the Poles. Only the White Russians form a certain analogy, but, among them, pure superstition outweighs customs and ceremonies in importance.

Sufficient facts have been given to make clear to the reader the complete originality and independence of Ukrainian popular culture. We now come to a brief survey of the cultural efforts of the educated Ukrainians.

The number of educated Ukrainians is comparatively small. Hardly a century has passed since the intelligence of the nation awoke to new life, yet, in its hands lies the development of the national culture in the widest sense of the word. The disproportion between the magnitude of the task and the small number of the workers for culture, is at once apparent. And yet the results of the work, in spite of obstacles on every side, have grown in volume.

The Ukraine lies within the sphere of influence of European culture. This culture has spread from Central and Western Europe over the territory of the Ukraine and its neighboring peoples, the Poles, Russians, White Russians, Magyars and Roumanians. Each one of these nations has accepted the material culture of Western Europe to a greater or less degree, and adjusted the spiritual culture to its national peculiarities. The Ukrainians, for a long time after the loss of their first state and the decline of their ancient culture, found no line along which they could develop their national culture independently. For centuries they vacillated between the cultures of Poland and Russia. To this day, now that the conditions are much better, one may still find among the Ukrainians individuals who, culturally, are Poles or Russians, and only speak and feel as Ukrainians. Such a condition is very sad, and causes the Ukraine untold injury—most of all in the field of material culture, which, in both these neighboring nations, is very incomplete. Agriculture, mining, trade and commerce, are on a much lower plane among the Poles than in Western Europe. And what is to be said of the Russians, who are a mere parody of a cultured nation in almost every field, altho they possess so great a political organization? No one need be surprised that material culture is of so low a grade in the Ukraine. On the other hand, it has become clear to every intelligent Ukrainian, that the development of material culture is possible only thru Western European influence, by sending Ukrainian engineers, manufacturing specialists, merchants and farmers, to Western and Central Europe to learn their business.

In the field of Ukrainian mental culture, the chief influences to be considered are Polish and Russian. In this field, Polish culture is comparatively very high. It possesses a very rich literature, considerable science and art, and very definite principles of life. The influence of Polish culture is limited almost exclusively to Galicia at the present time. But it was very strong until very recent years, when it began to decrease. At one time, however, the entire Ukraine, particularly the right half, was emphatically under the influence of Polish culture for centuries (16th to the 18th Century).

There is one element in the spiritual culture of the Poles which certainly deserves to be, and is, imitated by the Ukrainians. It is the tone of national patriotism, the love for the nation, its present and its past, which is everywhere evident. Hence, modern Polish literature must be a model for Ukrainian literature in its tendencies and its sentiments. But, beyond its patriotic tone, Polish culture is not appropriate for the Ukrainian people. It is aristocratic, by reason of its descent and its philosophy of the universe. It is far removed from the mass of the people it should represent. In spite of all efforts, the Polish culture of the educated classes has been unable to establish an organic connection with the common people of Poland. It has been built up above the masses and has not grown out of them. To build up Ukrainian culture entirely after the model of Polish culture, would mean to tear it from its life-giving roots in the soul of the people. That it would be deadly to Ukrainian culture, the Ukrainians have perceived for a long time.

Russian culture is much more dangerous to the Ukrainian people than Polish. In its material aspect it is of a very low grade. In the spiritual field it possesses a very rich literature and a noteworthy science and art. The spiritual culture of Russia now dominates all of the Russian Ukraine, and has, to a great extent, become prevalent even among those educated Ukrainians in Russia who possess real national consciousness.

This very circumstance constitutes a great danger for the development of Ukrainian culture. For, let the Muscovite conquest extend over the Ukrainians, even in the cultural field, and there is an end of all the independence of the Ukrainian element, and its beautiful language will be, in fact, degraded to a peasant dialect. But a still greater danger lies in the quality of the Russian cultural influence. The first evil characteristic of Russian culture is the complete lack of national and patriotic sentiment, which is absolutely necessary for an aspiring culture like the Ukrainian. Russian culture is infecting the Ukrainians with an ominous national indifference. Another unfavorable characteristic of all Russian culture, is the fact that it is undemocratic thru and thru, and very far removed from the Russian people. The Russian people did not create this culture; the educated, in producing it, took nothing from the people. An intelligent man, brought up in the atmosphere of Russian culture, is unspeakably distant from the Russian people, so that it is impossible for him to work at the task of enlightening them. The views of the Russian “lovers of the people” (narodniki), or of a Tolstoy, concerning the common people and its soul, simply offend us thru their unexampled ignorance of the peculiarities and customs of the common people.

A culture so far removed from the people as the Russian can bring no benefit to the Ukrainians. We observe this, best of all, in the condition of the muzhik, to whom the educated Russian has never been able to find an approach, and now the latter looks on indifferently, while the masses sink deeper and deeper down into the abyss of intellectual and spiritual darkness. To guide the common people along the path of organic social-political and economic progress, is a task which an intellect permeated with Russian culture can never perform. The last Russian revolution, and the beginning of the era of constitutional government for Russia, have furnished the best proof for the truth of this assertion.

The other chief characteristic of Russian culture is its manifest superficiality. Hidden beneath a thin veneer of Western European amenities lies coarse barbarism. The external manners of the educated Russian very often strike one by the coarseness, lack of restraint and brutal recklessness accompanying them. We see, then, that even the external forms of European culture have only been outwardly assumed by the Russians. Still poorer is their condition with respect to the things of the spirit. We have observed to what a slight degree the Russians have been able to assimilate the material culture of Europe. The same holds for spiritual culture. Russian literature, particularly the latest, has brought ethical elements of the most questionable worth into the world’s literature. (Artzibashev and others). Russian science, altho it can point to some great names and has unlimited means at its disposal, stands far behind German, English or French science. In Russian science, everything is done for the sake of effect, without thoroness, without method, hence fatal gaps appear. Let us consider, for example, our science of geography. Hardly a year passes in which the Russian government does not send one or more great scientific expeditions to Asia or to the North Pole. Each expedition hands in volumes of scientific results, and, at the same time, the surface configuration of the most populous and culturally most advanced regions of European Russia, for example, is barely known in its main aspects. The best geography of Russia was written by the Frenchman Reclus. A modern, really scientific geography of Russia does not exist.

Even more emphatically does the superficiality of Russian culture appear in social and political questions. These two directions of human thought have, in most recent times, become very popular in all Russian society. But what an abyss separates a European from a Russian in this field! In Europe the theses of the social sciences or of politics are the result of life. They are adjusted to life conditions and treated critically. In Russia they are lifeless dogmas, about which Russian scholars of the 20th Century dispute with the same heat and in the same manner as their ancestors, a few hundred years ago, disputed as to whether the Hallelujah should be sung twice or three times, whether the confession of faith should read “born, not created” or “born and not created,” whether one should say, “God have mercy upon us” or “Oh God, have mercy upon us,” whether one should use two fingers in crossing oneself or three, and so on. Naturally, at that time religious questions were the fashion. Today it is social questions. And what does it amount to? Rampant doctrinism, the eternal use of banal commonplaces, an immature setting up of principles. And the result is—extreme unwieldiness of Russian society in internal politics and in parliamentarism, in social and national work, together with a deep scorn of the depraved West (gnili zapad).

With this superficiality of Russian culture, its most evil characteristic is connected; the decline of family life and a certain moral perverseness. This phenomenon is commonly met with in all peoples who have but recently come in contact with Western European culture. The bad qualities of a high civilization are always assumed first, the good qualities slowly. In this field the Russians have far outstripped their European models.

The above facts suffice to prove that Russian cultural influences are dangerous for the Ukrainian people. The severe, rigid materialistic character of the Russian people will, without any doubt, enable it to outlast the storm and stress period of the present Russian culture, and guide it to a splendid future. But for the Ukrainian people, with its sentimental, gentle character, the assuming of Russian culture would be a deadly poison. Even supposing that the Ukrainian people might survive such an experiment, a thing which is not likely, it would forever remain a miserable appendage of the Russian nation.

And besides, such an experiment is entirely unnecessary. Either we say, “We are Ukrainians, an independent race and different from the Russians,” and build up our culture quite independently, or we say, “We are ‘Little Russians,’ one of the three tribes of Great Russia and of its high culture,” and, in that case, we may calmly lie down on the world renowned Ukrainian stove. For then it does not pay even to work at the development of our language. A third alternative does not exist.

At present, however, the former view is generally predominant among the intelligenzia of the land, and the fact that many intelligent Ukrainians are permeated with Russian culture is due, not to an ideal conviction, but only to the powerful influence of the Russian schools and the Russian cities. How do these educated people stand beneath the Ukrainian peasant who, even on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, does not exchange his individual Ukrainian popular culture for the Russian, and deserves the scornful, but in our eyes very commendable saying of the Russians, “Khakhol vyesdie kharkhol!”

If, then, we are to remain a really independent nation, there is only one avenue open to Ukrainian culture, and that is to follow the culture of Western Europe step by step, to seek its models among the Germans, Scandinavians, English and French. And this entire development we must base upon the broad foundation of our high popular culture. Let us consider with what piety the really cultural nations of Europe preserve the little remains of their popular culture. Their few usages or superstitions, their little body of folk-songs! How much richer than they are we in all our misery! The Ukrainian people spoke a mighty first word thru Kotlarevsky a century ago; it then found the first diamond upon its path, the pure language of the people. Unfortunately, no Ukrainian has yet arisen who could speak just as mighty a second word by finding ways and means of lifting the treasures of the home culture of the land, and enabling the entire nation to work at the task of using them to advantage. This “apostle of truth and science,” as he is called by Shevchenko, has not appeared, altho he has had several ancestors, like Drahomaniv. But there are already very many Ukrainians who would place their seal upon the declaration: “that the Ukraine possesses so rich a popular culture, that by developing all its hidden possibilities and supplementing them by elements drawn from the untainted sources of Western European culture, the Ukrainian nation could attain a complete culture just as peculiar to itself, and just as exalted among the great European cultures, as Ukrainian popular culture is among the popular cultures of other peoples.”

Hence, the way lay clearly indicated for the Ukrainians of the 19th and 20th Century. Ethnological investigations and the scientific study of folk-lore have been taken up very eagerly by Ukrainian scholars, so that in this particular field, recent Ukrainian science, perhaps, ranks highest in all Slavic science. In no other cultured nation of Europe is the life of the educated elements so permeated with the influences of the nation’s own popular culture. The Ukrainian cultural movement is hardly a century old, and yet it has results to show which, even today, guarantee the cultural independence of the Ukrainian nation. Active relations with Central and Western European cultures have been established, which may become of incalculable effect in the further development of Ukrainian culture.

RELATIONS BETWEEN THE SOIL AND THE PEOPLE OF UKRAINE

The geographical situation of the Ukraine is the same today as it was a thousand years ago. If the theories which call the present Ukrainian territory the original home of the Aryans are true, the Ukrainians must be considered the primeval autochthones. The limits of the Ukrainian nation, too, are almost the same today as they were a thousand years ago, altho, in the meantime, great shifts have taken place. Only in the west, the Ukrainians have lost a strip about 30 kilometers wide to the Poles, thru the Polonization movement, which has been advancing eastward since 1340. In this section the Ukrainian element has survived only in the mountains. The northern border, next to the White Russians, which, since primitive times, has consisted of great forests and swamps, has always remained without changes of any kind. On the other hand, the part of the northern border east of the Dnieper, and still more the eastern and southern borders, have been subject to radical changes in the course of Ukrainian history.

The old Ukrainian state of Kiev rapidly developed a far-flung expansive movement, and soon covered almost all of Eastern Europe. In the south, the old Kingdom of Kiev, and together with it the southern tribes of East Slavs (the ancestors of the present Ukrainians) reached the delta of the Danube and the Black Sea and the foothills of the Caucasus, where, in the present Kuban district, the old province and petty principality of Tmutorokan was situated. How far to the north the southern East Slavic tribes then extended we can not tell exactly. But it is very improbable that they extended beyond the woods and swamps of the Polissye.

Even at that time, a thousand years ago, the geographical position of the Ukraine, on the edge of Europe and the steppe-country of Central Asia, proved itself dangerous. From the beginning of the Middle Ages on, innumerable tribes of Turkish-Tatar origin, came crowding out of the Central Asiatic steppes westward, thru the steppes of Southern Ukraine. The Ukraine had to be the first of all the countries of Europe to withstand the attack of these hordes. The first Ukrainian conqueror, Sviatoslav, who destroyed the state of the Khazars and Bulgars and defeated other weak hordes, was killed in the struggle with the Pechenegs. Volodimir the Great was forced to fight these nomads under the very walls of his capital. These wars with nomad tribes, which began before the Ukraine appeared in the arena of history, lasted from this time until the end of the 18th Century, with varying fortunes. At times the balance of power was on the side of the Ukraine, and then Ukrainian colonization advanced victoriously to the south and east as far as the Black Sea. At other times the nomads were victorious, and the eastern and southern boundaries of the Ukraine receded north and west. The great chains of fortifications and border walls erected by the Great Princes of Kiev, on the southeast borders of the Ukraine, were of no avail. At the time of the greatest extent of the Tatar attacks (15th to 16th Century) almost all the left half of the Ukraine was a wilderness, and in the right half Kiev was a border fortress. All the southern Dnieper country, the Boh country and Eastern Podolia, was at that time a sparsely-peopled borderland, and constantly exposed to the dangers of Tatar attacks. At that time Ukrainian territory was confined to the Polissye, the northern part of Chernihiv, Volhynia, Western Podolia, Eastern Galicia and Podlakhia, and only small, very thinly populated border strips of the adjacent regions. These fluctuations in the boundaries of the Ukraine have no parallel in the history of Europe, and show most clearly in what difficult straits the Ukrainian nation was forced to live for centuries.

The proximity of nomadic Asia for a time greatly weakened the influences of the proximity of another neighbor—the Black Sea. The Black Sea was, for the Ukraine, the means of intercourse with Byzantium, the greatest cultural center of Europe in the Middle Ages. The Ukraine, because of its waterways, was nearest to Byzantium of all the European countries. This comparatively short period in which the Ukraine was able to maintain intercourse with Byzantium, without obstacles, brought the Ukraine splendid cultural advantages. In a wide stream the Byzantine material and spiritual culture flowed into the Ukraine, so that the country from the 11th to the 13th Century stood highest, culturally, among all the Slavic states and almost equalled the Western European states. In some respects the Ukraine of those days was even superior to Western Europe. In those days Kiev or Halich surpassed London or Paris in wealth and commercial importance.

The relations with the sea and with Byzantium kept growing ever more difficult for the Ukraine to maintain, however, as a result of the ever growing pressure of the nomad hordes. Finally, in the 13th Century, came the Tatar invasions. These have best demonstrated the significance of the geographical situation of the Ukraine. The ancient Ukrainian state had to be the first to withstand the Mongol attack. After the defeat, the Ukraine was the first of all the countries of Europe to be desolated by fire and sword. It is true that the strong resistance of the Ukraine effectively stopped the Tatar pressure, and Europe has this circumstance to thank for its escape from the fate of Asia in the 13th Century, three-fourths of which was conquered by the Mongols of Djingis Khan. The Ukrainian state fought a whole century longer with the Tatars, but could not hold their own after that. The Ukraine was systematically devastated by the Tatars, and in the struggle with them the entire military power of the Ukraine was spent. At the same time the neighbors on the north and west—the Poles and Lithuanians—were able to develop freely behind the protecting back of the Ukraine, and to increase their powers. Finally the Poles annexed Eastern Galicia, and the rest of the Ukrainians faced the choice of either joining themselves to the Lithuanians, whose upper classes were at that time, culturally, entirely Ukrainian, or to place themselves beneath the Muscovite yoke. They chose the first. In 1569 the Lublin Union joined the Ukraine to Poland. All these things are the unhappy results of the geographical situation of the land on the threshold of Europe and Asia.

A long time following the loss of Ukrainian political independence, the sad results of the geographical situation of the country continued. The constant attacks of Tatars and Turks, the millions of Ukrainian slaves in the slave-markets of the Orient, had to continue for many centuries to be the source of the oriental world, which was fast hurrying toward its fall. But soon the geographical situation of the Ukraine began to work positively too. The geographical situation, together with other natural factors, became one of the main causes for the formation of the Ukrainian Cossack organization. This is not the place to discuss at length the significance of the Cossack organization for the Ukraine; we are only emphasizing the fact that the Cossack organization alone has preserved the Ukraine from complete downfall.

The Cossack organization, as a product of geographical situation, has a parallel only in the familiar North American backwoodsmen, prairie hunters and pioneers who constituted the advance guard of European civilization on their continent. Yet this analogy is a very weak and incomplete one. The Zaporog Cossacks can in no way be compared either with the Volga, Don or Ural Cossacks, who were chiefly brigands, or with the Austro-Hungarian border-soldiers, who were a state organization. The Ukrainian Cossack organization represented the efforts for liberty and independence of the entire Ukrainian people, and, finally, led up to the revival of Ukrainian political life in the form of an independent hetman state. To be sure, the territory of this hetman state embraced barely one-half of the Ukraine, but it constituted a region about which a Piedmont of independence for the entire Ukraine might grow up.

Since the last decades of the 18th Century, the geographical situation of the Ukraine on the threshold of two continents has been growing from an unfavorable position to one that may be described as very favorable.

It was for the most part with Ukrainian forces that Russia finally destroyed the nomads of the Ukrainian steppes. This fact has been of great significance for the Ukraine. Since that time the vast, tho almost imperceptible, colonization movement of the Ukrainian people to the east, southeast and south, has been in progress. This movement extended the Ukrainian boundaries twice within a single century. For the second time, and in a peaceful way, the Ukraine reached the delta of the Danube, the Black Sea, the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea. All this is only an outcome of its geographical situation. In another situation the Ukrainians could not so easily dispose of unsettled lands. This expansion of the Ukrainian people has by no means reached its maximum, but it has surely passed its climax. To be sure, the migration of the Ukrainian element to the east and south is still very large, but there are no longer so many uninhabited districts open to settlement as in former times, and the emigration in masses has had to stop.

Nevertheless, the geographical situation opens a very fine prospect for later Ukrainian colonial expansion. Ciscaucasia and many regions on the lower Volga and Ural are, culturally considered, really a bonum nullius. Russian colonization is directed to other regions, chiefly for climatic reasons, and other competing races need hardly be considered because of their smallness. Even at present the Ukrainians constitute a very noteworthy minority; in the sub-Caucasian country most probably an absolute majority. In the course of a few decades of rather unsystematic colonization, extensive regions of the sub-Caucasian country, with their wealth of natural resources, will become Ukrainian; the entire Kuban region already is part of the compact national territory of the Ukrainians, and the Ukrainian language has become an international language for the small mountain races of the Western Caucasus.

The geographical situation of the Ukraine on the threshold of Asia is distinctly favorable to the immigration of Ukrainians into Central Asia and Southern Siberia. In a strip of thousands of kilometers, chains of Ukrainian settlements extend along the southern border of Siberia to the Japan Sea. Along this immeasurable strip the number of Ukrainian settlements is continually growing. This colonization, which leads tens of thousands of Ukrainian peasant-settlers to the far east every year, has attracted the attention of wider circles only within the last two decades. In reality it is much older, for as early as the seventies of the past century, German explorers found Ukrainian colonies at the northern base of the Altai and on the Chinese border, etc. The establishment of these old and new colonies of the Ukrainians in Asia is proceeding in all quietude, and is quite analogous to that splendid colonization movement of the Ukrainians at the beginning of the 19th Century, which, at one time, quite imperceptibly doubled the national territory of the Ukrainians.

Yet the colonial expansion of the last century brought the Ukrainian nation many disadvantages along with the advantages. For more than a century it drained the entire energy of the nation and deprived it of tens of thousands of the most active and energetic individuals every year. All the strength of the nation was turned to the one task of settling new lands and cultivating them according to ancient usage. From this cause, the political idea and the cultural efforts of the Ukrainians have suffered very keenly.

After the Ukrainian territory had again reached the Black Sea, as a result of colonial expansion, the Black Sea regained its ancient significance to the Ukrainians. Of course, there is no longer any such cultural center on the Pontus as Byzantium once was, and Turkish domination has deprived the formerly highly cultured districts on the shores of the Black Sea of all their ancient civilization. But the sea has retained its capacity for promoting culture, and, after many centuries, once more gave the Ukrainians direct connection with the wide world. To be sure, the Black Sea is closed by nature and by international treaties, and the Russian Government, intentionally or unintentionally, has never particularly encouraged the development of Pontian navigation; and, to be sure, the Black Sea lies far distant from the main commercial thorofares of the world. But all these disadvantages of the Black Sea may lose much of their weight in a short time. The materialization of the splendid project to connect the Baltic and the Black Sea by means of a canal, including the Dvina and the Dnieper, navigable by large vessels, can not be far off. After the carrying out of this project the isolation of the Black Sea will be lessened, and an important channel of sea-navigation will run across the entire Ukraine. Pontian navigation must sooner or later experience a great advance, for it is a natural necessity for the productive hinterland and for the entire Ukrainian shore people, who have always exhibited considerable skill as seamen. The Ukrainians already constitute more than two-thirds of the crews of all Russian trade and warships on the Black Sea. With the strengthening of the constitutional regime in Russia, the obstacles which have been placed in the way of Pontian navigation by the Russian government in favor of Baltic navigation must disappear of themselves.

Finally, the great commercial thorofares of the world are beginning to move nearer to Ukrainian territory as the cultural development of the Orient advances. As the European influences in the Iran, in Syria and Mesopotamia begin to grow, new projects for an overland connection of Europe with India continually arise. At present the Bagdad Railroad is the center of interest, and soon the Persian railroad projects will claim attention. But the shortest and easiest overland route from Europe to India must cross the length of the Ukraine, touching Kiev and Kharkiv, going past the deltas of the Volga and Ural and the Aral Sea, along the Amu, and thru Afghanistan and the Punjab. When this route is once established the Ukraine will attain a great commercial significance as the right of way of one of the world’s most important commercial highways. Then, only, will the importance of the Dnieper and Don, the Black Sea, the Sea of Azof and the Caspian Sea, as bearers of the main commercial road, be indeed realized.

Everyone can readily understand that in this case the political significance of the Ukraine would also be very great. Even now this land is an invaluable possession to Russia. Only the possession of the Ukraine makes possible for Russia access to the Black Sea and permits her to gravitate toward the straits, to win influence on the Balkan peninsula, to threaten Turkey and the Mediterranean, to dominate the Caucasus country, to oppress Persia and seek the nearest way to the Indian Ocean. And when once the overland route to India goes thru Ukrainian territory, the Ukraine will command over a thousand kilometers of this important road and begin to be a prime factor in world politics. The possession of the Ukraine will then be the costliest treasure and a life-problem to the state which will dominate this territory. Or, if the Ukraine, in all its ethnographic extent, should win its political independence, it may in time become one of the largest and most powerful states of Europe.

Another element of the geographical situation of the Ukraine, which should not be underestimated, is the fact that the Ukraine is so remote from all the cultural centers of Europe. We indicated briefly, above, of what great importance was the short, direct connection of the Ukraine with the Byzantine cultural center. Only during this short period did the historical fate of the Ukraine permit the land to have direct relations with an important culture center. The wall of barbarian nomad attack separated the Ukraine very quickly from this culture center, and when it died the Ukraine suddenly fell into a situation in which it was far removed from all the cultural centers of Europe. Only Poland allowed a few elements of Western European culture to sift thru into the Ukraine. But the lack of Polish political and social organization did not allow Western European culture to take firm root in Poland. The Ukraine could, therefore, receive only a little of the Western European wealth of culture thru this channel. Until well into the 18th Century, Russia stood upon a much lower grade of culture than the Ukraine. And altho Russia very soon reached and surpassed her rival, the Ukraine has, to this day, received nothing worth while from Russia. The Ukraine even suffered great loss, culturally, from its union with Russia. The White Russians, the Roumanians, the Slovaks, the Magyars, were never so far advanced, culturally, as to be able to teach the Ukrainians anything. The centers of Western and Central European culture—Germany, Scandinavia, France and England—are so far distant from the Ukraine that they can exert only slight and indirect influence upon its cultural progress. The low state of culture of the Ukraine, consequently, springs chiefly from its geographical situation.

The second geographical element, surface formation, has had as strong an influence upon the Ukrainian people as the geographical situation. The chief factor in the surface configuration of the Ukraine is the great preponderance of plains and plateaus. These take up nine-tenths of the area of the Ukraine. The difference in level of the ground is from 200 to 300 meters. Such slight variations in height are of great significance as far as anthropogeographical conditions are concerned. The most important characteristic of level countries such as this, is the complete lack of such obstacles as might make good natural boundaries. And the lack of good natural boundaries is very strongly felt in the history of all lowland peoples.

This lack the Ukrainians have always felt very deeply. With the exception of the Black Sea, which was once the boundary of the ancient Ukrainian Kingdom of Kiev and now forms the southern boundary of the Ukraine, and, with the exception, also, of the forest swamps of the Polissye, the Ukraine never possessed, and does not now possess, any good natural boundaries. Neither the Carpathians nor the Caucasus have provided the Ukraine with a distinct natural boundary line. The borders and borderlands of the Ukraine lie open, were always easily accessible to all conquerors, and made the defense of their political independence much harder for the Ukrainians than it has been for any other nation of Europe. To be sure, the lack of obstacles on the borders made it very easy for the Ukrainian Kingdom to extend its limits, as the rapid and appreciable growth of the ancient Kingdom of Kiev best proves. But later, unfortunately, this favorable surface formation was taken advantage of with much greater gain by the Tatars, Lithuanians, Poles and Russians, to the ruin of the Ukraine. The facility of military campaigns and of territorial conquests, two favorable foundations for the development of great land-conquering nations, and at the same time typical anthropogeographical characteristics of low countries, have played an active part in the history of the Ukraine. The pressure of various races, which is a characteristic of plain countries, is another condition the Ukraine had to face. From the Cimmerians to the Turks, how many races have inhabited the steppes of the Ukraine!

In the present times of highly developed intercourse, natural obstacles are losing much of their value, and, for the same reason, the disadvantages of low countries are becoming less serious. It is true that the Ukraine is hard to defend strategically, and an enemy wishing to attack Russia in the Ukraine would place her in a very precarious position. But the lack of pronounced natural lines of defense is also peculiar to the eastern border of Germany, for example, or the northern border of France. Apart from these strategic elements, the Ukrainian plain country and plateau country has nothing but advantages. The migration of the Ukrainian people has always been very easy, and the growth of Ukrainian territory has been unhindered because of the openness of the borders.

The lowland character of the Ukraine is important not merely in respect to borders. The lack of obstacles within the country in the way of highlands always favored easy travel in all directions. The building of the roads met with no obstacles, and was able to proceed in straight lines. In the present days of high-roads and railways, this is a very important characteristic of the land. Unfortunately it has never been taken advantage of. The railroads of the Ukraine tend toward unknown Russian centers, without consideration of the natural centers of the country. Hence its insufficient importance for traffic.

Another characteristic of all plain countries, and therefore of the Ukraine, is great homogeneity. It produces a great uniformity of living conditions, and gives the Ukraine great unity of language, customs and standard of living. The types of buildings, national costume, etc., so varied in the small area of Germany, extend over hundreds of thousands of square miles in the Ukraine, with only minor changes. The uniform lowland character of the Ukraine favored, to a certain degree, the constant preservation of the old customs and the gradual development of culture. The lack of natural differences within the country has brought with it the lack of differences among the inhabitants, and it is well known that such differences enrich the ability and the character of the entire nation considerably. Hence, the lack of those necessary conditions of development and progress has always had a profound influence in the Ukraine, while we meet such favorable conditions at every step in the small areas of Central Europe, with their smaller supply of natural wealth. Melancholy and indifference, these typical marks of the lowland peoples, have always been characteristic of the Ukrainians also. And these types are not favorable to the development of culture. Only the present time of easy communications are capable of weakening the bad influence of the uniformity of surface of the Ukraine to any marked degree.

Yet, not all the typical characteristics of a lowland country are common to the Ukrainians. Above all, they lack, and always have lacked, the capacity for the development of great political strength, the capacity for centralization; in a word, the capacity for state organizing. This characteristic of the lowland peoples, which is very strongly developed among the Russians, more weakly in the Poles, has always been very poorly bred in the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians have possessed the tendency, peculiar to all lowland peoples, to level its aspirations, to divert them to one side, but never to the subordination of their individuality to the interests of the state. Only when the general equality of all citizens of the state opens to every man an equal field for the activity of his personal ego, have the Ukrainians been able to do the state-idea justice and to embody it very finely. They have given the best proof of this in the Zaporog Cossack organization. This fact gives us the only hope that the Ukrainians may yet become an organized nation in modern times. The present manner of national life is what the Ukrainians wished to have centuries ago—much too early, of course.

In view of the great uniformity, every rise of land is significant. Slight elevations, chains of hills, river valleys, even swamps and forests appear in the Ukraine as important boundaries, lines of defence, foundations for cities and castles, fortified places, lookout stations, etc. Even the many barrows (mohili, kurhani) have played an important part in the history of the Ukraine.

The anthropogeographical significance of the Ukrainian mountains is in general slight, altho we find all the typical influences of the mountains in the mountain tribes of the Ukrainians. Great physical endurance, coupled with a feeling for liberty and independence, great personal courage, great love of country, etc., have always distinguished the Ukrainian mountain dwellers.

The Ukrainian Carpathians are, to this day, one of the most thinly settled regions of the Ukraine, chiefly for the reason that it was always a passive region, which was not considered in political life. Great historical movements hardly ever touched the Carpathians. For many centuries they remained almost devoid of human life. Hence, the Carpathians played hardly any part as a border defence of the Ukrainian state organizations. Mountain chains usually are of very great importance as a defence for individual tribes or entire races. The Carpathians, with their great ease of passage, especially in the Ukrainian part, have been of no significance in this respect. They did provide effective protection for the Walachian shepherds thru many centuries. These shepherds led a nomad life with their flocks on the Carpathian pastures, and left proof of their presence in numerous names of mountains, rivers and villages. The Carpathians also provided shelter for the numerous Ukrainian fugitives who fled from oppressive serfdom and formed bands of half-political freebooters, friends of the lowly, and warriors against the lords (oprishki). The brigandage peculiar to all mountain regions flourished also in the Carpathians. But no state originated in the Carpathians. The Alps were the foundation of Switzerland, and played a part in the formation of the Austrian state. The Carpathians have given the Ukraine nothing, apart from occasional passing shelter.

At this point we must emphasize another anthropogeographical characteristic of the mountains. It is the general poverty of their inhabitants and their consequent desire, under compulsion, to seek expansion. The inhabitants of the Ukrainian Carpathians, about the middle of the 19th Century, were in a serious economic condition because of the small amount of productive ground. Need came first to the Lemkos, then to the Boikes, and last to the Hutzuls. Above all, it partly divested the mountain population of the then predominating industry of cattle raising. The Lemkos at first carried on a lively trade in wagon grease thruout the southern part of Eastern Europe, then they turned to harvest work, in the surrounding lowlands, and last to the annual emigration to America. The Boikes first carried on trade in salt, then changed to the fruit trade, which they are carrying on today, down as far as Warsaw and Moscow. Very lately, the annual emigration to America has been depleting their ranks also. The Hutzuls have but just begun to resort to emigration. They hire out less frequently for agricultural work than for the lumber industry, in which they are very skilful. Their highly developed domestic industry, which borders on the artistic, might provide them with rich support, but it is rather hindered than advanced by the determining factors of the land.

In presenting the general influence of the ground formation on the people, we must also consider the anthropogeographical significance of the geological conditions of the country. They should not be underestimated, as one might expect, while to overestimate them, as some scholars have done, by even referring anthropological characteristics back to the geological composition of the country, is quite as bad; at all events very many of the living conditions of the inhabitants are dependent upon the geological make-up of the land. We shall skip over the great importance of the geological composition of the country for the surface formations which it determines. We shall pay attention only to the direct geological influences.

The Ukraine possesses very great mineral treasures. The most important mineral deposits for the present time, namely, coal, iron, salt and petroleum, are very large in the Ukraine. Of all these mineral treasures, however, only the salt deposits have had an historical significance, since far back in the period of the Kingdoms of Kiev and Halich they furthered active trade and commerce, and later favored the development of the Chumak organization. The other mineral treasure attained a greater importance only in the past century. When one considers today that the Ukraine furnishes almost three-fourths of the coal and iron output of Russia, one can readily believe that the Ukraine might some day become as great an industrial country as Germany, England or Belgium. A single glance at the mining map of the Ukraine soon shows us, however, how small the regions containing this abundance of mineral wealth are in proportion to the entire territory. Then everyone can understand what the geological composition of the country means. It condemns the Ukraine forever to remain an agricultural country, altho it also permits the development of a considerable industry in several centers.

The same path of future development is outlined for the Ukraine by its fertile soil. Almost three-fourths of the Ukrainian territory lies within the Eastern European black-earth zone. The chornozyom, one of the most fertile species of earth on the globe, makes the Ukraine the most fruitful land of Europe. We need not wonder, therefore, that the Ukrainians have, to this day, remained almost entirely an agricultural people. The fertility of the soil must also remain the greatest wealth of the land into the remotest future. Now that the greatest grain lands of the earth, the American prairies and pampas, the Australian border-steppes, etc., have been almost entirely subjected to cultivation, the extensive market production of grain must, in the nearest future, give way to intensive production. Then the importance of the Ukrainian black earth, which has maintained its great fertility for thousands of years, will become even greater than it is today; and even today the Ukraine must be considered one of the main centers of grain production.

The fertility of the Ukrainian soil has had several unfavorable as well as favorable results. Like a promised land, the Ukraine has always lured foreign conquerors and colonists. Its fertility has brought the Ukraine much war and trouble. For centuries the fertile ground of the Ukraine gave its own people only a part of its rich produce. To this day the foreign landowners and grain merchants demand the greater part of the harvest, while the native people of the Ukraine, who have dwelt in the land since time out of mind, can hardly reserve enough for themselves to keep from dying of hunger.

The fertile Ukrainian ground has exerted another important unfavorable influence over the Ukrainian people. The great fertility of its fields has caused a certain indifference and carelessness in planting among the Ukrainian peasants. To be sure, the Ukrainian is a better farmer than the White Russian, Russian or Roumanian. But for centuries he has been accustomed to depend on the fertility of his native soil and is, therefore, far behind the progressive farmer of Central or Western Europe. Antiquated methods of planting have until recently prevailed in the Ukraine without the slightest change. At the same time the ground has become scant, and progressive methods of cultivation must be adopted in order to get as much as possible out of the land and to balance the relative diminution of the cultivation area.

The geological conditions have also exerted a great deal of influence over the buildings and roads of the Ukraine. Clay houses, covered with straw, are still typical for the Ukraine today. Only in the most recent times brick houses, covered with shingle, are beginning to appear in the Ukrainian villages. Stone buildings were not original with the Ukraine, and were only adopted with the higher grade of culture. The cause of this is not the lack of building material. Almost everywhere in the Ukraine good building-stone is found beneath the thick cover of loose earth. But the abundance of clay always showed the nearer and easier way—clay huts. Even this small matter has had an unhappy influence upon the fate of the Ukraine. The ancient Ukrainian cities consisted chiefly of wood and clay buildings and were fortified by means of earthworks, palisades and clay covered wooden towers. Walled houses and circular walls were very rare. This condition made the defence of the cities and castles, even against the attacks of nomadic tribes, very difficult. The ancient Ukrainian State would not have been destroyed so soon if it had had an abundance of strongly fortified walled cities.

The black earth and clay sub-layer of the Ukraine has, since the most ancient times, been an unfavorable influence as far as the quality of its roads are concerned. Outside of the negligence of the Polish and the Russian State, which alternated in the domination of the Ukrainian territory, natural conditions, too, have had a great deal to do with the roads in the Ukraine. The stone lay far below the loose cover of clay; it was used very rarely for building purposes; hence the idea of plastering the roads with stones could hardly occur to anyone.

We shall now consider the anthropogeographical significance of the Ukrainian bodies of water. Of the importance of the Black Sea we have already spoken. The Ukrainian people lived in close connection with this sea in the days of the ancient Kingdom of Kiev, as well as in the days of the Cossack organization. But the lack of well-developed coast, of harbors and islands, have prevented the development of the Ukrainians into a seafaring nation, altho favorable tendencies were not lacking. The smallness and isolation of the Black Sea could not favor the development of navigation. The frequency of dangerous storms had a deterring effect, altho they strengthened the courage of the sailors. Then again, the smallness of the sea made the use of small vessels sufficient, which could more readily find shelter at any time or at any point along the coast, with its few harbors, than larger ships. These circumstances have hindered the development of extensive navigation for long distance traffic. Hence, the Ukrainians, altho in certain periods of their history they gained a not inconsiderable familiarity with the sea, could not rise to a genuine seafaring people.

Much stronger ties connect the Ukrainian people with the rivers of its territory. The rivers have an anthropogeographical significance chiefly as ways of travel. The great main streams of the Ukraine, particularly the Dnieper and the Dniester, have always had the character of a transition between rivers and arms of the sea. At the time of the ancient Kingdom of Kiev, seafaring vessels sailing up the Dniester reached the royal city of Halich, and, in the time of the Cossacks, the Zaporog boats were pursued by the Turkish galleys as far as the rapids of the Dnieper. As far as ancient navigation was concerned, there was very little difference between river and sea; rivers were simply the extension of sea routes. In the ancient Ukraine, the Varangians were the first to use them in this sense. Their route “from the Varangian Land to Greece,” which later became one of the main paths of the old Kingdom of Kiev, led from the Baltic to the Black Sea by way of rivers and portages. These wanderings of the Varangians in the Ukrainian water system are of great historical significance. For altho we are now almost certain that the Varangians were not the founders of the Kingdom of Kiev, it cannot be denied that they played a great part in the forming of it.

Rivers are natural, and therefore, also the easiest and cheapest roads. Especially in countries of great area, as the United States, Russia and the Ukraine, the importance of rivers as roadways is very great. Rivers connect the nations. The Dniester and the Dnieper connected the Ukraine with the sea, with the highly-cultured Constantinople, with the entire Mediterranean and Oriental world of culture. The Dnieper, thru its much branched water-web, connected the Ukraine directly with Poland and White Russia, and indirectly with the Baltic Sea and Northern Europe. Even today, altho the canals connecting the Dnieper with the Vistula, Niemen, and Dvina are entirely neglected, the Dnieper River plays a very significant part as a great vein of traffic connecting different lands, peoples and producing regions. It may become more important still if it is made accessible to sea vessels and connects two distant seas.

In the Cossack period a considerable portion of the Ukrainians became a river people. The life and work of the Zaporog Sich depended entirely upon the Dnieper River. It protected, fed and clothed them. So strongly were the Zaporogs bound to the Dnieper, so necessary did the great river become to them, that all attempts to found new Zaporog centers on other rivers simply failed. We need not wonder, then, that the Dnieper is celebrated in all the Cossack songs as a sacred possession of the nation.

Closely connected with the character of rivers as roadways, is their importance as the directing lines of the movements of races. The history of the Ukraine tells us how the ancient Kingdom of Kiev penetrated toward the south along the Dnieper, and how the Kingdom of Halich reached the delta of the Danube by way of the Dniester and Prut. Most likely the first expansion of the Ukrainians proceeded along the Dniester, Boh and Dnieper, southward. At the time of the great shifts of the Ukrainian southeast border, the advance of the Ukrainians was always directed southeast, their retreat always northwest. The history of the 16th Century shows plainly how the first pioneers of the new colonization movement—the Cossacks—pushed along the Dnieper, toward the southeast, into the steppe region. Altho it is a commonplace, yet it may be established without doubt that the whole Ukrainian nation took its way southeast along the Ukrainian rivers. To this day the national territory of the Ukraine is advancing irresistibly in that direction.

But not only with the southeast has Nature connected the Ukraine. Important borderlands of the Ukrainian territory—Central Galicia, the region of Kholm, Podlakhia, Western Volhynia—with their river system, belong to the Baltic slope. At the same time, the transition from the Pontian river system to the Baltic system is very easy, the divides flat and low. The easy transition from the Dniester to the San and Buh, from the Pripet to the Vistula and the Niemen, was of great importance in the past, when western influences could easily penetrate these Ukrainian borderlands, and is of great importance in the present. If, in the near future, the now antiquated canals are improved and new ones built, the Ukraine will have as good connections with the west as it has with the east. Then the Ukraine may, from a hydrographic point of view, gain great importance as a transition country of important waterways.

By no means accidental is the remarkable fact that the Ukraine has no hydrographic connection with the northeast, the real Muscovite country. Of the country drained by the Don, only the region of the Donetz (which also flows southeast) and the mouth of the main stream belong to the territory of the Ukraine, and that only since a relatively short time. Outside of the Don region the Ukraine has no hydrographic connections with the Muscovite country, which has always had different directions, different channels of traffic, and different centers of waterways.

Modern geography does not consider rivers good natural boundaries, and does not believe in their powers of separation. In the Ukraine, rivers have played almost no part as boundaries. Even the Pripet, surrounded as it is with inaccessible swamps, does not make a good natural boundary between the Ukraine and White Russia. The ethnographic influences on both sides, and even the political boundaries are hardly considered. Nor could the rivers be important lasting obstacles; instead of separating they are more likely to connect individuals, and even whole nations. Only as passing, momentary obstacles, they were of importance to the Ukraine in the innumerable wars which were waged on Ukrainian soil, and much Ukrainian blood was carried by them to the sea.

We now come to the relations between climate and people of the Ukraine. The situation of the Ukraine at an equal distance from the equator and the pole, on the southeast border of the European continent, which is so very favored climatically, has given the country one of the finest climates of the temperate zone. The hot summer permits of an extensive exploitation of the ground, the severe winter hardens the body and strengthens the soul, strong winds clear the atmosphere and bring motion into nature. The amount of rainfall is sufficient for the vegetable world, and is as far removed from the superabundance of damp Western Europe, as from the deadly dryness of the Asiatic steppes.

As for the general influence of the Ukrainian climate upon the people, it is in the main similar to that of Western and Central Europe. The Ukrainians are one of the northern peoples of Europe, and they show it by the difficulty with which they become acclimated to the tropical conditions of Brazil and Argentina. There conditions are much worse for the Ukrainians than for the Spaniards, Portuguese and Italians, but at least better than for the English or Scandinavians. The Ukrainian is already accustomed to a hot and long summer in his native land. He accustoms himself quickly and easily to the cold Siberian climate, because the frosts in the Ukraine, despite the short frost period, are very severe. For climatic reasons then, the colonial capacity of the Ukrainians must be even better than that of most of the peoples of Western or Central Europe.

The climate of the Ukraine, which we have discussed in a preceding chapter, is very uniform thruout the entire great territory, with the exception of the southern borders. This homogeneity is favorable on the one hand, because it advances the homogeneity of the people, unfavorable on the other hand, because differences in climate as a rule enliven and quicken the course of history of a country. The variations in character of the people and in the mode of living due to the differences in climate give countless impulses to development and to progress.

Despite the general uniformity of the climate, we do find appreciable differences when we compare the northern border regions of our country with the southern ones. The Ukraine has the same climatic peculiarity as France on a small scale, the transition of the temperate to the Mediterranean climate without sharply defined boundaries. In this way some difference of products does arise, which advances the development of trade and commerce.

In our description of the Ukrainian climate, we emphasized its peculiar position as compared with the climates of the adjacent districts of Eastern Europe. Just beyond the borders of the Ukraine, to the north and east, the annual temperature becomes lower and the duration and severity of the winter suddenly becomes very much greater. The Muscovite climate and that of the Ukraine would not be ranked together by anyone who understands anything about the matter. And yet the renowned historian and publicist, Leroy Beaulieu, considers a uniform climate as one of the chief causes of the unity of Russia. In January, he writes, one may ride in a sleigh from Astrakhan to Archangel; the Sea of Azof and the Caspian Sea freeze over just as the White Sea or the Finnish Gulf, the Dnieper as well as the Dvina; the winter wraps north and south in one vast blanket of snow every year. Less strong are the ties formed by the summer, but there is a preponderance of unifying circumstances.

Such statements can come only from one who has no conception of climatology and anthropogeography. On such premises no conclusions may be based, except by persons who have previously constructed a hypothesis and now wish at all costs, to prove its validity. For it is certainly generally known that the same winter covers all Scandinavia, Poland, Germany and Northern France together with the same white mantle. In the winter-time one may travel by sleigh not only from Astrakhan to Archangel, but also to Irkutsk in one direction and to Stockholm in the other, and even to Paris. Not only the Dnieper freezes, but also the Vistula, the Oder, the Elbe, and sometimes even the Seine. If we consider ice and snow as the basis of “unification,” very little of Europe remains. For not only in snow and ice should we seek signs of uniformity in climate, but in its general character, in the community of all climatic characteristics. It is true that the Ukraine is part of the Eastern European climatic province, but in this province we may also include almost all of Sweden, almost all of Poland, a part of Austria-Hungary and Prussia, and Supan adds all of Western Siberia, Caucasia and Turkestan as well. Every geographer understands that so great a climatic province must be divided into smaller districts even in climatology, not to mention the details of daily life. Every inhabitant of Southern Russia, whether a Ukrainian or not, feels the difference of the Ukrainian climate from that of St. Petersburg or Moscow very keenly. There is hardly a Russian author who does not describe the fine climate of the Ukraine as wonderfully mild compared to the inhospitable climate of his native land. How keenly, then, does a Ukrainian feel the difference in the two climates, who is forced to live in the cold Muscovite country.

The climatic difference is illustrated more clearly still when we consider the matter from the climatological side. Voyekov, the great Russian climato pzeshasiemlogist, expressly the slight cover of snow in the Ukraine, the relatively high temperature of the warmer periods of the winter, and the abnormally warm spring, which is due to the lightness of the snow-cover, which requires only a little of the spring warmth to melt it. The snow cover of Poland, Lithuania or Northeastern Germany is much more similar to that of Muscovy than the Ukrainian. The January isotherms in the Ukraine switch over from the N. to S. direction to the N. W. to S. E. direction. The isotherm of the typical Russian winter (January -8 to -10°) avoids the region of the Ukraine entirely. It is true that the Dnieper and Dniester have the same amount of ice as the Volga or the Dvina. But here the main consideration should be the period of freezing; the Dvina is covered over for 190 days, the Volga 160, the Dnieper in the Ukraine only 80 to 100 days, the Dniester 70 days. These are certainly greater differences. Still greater differences between the Ukrainian and the Muscovite climates become evident when we compare the length of the winter, or the time suitable for work outdoors. In Great Russia this time is at most four months; in the Ukraine, at least six and a half; and in its southern borderlands even nine months. Such differences play a great part in the life of the people. The time of the winter obstructions and enforced idleness is twice as great in Russia as in the Ukraine. The struggle with the cold takes on forms in the Ukraine which are entirely analogous to the Western European forms. In the Muscovite country we observe polar elements in the winter-life of the people. The Ukrainian winter does not depress the people, does not bore them to death, but only steels their bodies in the struggle with the cold and gives them the desired rest after the summer’s heat. The winter is the time of the most intensive social life among the Ukrainian peasantry.

The spring of the Ukraine, warm and sunny, has quite a different influence upon people to that of the cool, damp Russian or Polish spring. The sunny climate of the spring and the cloudlessness of the summer have produced in the Ukrainian a quiet, fundamentally cheerful temper. Yet, we find in him none of the gaiety which is characteristic of the people of the south as compared with the people of the north, but rather a quiet melancholy. It is just the Russians or the Poles that are of a much gayer sort than the Ukrainians, livelier, more easy-going in their social life, more frolicsome; not the Ukrainians, but the Russians and Poles, are the very ones that are vying with one another for the epithet of the “Frenchmen of the North” or “of the East,” respectively. (This remarkable fact is due, in the first place, to the unhappy history of the Ukraine). But, on the other hand, the melancholy of the Ukrainians is quiet, while the occasional melancholy of the Russians turns into despair and pessimism.

The Ukrainian summer and fall, warm and beautiful, has made the Ukrainian, in contrast with the Russian, a farmer par excellence. The warmth of these seasons is very similar to Southern European conditions, and gives to the life of the Ukrainian people many southern characteristics. The life in open communion with Nature, the accessibility of her organic treasures, is much more pronounced in the Ukraine than in Russia, White Russia or Poland. In the warm seasons the Ukrainian lives much of the time outside his house. In the day he works continuously in the field or in the garden, and even at night he usually sleeps outdoors in the orchard or the yard. If the fields are at a distance from the village, a large part of the population of the place camp out in the open fields for several days during harvest time. These are all characteristics of the life of the south. Yet we see in our people no real characteristics of the people of the south. Despite all this, the Ukrainian is much more domestic than the Russian, more frugal and more temperate; the “extravagant Russian nature” is entirely foreign to him. We have already seen that the Ukrainians do not have gay manners, and in like manner their activity of thought is less than that of the northern peoples, the Russians and the Poles. Yet the depth of thought of the Ukrainians is much greater, and their popular poetry incomparably deeper than that of the Russians or Poles. Dreaminess and reserve of character is much greater in the Ukrainians who live in the south than in the Poles and Russians who live in the north. All these are the effects of a sorrowful past. Only in one respect do the Ukrainians bear out their southern type of character; in their great abilities and their generally rich intellectual gifts. Every unprejudiced observer must admit that the Ukrainian peasant, almost the only typical representative of our nation, surpasses almost all his neighbors in his natural accomplishments.

The laziness and weakness of will peculiar to the southern nations compared to the northern, have not developed into a typical characteristic among the Ukrainians. The often remarkable indifference of the Ukrainian is rather an outgrowth of sad historical events than of the climate and the nature of the land in general. At most one might blame the great fertility of the black soil. For the faith in this fertility is almost never misplaced and favors the indifference of the peasant. On the other hand, the five hundred years of Tatar oppression were actually able to produce an inherited indifference. And why strive and work, when at any moment the Tatar hordes might come and take or burn everything?

Despite this historically inherited indifference, as we may call it, the laziness peculiar to southerners cannot be ascribed to the Ukrainians. They are better farmers than all their neighbors, with the single exception of those who adopted progressive farming, as, for example, the Prussian Poles. Domestic industry is also well developed among the Ukrainians, and the Ukrainian seasonal workers are actually sought after, especially in Germany, and earn a great deal. The Ukrainian harvest-worker is more sought after and better paid than the Russian. He works slowly but methodically, and achieves good results. The Ukrainian colonists find tolerable living conditions in places in which the Russian starves to death or from which he flees.

In like manner weakness of will is not a real peculiarity of the Ukrainians, in spite of their southern location. The thousand years’ struggle with piratical Asia, the independent establishment of two great state organizations, especially the second, after three centuries of slavery, the new awakening in the 19th Century under such difficult and hostile conditions, the splendid colonial expansion—all this speaks rather for great energy than for weakness of will. It is certainly true that in our people, oppressed by centuries of serfdom, energy and strength of character must hide beneath a thick crust of indifference, and our educated people find their energy weakened by the bad influence of foreign cultures. But these facts show most clearly that an enormous amount of energy and willpower is latent in the Ukrainian people, which, to this day, however, has not been properly developed.

Among historians and anthropogeographers it is a much used commonplace that the northern peoples always appear as conquerors who subjugate the southern peoples, and that they are always the founders of states in their particular climatic zones. The Germans overthrew the Roman Empire, the Northern Frenchmen founded the French state, the Northern Spaniards the Spanish, the Northern Italians, the Italian state, and the North Germans united Germany. It is natural, therefore, that this commonplace should be applied also in Eastern Europe. The “Northern” Russians have, by the natural necessity of history, “united” the “southern” Russians. The same explanation should be accepted as a necessity by the Ukrainians, and nothing should be done to resist this condition!

In reality this commonplace, like so many others, is false. The Ukrainians, as we have already observed, possess no such characteristics, as opposed to the Russians, as a southern race possesses with regard to a northern neighbor. To be sure, the Russian state now dominates the Ukraine. But the present Russian state is, after all, only a branch of the ancient Ukrainian Kingdom of Kiev. The ancient Ukrainian Kingdom subjugated the present Russian territory, organized it as a state, even partly colonized it, and gave it a ruling dynasty. The ancient Ukrainian state tradition was usurped by the Muscovite states, and gave them all the prestige which the Muscovite possesses. It was only the Tatar invasion that entirely held up the political development of the Ukraine, and, at the same time, favored the development of the Muscovite Empire. Only the Tatar invasion brought Moscow the supremacy over the Ukraine which Russia still enjoys. It was a foreign conquest, which has nothing to do with climatic influences. The very name of Russia only came into use in the time of Peter the Great!

From this survey of climatic influences, it appears, unequivocally, that the Ukrainians cannot be classed with the so-called southern peoples. The Ukrainians have all the characteristics of the races of the North Temperate Zone, who are the representatives of the European culture of today. The growth of national consciousness and of culture will, without a doubt, raise the Ukrainians to the standard of the European family of cultured nations. The nature of the country has, by means of its influences, given them all the necessary prerequisites.

The significance of the flora and fauna, for a lowland people like the Ukrainians, should be considered very great. From the physico-geographical description of the Ukraine, everyone will observe that the Ukraine may be naturally divided into two main parts, the forest country and the steppe country. The mountain formations take up only a comparatively small part of our territory.

Even among the Ukrainians themselves, the opinion is very widespread that they are a steppe-people. The enemies of the Ukraine have largely represented them in the eyes of Europe as a semi-nomadic steppe-people, devoid of all culture, which thru their growth and development might threaten the cultural treasures of Europe. These views, tho based partly upon the great part the steppe has played in the history of the Ukraine, and partly upon the unquestionable fact that three-fourths of the present Ukrainian territory lies within the steppe region of Eastern Europe, are, nevertheless, incorrect. For, a glance at the floral map of Europe is enough to show that the so-called old Ukraine, that is, the original Ukrainian territory, lies almost completely within the forest region. That means Galicia, Kholm, Western Podolia, Western Volhynia, Kiev, Chernihiv, etc. From here the most ancient Ukrainian colonization advanced to the Black Sea, only to lose all the steppe districts again upon the sudden nomad attack. For centuries the steppes of the present Ukraine were the stamping-ground of Mongolian-Turkish nomad tribes. The Cossack organization at last wrested great areas from them, and made these accessible to Ukrainian colonization. And only the last colonial expansion of the Ukrainians has been able to reach the Pontian shore again. The Ukrainians, then, were originally a forest and wood-meadow people. They have become in part a steppe people, but only thru their latest colonial expansion. And, just as today we would not call the English or the North Americans steppe peoples, merely because they colonized the American prairies and now inhabit them, so we can no more call the Ukrainians a steppe people, merely because they have colonized the Southern European steppes.

Not the steppe, but the forest and the wood-meadow are the native floral conditions of the Ukrainian. In the forest zone and in the adjacent parts of the forest-meadow zone, the seed of the Kiev State originated. In its expansion, this state first of all embraced the forest regions of the Ukraine, while the steppe regions were conquered later and kept under the dominion of the state for a comparatively short time only. The second center of the old Ukrainian historic life also lies within the forest zone of the Ukraine, namely, the Galician-Volhynian. Even the center of Ukrainian historical life that extended farthest into the steppe, the Zaporog Sich, was dependent for its existence upon the great wooded areas of the Veliki Luh on the Dnieper and its tributaries, and thus bound to the forest country.

The pronounced inclination of the Ukrainian people to agriculture, from the most ancient times down to the present, is another proof that it is a forest people, paradoxical tho it may seem. For it is an undisputed fact that, altho the steppes have apparently been most favorable to the cultivation of the grain grasses, and altho the present main centers of the grain production of the world lie in the steppe country of the prairies, pampas, Ukraine, yet nowhere in the whole world have the steppes brought forth an agricultural people. No steppe-people, anywhere, ever began agriculture of its own accord. The forest peoples had to teach the steppe-races agriculture in the first place. Only in case of bitter necessity do the inhabitants of the steppes take to the plough, and never has agriculture become part of their system to them.

How great was the part of the Ukrainian forest region in the past life of the nation has already been suggested in Book I. Only to the forests does the Ukrainian nation owe its preservation during the Tatar attacks. The forests were the only refuge of the people, to the forest zone the inhabitants of the steppes retreated whenever the steppes were threatened by the nomads, moving back again at a favorable opportunity.

The Ukrainian forests have also been of great importance as boundaries. The function of the forest to form important boundaries for races on a low grade of culture is familiar to anthropogeography. In Ukrainian history, too, this characteristic of the forests has appeared prominently. The forests of the Ukrainian Polissye were of great importance for the fencing-off of the East Slavic tribes, and by forming a wide zone, difficult of passage, separating the East Slavic tribes of the south from those of the north and west, they have contributed a great deal to the formation of the three East Slavic nations of today. In the days of the ancient Kingdom of Kiev, the centers in which the Muscovite nation later developed bore the name of Salissye (land behind the forest). There was a Pereyaslav Saliski, Vladimir Saliski, etc.

The significance of the forest as a boundary has also made itself felt in the internal history of the Ukraine. For the grade of culture upon which the Ukraine remained thruout the Middle Ages and in the early centuries of the modern era, the forests constituted good boundaries. The forest divided the population into small groups, which lived apart in separate clearings, every group living its own life. The forest made communication difficult and did not permit the organization of a powerful central state. The forest character of the old Ukraine was the natural chief cause of the formation of principalities in the ancient Kingdom of Kiev, and advanced that fateful particularism. It is not by mere accident that Kiev lies on the border of the forest zone of the Ukraine. Together with other causes, the thinner forests were an aid to the more rapid development of the Kiev principality, and made it the natural starting point for the great expansion under the reigns of Oleh, Sviatoslav, Volodimir.

From his original territory the Ukrainian took with him his great preference for trees, a love of trees which causes the white huts of a typical Ukrainian village to be bordered with the fresh green of leaves. The green of the trees in which the Ukrainian huts disappear, enables us immediately to differentiate a Ukrainian from a Russian village, which seems to be afraid of trees.

Consequently, the steppe is not originally native to the Ukrainian. The words of the Cossack song, “The steppes so wide, the joyous land” were not composed until the latter days of the Cossack organization. For centuries the steppe meant to the Ukrainian the terrible, mysterious, “wild field,” from which at every moment the nomad hosts, like a swarm of locusts, invaded the Ukraine. The struggles of the Kingdom of Kiev with the nomads show an anthropogeographer very plainly the reason of their final failure. The ancient Ukrainians, being forest dwellers, simply could not successfully fight the riders on the natural steppe or the artificial steppe of their own fields. The ancient Ukrainians did not feel at home in the steppe. A long evolution was necessary before the Ukrainians adapted themselves to the steppe, and the beginning of this adaptation was the Ukrainian Cossack organization. Not until after the formation and development of the Cossack organization could the Ukrainian people successfully advance into the steppe zone and colonize it. Yet the denser settlement of the steppes did not take place until toward the end of the 18th Century. Some of these early Ukrainian settlements have, to this day, not lost the character of new colonies. But these steppe districts were colonized by so great a mass of Ukrainian colonists, and they increased so rapidly in the fertile country, that today more than half the Ukrainians live in the steppe zone, and thereby favor the widespread commonplace that the Ukrainians are a steppe people.

The wealth of its flora and fauna very soon enabled the Ukraine to prosper. Very early it was called a land “where milk and honey flows.” This natural wealth of the organic world possessed the greater worth for the reason that it was not soon exhausted, and offered, as it still offers, to the population, an opportunity for constant work, enduring activity and steady development. The natural treasures of the Ukrainian territory are not the treasures of tropical countries which favor laziness, but the treasures of a more thrifty Nature, which require constant work to properly exploit them.

Man has changed the natural conditions of the flora and fauna of the Ukraine to a great extent. These changes are not as fundamental as in Western and Central Europe, but they have a great anthropogeographical significance. The forest zone of the Ukraine is thinned even beyond the normal and in places destroyed. The artificial steppe of the cultivated land has penetrated very far to the north and west. Certain plant species have become rare, others have entirely disappeared, while, on the other hand, new ones have been acclimated. The original wealth of game of the Ukraine is a thing of the past now, and the great abundance of fish is almost all gone. On the other hand, man has increased the number of domestic animals enormously.

All these conditions give to the Ukraine characteristics of a cultivated country. As we shall see further on, the degree of exploitation of natural resources is still very low, much lower than in the genuinely cultured countries of Europe.

Despite all this, the Ukraine must be considered a land exceptionally endowed with riches by Nature. Up to the present day this has been a misfortune, for from all sides strangers have come in to take with full hands of the riches of the Ukraine.

But the time has come, at last, in which the possibility lies in the hands of the Ukrainian people to make use in the future of the rich resources of the Ukrainian land for themselves.

ECONOMIC-GEOGRAPHICAL SURVEY OF UKRAINE

To give a lucid economic-geographical view of the Ukraine today is very difficult—almost impossible. The Ukrainian territory is divided among three states, and nowhere does the Ukrainian country form unbroken administrative units. Consequently, the official statistics cannot give an exact picture of the economic conditions of the Ukraine. The following attempt, also, can lay no claim to accuracy. A very heterogeneous and incomplete mass of material has made it impossible to attain the desired accuracy and uniformity.

The Ukraine differs from the cultural countries of Central and Western Europe first, in that its settlement is not yet complete, so to say. Only the northwestern regions of the “Old Ukraine” possess a sufficient density of population. The entire south and east are thinly, in places even very thinly, peopled. And the complete exploitation of the natural resources is still a far way off, even in the most thickly settled parts of the Western Ukraine.

In our economic-geographical survey of the Ukraine, we shall begin with the most primitive branches of the exploitation of natural resources and proceed from them to those that are more advanced.

HUNTING AND FISHING

The most primitive way of exploiting the natural resources of a country has always, and everywhere, been hunting and fishing. Both played a great part in the economic life of the Ukraine a thousand years ago. Our ancient chronicles contain many reports of the great abundance of game and fish in the Ukrainian land, and of their great importance for the population. Five centuries of Tatar warfare effectively interrupted the exploitation of these natural treasures, and even in the 16th and 17th Century the Ukraine still aroused the amazement of travelers from foreign lands, thru its great wealth of game and fish. In these centuries, hunting and fishing were among the main branches of industry of the Cossack border population of the Ukraine. As late as the second half of the 18th Century, hunting and fishing were still two of the main sources of industry of the Zaporog Sich. But soon agriculture began to gain ground in the regions ruled by it, the density of the population increased, and with it the fundamental strength of the Zaporog organization. This circumstance seemed threatening to the Russian government, and was the chief motive for the destruction of the Sich.

Today hunting has almost no significance in the economic life of the Ukraine. Altho in the year 1906, in Galicia, 500 stags, about 10,000 roes, over 2000 boars, about 90,000 rabbits, over 8000 pheasants, 50,000 partridges, 30,000 quail, 10,000 woodcocks, and 14,000 wild ducks were killed, the figures for other countries at the same time were much higher; in Bohemia which is more thickly populated there were brought down more than 800,000 rabbits, 1,000,000 partridges, etc. These figures show that in Galicia the natural wealth of game has declined considerably, while the artificial conservation of game has not yet begun. In the Austro-Hungarian part of the Ukraine, hunting has become a mere diversion of the upper classes—a mere sport. The hunting monopoly of the upper classes even bring to the country folk serious disadvantages, for boars and stags cause great damage to agriculture, especially in the Boiko and Hutzul country, and it is forbidden to keep them off. This circumstance encourages poaching, which in many districts is quite common. The extermination of beasts of prey, bears, wolves, lynx and wildcats is as a rule, undertaken only in occasional general chases, but the Ukrainian mountain-dwellers are very well able, despite all game laws, to defend themselves and their herds effectively from these wild animals. In 1906 more than 9000 foxes were brought down in Galicia.

In the Russian Ukraine the economic importance of hunting is as slight as in Austria-Hungary. Nowhere in this region do we find a developed, profitable hunting industry. Even in the Polissye hunting is not very important and is at most an avocation for a few forest settlers. Here rabbits, roes, boars, elk, grouse, wild fowl and water-game are sometimes hunted. Bison and beaver hunting is now very strictly forbidden. Many foxes and badgers are killed and a relatively large number of bears and wolves. Volhynia is much poorer in game, and still poorer are Podolia, and the districts of Kiev, Poltava and Kharkiv. In all the places, the most that one can get a shot at, aside from wild fowl, is rabbits and foxes, and sometimes wolves. In the forests and swamps of the Chernihov country there is a somewhat greater abundance of game. Hunting is most important, relatively, in the southern part of the Ukraine, on the Black Sea border and in the Caucasus lands. Besides roes, rabbits, and foxes, there are hunted in the steppes: wolves, sayga-antelopes and wild dogs; and in the Caucasus: bison, stags, bears, and lynx. The number of steppe and waterfowl, e.g., bustards, partridge, quail, wild geese and wild ducks, and of mountain fowl, as pheasants, mountain-quail, and grouse, is still considerable. Collecting the eggs of waterfowl is still a remunerative occupation. On the shores of the Caspian Sea 130,000 Caspian seals are killed every year.

Of much greater importance than hunting is the fishing industry. It is only a weak reminiscence of what it once was, yet it remains to this day an important economic element. The Ukrainian fishing industry is carried on in three regions: on the high sea, in the river-mouths, and in the interior of the land, in rivers, lakes and ponds.

The actual sea-fishing industry attains relatively slight results, on the average 24½ million kilograms a year. On the Black Sea, along the shores of Bessarabia, Kherson and Tauria, a great amount of mackerel, sardines, herrings and sturgeon-like fish are caught. The main fisheries of the northern Pontian shore are situated at the Kinburn bar, at the island of Tendva, in the Bay of Karkinit, at Cape Tarkhankut, at Eupatoria, Balaklava, Yalta, Sudak, and Theodosia. Fishing on the high seas, because of its great cost, is undertaken only by the large enterprising companies, who hire the Ukrainian fishing companies (artili) for the entire summer. Of late, fishing on a small scale has begun to develop. The small fishermen catch chiefly mackerel, which are then salted, or, less often, smoked. They also go after the small but savory Black Sea oysters, of which an average number of one million a year are gathered.

Far greater profit is yielded by the fisheries at the mouths of the rivers, in the limans, and particularly on the largest liman of all, the Sea of Azof. The annual yield here attains an average of 140 million kilograms. At the mouths of the Danube the chief fishing center is Vilkiv. Toward the end of the 19th century there lived at this place 900 independent fisherman, who sometimes united to form artils. Here they catch chiefly sturgeon and other fish of the sturgeon class (on the average 30,000 a year), and four and a half million of Pontian herrings. At the mouths of the Dniester, Boh and Dnieper, chiefly river fish are caught. Herrings and sturgeon-like fish are of minor consequence here. The fishermen in this region are always organized either in artils, in which the profits are shared equally among the members, or in so-called takhvi, which are hired by the entrepreneurs. The chief center of the fishing trade and of the putting up of canned fish, is Odessa. Yet the Bay of Odessa cannot compare with the Sea of Azof in fish production. The average value of the annual haul here exceeded a million rubles in the latter years of the 19th Century. Over 11 million kilograms of sturgeon-like fish and other large fish, besides 7 million herrings, were caught here annually. In some winters more than 70,000 fishermen, with 20,000 to 30,000 horses and oxen, gather on the frozen Sea of Azof. With gigantic nets, which are sometimes nearly two kilometers long, a very profitable fishing industry is carried on here. Important fishing centers, with great freezing plants and works for salting and smoking, are situated in Osiv (Azof) and Kerch. The members of the fisher artils come principally from the Poltava and Kharkiv country.

The Ukrainians may also claim a rather prominent part in the fishing industry of the Caspian Sea, which yields more than half a billion kilograms of fish annually. The Ukrainian Caspian fishermen come from Ukrainian colonies on the Volga, and from the eastern parts of the Ukraine proper.

The interior fishing industry on the rivers, lakes and ponds now has only slight significance. On the Dniester and Dnieper on the Pripet, Desna, Sula and Orel, and on the Donetz there still exist here and there fisher-artils, but the fish are caught only for local use. In the Polissye region the fishing industry still yields some profit, e.g., in the District of Mosir about 40,000 rubles a year, in the District of Pinsk only 3500 rubles. Lake Knias yields 10,000 rubles worth of fish annually. All of Galicia yields about 1,500,000 kilograms a year, of which two-thirds are contributed by the Ukrainian part of the country.

In examining the fishing industry of the Ukraine one cannot escape reminiscences that are painful. Everywhere a ruthless system of pillage and waste is carried on. The excessively fine meshes of the nets catch the young broods of fish with the old, and these are either sold for a few kopeks a pound or simply thrown away. The fish which come up the rivers to spawn are ruthlessly intercepted. A closed season or region barely exists, except on paper. We need not wonder, therefore, that the abundance of fish in the Ukraine is rapidly decreasing, and fishing is losing its importance more and more. Not a soul thinks of a rational method of breeding fish, of increasing the stock of fish in the streams. In Galicia a start has been made, but thus far the results are very slight. And yet the Ukraine, being an almost exclusively agricultural country, where there is no factory sewage to poison the rivers, could very easily recover its fame as a land abounding in fish.

The related industry of crab-fishing is not developed in the Ukraine, altho the Jewish dealers of Eastern Galicia send whole wagon-loads of crabs from Galician and Russian Podolia to the west. The old Zaporog regions have been famous since ancient times for their abundance of crabs. In Oleshki there also exists a drying-plant for crabs’ tails.

From this short survey of the hunting and fishing industry of the Ukraine, we perceive that these branches of industry play only a small part in the economic life of the Ukrainian population. A further proof of this fact is the small percentage of the population which engages in this work. This percentage amounts to 0.2% in the Russian-Ukraine; in the Austrian Ukraine it must be much smaller still.

FORESTRY

How extensive the wooded area of the Ukraine is cannot be determined exactly without detailed investigation, for the same reason that statistical figures concerning the Ukraine in other fields are difficult to determine. An approximate calculation of the forest surface gives us an area of over 110,000 square kilometers, that is 13% of the entire surface of the country. These figures show us that the Ukraine is one of the more sparsely-wooded countries of Europe. Of all the larger territories of our continent, only England, with its 4%, is poorer in forests. There remain only smaller territories, as Portugal (2.8%), the Netherlands (8%), Denmark (8.3%), Greece (9.3%). So old a land of culture as France still possesses 15.8% forest surface, Germany 25.9%, Hungary 27.4%, Austria 32.7%, Russia 38.8%. Among the large territories, the United States stand nearest to the Ukraine as far as their forest area (10.3%) is concerned.

The causes of the comparative lack of forests in the Ukraine are to be sought, first of all, in the fact that it includes large parts of the steppe region of Eastern Europe. The percentage of forest land in the various regions of the Ukraine show us this most clearly. The mountain regions still retain the highest proportion of forest. The Bukowina has 42% of forest (District of Kimpolung 78%), the Ukrainian region of Northeastern Hungary about 40% (Marmarosh 62%). Then come the Ukrainian regions of the forest zone: Polissye, from Minsk down 38.2%, Volhynia 29.6%, Galicia 25.4%, Grodno 25.5, Podlakhia, starting from Lublin, 25.1%, from Sidletz 19.8%. In the same class, as far as forest area is concerned, the Kuban region seems to stand. Besides the heavily wooded mountain region, this division includes the luhi in the foothill country and the treeless steppes; hence the percentage comes out very small—19.8%. The transition between the forest and the steppe zone is indicated by the following series: Kiev 18%, Chernihiv 15%, Podolia 10.9%, Kharkiv 8.5% of forest area. The steppe regions of the Ukraine have very little forest land: Kursk 7.1%, Voroniz 6.8%, Bessarabia 5.8%, Tauria (Yaila forests) 5.7%, Poltava 4.7%, Katerinoslav 2.4%, the Don region the same, Kherson 1.4%, Stavropol 0.3%.

In this distribution of forest we see a certain analogy between the Ukraine and the United States. Here the steppes are treeless, there it is the prairies. Here the forest predominates in the Carpathians, there in the Appalachians; here, just as there, we have zones of transition from forest regions to the steppes. But there is another point of similarity between the Ukraine and the United States—the ruthless exploitation and waste in forestry. This criminal waste is the second main cause for the lack of forests of the Ukraine. It began in the 16th Century and it still continues today. Historical sources mention great forest formations, even in those regions of the Ukraine which are now poor in forests. The “Great Forest” (veliki luh) in the Zaporog land, the “Black Forest” at the sources of the Inhul, the large forests of the Poltava and Kharkiv region, the Derevlan jungles, the gigantic forests on the Buh and Vislok, in the Rostoche, all have either entirely disappeared from the earth’s surface or have changed into miserable remnants, which, at any moment, may fall a final victim to human greed. A host of geographical names, in regions which are almost entirely treeless today, point to former forests. Thick, primitive oak trunks are found in the beds of rivers which flow only thru the treeless steppe-region. In five decades, in the second half of the 19th Century, the forest area of the Government of Kharkiv decreased from 10.9% to 8.5%, in Poltava from 13% to 4.7%, Chernihiv from 17.1% to 15%. Detailed investigations of the ground have proved that the forest area of the District of Poltava was originally 34% (now 7%), of the District of Romny 28% (now 9%) and of the District of Lubni 30% (now 4%). Similar conditions of forest devastation prevail everywhere in the Ukraine. Thus, the forest area of Galicia, for example, has decreased by 2000 square kilometers, i.e., almost 3% of the total surface area of the country, in the course of the last century.

We have already frequently called attention to the sad results of this criminal waste for the entire land. But, because of the low grade of culture of the nations dominating the Ukraine, the Polish nation and the Russian, no attention is paid to the fatal results of forest destruction. The forests are recklessly cut down for lumber, and year by year the scarcity of wood is being felt in most regions of the Ukraine. Only in Podlakhia, Volhynia, Polissye, and in the mountain regions of the Ukraine, is there no scarcity of wood. The three cubic meters of wood which, on the average, are due every inhabitant of the Ukraine, are not easily accessible to more than one-fifth of the Ukrainians. At the same time, the forests of the Ukraine are, as a rule, badly managed. Even in the Austro-Hungarian parts of the Ukraine there are very few professional foresters; in Galicia for example, 250 to 800. Conditions are still worse in the Russian-Ukraine. Consequently, the forest does not grow up again very well, and a great deal of wood is simply ruined. This happens chiefly in the mountain forests of the Carpathians, where hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of wood decay every year. In the regions which are poor in forests, the products of the woods are carefully and economically used, so that, for instance, from one hectare of forest in the Poltava region, 11.5 cubic meters of wood are produced every year; in the region of Katerinoslav, 7 cubic meters. Of the production of the Ukrainian forest, building wood constitutes only a comparatively small part. There is a crushing preponderance of firewood, especially in the regions which are poor in forests. Building wood, in large quantities, comes from the forests of the Polissye and of the Carpathians only. The export of building wood from Galicia and the Bukowina reached a million and a half cubic meters annually at the end of the century. The export of wood from the Polissye, starting from Minsk, exceeded 900,000 cubic meters. The complete production of Galicia in the year 1900 was 3,660,000 cubic meters of building wood and an equal quantity of firewood.

The reclaiming of forests, even in the Austrian Ukraine, where it is required by law, is not properly administered. It is still worse in the Russian Ukraine. Hence, the forest surface of the Ukraine is constantly decreasing instead of remaining unchanged or even increasing, as usually happens in the cultured lands of Europe. And yet, the Ukraine is one of those countries in which the forest problem is a life problem.

The Ukrainian people engage in the Ukrainian lumber industry only as labor-power, while the money profit goes to strangers—great landowners or middlemen. The forest-area which is in the possession of Ukrainian peasants is very small, even in Galicia, where at the time of the removal of the labor tax system, at least small patches of forest came into the possession of the peasant communities. Almost all the forests of the Ukraine belong to the large landowners, the clergy and the national lands.

The lumber industry and the industrial exploitation of the forest products engages but a slight part of the Ukrainian people. In the Russian Ukraine the percentage of such workers is barely 0.1%. In this percentage, however, the entire mass of Ukrainian peasants which seeks its incidental profit in forest work, is not considered. In the Carpathian regions of the Ukraine this percentage increases a hundredfold and more.

AGRICULTURE

Since the very first beginnings of the history of the Ukraine, the main occupation of its people has been, and has remained to this day, agriculture. To give a complete picture of Ukrainian agriculture is beyond the scope of our little book. Even a detailed economic study could not do justice to this task. Hence, we shall have to limit ourselves to its most important phases.

Almost nine-tenths of the Ukrainian people are engaged in agriculture. In the Russian Ukraine, the agricultural percentage of the population, according to official estimate, is 86.4%. This figure is probably correct for the Austrian-Ukraine as well, altho the biased calculations of Buzek place the percentage of farmers among the Ukrainians of Galicia at 94.4%. These figures show us very clearly the significance of agriculture in the economic life of the Ukraine. Now, a person seeing these figures and knowing the fertility of the Ukraine might easily imagine that agriculture here stands upon a high plane. Such a view, however, would be entirely false. Agriculture is on a very very low plane in the Ukraine.

Yet the causes of this sad state of affairs do not lie in the nature of the land. The climate of the Ukraine favors the cultivation of grains as no other does. Barely one small part of the steppe-zone is unfavorable to agriculture, because of its frequent periods of drought. The soil of the Ukraine is one of the most fertile on the whole globe. More than three-fourths of the Ukraine lies in the Black Earth Region, and many varieties of soil in the northwestern part of the Ukraine are by no means without value and at least equal to the best soils of Germany. Not in Nature, but in the cultural conditions, lie the causes of the low grade of Ukrainian agriculture.

The first and main cause is the lack of enlightenment among the people of the Ukraine. The Ukraine peasant cultivates his field entirely after the manner of his forefathers, which may have proved excellent a hundred years ago, and actually did make the Ukrainian peasant appear as the best farmer among his neighbors of other races, but they fail completely in these days of intensive cultivation of the soil. The illiteracy of the Ukrainian peasant renders almost inaccessible to him all the great progress of agricultural science. The old methods of cultivation, the primitive agricultural implements, waste his energy and his stock of living resources. The use of agricultural machines, which may be of great significance even in intensive farming on a small scale, is almost unknown to the Ukrainian peasant. The progressive amelioration of the soil and the national rotation of crops is not at all of wide application. And all efforts at enlightening the Ukrainian peasantry are hindered as much as possible by the governments dominating them, by their Polish and their Russian masters.

The highest level, relatively, in agriculture, is attained by the western borderlands of the Ukraine, Podlakhia, the Khohos country, and Galicia. The poorer quality of the soil has always required more intensive cultivation here. Besides, the influences of advanced methods of cultivation sifted thru more easily here, whether indirectly thru the Polish territory, or directly thru the influence of the German colonies. The greater enlightenment of the Ukrainian peasants of Galicia has brought it about that they now regularly apply rational rotation of crops and fertilization of the soil, even with artificial fertilizers, and possess pretty good agricultural implements. The three-field system has disappeared almost everywhere in this region, and continues in use only in the most fertile parts of Podolia. In the mountains, on the other hand, making land arable by means of fires followed immediately by planting, is still a procedure frequently met with. In the Polissye region burning is still frequently applied, but the two-field and three-field systems are used more frequently. On the same principle, agriculture is carried on in the northern parts of Volhynia, Kiev and Chernihiv. In the southern parts of these districts, as well as in Podolia, Poltava and Kharkiv, the three-field system predominates. Manuring is usually confined to small plots directly adjoining the farmhouse. Here, too, however, an advance to rational rotation of crops and to the multi-field system is undeniable. In the steppe zone the method of cultivation becomes more careless and the so-called fallow-system prevails. The steppe soil is cultivated for a number of years and then left lying fallow for some time. In very recent years, however, even the steppe-peasant has had to face the hard necessity of going on to the intensive methods of cultivation.

The agricultural implements of the Ukrainian peasants have undergone a great change. The primitive wooden plough, without metal mounting, has been retained only in places, in the Polissye region and the Carpathian country, more as a relic of the fathers than as an agricultural implement. In the entire central zone of the Ukraine, the typical Ukrainian plough, made of wood, with strong iron fittings, is used. Iron ploughs are rapidly coming into use. In the southern steppe zone of the Ukraine, the peasant has by far the best implements. Iron ploughs of different kinds are used here, in imitation of the German colonists, while sowing, harvesting, and also threshing machines are found as the property of large farmers or of agricultural co-operative associations.

It is possible, then, to note a certain progress in Ukrainian agriculture. The Russian and White Russian peasant is much more badly off, but the Ukrainian peasant, too, has a long way to go in order to reach the level of even the Ukrainian large landowners. Various agricultural co-operative associations are working to raise the standard of agriculture among the Ukrainian peasantry. One of these co-operative associations has 90 branches, 1100 local groups, and 27,000 members—the Eastern Galician “Silsky Hospodar.” Such associations would, if not hindered in their development (especially by the Russian Government), become of great importance in raising the level of the agricultural industry of the Ukraine, that ancient granary of Europe.

The second cause of the sad condition of Ukrainian agriculture lies in their unsound property conditions. The foreign conquerors, who were continually attracted by the fertility of the Ukrainian land, after taking possession of the land, divided it among their upper classes. The foreign conquerors have succeeded in denationalizing the Ukrainian nobility, have succeeded even in developing the republican Cossack organization into a new class of landowners and, very largely in russifying them. Foreign rule in the Ukraine has always supported foreign ownership of land on a large scale, and the Ukrainian peasant must be satisfied with small, mediocre and widely scattered bits of land.

Now for a few corroborative figures. In the Ukrainian part of Galicia the large estates embrace 40.3% of the total area. In the Governments of Chernihiv, Poltava and Kharkiv, the proportion of peasant-owned land is still rather large (53%, 52%, 59%), because here the property of descendants of the old-time Cossacks is included. Far worse are the conditions in other parts of the Ukraine. In Volhynia the peasant-owned land constitutes only 40% of the area, in Podolia 48%, in Kiev 46%, in Kherson 37%, in Katerinoslav 45%, in Tauria 37%, while in the Polissian Government of Minsk the peasants retain only 28% of the land.

The results of such unsound property conditions are fatal to the ever-increasing density of the peasant population. Land-famine has become chronic all thru the Ukraine. The parcelling out of the large estates which began with such fine results in Galicia a few years ago has now come to a halt, and the Stolypin radical agrarian reform in the Russian Ukraine has thus far only slight results to show. To be sure, the amount of property of the medium landowners is decreasing, but the giant estates are not only not losing ground, but even show a steady, tho gradual, growth.

As a result of the ever increasing scarcity of land, the Ukrainian peasants are splitting up their property more and more, trying to rent as much land as possible from the large landowners, and seeking subsidiary occupations in domestic work; but a large percentage find it necessary to leave their fatherland and to seek homes in Caucasia, Turkestan, Siberia, Canada, Brazil and Argentina. And this sad fact need not amaze us. For, while the foreign colonists who settled in Southern Ukraine upon the invitation of Catherine II were given 65 hectares of land per head, the Ukrainian peasant, after the abolition of serfdom, in 1861, was given a maximum of 3½ hectares, and in many cases only 1½ hectares per head. In half a century the rural population has doubled, while the area of cultivation has not increased perceptibly at all. Thus, there existed in the Government of Poltava, as early as twenty years ago, more than 60% of peasant-farms with an area of cultivation of only 1.3 desiatins, while another four percent of estates occupied more than 5 desiatins. How can one speak of progressive farming under such property conditions? Those 60% of peasant farms resemble very closely the sort of plots occupied by cottagers or squatters. And the consequence: 62% of the emigrants who emigrated to Russian Asia in 1910 came from the Ukrainian governments, that “granary” of Russia. And not only from the thickly populated districts of Kiev or Poltava, but also from the comparatively thinly populated, very fertile districts of the Ukraine—from Kherson, Katerinoslav and Tauria.

The third reason for the sad condition of Ukrainian agriculture, is the community ownership of land established in the Eastern Ukraine. The basis of their system, which is in vogue everywhere in Great-Russia, is that the land is not owned by the individual peasant, but by the entire community, which apportions it among its individual members. This Muscovite property system is unbearable to the Ukrainian peasant and causes him to neglect his land, since it does not really belong to him. It does not pay him at all to cultivate the ground better than his neighbor, since, in the new apportionment, the carefully improved patch may fall to someone else.

If, therefore, despite all these unfavorable conditions, the agricultural production of the Ukraine and its exports of food stuffs are very great, this fact is due, above all, to the great fertility of the Ukrainian soil and the economic policy of the large landowners, who, in spite of the frequent danger of famine in their own country, continue to export the products of their great estates beyond the borders of the land.

After these general observations, we proceed to a short survey of agriculture in the Ukraine. None of the European countries (with the exception of Russia) possesses as great an area under cultivation as the Ukraine. It amounts to more than 45 million hectares, that is, more than 32% of the area of cultivation of European Russia, which is six times as large as the Ukraine. The proportion of the area of cultivation in the Ukraine is nearly 53% of the total area of the country. In this respect the Ukraine is surpassed only by France (56%). In Germany, the proportion is only 48.6%, in Austria 36.8%, in Hungary 43.1%, in Russia 26.2%. To be sure, the proportion of the cultivated area is very different in different districts of the Ukraine. The most agricultural land is found in the steppe and transition regions: Kherson 78%, Poltava 75%, Kursk 74%, Kharkiv 71%, Voroniz and Katerinoslav 69% each, Podolia and Tauria 64% each, Bessarabia 61%, Kiev 57%, Chernihiv 55%. The forest regions possess much less farm land: Galicia 48%, Grodno 40%, Volhynia 37%, Minsk 24%, etc. Besides this, the farm land within each of the above mentioned regions is diversely distributed. In Galicia, for example, the area of cultivation is apportioned as follows: In Eastern Podolia 75–80%, in Western Podolia 60–75%, in Pidhirye only 20–30%, in the Hutzul country only 10%, of the total area. Similar conditions prevail in the Bukowina, in Upper Hungary, Caucasia. In the level regions of the Ukraine these local differences are slighter.

To calculate the general agricultural production of the Ukraine is difficult, if not impossible. By combining various reports, we get, for the yearly average in the beginning of the 20th Century, a grand total of 150 million metric hundred weights. (This number, however, includes only the wheat, rye, and barley production.) In this respect, the Ukraine surpasses all the countries of Europe except Russia. Its production is greater than that of Austria, Hungary or of France, to say nothing of other European States.

Following are several figures about the harvest yield of the Central regions of the Ukraine in 1910. Volhynia produced 73.4 million puds (1 pud = 16.4 kilograms), Kiev 113.4, Podolia 115.9, Kherson 188.6, Chernihiv 40, Poltava 113.6, Kharkiv 95.9, Katerinoslav 194.9, Tauria 138.3, Kuban 214.4 million puds. The total yield of the central regions of the Ukraine (without the borderlands, which also produce a great deal, as for example, parts of Kursk, Voroniz, the Don region, etc.) totalled 215 million metric hundred weights, and was, consequently, six times as great as the harvest yield of Russian Poland, and comprised 39% of the total production of European Russia and over 33% that of the entire Russian Empire. If we consider now that the Russian Ukraine comprises only a twenty-ninth part of the gigantic Russian Empire and barely one-fourth of its population, we recognize the great importance attached to the Ukraine as the granary of Russia.

Among the species of grain grown in the Ukraine, wheat is without doubt of the first importance. In the Southern Ukraine wheat takes up half the area of cultivation, decreasing rapidly toward the north and west. In the Government of Kherson the wheat fields cover 51% of the cultivated surface, in Katerinoslav 50%, in Tauria and in the Don region 49%, in Bessarabia 36%, in Podolia 30%, in Kharkiv 29%, in Poltava and in Kiev 22%, in Galicia 14%, in Volhynia 11%, in Grodno 4%, in Minsk 3%, in Chernihiv only 1%. In Kiev, Podolia, Volhynia, Galicia, more winter wheat is raised; in the Southern Ukraine, more summer wheat. The mean annual yield per hectare is 10½ hl. for winter wheat and 7½ hl. for summer wheat. The mean annual yield of wheat in the first decade of the 20th Century in Russian Ukraine was 68 million metric quintals, that is, over 46% of the production of European Russia. (In Eastern Galicia it was 1.9 million q.). The chief centers of wheat production in the Ukraine are Kuban (17 million q.), Katerinoslav (12.4 million q.), Kherson (12.4 million q.), Tauria (9 million q.), Poltava (6.3 million q.), Podolia (5.8 million q.), Kharkiv (4.9 million q.), Kiev (4.2 million q.), Stavropol (3.3 million q.), and Volhynia (2.7 million q.). Wheat is one of the chief exports of the Ukraine.

Rye is cultivated chiefly in the northern and western districts of the Ukraine, where it is the chief grain used for breadmaking. In Chernihiv, Minsk and Grodno, rye takes up 48% of the farm land, in Volhynia 38%, in Poltava 3%, in Kharkiv 29%, in Kiev 28%, in the Don region 22%, in Katerinoslav and Podolia 19%, in Tauria 18%, in Kherson and Galicia 17%, in Bessarabia only 7%. Rye (almost everywhere winter rye) yields on the average 10½ hl. per hectare. The chief districts of production are Poltava (55 million q.), Volhynia (4.9 million q.), Kiev (4.8 million q.). The total rye output of the Ukraine is as high as 42 million q., that is, over 20% of the Russian output.

Barley is raised mostly in the Southern Ukraine, where it takes up 28% of the farm land in Tauria, 26% in Katerinoslav, 21% in Kharkiv and Kherson, 18% in Bessarabia, 17% in the Don regions. The chief districts of production are Katerinoslav (9.2 million q.), Kherson (7.9 million q.), and Kuban (6.9 million q.) Barley is also an important export of the Southern Ukraine. In other regions of the Ukraine less barley is raised, e.g., in Poltava 13%, in Polissye and in Galicia 9%. The barley production of the Russian Ukraine amounts to 49 million q., therefore 61% of the Russian production of barley.

The importance of the remaining grains is, of course, comparatively slight. Oats take up on