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 [149]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 [150]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 [151]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 [152]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. [153]

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, [154]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 [155]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, [156]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 [157]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. [158]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 [159]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.

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 [160]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, [161]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 [162]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, [163]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 [164]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 [165]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 [166]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 [167]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.

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, [168]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 [169]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 [170]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, [171]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 [172]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. [173]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. [174]

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 [175]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 [176]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!

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. [177]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 [178]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 [179]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 [180]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 [181]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 [182]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. [183]

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 [184]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 [185]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 [186]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 [187]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, [188]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 [189]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 [190]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.

The most primitive way of exploiting the natural resources of a country has always, and everywhere, been [247]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 [248]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. [249]

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 [250]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. [251]

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.

How extensive the wooded area of the Ukraine is cannot be determined exactly without detailed investigation, [252]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 [253]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 [254]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 [255]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.

Since the very first beginnings of the history of the Ukraine, the main occupation of its people has been, and [256]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 [257]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 [258]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 [259]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 [260]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 [261]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, [262]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 [263]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 [264]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 the average 16% of the farm land in the Ukraine (21% in the Polissye region, 17% in Galicia, 16% in Chernihiv, 11% in Kharkiv and Poltava, 5% in Southern Ukraine). The total production is 28 million q. Kiev, Volhynia and Poltava take first rank. As a bread cereal, oats are of some importance only among the Carpathian people of the Ukraine. The Eastern Galician oats production amounts to 4.5 million q. Spelt is raised very seldom and then only along the western borders of the Ukraine. Buckwheat is of the greatest importance in the Chernihiv country (about 27% of the farm area and a yield of 0.8 million q. a year), and Kiev, Volhynia, and Poltava each produce almost as much. In other regions of the Ukraine, buckwheat is raised much less frequently (7% in Polissye, 2% in Galicia), in the southern part of the Ukraine almost none at all. Millet is raised chiefly in the Government of Kiev (10% of the farm-land, [265]2.3 million q. annual production) and Voroniz (9%). In Kharkiv and Poltava the amount of land used for millet is only 4%, in Galicia 1%. In Kherson the cultivation of the Chugara-millet has been begun. The chief region of Indian corn cultivation is Bessarabia, where this crop takes up 32% of the area of cultivation. Indian corn is also grown in the adjacent regions of Podolia (7%), Kherson (3%), Galicia (3%), and the Bukowina, playing an important part in feeding the population in these regions. The chief regions of corn production are Podolia (1.8 million q.), the Ukrainian part of Bessarabia and Kherson (each 1.1 million q.) and Southeastern Galicia (0.9 million q.).

Besides grains and cereals, some other species of plants are of great importance in the agricultural production of the Ukraine. The first of these is the potato. The fact that the yield of the potato is six or eight times that of the other plants makes it a very important staple. Yet this advantage of the potato is but little exploited in the Ukraine. Only in Galicia does the potato take up 14% of the farm-land (annual production in Eastern Galicia 38.7 million q.). Even in the Polissye region and in Chernihiv, only 6% of the farm-land consists of potato-fields, in Poltava and Kharkiv only 3%, in the Southern Ukraine barely 1%. The total production of potatoes in the Russian Ukraine is 63.2 million q. annually, therefore 22% of the production of European Russia. The large landowners use the potato for distilling alcohol (especially in Galicia), or for cattle-feed.

Various species of beans and lentils are raised everywhere in the Ukraine, but on a small scale, chiefly in kitchen-gardens. In Galicia these vegetables take up 3% of the farm-land, in Polissye and Chernihiv 2% each, in the other districts of the Ukraine still less. The culture of forage (clover, lucerne, fodder-turnip) is still in its infancy in the Ukraine. Only in Galicia do such plants take up more than 10% of the farm-land. [266]

The cultivation of commercial plants stands upon a comparatively low level. Most extensive is the cultivation of hemp and flax; but it takes up only a tiny part of the general area of cultivation of the land. Flax is cultivated chiefly in the Polissye region and in Katerinoslav (3% of the farm-land). In Chernihiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, it takes up 1 to 2% of the farm-land, in Galicia 1% (together with hemp). In the Southern Ukraine a short-stemmed variety of flax, raised only for obtaining oil, is cultivated widely. Hemp takes up on the average 1% of the farm-land, only in Chernihiv as much as 4%. All the hemp products are used in home industry, white the flax products are mostly exported. Another plant grown for the sake of oil thruout the Ukraine, but especially in the eastern borderlands of the country, is the sunflower. Rapeseed is grown only by the large landowners, chiefly in Kherson, Kiev, Poltava, and Podolia. Poppy is cultivated everywhere in the Ukraine even by the peasants. Among the industrial plants of the Ukraine the sugar-beet plays a very important part. In the year 1897 Russia had 410,000 hectares of beet-fields, 330,000 hectares of this area being in the Ukraine. The total Russian production of sugar-beets was 60 million metric hundredweights, of which 50 millions, that is, five-sixths, came from the Ukraine. The most important centers of sugar-beet production lie in the Governments of Kiev, Kharkiv and Podolia, much less being produced in Volhynia, Chernihiv and Kursk. In the Austrian Ukraine sugar-beet culture is developed only in Southeastern Galicia and Northern Bukowina. Not only the large landowners, but also frequently the peasants, engage in sugar-beet culture with great profit.

Another important commercial plant of the Ukraine is tobacco, which takes up over 50,000 hectares of farm-land, 3000 hectares of it in Galicia. The chief districts of tobacco production are Chernihiv, Poltava, Kuban and Tauria. [267]Much less is produced in the Black Sea region in Podolia, Volhynia, Bessarabia, Kherson and Kharkiv. The tobacco production in Russian Ukraine in 1908 amounted to over 660,000 q., that is, 69% of the total production of Russia, in Galicia 50,000 q. Tobacco culture has a great future in the Ukraine, because the ground and the climate are wonderfully fit for it. But first the unfavorable conditions, which lie chiefly in the poor organization of the tobacco trade, must be removed.

Hops are raised in the Ukraine to a very slight extent. In Galicia only the large landowners engage in a little hop culture on 2300 hectares of ground. In Volhynia the Chekhic colonists have introduced the cultivation of hops. It comprises about 3000 hectares of land and yields over 16,000 q. of hops a year, that is 40% of the total Russian output of hops.

Vegetable-culture is very slightly developed in the Ukraine. Beyond the little vegetable gardens about the houses and the melon-patches in the steppe we see no developed vegetable culture even in the neighborhood of large cities. It is worthy of mention only in the Chernihiv and Odessa regions, as well as in the old Zaporog country on the Dnieper (Oleshki, etc.). Here vegetables are harvested twice a year, in the early summer for exportation and in the fall for home use. The South Ukrainian melon plantations (bashtani) annually yield great masses of sweet melons, watermelons, pumpkins and cucumbers. Here there has even arisen a special class of bashtanki, who rent pieces of land for melon patches.

Fruit-culture is much more highly developed in the Ukraine. The love of the Ukrainian people for trees favors the planting of orchards. The ignorance of progressive fruit-culture, owing to illiteracy, as well as the exploitation of the fruit growers by middlemen is hindering the development of Ukrainian fruit-culture, which, nevertheless, has [268]a great future before it, and even now plays an important part in the economic life of the Ukraine.

The greatest amount of space is taken up by orchards in Bessarabia (40,000 hectares), where the more delicate kinds of apples, pears, plums and walnuts, almonds and apricots are raised. In Podolia the orchards of the peasants alone comprise more than 26,000 hectares. Besides apples, pears and plums, great quantities of cherries are raised here. The orchards usually lie in the deep river-valleys. The yar of the Dniester, between Khotin and Yampol, produces annually half a million metric hundredweights of fruit. From Podolia and Bessarabia over 800,000 q. of fresh fruit, 100,000 q. of dried fruit and 20,000 q. of nuts and almonds are exported annually. The most luxuriantly growing orchards are those of Tauria, which cover over 7000 hectares on the northern declivities of the Yaila Mountains. The annual production exceeds 160,000 q. of fruit and 40,000 q. of nuts. In this region the tenderest species of apples, pears and plums flourish, besides apricots (4,000 q. a year) and peaches. About the middle of May the cherries ripen here. In the middle of June the apricots; at the end of June plums and early pears; about the middle of July peaches and early apples; in August we have autumn pears and apples, and in the first half of September, the winter apples.

Beyond these districts, fruit-culture is practised on a large scale in the Kiev region and in Volhynia. Here, above all, the hardier northern species of apples and pears are raised, as well as cherries. In Kherson and Katerinoslav, too, fruit-raising flourishes; especially in the Dnieper valley, where apricots also thrive. In the Poltava country fruit-culture is still important enough, while in the districts of Kharkiv, Voroniz, Kursk and Chernihiv it is much less significant, altho we find, even here, a few centers of intensive fruit-growing; for instance, in the [269]vicinity of the cities of Kharkiv, Okhtirka, Bohodukhiv. In Galicia fruit-growing is not especially developed, except in Pokutia, the vicinity of Kossiv, and the Podolian yari-valleys, where (near Zalishchiki) even apricots and grapes are grown.

There is a certain connection between fruit-growing and viniculture. The northern boundary of the grape in the Ukraine, coincides approximately with the May isotherm of +16° and reaches the 49th parallel. This boundary line may be drawn from Zalishchiki, past Kamianez and Katerinoslav, to Astrakhan. In places, however, the northern boundary of the vineyards extends beyond the 50th parallel; for example, near Bilhorod, in the Government of Kursk. Thus, the entire southern part of the Ukraine may be considered a favorable vine-growing region. But vine-culture has not developed in the entire great expanse of the Southern Ukraine; it is confined to only a few centers. In Galicia the vine is cultivated only in Zalishchiki, in Russian-Podolia only in a few river-valleys. Somewhat greater is the wine-production of the old Zaporog district, where both inclines of the Dnieper valley are planted with grape-vines. In the Kherson region the vineyards cover about 7000 hectares. The most important wine-producing district of the Ukraine is Bessarabia, where the vineyards take up 75,000 hectares, that is, a third of the entire Russian wine-country, and yield over 2½ million metric hundredweights of grapes annually. From this amount usually 870,000 hl. of wine are obtained, which, despite its fine quality, is so cheap, as a result of the poor organization of the wine trade, that the barrel often costs more than its contents. Vine-growing is but slightly developed in the Don region, where 33,000 q. of grapes are obtained every year, and the familiar sparkling wines are manufactured. In the Government of Stavropol we find large vineyards only in the Kuma [270]and Terek valley. In Ciscaucasia, the vineyards cover about 19,000 hectares, and nearly 200,000 hl. of wine (of very good quality) are obtained annually. Grapes flourish very luxuriantly in the Black Sea region and in Tauria. Many vineyards are found in Melitopol and Berdiansk, but the most successfully flourishing vines are those of Crimea, where tender French and Spanish varieties are also cultivated. Wine-growing has become an important branch of industry for the population here. Tauria yields only 250,000 hl. of wine annually, because of the exclusive use of raw grapes for medicinal purposes.

Bee-culture has, since ancient times, been carried on in the Ukraine in very close connection with fruit-growing. It is very popular thruout the Ukraine, and in some districts of the country we rarely find a peasant farm without several beehives. Yet the almost fabulous wealth of honey which the Ukraine originally possessed is steadily declining. Deforestation has limited the original forest bee-culture to the Polissye only. The continued assimilation of meadows and steppes for agriculture has greatly injured the Ukrainian bee industry, and progressive bee-culture is spreading very slowly among the Ukrainians, due to the lack of education and instruction. The chief producing centers of honey in the Ukraine are Kuban (326,000 bee-hives), Poltava (305,000 bee-hives), Chernihiv (283,000 bee-hives), Kharkiv (246,000 bee-hives), Kiev (242,000 bee-hives), Volhynia and Podolia (each 206,000 bee-hives). The total production of honey of the Russian Ukraine, in 1910, amounted to 125,900 q., wax 13,700 q. (38% and 34% respectively of the total production of the Russian Empire). In Galicia, in 1880, the number of bee-hives was still as high as 300,000, in 1900 only 210,000. Nevertheless, the land produced one-half of the honey and one-eighth of the wax of the entire Austrian production (25,000 and 350 q. respectively). The damp, cool summers [271]of the past decades have greatly injured the Galician bee industry, but, in very recent years, progressive bee-culture has begun to develop strongly here, and to increase the honey and wax production of the land.

Silkworm-culture is very slightly developed in the Ukraine, altho the mulberry trees thrive almost everywhere in the country, and silkworm-culture requires no great outlay in money and labor. Attempts are being made in the Don region, Tauria, Bessarabia, Kherson, Katerinoslav, Kharkiv, Kiev, Poltava and Chernihiv, but the silk output is still very small. In the Government of Kiev, in 1907, barely 1,300 q. of cocoons were obtained.

Cattle-raising thruout the Ukraine is closely joined to agriculture. Only in the Pontian steppes the remains of the originally extensive cattle industry are left today. With the prevailing shortage of land, cattle-raising is a source of industry of the greatest importance to the Ukrainian peasantry, the most important source of ready money with which to pay taxes and to invest in farm improvements. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian peasantry is only beginning to understand the importance of progressive cattle-raising and to introduce it. In Galicia, this movement has already had a good start. In the Russian Ukraine, only the large landowners (and they but rarely) are carrying on progressive agriculture. On the other hand, it should be noted that only extensive cattle-raising pays the large landowner, hence, cattle-raising by the peasants is of incomparably higher importance in the life of every cultured nation. For this reason, cattle-raising in the Ukraine gives promise of a splendid future, once it is carried on by an enlightened peasant class.

The total number of cattle in the Ukraine can hardly be estimated, even roughly. At any rate it is considerably [272]more than 30 million, of which approximately four million belong to the Austrian Ukraine. Compared to the adjacent countries, the Ukraine is very rich in cattle. The Russian Ukraine, which comprises not quite a sixth part of European Russia, possesses fully a third of the Russian stock of cattle; that is, about double the amount it should have according to the size of the territory. In like manner, the Austrian Ukraine is important for its exports of cattle to Western Austria and Germany.

Of all the districts of the Ukraine, the relatively smallest stock of cattle is found in Galicia, for here there are only 723 head of cattle (116 horses, 372 horned cattle, 60 sheep, 172 hogs) for each 1000 inhabitants. The proportions are greater in the Russian Ukraine. For every 100 of the population Volhynia has 19 horses, 32 steers, 18 sheep, 17 hogs. The corresponding numbers for Podolia are 16, 19, 17, 11; for Kiev 13, 18, 17, 10; for Kherson 29, 24, 16, 11; for Chernihiv 21, 25, 33, 16; for Poltava 14, 22, 27, 11; for Kharkiv 17, 27, 23, 10; for Katerinoslav 25, 26, 21, 12; for Tauria 30, 28, 61, 11; for Kuban 34, 54, 80, 21.

We shall begin our survey of the cattle industry with a consideration of horse-raising. The Ukrainian breed of horses is widely distributed thruout the entire Dnieper region, its Chornomoric variety in the Kuban region, its Don variety in the eastern border districts of the Ukraine. By far the greater number of the Ukraine horses, however, are a mixed breed, of small stature, and, despite great powers of endurance, not particularly strong. Of the different breeds of small horses, only the Hutzulian mountain-breed are important, because of their fine qualities. The remaining millions of small horses rather mark the low grade of horse-breeding than real value for the population, which, in proportion to its economic resources, keeps entirely too many horses. Very little is being done to raise the standards of horse-raising in the Ukraine. Breeding-studs [273]are kept up by the large landowners only for the breeding of race-horses, while nothing at all is done for the breeding of work-horses. Only in Voroniz a breed of strong draught-horses is produced (bitiuhi), and a little is accomplished also by the breeding-studs of Novo-Alexandrivsk (Kharkiv region) and in Yaniv (in the Kholm country). In the Austrian Ukraine the war-department takes care of the breeding of the Hutzulian breed of horses with great success.

Horned cattle are of much greater importance to the Ukrainian people than horses, and the breed is relatively much better. Thanks to the general distribution of the native gray breed, the addition of the red Kalmuck breed of cattle in Eastern Ukraine, and the frequent crossing with Western European breeds accomplished thru the agency of the large landowners, the governments and the agricultural organizations, cattle-breeding in the Ukraine appears much more advanced than horse-breeding. On the other hand, dairying in the Ukraine is barely in its beginnings. Only in Galicia has a dairymen’s organization been formed by the Ukrainian peasants, which produce ¼ million kilograms of butter a year.

Sheep-raising in the Ukraine decreased considerably within the last decades of the 19th Century, as a result of Australian competition. Formerly, the Southern Ukraine was one of the most important wool producing regions of the world. The decline of the sheep-raising industry has been accelerated a great deal by the transformation of the steppes into farmland. The immense flocks of sheep which roamed the Ukrainian steppes under the care of semi-nomadic shepherds are a thing of the past. Nevertheless, about 10 million sheep can still be found in the Ukraine. The greatest part of them is raised in the Don region, the Kuban region, Tauria, Katerinoslav and Bessarabia. Just as in the other branches of live-stock-breeding, [274]so also in the matter of sheep-raising, the most important part is performed by the peasant. The peasants breed chiefly coarse-wooled sheep of various breeds. These sheep can graze three-fourths of the year out in the steppes. The large landowners raise far less sheep, but these belong to the fine-wooled Merino breed, the raising of which is more expensive, but also more profitable. In very recent years the peasants have at last begun to engage in breeding the fine-wooled varieties. Sheep-raising is very important in the districts of Chernihiv, Poltava and Kharkiv, where, in the year 1900, there were 3½ million sheep (3 million of which belonged to peasants). Here the greatly renowned Reshetilov breed of sheep is raised. The remaining districts of the Ukraine carry on very little sheep-raising. Only in the Carpathians is it an important branch of industry of the population. Here the coarse-wooled mountain-sheep graze in the mountain pastures, and bring almost greater profit thru their dairy products and skins than thru their wool.

Goats are found very rarely in the Ukraine, almost exclusively in the Carpathian, Yaila and Caucasus Mountains. Hog-raising, however, is perhaps the most important source of income of the poorer Ukrainian peasantry, and as such it is common everywhere in the Ukraine, most of all in Chernihiv, Volhynia and Kuban. Besides sty-breeding, extensive breeding is carried on in some districts. On the lower Dnieper and Dniester large droves of swine remain in the plavni all summer and fall. Improved breeds of English hogs (Yorkshire, Berkshire, etc.) are not common in the Ukraine and easily degenerate, while the most common breeds, the Russian, the Polish and the southern curly-haired variety, are very hard to fatten.

Camels are kept only in the southeastern steppes of the Ukraine (Tauria, Don region, Stavropol), buffaloes only in Bessarabia, asses and mules in Bessarabia and Tauria. [275]

Having reached the end of our survey of cattle-raising in the Ukraine, we must turn to poultry-raising, which constitutes one of the most important sources of the money income of the peasantry. In view of the truly Spartan mode of life of our peasants, very little poultry is consumed by the breeder himself, most of it being sold to the dealers or in the cities. The balance of the production over the local consumption is so great that the entire Ukraine has become an exporting region for poultry, eggs and feathers to the other districts of Russia, to Western Austria, Germany, England, etc. From the nine governments of the Ukraine, in 1905, over 600,000 q. of eggs were exported, 90% of which went over the border. These Ukrainian governments yielded 40% of the total Russian exportation of eggs, Kharkiv alone giving 8%, Kiev 5%. If we consider the remaining Ukrainian districts of Russia, we can say, without fear of error, that all the Russian territory together that is inhabited by Ukrainians produces more than half the Russian output of eggs and poultry. Podolia alone, in 1908, sold nearly 3½ million fowl, Kharkiv (1906) 1¼ million. Galicia, about the year 1903, exported annually eggs to the value of 35 million crowns1, feathers to the value of 3 million, and poultry to the value of 1½ million, of which, at least, two-thirds must be credited to the Ukrainian part of the land.

Every farmer in the Ukraine raises live-stock. The percentage of exclusive breeders of live-stock is very small; in the Russian Ukraine, in 1897, it was hardly 0.4%.

Altho farming—agriculture and cattle-raising—must, for the time being, comprise the main source of industry of the population of the Ukraine, this blessed land does not lack other resources as well. Very great mineral resources lie in various districts of the Ukraine; the largest in the [276]Donetz Plateau, in the Carpathians, and in the Caucasus. There is little prospect, to be sure, that the Ukraine might, with the aid of its mineral resources, become an industrial country like Germany or England, yet there does exist some hope that it will soon be in a position to provide its own needs in the way of industrial products.

Gold is found in the Ukraine only in traces, hardly worth mentioning, in the gold-containing quartz of the Naholni kriaz in the Donetz Plateau. Silver, together with lead, appears much more frequently, chiefly in the Kuban and Terek regions of the Caucasus, where, in 1910, about 300,000 q. of lead and silver ore were mined (73% of the total Russian production), yielding 25.5 q. of silver (90%) and about 11,000 q. of lead (81%), and also in the Donetz region and in the Ukrainian Carpathians of the Bukowina and Northern Hungary. The amount produced outside of the Caucasus, on the other hand, is very insignificant. Zinc is found only in small quantities in the Naholni kriaz. Tin, nickel, chromium and platinum are not found anywhere in the Ukraine.

The first in the series of the more important mining products of the Ukraine is mercury. It is obtained from the cinnabar mines of Mikitivka, in the Donetz Plateau. Here, 842,000 q. of cinnabar were mined in 1905, yielding 320,000 kilograms of mercury. Outside the Ukraine, the Russian Empire has no mercury mines worthy of mention.

Copper ore is found in the Donetz Plateau, in Kherson and Tauria, in the Bukowina and Marmarosh, yet the production is comparatively small. Much greater is the copper production of the Caucasus, where, in 1910, about 2,500,000 q. of copper ore (35% of the Russian production) and 81,000 q. of copper (31%) were gained.

Much more important is the manganese production of the Ukraine. Manganese ores are gained chiefly from the oligocene strata of the Nikopol region (on the lower Dnieper), [277]and in Eastern Podolia. The production for the year 1907 amounted to 3,245,000 q., or 32% of the total Russian output and about one-sixth of the output of the world.

But all the remaining metal resources of the Ukraine disappear, as it were, beside the enormous wealth of iron of the land. Iron ores are found in great quantities in very many places in the Ukraine; many deposits have not been sufficiently explored to make exploitation seem advisable, and many, for various reasons, are not being exploited. The iron production of the Ukraine is consequently limited to a few centers, but in these it is of very great importance. The most important center of iron mining is Krivi Rih (Government of Kherson) and vicinity. The annual production here (1903–1904) amounted to 26¼ million metric hundredweights. The entire supply of iron ore at Krivi Rih is estimated at 870 million metric hundredweights, but in the immediate vicinity there lie much larger untouched deposits. The iron content of the ores (red and brown iron ore) is 60–75%.

Other iron ore deposits of the Ukraine are of much less significance. Only in the Donetz Plateau and in the vicinity of Kerch are iron ores still mined in considerable quantities. The iron ore deposits of the Caucasus, the brown iron ores and swamp-ores of Volhynia, of the western Kiev country and of the Polissye, are not exploited, and in in the Ukrainian Carpathians of the Bukowina and Northeastern Hungary, iron mining is dying out.

The iron production of the Russian Ukraine in 1907 amounted to 39.9 million q., that is, 73% of the total Russian production. The figures for the years following are: 1908—40.3 million q. = 74%; 1909—39 million q. = 74%; 1910—43.4 million q. = 74%; 1911—51.1 million q. = 72%. These figures show clearly enough what a wealth of iron the Ukraine possesses, and what part the country plays as the chief producer of iron for Russia. [278]

We now come to the second group of mineral resources,—the mineral fuels. In this respect, too, the Ukraine is richly supplied. The Ukraine possesses but one coal-field in the Donetz Plateau, but this coal-field is one of the largest and richest in Europe. Its surface area is 23,000 square kilometers, the annual production (1911) 203 million metric hundredweights, that is, 70% of the total production of coal of the entire Russian Empire. Then, the coal-district on the Donetz is very rich in anthracite. In 1911, approximately 31 million metric hundredweights of anthracite were gained here (98.5% of the total Russian production). For coke-making, practically the only coal that can be used in Russia is the Donetz coal. In 1911, 33.7 million metric hundredweights of coke was gained in the Donetz region; in all the remaining coal districts of the Russian Empire, barely 13,600 q.

From these figures we see clearly that the Ukraine, despite its general agrarian character, possesses great supplies of coal, that indispensable aid in modern industry. To be sure, the Ukraine takes only seventh rank in the world’s coal production (being preceded by the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, France and Belgium) yet it is, nevertheless, not to be despised as a producing district. When we consider the backward state of material culture in Russia as a whole, the youth of the Ukrainian coal-mining industry, and the centripetal railway tariff policy of the Russian Government, we must come to realize that, with better conditions, a brilliant future awaits the Ukrainian coal industry.

The brown-coal deposits of the Ukraine are as yet but slightly explored, and, in themselves, much less important than the pit-coal deposits. A brown-coal field of 5000 square kilometers is part of the tertiary strata of the Dnieper Plateau (Kiev-Yelisavet coal region). Toward the end of the past century an annual average of 82,000 q. [279]of brown-coal was mined here (Katerinopol, Zuraska). Just as unimportant is the brown-coal production in the Caucasian foothills (Batalpashinsk). In the Carpathian foothill country and in the Rostoch, in 1901, over 1 million metric hundredweights of brown-coal was mined; in 1905 barely one-half that amount. Notwithstanding, some importance must be attached to the brown-coal industry in the Ukraine for the future.

Large peat deposits are widely distributed in the Polissye, in Volhynia, Podlakhia, Galicia, Kiev, Podolia, etc., but extremely little is done in the way of rational exploitation. Only in the Polissye and in Galicia (40 places in 1905) is peat cut on a large scale, altho its importance, especially for the districts of the Ukraine, which have few forests, should not be underestimated.

In petroleum and ozokerite the Ukraine is the richest land in Europe. Along the great bend of the Carpathians, beginning at the Poprad Pass, one petroleum district crowds close upon the next. They lie almost exclusively in the Ukrainian territory of Galicia, e.g., Borislav and Tustanovichi, which, in 1907, yielded about 86% of the Galician petroleum output, in the Ukrainian District of Drohobich. The Galician petroleum production in 1911 amounted to 14.9 million metric hundredweights—(in 1907 even 17.5 million metric hundredweights), and takes third rank in the world’s production (being outranked by Russian Caucasia and the United States). Considerable naphtha fields are also found in the Ukrainian sub-Caucasian country, where, in 1910, near Hrosni and Maikop, 12.6 million metric hundredweights of petroleum were gained. From the eastern tip of Crimea and the Taman peninsula to the Caspian Sea immense treasures of petroleum are hidden.

The only place in the world where ozokerite is found in large quantities is Eastern Galicia. In 1885 Borislav yielded 123,000 q. of this rare mineral. The unexampled [280]wastefulness in mining accounts for the fact that, in 1911, Borislav together with other small sub-Carpathian mines (Dsviniach, Starunia, Truskavetz) yielded barely 19,400 q. of ozokerite. Ozokerite is also found in the Ukrainian sub-Caucasus country, but in inconsiderable quantities.

Quite as important as the iron, coal and petroleum deposits of the Ukraine, are its salt deposits. The Ukraine has three districts of salt-production—the Carpathian foothills, the Donetz Plateau, and the Pontian-Caspian salt-lake and liman region. The sub-Carpathian salt-mines and salt-works of Galicia (Latzke, Drohobich, Stebnik, Bolekhiv, Dolina, Kalush, Delatin, Lanchin, Kossiv) all lie within Ukrainian national territory, with the single exception of Vielichka and Bokhnia. In 1911 Galicia produced about 1,440,000 q. of rock salt, most of which, to be sure, must be credited to Vielichka and Bokhnia. On the other hand, the 1,690,000 q. of manufactured salt and brine were produced mainly in the Ukrainian part of Galicia. In 1908 the salt production of the Ukrainian part of Galicia amounted to only 540,000 q. In the Donetz region there are immense deposits of rock-salt in the vicinity of Bakhmut (e.g., Branzivka with a deposit of pure rock-salt 100 meters deep). Here, in 1911, about 4.9 million metric hundredweights of rock-salt were mined (86% of the total Russian rock-salt production) and the rich salt-springs and salt-lakes exploited besides. In the Ponto-Caspian region first place is held by the salt-lakes and limans of Crimea, then follow the limans of the Kherson region (Knyalnik, etc.), the Manich lakes, etc. The amount produced vacillates between 3⅓ and 5¾ million metric hundredweights a year, and depends largely on the degree of dryness and heat of the summer season. The total salt production of the Russian Ukraine in 1907 attained 10 million metric hundredweights, or 53% of the production of the entire Russian Empire. [281]

Nitre salts are found in great quantities only in the Ukrainian sub-Carpathian country. In 1901 the amount produced was about 179,000 q.; in the year of 1908 it decreased to 121,000 q.

Besides the above-mentioned most important treasures of the soil, minerals less important, but yet noteworthy, are found in the Ukraine. In Podolia and the adjoining border strips of Bessarabia there lie some rich deposits of phosphorites (70–75% phosphoric acid), out of which, in 1907, over 114,000 q. (72% of the total Russian production) were mined. In the districts of Katerinoslav, Kherson, Poltava, Chernihiv, Kiev, Volhynia, in 1907, over 216,000 q. of kaolin were mined. Outside of the Ukraine no kaolin is found in Russia. Good pottery clays are found thruout the Ukraine, mostly around Kiev, Chernihiv and Poltava. Fireproof clays occur in the Donetz Plateau, slate in the Zaporoze (Katerinoslav), lithographic stone in Podolia (near Kamianez and Mohiliv), graphite (in inconsiderable quantities, to be sure) in Volhynia, on the Sluch River, near Krivi Rih (Kherson), in the districts of Kiev and Katerinoslav, mineral paints near Lissichansk (Donetz region), Krivi Rih, and Yelisavet (Kherson), Stari Oskol (Kursk). Sulphur is obtained on the upper course of the Kuban River, pumice stone in the Caucasus, rotten-stone near Svenihorodka (Kiev). Mill-stones are obtained in many places, the best variety near Hlukhiv (Chernihiv), whetstones especially in the Poltava region and in the Devonian region of Galician-Podolia (Terebovla). Chalk is widely distributed in Podolia, Volhynia and Kharkiv, gypsum in Podolia and Pokutia (beautiful alabasters), as well as in the Donetz region. Building-stones, lime, sand, loam are found everywhere in the Ukraine and are of good quality. The most fit for masonry work are the devonian sandstone of Podolia, the granite gneisses of the Dnieper Plateau, and the old eruptive formations of Volhynia. [282]

From this short survey of the mineral resources of the Ukraine, we perceive that the Ukraine, altho in this respect it does not compare with the countries of Western and Central Europe, yet does produce a great deal, and after a thoro change in the political and cultural conditions, should be able to occupy an important place in the world’s production of mineral wealth. At present the Ukrainian people contributes only the poorly-paid labor, while the profit falls to the foreign rulers.

The industry of the Ukraine is now in an important stage of transition. The originally very important home industries which, until recently, satisfied all the needs of the peasantry, cannot endure the competition with the factory system of large-scale industry, which is penetrating more and more deeply into those regions of the Ukraine that lie farthest from the highways of the world’s trade. Home industry is declining irresistibly, factory industry is developing more and more, and, altho the latter is still young and is retarded, in the textile branches, by the centralization of industry at Moscow, still the Ukraine (especially the southern part) is on the way to becoming the most important industrial district of all Russia.

Ukrainian home industry is just as old and of as high a grade as all the popular culture of the Ukrainians—this typical primitive agricultural people. The products of Ukrainian home industry are characterized above all by their great solidity and durability. Their distinguishing feature is in the original ornamentation on all objects, even those destined for every-day use, noticeable particularly in the products of the textile, wood-carving and pottery industries. Anyone who knows Ukrainian home industry is overcome by a sad feeling when he perceives that this industry, which may really be called a fine art, will [283]soon be a thing of the past. The foreign rulers of the Ukraine are hostile, or at best indifferent, to Ukrainian home industry, and all efforts of the Ukrainians to promote their very vital native home industry are hindered at every turn. The middlemen ruthlessly exploit the artisan, whose earnings are a mere pittance, insufficient even for the contented Ukrainian. More and more of those who work at a trade are turning their backs upon their thankless occupations, if they can only find a means of subsistence at something else.

The most important branch of Ukrainian home industry is weaving. It is not confined only to the weaving of coarse, very durable kinds of linen and cloth; for very fine, sometimes really artistically ornamented tablecloths, towels and handkerchiefs, fine woolens, decorative fabrics with inwoven patterns, gold and silver thread, carpets and tapestries, too, come out of the primitively equipped workshops of the Ukrainian weavers. Under very difficult working conditions, with the most primitive means, genuine works of art are frequently created. For all that, the artistic weaver must yield place to factory goods, even in the Ukraine, and the home weaving industry is surely hurrying toward extinction.

Yet, to this day, thanks to the persistence of the people in preserving their national costume, the weaving industry is still so widespread thruout the Ukraine that there is hardly a hamlet where there are not some weavers by trade, or at least such persons as carry on weaving as an avocation. Home weaving is at its height in the districts of Poltava, where it occupies 20,000 families (1902), Chernihiv and Kharkiv. Its chief centers are Krolevetz and vicinity, Sinkiv, Mirhorod, Zolotonosha (wool-weaving). In Galicia, the entire Ukrainian Pidhirye is famous for its home weaving industry; in the mountains it is the neighborhood of Kossiv, in the low country the districts [284]of Horodok, Komarno, Halich, Busk, etc., which are important in this connection. The most beautiful carpets and tapestries, worked in colors, come from the districts of Mirhorod and Sinkiv (Poltava), Olhopol, Balta, Yampol, Bratzlav (Podolia), Sbaraz, Buchach, Kossiv (Eastern Galicia).

Tailoring is nowhere developed to large proportions, altho no place, not even the smallest village, is without it. In Poltava, tailoring and cap-making occupies over 10,000 families.

Rope-making is very common thruout the Ukraine, mostly in the districts of Poltava, Kiev (Lissianka) and in Galicia (Radimno). Nets are made in the district of Lokhvitzia (Poltava) and Oster (Chernihiv) on a large scale.

After the textile industry comes the wood-working industry. It is common, everywhere in the Ukraine, the steppe country alone excepted. Almost every Ukrainian peasant of the Carpathian Mountains, of the Polissye, Volhynia, Kiev, Chernihiv, knows the carpenter trade. The best carpenters are the Hutzulians, who, independently, without drawn plans, build churches of fine style, even for the most distant villages of the low country.

Ship-building is carried on chiefly in the Polissye (Mosir, Petrikiv, Balazevichi on the Pripet, and particularly Davidhorodok on the Horin). On the Dnieper River, ships are built at Horodnia, small sea-vessels in Nikopol, Oleshki, Hola Pristan, Kherson; on the Don in Osiv (Azof). On the Dniester, river-ships are built in Zuravno, Halich, Zvanetz, Mohiliv, Yampol.

Cabinet-making, altho in general but slightly developed, still supplies the demand of the peasantry and the common city-dwellers. Artistic cabinet-making is carried on in the Hutzul country (Kossiv, Yavoriv, Richka, Viznitza), where, besides furniture, various kinds of woodwork, [285]decorated with artistic carvings and with the beautifully conventionalized specifically Hutzulian bead and brass-wire ornaments are produced, e.g., canes, boxes, picture-frames, etc. The furniture industry is common in the District of Cherkassia (Kiev) and in the entire Poltava country. Here, too, beautiful and durable wooden chests are made. Wooden spoons are produced in the districts of Poltava (Kalaidintzi), Kiev (Chornobil, Hornostapol), in the Hutzul country (Porohy, Yavoriv), in the Rostoche region (Yavoriv, Vishenka), and smoking-pipes of wood in the Poltava region (Velika Pavlivka).

Cooperage and the making of wooden vessels is common everywhere, but it is most extensive in the districts of Poltava (3,700 families), Kharkiv (Okhtirka, Kotelva), Polissye (Mosir), Kiev (District of Radomishl), Chernihiv, Volhynia and the Hutzul country.

Wagon-making and the making of sleds and wooden agricultural implements has its chief center in the Poltava country, where it occupies over 2400 families (Districts of Sinikiv, Lubni, Hadyach). In the Kharkiv country this industry is important about Starobilsk, Bohodukhiv, Isium, Kupiansk, as well. In Ardon (Government of Chernihiv) beautiful carriages are produced and in Tarashcha (Government of Kiev) the world-renowned tarantas.

The shingle industry, charcoal-burning, pitch and potash-making are met with only in the Carpathians and in the Polissye region. Yet, not so long ago, these comprised one of the most important branches of industry of the forest-dwellers. Basket-weaving is especially developed in the Poltava region (about 1000 families, chiefly in the Districts of Lokhvitzia and Kupiansk), to some degree also in Podolia (Districts of Litin and Vinitza), Kherson, Kiev, Polissye about Mosir. Sieves are made everywhere the wood industry is established. Bast shoes are made only in the Polissye region. [286]

Among the branches of industry in which mineral substances are used, pottery takes first rank. Thanks to great deposits of splendid pottery clay, the Ukrainian pottery industry developed very early and now stands upon a very high plane. Its products usually have fine form and beautiful ornamentation. Pottery is best developed in the Poltava region, especially in the Districts of Mirhorod, Sinkiv (well-known center of Oposhnia), Romen and Lokhvitzia. In the Chernihiv country pottery is almost as important, especially in the vicinity of Horodnia, Krolevetz, Hlukhiv (Poloshki and Novhorod Siversky). In the Kharkiv region we find large pottery works in the regions of Valki, Lebedin, Okhtirka, Bohodukhiv, Isium; in the Kiev country about Chihirin, Uman, Cherkassia, Svenihorodka, Kaniv, in Podolia about Mohiliv, Ushitza, Yampol, and Letichiv. In Galicia the Rostoche region (Potilich, Hlinsko, etc.), Podolia (Chortkiv, Borshchiv, Kopichintzi, etc.), and especially the Hutzul country (Kolomia, Kossiv, Pistin, Kuti) are renowned for pottery products. In other regions of the Ukraine pottery is less developed.

The brick-making industry is actively growing all over the Ukraine, and the introduction of tile-covered brick buildings has led to the formation of numerous peasant organizations, for the purpose of making these building-materials.

The stone-cutting industry is carried on on a large scale only in the region of Odessa, Olexandrivsk (Kamishevakha) and Bakhmut.

The metal-working industry is, in general, not highly advanced. Only the blacksmith trade is carried on everywhere and shows a fine development, especially in the Southern Ukraine. In the village smithies in Kherson, Katerinoslav and Tauria, even complicated agricultural machines are often made. The production of iron ploughs [287]has for its centers the districts of Starobilsk (the village of Bilovodsk produces on the average 3½ thousand ploughs a year), Isium and Valki of the Kharkiv country, in the Chernihiv country (districts of Starodub and Sosnitza), in the Poltava country (Zolotonosha and vicinity). Artistic brass-work is made by the Hutzuls of the Kossiv region (Brusturi, Yavoriv, etc.).

The utilization of animal raw-materials plays an important part in the home industry of the Ukraine. Sausage-makers are found in all the towns of the Ukraine, especially those of the left half, and their products enjoy a good reputation, even beyond the borders of the land. Tanning and fur-manufacturing flourish in the Ukraine. Ukrainian workmen have had no small share in earning world-renown for the Russian leather industry. The chief centers of this home industry lie in the districts of Chernihiv (in the regions of Chernihiv, Koseletz, Krolevetz), Poltava (about Sinkiv, Poltava, Reshetilivka with its famous furriery, Pereyaslav, Kobeliaki), Kharkiv (about Okhtirka, Valki, Isium, Sumi). In the Government of Voroniz, the village of Buturlinivka is noted for its leather industry. Shoemaking engages over 9000 families in Poltava (districts of Sinkiv, Kobeliaki, Romen, Konstantinohrad, etc.). In the region of Kharkiv, the towns of Okhtirka and Kotelva are the main centers of the shoemaking industry, in the Chernihiv country the regions of Novosibkiv, Borsna and Oster. In the region of Voroniz (districts of Bobrivsk, Biriuch, Valuiki) there are over 12,000 shoemakers. In the Ukrainian part of Kursk the chief centers are the districts of Sudza (5000 shoemakers, 3000 of them in Miropilia alone) and Hraivoron. In Galicia we find a strongly developed shoemaking and tanning industry in Horodok, Kulikiv, Busk, Uhniv, Stari Sambir, Ribotichi, Nadvirna, Buchach, Potik, etc.

The horn industry, especially the making of horn combs, [288]appears in Mirhorod and Sinkiv, in Kharkiv and about Sumi.

Of the numerous other branches of home industry in the Ukraine the organized (guild) painters of sacred pictures, of whom there are over 300 families in the Poltava region, may be mentioned in passing.

So much for home industry. The factory industry of the Ukraine is still in its infancy. Notwithstanding, it is already producing so much, despite its youth, that Southern Ukraine, in particular, is on the way to becoming the most important industrial center of all Russia. Large-scale production in the Ukraine is carried on almost exclusively by foreign (Russian, Jewish, English, French and Belgian) capitalists—the Ukrainians contribute only the poorly-paid labor. Ukrainian large-scale industry must wage a hard battle against the economic policy of the Russian Government, which aims to stop the declining preponderance of the Moscow and St. Petersburg centers of industry, and to prevent the industrial rise of the south.

The total value of the industrial output of the Russian Ukraine, in 1908, was approximately 870 million rubles, or 19% of the total Russian large-scale production. The production of the Austrian Ukraine amounts to not even one-tenth of this amount. The main centers of large-scale production are Katerinoslav (166.2 million rubles), Kiev (143.5), Kherson (127.5), and Kharkiv (98.7). Ukrainian large-scale industry concerns itself chiefly with the manufacturing of the mineral products of the land and the preparation of foods. The textile industry is artificially suppressed in the interests of the Central Russian industrial districts.

The cotton industry is confined to only a few small factories in the Don region (Rostiv, Nakhichevan) and Katerinoslav (Pavlokichkas). The woolen industry is less limited (Chernihiv country, especially Klinzi, then [289]Kharkiv, Kiev, the Don region, Volhynia). The linen and hemp industry is well developed only in the Chernihiv country (Pochep, Mhlin, Starodub, Novosibkiv) and in Kherson (Odessa) jute factories are also found. The clothing industry is worthy of mention only in Kherson and the larger cities of Eastern Galicia.

Of the many branches of the food industry, the first to be mentioned is the manufacture of sugar. The sugar refineries of the Ukraine, more than 200 in number (most of them in the territories of Kiev, Kharkiv, Podolia, Kherson), produce annually (1904) over 6.6 million metric hundredweights of raw sugar and 3.9 metric hundredweights of refined sugar. These figures represent 76% and 68% respectively of the total Russian output. It is remarkable that in the Austrian Ukraine, where the sugar industry has the finest possibilities of expanding, it is entirely undeveloped (only two factories). The milling industry, which, in general, is carried on chiefly in small water and wind-mills, possesses also some large mills operated by steam (Kharkiv, Kiev, Poltava, Kreminchuk, Odessa, Mikolaiv, Melitopol, Lviv, Brody, Ternopil, Stanislaviv, Kolomia, etc.). Another important industry is alcohol-distillation, which is well advanced in all parts of the Ukraine, but particularly in Russian and Galician Podolia (Galicia has 800 stills), Kharkiv and Kiev. The beer-brewing industry is but slightly developed, and the only districts in which it yields a product of some quality are Galicia and the Bukowina. Mead brewing, also a common industry, is carried on on a large scale only in the Kharkiv country and in Eastern Galicia. Oil-pressing is important in the territories of Kherson (Odessa), Kiev, Chernihiv (Pochep, Novosibkiv), in Kharkiv and in Kreminchuk. The important tobacco industry is carried on to a considerable degree in 100 factories in the Russian Ukraine (Kiev, Kharkiv, Odessa, Zitomir, Poltava, Kreminchuk, Romen, Katerinoslav, [290]Mikolaiv, etc.) as well as in three government factories in Galicia (Vinniki, Monastiriska and Zabolotiv).

The lumber industry embraces large saw-mills in the Carpathian mountain districts of Galicia, the Bukowina and Northeastern Hungary, as well as long the Pripet and Dnieper Rivers (Mosir, Kreminchuk, Katerinoslav, Kherson, etc.). The cork industry is established in Odessa, the paper industry in Rostiv, Odessa, Kharkiv, Poltava.

The most important branch of Ukrainian large-scale industry is the metal-industry. The Ukrainian iron industry, despite its youth, has rapidly surpassed the Polish, Moscow and Ural industry, and would be even more advanced if the economic policy of the Russian Government had not taken measures for the protection of the Moscow and Ural industry from the industrial competition of the Ukraine. Hence, the Ukrainian metal industry must furnish chiefly semi-manufactured goods, which are afterwards worked into finished goods in the center of the Empire.

In 1911, there were obtained in the Ukraine, 24,625,000 q. of cast iron, that is, 67.4% of the total Russian production; in 1912 the percentage is said to have reached 70%, while the rest, 30%, is accredited to Poland, Great-Russia and Russian-Asia. In 1911 the Ukraine produced 18.8 metric hundredweights (55.6% of the total Russian production) of wrought iron and steel, and in the year 1912, it attained the same percentage. The significance of these figures is at once apparent.

The iron works of the Ukraine lie chiefly near Krivi Rih, in Katerinoslav and vicinity, Olexandrivsk, the Donetz Plateau and the adjacent districts (Yusivka, Hrushivka, Tahanroh, Mariupol, Kerch, etc.). The nail and wire industry has its center in Katerinoslav, machine-manufacturing in Katerinoslav, Kiev, Kharkiv, Yelisavet, Odessa, Olexandrivsk, Mikolaiv and Berdiansk. The [291]iron steamship building industry has its seat in Rostiv and Mikolaiv. In Galicia we find only a very small iron industry, and at best a few railway supplies, factories and workshops are worthy of mention, e.g., those in Sianik (car factory), New Sandetz and Lemberg.

Of the other branches of industry which manufacture mineral products, the petroleum refineries must be mentioned above all, particularly those of the Carpathian foothill country (Horlitzi, Drohobich, Kolomia) and at the foot of the Caucasus (Hrosni). The factory industry of pottery is carried on in Lviv and Kharkiv; porcelain and chinaware manufacture in the Kharkiv region (Budi, Slaviansk) and in Odessa; cement manufacture in the Black Sea region, in Odessa and in the Bukowina; brick and tile manufacture in all the large cities of the Ukraine. Glass manufacture, once very extensive in the forest regions of the Western Ukraine (Rostoche, Volhynia), is now confined to the neighborhood of Kharkiv, Horodnia and Bakhmut. Of the different branches of the chemical industry, the manufacture of matches is important; its seat is in the Chernihiv country near Novosibkiv, and in the Galician sub-Carpathian country (Striy, Skole, Bolekhiv, etc.).

This does not exhaust the branches of industry of the Ukraine, but, because of their comparative insignificance, we must desist from describing them. Having now come to the end of our presentation of Ukrainian industry, we have still to consider what percentage of Ukrainians engage in industrial pursuits. According to official Russian estimates of the year 1897, the percentage is barely 5% (in Galicia, according to Buzek’s biased calculation, 1.4%). The smallness of the figures would surprise us if we did not know how the Russian and Polish nationality “make” their statistics; nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the Ukrainian people still engage too little in industry. Among the Ukrainians who seek their subsistence in industry, [292]the greatest number (14%) engage in the making of clothing; then follow, in order, the building, metal, lumber and food industries, linen-weaving and pottery.