Chapter IX: Book II: Anthropogeography (4)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RELATIONS BETWEEN THE SOIL AND THE PEOPLE OF UKRAINE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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