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