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. [[211]]
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 [[212]]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 [[213]]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 [[214]]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. [[215]]
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.