All these conditions give to the Ukraine characteristics of a cultivated country. As we shall see further on, the degree of exploitation of natural resources is still very low, much lower than in the genuinely cultured countries of Europe.
Despite all this, the Ukraine must be considered a land [[245]]exceptionally endowed with riches by Nature. Up to the present day this has been a misfortune, for from all sides strangers have come in to take with full hands of the riches of the Ukraine.
But the time has come, at last, in which the possibility lies in the hands of the Ukrainian people to make use in the future of the rich resources of the Ukrainian land for themselves. [[246]]
Economic-Geographical Survey of Ukraine
To give a lucid economic-geographical view of the Ukraine today is very difficult—almost impossible. The Ukrainian territory is divided among three states, and nowhere does the Ukrainian country form unbroken administrative units. Consequently, the official statistics cannot give an exact picture of the economic conditions of the Ukraine. The following attempt, also, can lay no claim to accuracy. A very heterogeneous and incomplete mass of material has made it impossible to attain the desired accuracy and uniformity.
The Ukraine differs from the cultural countries of Central and Western Europe first, in that its settlement is not yet complete, so to say. Only the northwestern regions of the “Old Ukraine” possess a sufficient density of population. The entire south and east are thinly, in places even very thinly, peopled. And the complete exploitation of the natural resources is still a far way off, even in the most thickly settled parts of the Western Ukraine.
In our economic-geographical survey of the Ukraine, we shall begin with the most primitive branches of the exploitation of natural resources and proceed from them to those that are more advanced.