Trade and Commerce
The mercantile movement in the Ukraine, as, in fact, in all of Eastern Europe, is comparatively slight. To give an exact picture of Ukrainian commerce is much more difficult than to describe its agricultural and industrial production. The great exchanges of goods in the interior, the commercial relations of the Ukraine with the other districts of Russia and Austria-Hungary, its part in the export trade of these states,—all this matter awaits working up on the part of competent economists and geographers.
The Ukrainian people take but little part in the commercial activity of their country; the Ukrainian peasant simply considers trade an occupation very little in accord with the rank of a landed proprietor, and the middle class has only begun in the last decades to recover from the suppression of centuries. Hence, Ukrainian commerce lies almost wholly in the hands of the foreign races—the Russians, Jews, Armenians and Greeks.
The causes of this condition are usually sought and found by the foreign (Russian and Polish) “standard-bearers of culture” in the indifference and incapacity for culture of the Ukrainians. This explanation, however, can be objected to when we recall the great commercial importance of the ancient Kingdoms of Kiev and Halich, as well as the long perseverance of the Ukrainian trade down into the 16th Century, despite its systematic suppression by the Polish Government. Naturally, the five centuries of Tatar invasion caused severe injuries to Ukrainian trade. And when the commercial activity of the Ukraine of the hetmans began to flourish in the 17th and 18th Centuries, it was systematically suppressed by the Russian [[293]]Government, following the ill-fated rebellion of Mazeppa. Then we must consider the difficulties of competition with the Russians, a very talented commercial race, with the Jews, the Armenians and the Greeks. Most keenly, however, the calamitous lack of education is being felt. Wherever the education of the people is more advanced, as, for example, in Eastern Galicia, there is a revival of the commercial spirit in the Ukrainians. The Galician Ukrainians have thousands of shops, large commercial co-operative organizations (Narodna Torhovla, with seventeen branch warehouses and several hundred shops, Soyuz tohorvelnick spilok, Soyuz zbutu khudobi, etc.), with the large annual turnover (large for Galician conditions) of 25 million crowns. The enlightened peasantry of Sinevidsko and vicinity (Boiko country) carries on an active fruit-trade far beyond the Austrian borders. Even in the Russian Ukraine trade is coming to life in all places. The co-operative movement has taken such a bound in advance, in spite of the frightful illiteracy, that in 1912 there were over 2500 such organizations, while all of Russia (including the Ukraine) had 5260, and Poland only 920. From these facts we may safely conclude that, with the elevation of the grade of culture, the former commercial spirit of the Ukraine is reawakening. To be sure, the sturdy, upright nature of the Ukrainian, which abhors every form of dishonesty, will not lend to this new commercial spirit a world-conquering character, but it will, on the other hand, increase the influence of the Ukrainian merchant in the commercial world.
The present condition of commerce in the Ukraine is still very primitive; first, because of the generally low grade of culture; second, because of the very primitive traffic conditions of Eastern Europe.
The first mark of the primitive condition is probably the existence of countless annual fairs in the Ukraine—a [[294]]relic of medieval trade conditions. The number of annual fairs in the Russian Ukraine exceeds 4000, altho it is far out of proportion to the great number of annual fairs in Great Russia. But out of twenty-two grand annual fairs of Russia, eleven fall to the Ukrainian territory—four in Kharkiv, two in Romny, one in Poltava, Kursk, Kolevez, Yelisavet and Sumy, respectively. In addition, there are the once famous Kiev “kontrakti” (now declining), and the smaller annual fairs in Berdichiv, Zitomir, Dubno, etc. The greatest exchanges of goods take place in the Yordan fair in Kharkiv (January 20th), and the Elias fair (August 2nd) in Poltava. Here the wholesale dealers sell their goods to the retailers (Ofenyi—Russians from the Governments of Vladimir and Slobozani—Russian sectarians, colonists from the Chernihiv country, Jewish retailers who sell in the right half of the Ukraine), who buy or supplement their stock of goods during the annual fairs. In these wholesale transactions, the so-called prassoli—Russian barterers—also engage, dealers who travel all year thru the villages of the Ukraine, exchange the wool, bristles and flax of the peasants for hardware, and sell the collected raw materials to the wholesalers. In this annual fair system, the Ukrainians have, until recently, played an important part as paid drivers, who drove the goods on their oxcarts from fair to fair. These drivers at one time formed a sort of class of their own—the “chumaki”—and even engaged independently in the trading of the Crimean salt and the dried fish of the Sea of Azof. The railroads have put an end to the former importance of the chumaki, yet the scanty length of the Ukrainian railway system prevents this carting industry from disappearing altogether. In the eighties of the past century there were counted in the districts of Poltava, Kharkiv and Chernihiv, 210,000 chumaks; in the year 1897, in Kherson, Katerinoslav, Tauria and Don, about 100,000 of these hired drivers. [[295]]
The fair system of Ukrainian trade is carried on not only by means of great annual fairs, which, by the way, are decreasing in importance year by year, but also by means of an enormous number of smaller annual fairs in the cities, towns, and even villages of the Russian Ukraine, which take care of the retail trade. In the Austrian Ukraine the annual fairs (as for instance, the once famous fairs of Tarnopol, Ulashkivtzi, Czernowitz) have lost all significance since the modernization of the country’s commerce.
World-commerce has, until very recently, left the Ukraine almost untouched. This is one of the reasons why the primitive forms of commerce were able to last so long in the Ukraine. Until recently, world-commerce has taken the Ukraine merely for a producing and exporting country of raw materials, and left the supplying of local demands to the traditional forms of trade. Only within the last decades has the modern commercial organization begun slowly to take in the Ukraine. The exchanges in Kiev, Kharkiv, Odessa, Kreminchuk, Mikolaiv, Tahanroh, Rostiv, the chambers of commerce in Lviv and Brodi, are organizing the export of raw materials from the Ukraine, and the flooding of the country with the products of foreign industry is becoming more and more intensive.
In spite of all we have mentioned, the significance of the Ukraine in the internal commerce of Russia and in world-trade is very great. The natural resources of the country, its situation on the threshold of Asia and the Mediterranean world, its property of being a direct hinterland of the Black Sea, give to the Ukraine a commercial importance with which that of any other individual district of European Russia, the Baltic lands and Poland not excepted, can never compare.
In the internal commerce of Russia, the Ukraine figures, first of all, as purveyor of foodstuffs, and in Austria-Hungary the Austrian Ukraine plays the same part on a small [[296]]scale. To represent these relations in figures encounters great difficulties, and the figures can be only approximate. In 1895 the Ukraine exported over 1.5 million metric hundredweights of grain to Lithuania and White Russia, about 1.7 million metric hundredweights to Poland, and about 0.9 million metric hundredweights to Central Russia. In 1905, two Ukrainian districts alone, Poltava and Kharkiv, exported over 0.7 metric hundredweights of grain to Central Russia. These figures must be much greater today. And the grain exportation of the Austrian Ukraine to the interior of Austria must be relatively as great. As a matter of fact, Galicia produces one-third of the total Austrian output of oats and wheat, and almost half the output of potatoes.