Ukraine, the land and its people

by Stepan Rudnytskyi

The greatest portion of the country, the Russian Ukraine, also suffers from an unnatural political division. The Ukrainian territory is divided into several great administrative districts, or groups of governments. Parts of the Ukrainian national territory lie in the Vistula Governments in Western, Southwestern, Southern and Little Russia and Caucasia. The boundaries of the individual governments everywhere are drawn without consideration for natural and ethnographic conditions. In this way the border districts of the unbroken Ukrainian territory have been united with parts of foreign racial territories into artificial administrative units, as, for example, the Governments of Lublin and Sidlez (the present Government of Kholm), Grodno, Minsk, Kursk, Voroniz, Don region, Stavropol, Bessarabia, etc. This circumstance being a result of the poor development of constitutional life in Russia, has no great significance now, but may in the future become as unfavorable for the Ukraine as is the similar condition today in Austria-Hungary.

The anthropogeography of today in describing a land, very seldom takes such artificial divisions into consideration. Then there is the additional circumstance that these [[310]]divisions, as is obvious, have no physico-geographical value. In like manner, the division of Russia “according to natural and economic characteristics,” by Arseniev, Semyonoff, Richter, Fortunatov, etc., are worthless for geographical purposes. The most suitable of any of them is that of Richter, which gives the Ukrainian territory an independent position. A good division also comes from M. Drahomaniv, but it is not suitable for a geographical description.

For all these reasons we shall keep to the natural districts which we described in Book I. Such a division is the only justifiable one in a country which, like the Ukraine, has no political independence.

The Carpathian region constitutes the first natural district of the Ukraine. It is populated by three Ukrainian mountain-tribes—the Lemkos (from Poprad to the Oslava), the Boikos (together with Tukholzians, from the Oslava to the Limnitzia) and the Hutzuls (from the Limnitzia to the Roumanian ethnographic border). The population is everywhere thinly strewn, especially in the Boike country. The agriculture of the region is not sufficient at any point to nourish even the sparse population. The Lemkos and Boikos carry on a little farming (oats, potatoes), the Hutzuls only along the edge of the mountains. Cattle-raising, with dairying, forestry and lumbering, and among the Hutzuls their fine home industry as well, constitute the main sources of sustenance of the mountain dwellers. Every year a large percentage of the population goes out for seasonal migrations.

The settlements of the Ukrainian Carpathians all have the character of villages. The Lemko and Boiko villages usually form long rows of farms, which extend along the valley bottom. The Hutzulian villages, on the other hand, consist of separate farms which lie scattered on valley sides, valley plains, and even valley spurs. The huts [[311]]are everywhere built of wood, and covered with shingles or boards; only among the Boikos, sometimes, with straw. The very practical block houses, adapted to the climate, which are built by the Hutzuls, look very neat.

There are no cities in the Carpathian region, but only small towns, inhabited for the most part by Jews, and bristling with dirt. The Lemko country (Lemkivshchina) has only one larger town, Sianik (11,000 inhabitants), with railway-car factories. Also noteworthy, on the Hungarian side, are the little towns of Svidnik and Strupkiv, on the Galician side the resorts of Krinitzia, Zeghestiv, Vissova, Rimaniv. In the little towns of the adjacent Polish (New Sandetz, Gorlice, Gribov, Dukla) and Slovenian territory (Bartfeld) the Lemkos supply their needs in industrial products and grain.

In the Boiko country (Boikivshchina) the towns are little centers for the retail trade and the lumber industry, as for instance, Turka on the Striy (11,000 pop.), Lisko on the San, Stari Sambir on the Dniester, and Skole on the Opir (match manufacture). The village of Smorze is noted for its cattle fairs, Sinevidsko for its fruit trade. Along the Opir valley lie numerous summer resorts (Tukhla, Slavsko).

In the Hutzul country, too, there are many summer resorts, particularly in the valley of the Prut (Dora, Yaremche, Mikulichin, Tatariv, Vorokhta). The Hutzuls make their purchases in the little towns which lie at the exit of the main passes of the range—in Nadvirna (saw-mills), Delatin (salt-works), in Kossiv, noted for its mild climate, its flourishing home industry and fruit-culture and its salt-works, in Kuti, where tanning and furriery flourish, and in Viznitza (saw-mills and lumber industrial school). In the center of the Hutzul country lies the large Hutzulian village of Zabye. There are noted mineral springs in Burkut and Pistin. On the southern [[312]]slope of the range lies the only city of the Hutzul country (21,000 pop.) and the town of Hust (10,000 pop.), both important as trade centers of the Hungarian Hutzul country.

In the southern sub-Carpathian zone the Ukrainian territory extends forward but a slight distance. The economic conditions of the mountain range suddenly give way to agriculture and vine-growing. All the cities of the region lie on the borders of the Ukrainian territory at the points of exit of important railroad lines and highroads out of the mountains. Such is the position of Uzhorod (17,000 pop.) and Mukachiv (17,000 pop.) where the products of the plain and the mountains are exchanged.

The Galicia-Bukowina sub-Carpathian hill country (Pidhirye) forms a gentle transition from the mountains to the plain. With the great wealth of forest and meadow and a not very fertile soil, agriculture begins to predominate but slowly as we depart from the limits of the mountain district. Besides, the great abundance of salt and petroleum demands many hands. The villages of the Pidhirye are as a rule, not large; the huts are regularly covered with straw. Here we find the rather unattractive type of the Galician cities and towns. Their chief characteristic is unfathomable mud or unfathomable dust on the streets, depending on the season of the year. Only the suburbs inhabited by the Ukrainian city-farmer population appear at all friendly, with their orchards and their little white-painted houses. The center of the city is regularly taken up by the Jews. Their houses, as a rule, defy all ideas of cleanliness and hygiene, and, amid bristling dirt, the retail trade surges thru miserable booths and shops. Almost nowhere in the Galician cities do we find wholesale trade or industry on a large scale, in the European sense. The Christian middle-class does not exist, and the educated class of the city population is represented by officials [[313]](usually Poles, and, in decreasing proportions, Ukrainians).