The Ukrainian people occupy a large territory of more than 500,000 sq. miles, that is to say, an area greater than that of France.
(Ukraine ethnographically comprises the Governments of Kiev, Poltava, Podolia, Volhynia, Tchernigov, Ekaterinoslav, Kharkov, Kherson, Cholm, Eastern Galicia, Ukrainian Bukovina, Ukrainian Hungary, Ukrainian Bessarabia, The Girl In Kherson and some districts of the Governments of Grodno, Minsk, Taurida, the Don, Kursk, Voronege, Kuban, Stravropol, and Tchernomore.)
The purely Ukrainian population comprises some 37 million inhabitants.
This population is distinguished from the neighboring peoples in all respects: anthropological, ethnographical, and as regards folklore. The anthropological mensurations show very clearly the type and national individuality of the Ukrainian people, which differs in a very marked manner from that of the people of Great Russia. The ethnic frontier of these two races is easy to trace. Even superficial observations show the existence of this frontier. On one side are found villages designed and built in the Ukrainian style; on the other, the plans and constructions are of Russian style. In the Ukrainian villages the little white cottages have thatched roofs that slope on four sides, and always have a garden in front. The villages give the impression of being lost in foliage. On the other hand, the Great Russian villages are impressions of sadness, as are the countries of the North. They are usually empty of gardens or trees. Their cottages, constructed of unwhitewashed and unpainted wood, have a somber appearance. Their roofs, often of laths, are made in the shelving ridge style. The yards, sheds, and interiors of the Great Russian abodes completely differ from the Ukrainian habitations. On the frontier, the Ukrainian villages, and those of the Great Russians, are frequently neighboring. It even happens that a Ukrainian village, or Great Russian village, overreaches the frontier by some scores of miles. But one never sees the houses constructed partly in the Ukrainian type or partly according to the Russian style. The two styles are never confused with each other.
The same difference is met with in the costumes, manners, and morals. The Ukrainian peasants and those of Great Russia rarely inter-marry. The character of the two types is so accentuated that the Russian villages, constructed by emigrants in the depth of Ukraine (Kherson Government) and those of the Ukrainians, built also by emigrants in the heart of Russia (Saratov Government) preserve their ethnic individuality.
These differences are accounted for by anthropology and history. The Great Russians were constituted in the North by a mixture of a minority of Slav emigrants and a majority of Finnish tribes. The Slavs gave their language, but from the anthropological point of view it was the Finns who prevailed, and they also had a great preponderance in all that concerns the customs and even the mythology.
Although they have undergone in the past certain oriental influences, the Ukrainian people have preserved a much more purely Slavonic character. Ethnographically, it has more resemblance with the Slavs of the South than with the Great Russians, although the languages of the Great Russians and the Ukrainians, distinct as they both are, both belong to the same group of Slavonic languages of the East.
Historically, the explanation of the characters and the differences between these two races is also easy.
For centuries the Ukrainian people and the people of Russia have not had even common frontiers. The wandering tribes occupied vast lands, and the Ukrainians came to inhabit the Northern part, especially the Western district of the country, while the Great Russians congregated in the North, near Moscow. They did not dare to venture very far into the Southern Steppes, where the nomad tribes had formidable forces. It was not until later, when these forces had diminished, that the Ukrainians, emigrating towards the East (in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) met the Russians who were emigrating towards the South.
If two nations, more or less connected, as, for example, the Serbians, and the Bulgarians, lived near to each other through the centuries, they would inevitably have had in the period of their formation an influence on each other, and they would necessarily have intermixed on their frontiers. But the Great Russians and the Ukrainians were brought together at the time when their ethnic culture was accomplished: and it is for that reason they ought not to and cannot have an influence over each other.
The same may be said, and the same explanation be given, concerning the languages. The existence of a Ukrainian language is no longer debatable. It is established that it is a quite independent language, belonging to the Slavonic group of the East (Ukrainian, Great Russian, and White Russian). This is not only admitted by the Ukrainian scholars, but also by the best Slavists of Europe, including the philologists of Russia. When in 1905 the Academy of Petrograd was consulted by the Government to know whether they ought to authorize publications in the Ukrainian language, a memorandum was presented by some Russian Academicians, such as Shakhmatoff, Korch, Fortunatoff, Lapo-Danilievsky, Ovsianiko-Koulikovsky. In this memorandum, it was scientifically recognized and affirmed categorically, that the Ukrainian language was indeed an individual language, and in explaining this thesis, the Russian scholars have given the formation of this language almost the same historic explanations as those which we have given to the subject of Ukrainian ethnic development.
“From even the beginning of history, the general Russian language had its dialectic differences which allowed for the supposition that the Russian people were divided into three groups: the Northern Group, the Center Group, and the Southern Group. The documents of the South in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as is proved by the Academician, Sobolievsky, already showed the characteristic traits of the language of the Little Russians. One can say with certainty that the dialect of the South (Ukrainian) is quite distinguished from the dialects of the Centre and the North, even before the pre-Tartar period. This distinction did not cease by the political union of the Slavs of the East in the tenth and eleventh centuries (the Duchy of Kiev). On the contrary, the political dispersion of these territories which took place later, the organization of a political center near Moscow, and the downfall of Kiev towards the end of the twelfth century, all favored the separation of the South, which the arrival of the Tartars achieved. In the Lithuanian-Russian State (which comprised many Ukrainian lands), the tribes of the South met the tribes of the Center, who, later on, formed the White Russians. It is only by the colonization, which did not occur until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that the Great Russians and the Little Russians drew together in the basins of the rivers Seime, Donetz, and Don. Thus it is, that historical conditions have contributed to the complete isolation of South-West Russia (Ukraine) and Great Russia, and thus it is, that the differences between the languages of the Great Russians and the Little Russians are explained. The historical life of these races has not created a common language; on the contrary, it has deepened the dialectic differences which one sees at their entrance into history, among the ancestors of the Little Russians on one side and among the ancestors of the Great Russians on the other side.”
The Ukrainians, in distinguishing themselves from all their neighbors, established on their vast territory an almost absolute ethnic unity, and such a distinction makes itself felt even on the outskirts of the north of the country and in the region of the Carpathians.
This remarkable unity is explained by the displacements that several conquests effected in the different regions of the territory, when the Ukrainians ebbed and flowed back, under the pressure of the invaders, nomadic tribes, and others. The Ukrainians of these different regions thus met each other, harmonized together, and formed a single ethnic type.