THE LAND AND ITS PEOPLE
AN INTRODUCTION TO ITS GEOGRAPHY
STEPHEN RUDNITSKY, Ph. D.
PRIVATDOZENT OF GEOGRAPHY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LEMBERG
NEW YORK CITY
VP^ ' \ RAND MCNAULY ft CO, IEW YORK
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
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Publisher's Preface
The first appearance of this book, which is from the pen of Stephen Rudnitsky, the famous geographer of the University of Lemberg, was in the Russian Ukraine. The book was printed in Ukrainian, at Kieff, and the date under the publisher's imprint was 1910. The first translation into a foreign language was into German. This translation appeared at Vienna in 1915, with many improvements and additions.
The English translation which appears in this volume is an authorized translation of the German edition above-mentioned.
The reader is respectfully requested to note that the few unpleasant references to Russia are of course meant to apply to the Russia of the Czars, as the book was written during the Czarist regime.
Ukrainian Alliance New York City of America
CONTENTS
Book I. Physical Geography
Ukraine as a Geographic Unit 3
Location and Size 12
The Black Sea and its Coasts 15
General Survey of the Topography of Ukraine
The Ukrainian Mountain Country 23
The Ukrainian Plateau Country 37
The Ukrainian Plain Country 53
Streams and Rivers of Ukraine 63
The Ukrainian Climate 85
Flora and Fauna of Ukraine 99
Book II. Anthropogeography
Ethnographic-Boundaries of Ukraine.
Number and Geographical Distribution of the Ukrainians.. 118
The Ukrainian Nation as an Anthropogeographical Unit
General Survey 148
Anthropological Characteristics of the Ukrainians 159
The Ukrainian Language 167
Historico-Political Traditions and Aspirations of the
Ukrainians 176
Ukrainian Culture 190
Relations between the Soil and the People of Ukraine 211
Economic-Geographical Survey of Ukraine 246
Hunting and Fishing 246
Forestry 251
Agriculture 255
Fruit and Vegetable Raising 267
Cattle Raising 271
Mineral Production 275
Industry, 282
Districts and Settlements of Ukraine 307
Maps:
General Physical Chart of Ukraine
General Ethnographic Map of Eastern Europe
Geological Map of Ukraine
General Climatic Map of Ukraine
Map of the Flora of Ukraine
Structural-Morphological Map of Ukraine
Book I.
PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY
Ukraine as a Geographic Unit
There are few lands upon the whole globe so imperfectly known to geographic science as the one which we shall try to describe in this little work. The geographic concept of the Ukraine does not exist in the geography of today. Even the name has been almost forgotten in Europe in the course of the last century and a half. Only occasionally on some maps of Eastern Europe the name "Ukraine" shows timidly along the middle of the Dnieper. And yet it is an old name of the country, originating in the 11th Century, generally known thruout Europe from the 16th to the end of the 18th century, and then, after the abrogation of the autonomy of the second Ukrainian state, gradually fallen into oblivion. The Russian Government has determined to erase the old name of the land and the nation from the map of Europe. Little Russia, West Russia, South Russia, New Russia, were officially introduced in place of the old name Ukraine, the Austrian part of the Ukraine receiving the name of East Galicia. The people were named Little Russians, South Russians, Ruthenians, and all remembrance of the old name seemed to have been blotted out. But, in the speech of the people and in the magnificent unwritten popular literature of the nation, the name of the land could not be destroyed, and, with the unexpected rise of Ukrainian literature, culture, and a feeling of national political independence in the 19th Century, the name Ukraine came into its own again. Today there is not an intelligent patriotic Ukrainian who would use another name for his country and nation than Ukraine and Ukrainian, and, slowly, these designations are penetrating foreign lands as well.
The Ukraine is the land in which the Ukrainian nation dwells — a great solid national territory embracing all the southern part of Russia in Europe, besides East Galicia, Northwest Bukowina and Northeast Hungary.
This district is a definite geographic unit. A discussion of its exact boundaries shall be reserved for the anthropogeographical part of this book.