In the first chapter of our little book we mentioned the reasons which compel us to regard the Ukraine as a physico-geographic whole. We emphasized the fact that the geographic units of the great uniform country of Eastern Europe could not, for obvious natural reasons, appear so well-defined and individualized as the different sections of Western and Central Europe. The same is true of the anthropogeographic conditions of Eastern Europe as well.
The anthropogeography of Eastern Europe is so unfamiliar a part of geographic science that even such pioneer geographers as Ratzel, Kirchhoff and Hettner entirely misunderstood and misrepresented the anthropogeographic conditions of Russia, and especially the racial conditions of this giant empire.
There are two reasons for the universal ignorance of the anthropogeographic conditions of Russia which exists even in the ranks of renowned scholars. The first cause lies in the sources from which scholars, and subsequently publicists, draw their knowledge of the subject. Now the official Russian sources on the basis of which an anthropogeography of Eastern Europe would have to be written are not immune from serious criticism. The ranks of Russian scholars have always worked in the interests of the Russian political idea, and latterly, caught by the mighty wave of Pan-Slavic-Russian nationalism, they are doing their best to represent as actual fact whatever Russian governmental politics would desire to be fact. Russian geography, ethnography, statistics, history, have always worked in accordance with approved "unifying" designs. Hence, European learning involuntarily sees all that exists and is coming into existence in Russia thru the spectacles put on it by official Russia. The same official Russia comes to meet the European traveler upon every step of his journey, and guides him in such a way that he may be sure not to see below the general official Russian varnish what is actual and true. Besides, there is the Russian censorship, which even now, after the introduction of the constitution, takes very good care to veil everything from the view of the outside world, which, in the interest of the Russian political idea, should remain hidden.
The second cause of ignorance as to the anthropogeography of Russia lies in the subject itself. The Eastern European family of races inhabiting Russia is so different from that of Western and Central Europe in its evolution and composition, that the anthropogeographical laws and methods which (as far as civilized peoples are concerned) are based upon Western European conditions, do not apply in the least in Eastern Europe. A difficulty confronts anthropogeography here, analogous to the difficulty which confronted geologic science when, fitted out with European stratigraphy, it sought to explore South Africa or India. The geologists, as representatives of a natural science, were readily able to find the way out, but the anthropogeographers, whose field is more that of a psychic science, have lost themselves in false assumptions and in commonplaces.
We must not wonder, therefore, if every critical reader of the preceding chapter is assailed by a host of questions: Why in the world are the Ukrainians, this second largest
Slavic nation of the whole world, so utterly unknown? Perhaps Ukraine is only an ethnographic conception, and the Ukrainians only a branch of the Russian race, just as the Bavarians or Saxons are branches of the German people? Or are the terms "Ukraine," "Ukrainian", only outgrowths of the idle imagination of a few belated enthusiasts, who rave about a glorious past and a brilliant future, and represent what they are striving after as a fait accompli, and so forth.
Such questions, based upon deep ignorance of the anthropogeography and history of Eastern Europe, come up in this very 20th Century, even in the learned circles of scholars, publicists and politicians. To answer these and similar questions correctly, this little book has been written.