But we do not desire, in this small work, to write a geography of the Ukrainian colonies. All are branches severed from the mother-tree, which, considering the low grade of culture of the settlers, must sooner or later be assimilated by the foreign race. Only the Asiatic colonies have some (though rather slight) prospects of preserving their national individuality into the remote future. The constant addition of new arrivals from the home country, as well as the higher culture of the Ukrainian people as opposed to the Russian masses, will preserve the Ukrainian colonists in Asia from rapid denationalization.
What is the total number of Ukrainians, and how many of them live in the compact Ukrainian national territory?
The answer to this question is not easy — for the same reasons which do not permit us to draw accurately the boundaries of the Ukrainian country. The political subjugation of the Ukraine on the one hand, and the size of the nation and its territory on the other, cause the ruling governments to falsify the statistics, thus concealing the true state of affairs. To a great extent, also, the ignorance of the organs performing the census bear the blame for the unreliability of the statistics collected in Ukrainian territory. The Ukrainians are either simply registered as members of another (usually the ruling) nationality, or forced, by various means, to deny their inherited nationality.
In Hungary entire villages are sometimes set down as Magyar, Slovak or Roumanian, altho their population is wholly, or for the most part, Ukrainian. In the Bukowina, too, a great many Ukrainians are registered as Roumanians. In Galicia, all Roman-Catholic Ukrainians are regularly entered as Poles, altho, as a rule, they have not even a mastery of the Polish language. Nevertheless, the Austro- Hungarian statistics allow the possibility of determining very closely the true condition. The Russian census of 1897, which gives us the sole materials for statistics on a racial basis in the Ukraine, was carried out greatly to the disadvantage of the Ukrainian element. In the cities, only the smallest minority of the Ukrainians are registered as such, all the rest being counted as Russians. The same has been the case in all the Ukrainian colonies and language islands scattered thru the great space of the gigantic Russian Empire. Even so, we are omitting from consideration those Ukrainians who, because of lack of national consciousness or for fear of persecution, have denied their nationality.
Despite all these shortcomings of the official statistics, we shall make their statements the basis of our calculations. Only the most marked falsifications or errors can be considered and corrected. As the basis of our calculations, we shall take the figures of the census in Austria and Hungary of the year 1910, as well as the Russian calculations of the same year. As the latter lack any statement as to the relative proportions or percentages of the nationalities, we must apply the percentages of the enumeration of 1897 to the totals of 1910. This process, of course, gives us only approximate values, but it is the only available method.
We shall begin our statistical view of the Ukrainian lands with Northeastern Hungary. Here the Ukrainians inhabit a compact territory of over 14,000 square kilometers. The greatest part of it lies in the Carpathian Mountains and includes the northern three-quarters of the County of Marmarosh, the northeastern half of the County of Ungh, the northern borderlands of the Counties of Semplen and Sharosh, and the northeastern borderlands of the County of Zips. The total number of Ukrainians in Hungary was 470,000 in 1910, a number which, because of the insufficient Hungarian statistics, may be confidently raised to a half a million, if we consider the fact that even the doctored Greek-Catholic figures of the eighties gave approximately the latter number. The percentages of the Ukrainians in different counties, according to official reckoning, are as follows: In Marmorosh 46%, Uhocha 39%, Bereg 46%,
Ungh 36%, Sharosh 20%, Semplen 11%, Zips 8%. In the east the Roumanians form small scattered language islands, in the west the Slovaks. Amid the Ukrainian population, scattered, but in considerable numbers, live Jews; in the cities, Magyars and Germans besides. The Ukrainians inhabit all the mountainous, sparsely settled parts of the counties, hence the percentage of them is small, despite the extent of the country they inhabit. The Ukrainian people in Upper Hungary consist almost exclusively of peasants and petty bourgeois. The lack of national schools causes illiteracy to grow rampant. The upper strata of the people are three-fourths denationalized; the common people are stifled in ignorance, and in the consequent poor economic conditions, which the Hungarian Government is vainly trying to relieve.