Much more important are the external injuries done to the Ukrainian national idea by the Russian unity theory. They may be expressed in a single sentence: As a result of the absolutism of the Russian unity theory in the history, geography and statistics of Eastern Europe, the civilized world does not know that there exists in Europe a large country which is called "Ukraina," and that in this country there lives a nation with a separate individuality, a nation of over thirty million souls, which bears the name "Ukrainians."
It is true that, from time to time, since the beginning of the present century, magazine articles and pamphlets in various leading languages have appeared, which aim to inform the world about the Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. But these journalistic efforts have only an ephemeral value. Politicians only occasionally interest themselves in the Ukrainian question when it is brought to their notice. And scholars, however well-disposed, can not give such publications preference over the official Russian sources.
The young Ukrainian learning has thus far been unable to spread true information on the Ukrainian nation, and to establish the Ukrainian nation in the scientific world as an independent unit among the Slavic nations. Only in the historical field the independent position of the Ukrainians among the nations of Eastern Europe has been demonstrated, thanks to the compositions of a Kostomariv, Antonovich, Drahomaniv, Hrushevsky. In the fields of philology, anthropology, ethnology, ethnography and folk-lore, there are many treatises relating to these sciences, but there is no systematic exposition of the Ukrainian nation as a uniform whole in relation to these branches of science. In the anthropogeographic field the present lines constitute the first effort. In addition, all these treatises have appeared only in Ukrainian or Russian, and, consequently, remain inaccessible to the overwhelming majority of the European world of scholarship.
For these reasons science must depend upon the official statements. The official Russian geography considers the Ukrainians only as one of the three tribes of the unified Russian people. The official Russian statistics report this to the world. Hence, German, French and English geographic science, too, usually accounts for the Ukrainians as Russians. The names Kleinrussen, Petits Russes, Little Russians, do not mean an independent nation, but a tribe of the Russian nation. Such erroneous views may be found in all the general encyclopedias and lexicons, in all handbooks of geography and statistics. The Austro- Hungarian Ukrainians, who are mentioned in the official statistics as Ruthenians, are also to a great extent taken for a part of the Russian people which differs from the mass of Russians only in its Catholic faith, or more remarkably still, for an entirely independent little nation called Ruthenia, and differing both from the Little Russians and the Russians.
The results of such ignorance of the Ukrainian Nation in the scientific world are disastrous for the Ukrainians.
Every appearance of the Ukrainians in the political and cultural arena remains enigmatic to the whole world. Enigmatic remains the struggle of the Ukrainians against Russia and particularly against its Russification policy. In case after case it is explained by far-fetched political, social and economic causes, but never by national-cultural reasons. For almost no one in Europe knows that in the Ukraine a great independent nation is struggling for its national life, and not a political or social party for its significance in the state. The struggle of the Austrian Ukrainians against the predominance of the Poles in Galicia seems hardly more reasonable to the foreigner than the striving of the Russian Ukrainians. Most incomprehensible here appears the struggle of the Ukrainians against the Russophile movements. For a long time it was regarded as insincere, or even as non-existing, and this circumstance has brought the Ukrainians innumerable political injuries.