It would require the giving of a detailed ethnological description of the Ukrainian people if we wished to draw a complete picture of its peculiar culture. Such a description has no place in geography, and certainly none in a book of such general nature as this. Therefore, I shall discuss but briefly the various phases of the popular culture of the Ukraine, so that in this respect, too, the independent position of the Ukrainians among the peoples of Eastern Europe may appear in the proper light.
The Ukrainian villages (with the exception of the mountain villages, which consist of a long irregular line of farms) are always built picturesquely, in pretty places. The huts of a typical Ukrainian village are always surrounded by orchards, which is hardly ever the case among the Russians and White Russians, and very rarely so among the Poles. These neighbors of the Ukrainians plant orchards only in the few regions where professional fruitgrowing has developed. In a Ukrainian village, the green of the orchards is considered absolutely necessary. The Russian will not endure trees in the neighborhood of his hut; they obstruct his view. In the Ukraine an orchard is an indispensable constituent part of even the poorest peasant homestead. And the separate farms, in which very much of the spirit of the glorious national past still lives, are hidden in the fresh green of fruit orchards and apiaries.
The Ukrainian house is built of wood only in the mountains and other wooded areas. In all other regions it is made of clay and covered with straw. The front windows are always built facing the south. In this way, different sides of the houses face the street, and in general, too, street life does not play so important a part in a Ukrainian village as it does in Polish, White Russian or Russian villages. The Ukrainian houses are always well fenced in, altho not so strongly and so high as the Russian houses in the forest zone, or as the White Russian houses. They usually stand (except in Western Podolia) rather far apart. Thus, the danger of fire is less than in the Russian villages of the Chornozyom region, where the huts lie very close together. As a result, the insurance companies, for instance, charge smaller premiums in the Governments of Kursk and Voroniz for insuring Ukrainian village properties than for Russian.
The general external appearance of the Ukrainian huts, which are always well whitewashed and have flower gardens before the windows, is very picturesque, and contrasts to advantage with the dwellings of the neighboring races, especially the miserable and dirty Russian "izbas." All the houses of the Ukrainians, excepting, of course, the poorest huts, are divided by a vestibule into two parts. The division into two we do not find in the typical huts of the Poles and White Russians. A further characteristic in which the Ukrainian house differs from the houses of the neighboring peoples, is its comparative cleanliness. Particularly does it differ in this respect from the Russian izbas, which are regularly full of various insects and parasites, where sheep and pigs, and, in winter, even the large cattle, live comfortably together with the human inhabitants. The well-known authority on the Russian village, Novikov, relates a very characteristic little story in this connection. Several Russian families settled in a Ukrainian village. Naturally, cattle were kept in the living room. And when the Ukrainian village elders expressly forbade the keeping of cattle in the huts, the Russians moved out, because they could not become accustomed to the Ukrainian orderliness. It happens very seldom that the Russians live together with the Ukrainians in one and the same village. In such a case, the Russian part of the village lies separate, on the other side of a ravine, a creek, or a rivulet. In the regions of mixed nationality we see, adjoining one another, purely Ukrainian and purely Russian villages.
The interior arrangement of the houses and the arrangement of the barnyard differentiate the Ukrainian very sharply from his neighbor. Still more decidedly does he show his individuality in his dress. The mode of dress is quite varied thruout the great area of the Ukraine, and yet we observe everywhere a distinctness of type and individuality as opposed to the dress of neighboring peoples. Only the dress of the Polissye people bears some trace of White Russian influence, on the western border of Polish influence, in Kuban of Caucasian influence (Russian influence appears nowhere). But all these influences are slight. Ukrainian dress is always original and esthetic. No one can wonder, therefore, that the Ukrainian costume is surviving longer than the Polish, White Russian and Russian, and is giving way very slowly to the costume of the cities.