Ukraine possesses so rich a popular culture, that by developing all its hidden possibilities and supplementing them by elements drawn from the untainted sources of Western European culture, the Ukrainian nation could attain a complete culture just as peculiar to itself, and just as exalted among the great European cultures, as Ukrainian popular culture is among the popular cultures of other peoples."
Hence, the way lay clearly indicated for the Ukrainians of the 19th and 20th Century. Ethnological investigations and the scientific study of folk-lore have been taken up very eagerly by Ukrainian scholars, so that in this particular field, recent Ukrainian science, perhaps, ranks highest in all Slavic science. In no other cultured nation of Europe is the life of the educated elements so permeated with the influences of the nation's own popular culture. The Ukrainian cultural movement is hardly a century old, and yet it has results to show which, even today, guarantee the cultural independence of the Ukrainian nation. Active relations with Central and Western European cultures have been established, which may become of incalculable effect in the further development of Ukrainian culture.
Relations Between the Soil and the People of Ukraine
The geographical situation of the Ukraine is the same today as it was a thousand years ago. If the theories which call the present Ukrainian territory the original home of the Aryans are true, the Ukrainians must be considered the primeval autochthones. The limits of the Ukrainian nation, too, are almost the same today as they were a thousand years ago, altho, in the meantime, great shifts have taken place. Only in the west, the Ukrainians have lost a strip about 30 kilometers wide to the Poles, thru the Polonization movement, which has been advancing eastward since 1340. In this section the Ukrainian element has survived only in the mountains. The northern border, next to the White Russians; which, since primitive times, has consisted of great forests and swamps, has always remained without changes of any kind. On the other hand, the part of the northern border east of the Dnieper, and still more the eastern and southern borders, have been subject to radical changes in the course of Ukrainian history.
The old Ukrainian state of Kiev rapidly developed a far-flung expansive movement, and soon covered almost all of Eastern Europe. In the south, the old Kingdom of Kiev, and together with it the southern tribes of East Slavs (the ancestors of the present Ukrainians) reached the delta of the Danube and the Black Sea and the foothills of the Caucasus, where, in the present Kuban district, the old province and petty principality of Tmutorokan was situated " How far to the north the southern East Slavic tribes then extended we can not tell exactly. But it is very improbable that they extended beyond the woods and swamps of the Polissye.
Even at that time, a thousand years ago, the geographical position of the Ukraine, on the edge of Europe and the steppe-country of Central Asia, proved itself dangerous. From the beginning of the Middle Ages on, innumerable tribes of Turkish-Tatar origin, came crowding out of the Central Asiatic steppes westward, thru the steppes of Southern Ukraine. The Ukraine had to be the first of all the countries of Europe to withstand the attack of these hordes. The first Ukrainian conqueror, Sviatoslav, who destroyed the state of the Khazars and Bulgars and defeated other weak hordes, was killed in the struggle with the Pechenegs. Volodimir the Great was forced to fight these nomads under the very walls of his capital. These wars with nomad tribes, which began before the Ukraine appeared in the arena of history, lasted from this time until the end of the 18th Century, with varying fortunes. At times the balance of power was on the side of the Ukraine, and then Ukrainian colonization advanced victoriously to the south and east as far as the Black Sea. At other times the nomads were victorious, and the eastern and southern boundaries of the Ukraine receded north and west. The great chains of fortifications and border walls erected by the Great Princes of Kiev, on the southeast borders of the Ukraine, were of no avail. At the time of the greatest extent of the Tatar attacks (15th to 16th Century) almost all the left half of the Ukraine was a wilderness, and in the right half Kiev was a border fortress. All the southern Dnieper country, the Boh country and Eastern Podolia, was at that time a sparsely-peopled borderland, and constantly exposed to the dangers of Tatar attacks. At that time