Such statements can come only from one who has no conception of climatology and anthropogeography. On such premises no conclusions may be based, except by persons who have previously constructed a hypothesis and now wish at all costs, to prove its validity. For it is certainly generally known that the same winter covers all Scandinavia, Poland, Germany and Northern France together with the same white mantle. In the winter-time one may travel by sleigh not only from Astrakhan to Archangel, but also to Irkutsk in one direction and to Stockholm in the other, and even to Paris. Not only the Dnieper freezes, but also the Vistula, the Oder, the Elbe, and sometimes even the Seine. If we consider ice and snow as the basis of "unification," very little of Europe remains. For not only in snow and ice should we seek signs of uniformity in climate, but in its general character, in the community of all climatic characteristics. It is true that the Ukraine is part of the Eastern European climatic province, but in this province we may also include almost all of Sweden, almost all of Poland, a part of Austria-Hungary and Prussia, and Supan adds all of Western Siberia, Caucasia and Turkestan as well. Every geographer understands that so great a climatic province must be divided into smaller districts even in climatology, not to mention the details of daily life. Every inhabitant of Southern Russia, whether a Ukrainian or not, feels the difference of the Ukrainian climate from that of St. Petersburg or Moscow very keenly. There is hardly a Russian author who does not describe the fine climate of the Ukraine as wonderfully mild compared to the inhospitable climate of his native land. How keenly, then, does a Ukrainian feel the difference in the two climates, who is forced to live in the cold Muscovite country.
The climatic difference is illustrated more clearly still when we consider the matter from the climatological side. Voyekov, the great Russian climato pzeshasiemlogist,
expressly the slight cover of snow in the Ukraine, the relatively high temperature of the warmer periods of the winter, and the abnormally warm spring, which is due to the lightness of the snow-cover, which requires only a little of the spring warmth to melt it. The snow cover of Poland, Lithuania or Northeastern Germany is much more similar to that of Muscovy than the Ukrainian. The January isotherms in the Ukraine switch over from the N. to S. direction to the N. W. to S. E. direction. The isotherm of the typical Russian winter (January — 8 to — 10°) avoids the region of the Ukraine entirely. It is true that the Dnieper and Dniester have the same amount of ice as the Volga or the Dvina. But here the main consideration should be the period of freezing; the Dvina is covered over for 190 days, the Volga 160, the Dnieper in the Ukraine only 80 to 100 days, the Dniester 70 days. These are certainly greater differences. Still greater differences between the Ukrainian and the Muscovite climates become evident when we compare the length of the winter, or the time suitable for work outdoors. In Great Russia this time is at most four months; in the Ukraine, at least six and a half; and in its southern borderlands even nine months. Such differences play a great part in the life of the people. The time of the winter obstructions and enforced idleness is twice as great in Russia as in the Ukraine. The struggle with the cold takes on forms in the Ukraine which are entirely analogous to the Western European forms. In the Muscovite country we observe polar elements in the winter-life of the people. The Ukrainian winter does not depress the people, does not bore them to death, but only steels their bodies in the struggle with the cold and gives them the desired rest after the summer's heat. The winter is the time of the most intensive social life among the Ukrainian peasantry.
The spring of the Ukraine, warm and sunny, has quite a different influence upon people to that of the cool, damp Russian or Polish spring. The sunny climate of the spring and the cloudlessness of the summer have produced in the Ukrainian a quiet, fundamentally cheerful temper. Yet, we find in him none of the gaiety which is characteristic of the people of the south as compared with the people of the north, but rather a quiet melancholy. It is just the Russians or the Poles that are of a much gayer sort than the Ukrainians, livelier, more easy-going in their social life, more frolicsome; not the Ukrainians, but the Russians and Poles, are the very ones that are vying with one another for the epithet of the "Frenchmen of the North" or "of the East," respectively. (This remarkable fact is due, in the first place, to the unhappy history of the Ukraine). But, on the other hand, the melancholy of the Ukrainians is quiet, while the occasional melancholy of the Russians turns into despair and pessimism.