The Ukrainian summer and fall, warm and beautiful, has made the Ukrainian, in contrast with the Russian, a farmer par excellence. The warmth of these seasons is very similar to Southern European conditions, and gives to the life of the Ukrainian people many southern characteristics. The life in open communion with Nature, the accessibility of her organic treasures, is much more pronounced in the Ukraine than in Russia, White Russia or Poland. In the warm seasons the Ukrainian lives much of the time outside his house. In the day he works continuously in the field or in the garden, and even at night he usually sleeps outdoors in the orchard or the yard. If the fields are at a distance from the village, a large part of the population of the place camp out in the open fields for several days during harvest time. These are all characteristics of the life of the south. Yet we see in our people no real characteristics of the people of the south. Despite all this, the Ukrainian is much more domestic than the
Russian, more frugal and more temperate; the "extravagant Russian nature" is entirely foreign to him. We have already seen that the Ukrainians do not have gay manners, and in like manner their activity of thought is less than that of the northern peoples, the Russians and the Poles. Yet the depth of thought of the Ukrainians is much greater, and their popular poetry incomparably deeper than that of the Russians or Poles. Dreaminess and reserve of character is much greater in the Ukrainians who live in the south than in the Poles and Russians who live in the north. All these are the effects of a sorrowful past. Only in one respect do the Ukrainians bear out their southern type of character; in their great abilities and their generally rich intellectual gifts. Every unprejudiced observer must admit that the Ukrainian peasant, almost the only typical representative of our nation, surpasses almost all his neighbors in his natural accomplishments.
The laziness and weakness of will peculiar to the southern nations compared to the northern, have not developed into a typical characteristic among the Ukrainians. The often remarkable indifference of the Ukrainian is rather an outgrowth of sad historical events than of the climate and the nature of the land in general. At most one might blame the great fertility of the black soil. For the faith in this fertility is almost never misplaced and favors the indifference of the peasant. On the other hand, the five hundred years of Tatar oppression were actually able to produce an inherited indifference. And why strive and work, when at any moment the Tatar hordes might come and take or burn everything?
Despite this historically inherited indifference, as we may call it, the laziness peculiar to southerners cannot be ascribed to the Ukrainians. They are better farmers than all their neighbors, with the single exception of those who adopted progressive farming, as, for example, the Prussian
Poles. Domestic industry is also well developed among the Ukrainians, and the Ukrainian seasonal workers are actually sought after, especially in Germany, and earn a great deal. The Ukrainian harvest-worker is more sought after and better paid than the Russian. He works slowly but methodically, and achieves good results. The Ukrainian colonists find tolerable living conditions in places in which the Russian starves to death or from which he flees.
In like manner weakness of will is not a real peculiarity of the Ukrainians, in spite of their southern location. The thousand years' struggle with piratical Asia, the independent establishment of t&o great state organizations, especially the second, after three centuries of slavery, the new awakening in the 19th Century under such difficult and hostile conditions, the splendid colonial expansion — all this speaks rather for great energy than for weakness of will. It is certainly true that in our people, oppressed by centuries of serfdom, energy and strength of character must hide beneath a thick crust of indifference, and our educated people find their energy weakened by the bad influence of foreign cultures. But these facts show most clearly that an enormous amount of energy and willpower is latent in the Ukrainian people, which, to this day, however, has not been properly developed.