The first mark of the primitive condition is probably the existence of countless annual fairs in the Ukraine — a relic of medieval trade conditions. The number of annual fairs in the Russian Ukraine exceeds 4000, altho it is far out of proportion to the great number of annual fairs in Great Russia. But out of twenty-two grand annual fairs of Russia, eleven fall to the Ukrainian territory — four in Kharkiv, two in Romny, one in Poltava, Kursk, Kolevez, Yelisavet and Sumy, respectively. In addition, there are the once famous Kiev "kontrakti" (now declining), and the smaller annual fairs in Berdichiv, Zitomir, Dubno, etc. The greatest exchanges of goods take place in the Yordan fair in Kharkiv (January 20th), and the Elias fair (August 2nd) in Poltava. Here the wholesale dealers sell their goods to the retailers (Ofenyi — Russians from the Governments of Vladimir and Slobozani — Russian sectarians, colonists from the Chernihiv country, Jewish retailers who sell in the right half of the Ukraine), who buy or supplement their stock of goods during the annual fairs. In these wholesale transactions, the so-called prassoli — Russian barterers — also engage, dealers who travel all year thru the villages of the Ukraine, exchange the wool, bristles and flax of the peasants for hardware, and sell the collected raw materials to the wholesalers. In this annual fair system, the Ukrainians have, until recently, played an important part as paid drivers, who drove the goods on their oxcarts from fair to fair. These drivers at one time formed a sort of class of their own — the "chumaki" — and even engaged independently in the trading of the Crimean salt and the dried fish of the Sea of Azof. The railroads have put an end to the former importance of the chumaki, yet the scanty length of the Ukrainian railway system prevents this carting industry from disappearing altogether. In the eighties of the past century there were counted in the districts of Poltava, Kharkiv and Chernihiv, 210,000 chumaks; in the year 1897, in Kherson, Katerinoslav, Tauria and Don, about 100,000 of these hired drivers.
The fair system of Ukrainian trade is carried on not only by means of great annual fairs, which, by the way, are decreasing in importance year by year, but also by means of an enormous number of smaller annual fairs in the cities, towns, and even villages of the Russian Ukraine, which take care of the retail trade. In the Austrian Ukraine the annual fairs (as for instance, the once famous fairs of Tarnopol, Ulashkivtzi, Czernowitz) have lost all significance since the modernization of the country's commerce.
World-commerce has, until very recently, left the Ukraine almost untouched. This is one of the reasons why the primitive forms of commerce were able to last so long in the Ukraine. Until recently, world-commerce has taken the Ukraine merely for a producing and exporting country of raw materials, and left the supplying of local demands to the traditional forms of trade. Only within the last decades has the modern commercial organization begun slowly to take in the Ukraine. The exchanges in Kiev, Khatkiv, Odessa, Kreminchuk, Mikolaiv, Tahanroh, Rostiv, the chambers of commerce in Lviv and Brodi, are organizing the export of raw materials from the Ukraine, and the flooding of the country with the products of foreign industry is becoming more and more intensive.
In spite of all we have mentioned, the significance of the Ukraine in the internal commerce of Russia and in world-trade is very great. The natural resources of the country, its situation on the threshold of Asia and the Mediterranean world, its property of being a direct hinterland of the Black Sea, give to the Ukraine a commercial importance with which that of any other individual district of European Russia, the Baltic lands and Poland not excepted, can never compare.
In the internal commerce of Russia, the Ukraine figures, first of all, as purveyor of foodstuffs, and in Austria-Hungary the Austrian Ukraine plays the same part on a small scale. To represent these relations in figures encounters great difficulties, and the figures can be only approximate. In 1895 the Ukraine exported over 1.5 million metric hundredweights of grain to Lithuania and White Russia, about 1.7 million metric hundredweights to Poland, and about 0.9 million metric hundredweights to Central Russia. In 1905, two Ukrainian districts alone, Poltava and Kharkiv, exported over 0.7 metric hundredweights of grain to Central Russia. These figures must be much greater today. And the grain exportation of the Austrian Ukraine to the interior of Austria must be relatively as great. As a matter of fact, Galicia produces one-third of the total Austrian output of oats and wheat, and almost half the output of potatoes.