More glaringly still does the unnaturalness of the present political division of the Ukraine stand out, when we view the administrative units in the framework of the states which at present dominate the Ukraine. In Hungary, the Ukrainian part of the land is united into one great whole, together with Slavonia, Transylvania, Alfold, Banat, etc. All is centered in Budapest. Even the boundaries of the antonomous countries are so constructed that, besides a piece of Ukrainian territory, they embrace an equally great or even greater, but, at any rate, heavily peopled piece of a foreign national territory, e. g., of the Roumanian, Magyar, Slovenian. As a result of this scattering allotment, the Ukrainians of Hungary possess no political influence.
The same is the case in the Austrian parts of the Ukraine. Galicia proper, which is inhabited by Ukrainians, the nucleus of the ancient Ukrainian Kingdom of Halich, which, in its physico-geographical aspect, is wholly a part of Eastern Europe, is welded together with the so-called Western Galicia, properly a part of Little Poland (grandduchy of Cracow), which is inhabited entirely by Poles and belongs physically to Central Europe, both halves constituting together one administrative unit. The result of this unnatural union is the bitter racial struggle of century-long duration between the Poles and Ukrainians, a struggle which is still going on without prospect of peace, and is very unfavorable for the beneficial development of the land. The Ukrainians are fighting for equal rights and against Polonization; the Poles, in the name of their state tradition, for their hegemony in the land and for the forcible assimilation of the Ukrainians. The only remedy which presents itself would be the division of the present crown-province of Galicia into two crown-provinces, an eastern Ukrainian, and a western Polish province. The present crown-province of Bukowina also consists of parts of Pokutye, Pidhirye and the Ukrainian Carpathians, together with a part of the Roumanian Carpathian foothills. This circumstance again brings about a national struggle between the Ukrainians and the Roumanians.
The greatest portion of the country, the Russian Ukraine, also suffers from an unnatural political division. The Ukrainian territory is divided into several great administrative districts, or groups of governments. Parts of the Ukrainian national territory lie in the Vistula Governments in Western, Southwestern, Southern and Little Russia and Caucasia. The boundaries of the individual governments everywhere are drawn without consideration for natural and ethnographic conditions. In this way the border districts of the unbroken Ukrainian territory have been united with parts of foreign racial territories into artificial administrative units, as, for example, the Governments of Lublin and Sidlez (the present Government of Kholm), Grodno, Minsk, Kursk, Voroniz, Don region, Stavropol, Bessarabia, etc. This circumstance being a result of the poor development of constitutional life in Russia, has no great significance now, but may in the future become as unfavorable for the Ukraine as is the similar condition today in Austria-Hungary.
The anthropogeography of today in describing a land, very seldom takes such artificial divisions into consideration. Then there is the additional circumstance that these divisions, as is obvious, have no physico-geographical value. In like manner, the division of Russia "according to natural and economic, characteristics," by Arseniev, Semyonoff, Richter, Fortunatov, etc., are worthless for geographical purposes. The most suitable of any of them is that of Richter, which gives the Ukrainian territory an independent position. A good division also comes from M. Drahqmaniv, but it is not suitable for a geographical description.
For all these reasons we shall keep to the natural districts which we described in Book I. Such a division is the only justifiable one in a country which, like the Ukraine, has no political independence.
The Carpathian region constitutes the first natural district of the Ukraine. It is populated by three Ukrainian mountain- tribes — the Lemkos (from Poprad to the Oslava), the Boikos (together with Tukholzians, from the Oslava to the Limnitzia) and the Hutzuls (from the Limnitzia to the Roumanian ethnographic border). The population is everywhere thinly strewn, especially in the Boike country. The agriculture of the region is not sufficient at any point to nourish even the sparse population. The Lemkos and Boikos carry on a little farming (oats, potatoes), the Hutzuls only along the edge of the mountains. Cattle-raising, with dairying, forestry and lumbering, and among the Hutzuls their fine home industry as well, constitute the main sources of sustenance of the mountain dwellers. Every year a large percentage of the population goes out for seasonal migrations.