Ukrainians

“ The Ukrainians have all the characteristics of the races of the North Temperate Zone, who are the representatives of the European culture of today. The growth of national consciousness and of culture will, without a doubt, raise the Ukrainians to the standard of the European family of cultured nations. The nature of the country has, by means of its influences, given them all the necessary prerequisites. ”

“ The Ukraine has always [152] been the richest region of Eastern Europe in natural resources, the Ukrainians the second largest nation, the Ukrainian question the most important problem in every state commanding Eastern Europe. Now the Ukrainian nation was completely exhausted by half a thousand years of Tatar oppression and an equally long period of serfdom. ”

“ But anthropology discredits not only these theories which are still dominating European science. Several Polish historians have recently evolved a new theory of the origin of the Ukrainians and spread it thru Europe. According to this theory the Ukrainians are a mixture of Slavs and the Mongolian-Turkish nomad tribes which [166] traversed and commanded the Ukrainian steppes for centuries; they are a semi-nomadic steppe people, incapable of culture, whose development might bring with it the greatest dangers for European civilization. ”

“ The two neighboring nations, the Polish and the Russian, politically and culturally stronger, are trying to divide the Ukrainians between themselves, and are refusing them the right to exist as an independent nation. Against these appetites for conquest the comparatively small army of educated Ukrainians is fighting with might and main, supported semi-consciously by the mass of the Ukrainian People. The Ukrainian peasantry has for centuries defied all attacks upon its ethnographic-national independence. ”

“ New partitioning of Ukrainian territory (1919) , new persecutions of Ukrainians for adhering to their language and their church in Poland, bloody purges of Ukrainian nationalist leaders in Soviet Russia, new re-partitioning of Carpathian Ukraine to Hungary (1938) has not solved the Ukrainian problem nor killed the will for independence. ”

“ To this day, now that the conditions are much better, one may still find among the Ukrainians individuals who, culturally, are Poles or Russians, and only speak and feel as Ukrainians. Such a condition is very sad, and causes the Ukraine untold injury—most of all in the field of material culture, which, in both these neighboring nations, is very incomplete. Agriculture, mining, trade and commerce, are on a much lower plane among the Poles than in Western Europe. ”

“ The worth of Ukrainian culture appears, in its most beautiful and its highest form, in the unwritten literature of the people. The philosophical feeling of the Ukrainian people finds expression in thousands and thousands of pregnant proverbs and parables, the like of which we do not find even in the most advanced nations of Europe. They reflect the great soul of the Ukrainian people and its worldly wisdom. But the national genius of the Ukrainians has risen to the greatest height in their popular poetry. Neither the Russian nor the Polish popular poetry can bear comparison with the Ukrainian. ”

“ For the greater increase of the Ukrainians is not due to a higher state of culture of the neighbor nations. The Polish and Russian peasantry is not only not superior to the Ukrainian in respect to culture, but, on the contrary, inferior. The greater increase of the Ukrainians is connected only with their superior racial qualities. ”

“ In Central Galicia, Podlakhia, Polissye, in the Don country, that is in direct proximity to the Poles, White Russians and Russians, the stature of the Ukrainians decreases appreciably. But, even in these border countries, the Ukrainian people form a strong contrast, with their higher stature, to their neighbors, especially to the Russians, [163] with their heavy mixture of the small grown Finnish-Mongolian elements. ”

“ The entire essence of the popular metaphysics of the Ukrainians is quite foreign to the Russians, and almost entirely so to the Poles. Only the White Russians form a certain analogy, but, among them, pure superstition outweighs customs and ceremonies in importance. ”

“ The results of such ignorance of the Ukrainian Nation in the scientific world are disastrous for the Ukrainians. [158] Every appearance of the Ukrainians in the political and cultural arena remains enigmatic to the whole world. Enigmatic remains the struggle of the Ukrainians against Russia and particularly against its Russification policy. ”

“ 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 ”

“ They have given the best proof of this in the Zaporog Cossack organization. This fact gives us the only hope that the Ukrainians may yet become an organized nation in modern times. The present manner of national life is what the Ukrainians wished to have centuries ago—much too early, of course.
In view of the great uniformity, every rise of land is significant. Slight elevations, chains of hills, river valleys, even swamps and forests appear in the Ukraine as important boundaries, lines of defence, foundations for cities and castles, fortified places, lookout stations, etc. ”

“ For the foreign peoples which, since the earliest beginnings of history, traversed or even dominated the region of the Ukraine, were first of all too small in number to make any noticeable impression on the anthropological type of the Ukrainians. ”

“ The Ukrainians are quite as independent a Slavic nation as the Czechs, Poles, White Russians, Russians, Serbs or Bulgarians. The historic roots of the Ukrainian nation extend just as far back into the early middle ages as the roots of the German, French or English nations. The old Ukrainian Empire of Kiev is of the same age as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. But, while the evolution of the great European nations was steady and uninterrupted, the Ukrainian Nation was hindered in its development by reason of its geographical position on the threshold of Asia. ”

“ To give the ethnographic boundaries of a Western or Central European nation is very easy, for they have long since been determined and investigated, and it would be hard to find anyone who might try to efface or disregard them, least of all to falsify them. But with the Ukrainians it is quite different. They possess neither political independence, as for example, the Germans, French, Italians, etc., nor political influence, as for instance, the Poles and Czechs in Austria. ”

“ For almost no one in Europe knows that in the Ukraine a great independent nation is struggling for its national life, and not a political or social party for its significance in the state. The struggle of the Austrian Ukrainians against the predominance of the Poles in Galicia seems hardly more reasonable to the foreigner than the striving of the Russian Ukrainians. ”

“ For more than a thousand years, from the beginnings of the history of the Ukraine, these nomadic Asiatic tribes traversed the South Ukrainian steppes, covering the entire Ukraine with war and unspeakable misery. Huns, Avars, Khazars, Magyars, Pechenegs, Torks, Berendians, Polovs, Tatars, Kalmucks, infested the Ukraine in succession. Of all the European peoples, the Ukrainians always had to be the first to oppose these steppe-plunderers. The nomads always had first to force their way thru the Ukraine. ”

“ The greatest poet of the Ukraine, Taras Shevchenko, has characterized his fatherland all too fittingly as “Our Land, but not belonging to us.” Upon its large and rich territory the Ukrainian nation has had to endure so many hard buffets of fate, that it must be considered, along with the Jews, the most sorely tried civilized race on earth. Even down to the present moment the Ukrainians are a helot race, which is forced to unearth the treasures of its fatherland for its hostile neighbors. ”

“ 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 two 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. ”

“ On account of the many wars carried on by the Poles on nearly all sides their government could spare but little time and money for internal reconstruction problems; and as to the Ukrainians, they do not themselves know, whether they will form a Western Ukrainian republic, or join the Russian Ukraine as one independent republic, or whether they will not in the end form a Ukrainian state in a federal Russian republic. ”

“ To the Dead
And the Living, and the Unborn, Country-
men of mine, in Ukraine, or out of it,
My Epistle of Friendship.
This is the national poem of the Ukrainians, recited at all their gatherings. I have given the thought and something of the feeling. The music of the original I could not give. ”

“ In the following sections we shall discuss briefly all the foundations of the independence of the Ukrainians as a nation. The chief foundations of an independent nation are, proceeding from the less important to the most important: Independent anthropological characteristics, a distinct, independent language, uniform historico-political traditions and aspirations for the future, an independent culture, and, especially, a compact geographical territory. ”

“ The general relation to other people has become a matter of fixed form to the Ukrainians; a form developed in the course of centuries. The ancient culture and the individualistic cult have produced social forms among the Ukrainian peasantry which sometimes remind one of ancient court-forms. The proximity and influence of cities and other centers of “culture” have, to a great extent, spoiled this peasant ceremonial. But in certain large areas of the Ukraine it may still be observed in its full development. ”

“ January 6, 1918.—To-day we had the first discussions with the Ukrainian delegates, all of whom were present except the leader. The Ukrainians are very different from the Russian delegates. Far less revolutionary, and with far more [Pg 232] interest in their own country, less in the progress of Socialism generally. They do not really care about Russia at all, but think only of the Ukraine, and their efforts are solely directed towards attaining their own independence as soon as possible. ”

“ The foreign-speaking cities are gradually coming to be Ukraine-ized, and the very rapidly growing percentage of Ukrainians in Galicia and the Russian Ukraine justify us in hoping that the Ukrainian element, in its continuous stream from the surrounding country, will, in time, absorb the foreign-speaking elements which now command the cities of the Ukraine. ”

“ The non-German population of the Baltic provinces has frequently protested, through its spokesmen, against the German occupation and the design to settle German dynasts there.
40. In the Ukrainian problem we must carefully distinguish the question of language and nationality from the political question. The point lies in this: Are the Ukrainians a separate nation or a Russian tribe? Is the Ukrainian language a separate language or a Russian dialect? ”

“ The area of the Ukrainian territory is 850,000 square kilometers.
We see before us, therefore, a European country which is surpassed in area only by present-day Russia in Europe. No European people, with the solitary exception of the Russians, possesses so large a compact national territory as the Ukrainians. This characteristically Eastern European spaciousness of the territory, combined with the natural wealth of the region would, if coupled with Western European culture, make a fit dwelling-place for a world-power. ”

“ In the second half of the 19th Century the Russification of the educated Ukrainian circles has slackened its pace, altho, even now, there are in Russia a great many of the educated Ukrainians by birth who are completely Russified and the worst enemies of their own nation. ”

“ The southern boundary of the Ukraine in the Caucasian lands passes thru the Terek, Kuban and Black Sea Governments by way of Nalchic, Piatihorsk, Labinsk and Maikop, reaching the shore of the Black Sea between Tuapse and Sochi. In this region the Ukrainians have as neighbors besides the Russians, the Kalmucks, Kirgizians, Norgaians, Chechenians, Cabardines, Circassians, Abkhasians and Caucasian Tartars. ”

“ Only when the general equality of all citizens of the state opens to every man an equal field for the activity of his personal ego, have the Ukrainians been able to do the state-idea justice and to embody it very finely. ”

“ The various nationalist movements which have sprung up in this area are of such recent date and such uncertain strength, that it would require much boldness to prophesy the outcome. Will Lithuania, for instance, consolidate itself as an independent state, or renew its old federal union with Poland, or return to Russia? Will the Ukrainians unite once more with Russia or establish themselves as a new state of 40,000,000 people? What will become of the White Russians, of all the peoples in this region the most enigmatic? ”