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To give a lucid economic-geographical view of the
Ukraine today is very difficult almost impossible. The
Ukrainian territory is divided among three states, and
nowhere does the Ukrainian country form unbroken
administrative units. Consequently, the official statistics
cannot give an exact picture of the economic conditions of
the Ukraine. The following attempt, also, can lay no
claim to accuracy. A very heterogeneous and incomplete
mass of material has made it impossible to attain the
desired accuracy and uniformity.
The Ukraine differs from the cultural countries of
Central and Western Europe first, in that its settlement is
not yet complete, so to say. Only the northwestern
regions of the "Old Ukraine" possess a sufficient density of
population. The entire south and east are thinly, in
places even very thinly, peopled. And the complete
exploitation of the natural resources is still a far way off,
even in the most thickly settled parts of the Western
Ukraine.
In our economic-geographical survey of the Ukraine,
we shall begin with the most primitive branches of the
exploitation of natural resources and proceed from them
to those that are more advanced.
Hunting and Fishing
The most primitive way of exploiting the natural
resources of a country has always, and everywhere, been
hunting and fishing. Both played a great part in the
economic life of the Ukraine a thousand years ago. Our
ancient chronicles contain many reports of the great
abundance of game and fish in the Ukrainian land, and of
their great importance for the population. Five centuries
of Tatar warfare effectively interrupted the exploitation
of these natural treasures, and even in the 16th and 17th
Century the Ukraine still aroused the amazement of
travelers from foreign lands, thru its great wealth of game
and fish. In these centuries, hunting and fishing were
among the main branches of industry of the Cossack
border population of the Ukraine. As late as the second half
of the 18th Century, hunting and fishing were still two of the
main sources of industry of the Zaporog Sich. But soon
agriculture began to gain ground in the regions ruled by it,
the density of the population increased, and with it the
fundamental strength of the Zaporog organization. This cir-
cumstance seemed threatening to the Russian government,
and was the chief motive for the destruction of the Sich.
Today hunting has almost no significance in the
economic life of the Ukraine. Altho in the year 1906, in
Galicia, 500 stags, about 10,000 roes, over 2000 boars,
about 90,000 rabbits, over 8000 pheasants, 50,000 partridges,
30,000 quail, 10,000 woodcocks, and 14,000 wild ducks were
killed, the figures for other countries at the same time
were much higher; in Bohemia which is more thickly pop-
ulated there were brought down more than 800,000 rabbits,
1,000,000 partridges, etc. These figures show that in
Galicia the natural wealth of game has declined consider-
ably, while the artificial conservation of game has not yet
begun. In the Austro-Hungarian part of the Ukraine,
hunting has become a mere diversion of the upper classes
a mere sport. The hunting monopoly of the upper classes
even bring to the country folk serious disadvantages, for
boars and stags cause great damage to agriculture, especially
in the Boiko and Hutzul country, and it is forbidden to
keep them off. This circumstance encourages poaching,
which in many districts is quite common. The extermina-
tion of beasts of prey, bears, wolves, lynx and wildcats is
as a rule, undertaken only in occasional general chases, but
the Ukrainian mountain-dwellers are very well able, despite
all game laws, to defend themselves and their herds effec-
tively from these wild animals. In 1906 more than 9000
foxes were brought down in Galicia.
In the Russian Ukraine the economic importance of
hunting is as slight as in Austria-Hungary. Nowhere in this
region do we find a developed, profitable hunting industry
Even in the Polissye hunting is not very important and is
at most an avocation for a few forest settlers. Here
rabbits, roes, boars, elk, grouse, wild fowl and water-game
are sometimes hunted. Bison and beaver hunting is now
very strictly forbidden. Many foxes and badgers are killed
and a relatively large number of bears and wolves. Volhynia
is much poorer in game, and still poorer are Podolia,
and the districts of Kiev, Poltava and Kharkiv. In all the
places, the most that one can get a shot at, aside from wild
fowl, is rabbits and foxes, and sometimes wolves. In the
forests and swamps of the Chernihov country there is a
somewhat greater abundance of game. Hunting is most
important, relatively, in the southern part of the Ukraine,
on the Black Sea border and in the Caucasus lands.
Besides roes, rabbits, and foxes, there are hunted in the
steppes: wolves, sayga-antelopes and wild dogs; and in
the Caucasus: bison, stags, bears, and lynx. The number
of steppe and waterfowl, e. g., bustards, partridge, quail,
wild geese and wild ducks, and of mountain fowl, as
pheasants, mountain-quail, and grouse, is still considerable.
Collecting the eggs of waterfowl is still a remunerative
occupation. On the shores of the Caspian Sea 130,000
Caspian seals are killed every year.
Of much greater importance than hunting is the fishing
industry. It is only a weak reminiscence of what it once
was, yet it remains to this day an important economic
element. The Ukrainian fishing industry is carried on in
three regions: on the high sea, in the river-mouths, and in
the interior of the land, in rivers, lakes and ponds.
The actual sea-fishing industry attains relatively slight
results, on the average 24J/? million kilograms a year. On
the Black Sea, along the shores of Bessarabia, Kherson and
Tauria, a great amount of mackerel, sardines, herrings and
sturgeon-like fish are caught. The main fisheries of the
northern Pontian shore are situated at the Kinburn bar,
at the island of Tendva, in the Bay of Karkinit, at Cape
Tarkhankut, at Eupatoria, Balaklava, Yalta, Sudak, and
Theodosia. Fishing on the high seas, because of its great
cost, is undertaken only by the large enterprising companies,
who hire the Ukrainian fishing companies (artili) for the
entire summer. Of late, fishing on a small scale has begun
to develop. The small fishermen catch chiefly mackerel,
which are then salted, or, less often, smoked. They also
go after the small but savory Black Sea oysters, of which
an average number of one million a year are gathered.
Far greater profit is yielded by the fisheries at the
mouths of the rivers, in the limans, and particularly on the
largest liman of all, the Sea of Azof. The annual yield
here attains an average of 140 million kilograms. At the
mouths of the Danube the chief fishing center is Vilkiv.
Toward the end of the 19th century there lived at this
place 900 independent fisherman, who sometimes united to
form artils. Here they catch chiefly sturgeon and other
fish of the sturgeon class (on the average 30,000 a year),
and four and a half million of Pontian herrings. At the
mouths of the Dniester, Boh and Dnieper, chiefly river
fish are caught. Herrings and sturgeon-like fish are of
minor consequence here. The fishermen in this region are
always organized either in artils, in which the profits are
shared equally among the members, or in so-called takhvi,
which are hired by the entrepreneurs. The chief center of
the fishing trade and of the putting up of canned fish, is
Odessa. Yet the Bay of Odessa cannot compare with the
Sea of Azof in fish production. The average value of the
annual haul here exceeded a million rubles in the latter years
of the 19th Century. Over 11 million kilograms of sturgeon-
like fish and other large fish, besides 7 million herrings, were
caught here annually. In some winters more than 70,000
fishermen, with 20,000 to 30,000 horses and oxen, gather
on the frozen Sea of Azof. ' With gigantic nets, which are
sometimes nearly two kilometers long, a very profitable
fishing industry is carried on here. Important fishing
centers, with great freezing plants and works for salting
and smoking, are situated in Osiv (Azof) and Kerch. The
members of the fisher artils come principally from the
Poltava and Kharkiv country.
The Ukrainians may also claim a rather prominent part
in the fishing industry of the Caspian Sea, which yields
more than half a billion kilograms of fish annually. The
Ukrainian Caspian fishermen come from Ukrainian colonies
on the Volga, and from the eastern parts of the Ukraine
proper.
The interior fishing industry on the rivers, lakes and
ponds now has only slight significance. On the Dniester
and Dnieper on the Pripet, Desna, Sula and Orel, and on the
Donetz there still exist here and there fisher-arlils, but the
fish are caught only for local use. In the Polissye region the
fishing industry still yields some profit, e. g., in the District
of Mosir about 40,000 rubles a year, in the District of
Pinsk only 3500 rubles. Lake Knais yields 10,000 rubles
worth of fish annually. All of Galicia yields about 1 ,500,000
kilograms a year, of which two-thirds are contributed by
the Ukrainian part of the country.
In examining the fishing industry of the Ukraine one
cannot escape reminiscences that are painful. Everywhere
a ruthless system of pillage and waste is carried on. The
excessively fine meshes of the nets catch the young broods
of fish with the old, and these are either sold for a few
kopeks a pound or simply thrown away. The fish which
come up the rivers to spawn are ruthlessly intercepted.
A closed season or region barely exists, except on paper.
We need not wonder, therefore, that the abundance of
fish in the Ukraine is rapidly decreasing, and fishing is
losing its importance more and more. Not a soul thinks of
a rational method of breeding fish, of increasing the stock
of fish in the streams. In Galicia a start has been made,
but thus far the results are very slight. And yet the Ukraine,
being an almost exclusively agricultural country, where
there is no factory sewage to poison the rivers, could very
easily recover its fame as a land abounding in fish.
The related industry of crab-fishing is not developed in
the Ukraine, altho the Jewish dealers of Eastern Galicia
send whole wagon-loads of crabs from Galician and Russian
Podolia to the west. The old Zaporog regions have been
famous since ancient times for their abundance of crabs.
In Oleshki there also exists a drying- plant for crabs' tails.
From this short survey of the hunting and fishing
industry of the Ukraine, we perceive that these branches of
industry play only a small part in the economic life of the
Ukrainian population. A further proof of this fact is the
small percentage of the population which engages in this
work. This percentage amounts to 0.2% in the Russian-
Ukraine; in the Austrian Ukraine it must be much
smaller still.
Forestry
How extensive the wooded area of the Ukraine is
cannot be determined exactly without detailed investiga-
tion, for the same reason that statistical figures concerning
the Ukraine in other fields are difficult to determine. An
approximate calculation of the forest surface gives us an
area of over 110,000 square kilometers, that is 13% of
the entire surface of the country. These figures show us
that the Ukraine is one of the more sparsely-wooded coun-
tries of Europe. Of all the larger territories of our continent,
only England, with its 4%, is poorer in forests. There
remain only smaller territories, as Portugal (2.8%), the
Netherlands (8%), Denmark (8.3%), Greece (9.3%).
So old a land of culture as France still possesses 15.8% forest
surface, Germany 25.9%, Hungary 27.4%, Austria 32.7%,
Russia 38.8%. Among the large territories, the United
States stand nearest to the Ukraine as far as their forest
area (10.3%) is concerned.
The causes of the comparative lack of forests in the
Ukraine are to be sought, first of all, in the fact that it
includes large parts of the steppe region of Eastern Europe.
The percentage of forest land in the various regions of the
Ukraine show us this most clearly. The mountain regions
still retain the highest proportion of forest. The Bukowina
has 42% of forest (District of Kimpolung 78%), the Ukrai-
nian region of Northeastern Hungary about 40% (Mar-
marosh 62%). Then come the Ukrainian regions of the
forest zone: Polissye, from Minsk down 38.2%, Volhynia
29.6%, Galicia 25.4%, Grodno 25.5, Podlakhia, starting
from Lublin, 25.1%, from Sidletz 19.8%. In the same class,
as far as forest area is concerned, the Kuban region seems
to stand. Besides the heavily wooded mountain region,
this division includes the luhi in the foothill country and
the treeless steppes; hence the percentage comes out very
small 19.8%. The transition between the forest and the
steppe zone is indicated by the following series: Kiev 18%,
Chernihiv 15%, Podolia 10.9%, Kharkiv 8.5% of forest
area. The steppe regions of the Ukraine have very little
forest land: Kursk 7.1%, Voroniz 6.8%, Bessarabia 5.8%,
Tauria (Yaila forests 5.7%) Poltava 4.7%, Katerinoslav
2.4%, the Don region the same, Kherson 1.4%, Stavropol
0.3%.
In this distribution of forest we see a certain analogy
between the Ukraine and the United States. Here the
steppes are treeless, there it is the prairies. Here the
forest predominates in the Carpathians, there in the Appala-
chians; here, just as there, we have zones of transition
from forest regions to the steppes. But there is another
point of similarity between the Ukraine and the United
States the ruthless exploitation and waste in forestry.
This criminal waste is the second main cause for the lack of
forests of the Ukraine. It began in the 16th Century and
it still continues today. Historical sources mention great
forest formations, even in those regions of the Ukraine
which are now poor in forests. The "Great Forest"
(veliki luh) in the Zaporog land, the "Black Forest" at
the sources of the Inhul, the large forests of the Poltava
and Kharkiv region, the Derevlan jungles, the giantic
forests on the Buh and Vislok, in the Rostoche, all have
either entirely disappeared from the earth's surface or
have changed into miserable remnants, which, at any
moment, may fall a final victim to human greed. A host
of geographical names, in regions which are almost entirely
treeless today, point to former forests. Thick, primitive
oak trunks are found in the beds of rivers which flow only
thru the treeless steppe-region. In five decades, in the
second half of the 19th Century, the forest area of the
Government of Kharkiv decreased from 10.9% to 8.5%,
in Poltava from 13% to 4.7%, Chernihiv from 17.1% to
15%. Detailed investigations of the ground have proved
that the forest area of the District of Poltava was originally
34% (now 7%), of the District of Romny 28% (now 9%)
and of the District of Lubni 30% (now 4%). Similar
conditions of forest devastation prevail everywhere in the
Ukraine. Thus, the forest area of Galicia, for example,
has decreased by 2000 square kilometers, i. e., almost
3% of the total surface area of the country, in the course of
the last century.
We have already frequently called attention to the
sad results of this criminal waste for the entire land. But,
because of the low grade of culture of the nations domina-
ting the Ukraine, the Polish nation and the Russian, no
attention is paid to the fatal results of forest destruction.
The forests are recklessly cut down for lumber, and year
by year the scarcity of wood is being felt in most regions of
the Ukraine. Only in Podlakhia, Volhynia, Polissye, and
in the mountain regions of the Ukraine, is there no scarcity
of wood. The three cubic meters of wood which, on the
average, are due every inhabitant of the Ukraine, are not
easily accessible to more than one-fifth of the Ukrainians.
At the same time, the forests of the Ukraine are, as a rule,
badly managed. Even in the Austro-Hungarian parts of
the Ukraine there are very few professional foresters; in
Galicia for example, 250 to 800). Conditions are still
worse in the Russian-Ukraine. Consequently, the forest
does not grow up again very well, and a great deal of wood
is simply ruined. This happens chiefly in the mountain
forests of the Carpathians, where hundreds of thousands of
cubic meters of wood decay every year. In the regions
which are poor in forests, the products of the woods are
carefully and economically used, so that, for instance,
from one hectare of forest in the Poltava region, 11.5
cubic meters of wood are produced every year ; in the region
of Katerinoslav, 7 cubic meters. Of the production of the
Ukrainian forest, building wood constitutes only a com-
paratively small part. There is a crushing preponderance of
firewood, especially in the regions which are poor in forests.
Building wood, in large quantities, comes from the forests
of the Polissye and of the Carpathians only. The export of
building wood from Galicia and the Bukowina reached a
million and a half cubic meters annually at the end of the
century. The export of wood from the Polissye, starting
from Minsk, exceeded 900,000 cubic meters. The complete
production of Galicia in the year 1900 was 3,660,000 cubic
meters of building wood and an equal quantity of firewood.
The reclaiming of forests, even in the Austrian Ukraine,
where it is required by law, is not properly administered. It
is still worse in the Russian Ukraine. Hence, the forest sur-
face of the Ukraine is constantly decreasing instead of re-
maining unchanged or even increasing, as usually happens in
the cultured lands of Europe. And yet, the Ukraine is one of
those countries in which the forest problem is a life probelm.
The Ukrainian people engage in the Ukrainian lumber
industry only as labor-power, while the money profit goes
to strangers great landowners or middlemen. The forest-
area which is in the possession of Ukrainian peasants is
very small, even in Galicia, where at the time of the
removal of the labor tax system, at least small patches of
forest came into the possession of the peasant communities.
Almost all the forests of the Ukraine belong to the large
landowners, the clergy and the national lands.
The lumber industry and the industrial exploitation
of the forest products engages but a slight part of the
Ukrainian people. In the Russian Ukraine the percentage
of such workers is barely 0.1%. In this percentage, how-
ever, the entire mass of Ukrainian peasants which seeks its
incidental profit in forest work, is not considered. In the
Carpathian regions of the Ukraine this percentage increases
a hundredfold and more.
Agriculture
Since the very first beginnings of the history of the
Ukraine, the main occupation of its people has been, and
has remained to this day, agriculture. To give a complete
picture of Ukrainian agriculture is beyond the scope of our
little book. Even a detailed economic study could not do
justice to this task. Hence, we shall have to limit ourselves
to its most important phases.
Almost nine-tenths of the Ukrainian people are engaged
in agriculture. In the Russian Ukraine, the agricultural
percentage of the population, according to official estimate,
is 86.4%. This figure is probably correct for the Austrian-
Ukraine as well, altho the biassed calculations of Buzek
place the percentage of farmers among the Ukrainians of
Galicia at 94.4%. These figures show us very clearly the
significance of agriculture in the economic life of the
Ukraine. Now, a person seeing these figures and knowing
the fertility of the Ukraine might easily imagine that
agriculture here stands upon a high plane. Such a view,
however, would be entirely false. Agriculture is on a very
very low plane in the Ukraine.
Yet the causes of this sad state of affairs do not lie in the
nature of the land. The climate of the Ukraine favors the
cultivation of grains as no other does. Barely one small
part of the steppe-zone is unfavorable to agriculture,
because of its frequent periods of drought. The soil of the
Ukraine is one of the most fertile on the whole globe.
More than three-fourths of the Ukraine lies in the Black
Earth Region, and many varieties of soil in the northwestern
part of the Ukraine are by no means without value and at
least equal to the best soils of Germany. Not in Nature,
but in the cultural conditions, lie the causes of the low
grade of Ukrainian agriculture.
The first and main cause is the lack of enlightenment
among the people of the Ukraine. The Ukraine peasant
cultivates his field entirely after the manner of his fore-
fathers, which may have proved excellent a hundred years
ago, and actually did make the Ukrainian peasant appear
as the best farmer among his neighbors of other races, but
they fail completely in these days of intensive cultivation
of the soil. The illiteracy of the Ukrainian peasant renders
almost inaccessible to him all the great progress of agri-
cultural science. The old methods of cultivation, the
primitive agricultural implements, waste his energy and
his stock of living resources. The use of agricultural
machines, which may be of great significance even in
intensive farming on a small scale, is almost unknown to the
Ukrainian peasant. The progressive amelioration of the
soil and the national rotation of crops is not at all of wide
application. And all efforts at enlightening the Ukrainian
peasantry are hindered as much as possible by the govern-
ments dominating them, by their Polish and their Russian
masters.
The highest level, relatively, in agriculture, is attained
by the western borderlands of the Ukraine, Podlakhia,
the Khohos country, and Galicia. The poorer quality of
the soil has always required more intensive cultivation
here. Besides, the influences of advanced methods of
cultivation sifted thru more easily here, whether indirectly
thru the Polish territory, or directly thru the influence of
the German colonies. The greater enlightenment of the
Ukrainian peasants of Galicia has brought it about that
they now regularly apply rational rotation of crops and
fertilization of the soil, even with artificial fertilizers,
and possess pretty good agricultural implements. The
three-field system has disappeared almost everywhere in
this region, and continues in use only in the most fertile
parts of Podolia. In the mountains, on the other hand,
making land arable by means of fires followed immedi-
ately by planting, is still a procedure frequently met with.
In the Polissye region burning is still frequently applied,
but the two-field and three-field systems are used more
frequently. On the same principle, agriculture is carried
on in the northern parts of Volhynia, Kiev and Chernihiv.
In the southern parts of these districts, as well as in Podolia,
Poltava and Kharkiv, the three-field system predominates.
Manuring is usually confined to small plots directly
adjoining the farmhouse. Here, too, however, an advance
to rational rotation of crops and to the multi-field system
is undeniable. In the steppe zone the method of cultivation
becomes more careless and the so-called fallow-system
prevails. The steppe soil is cultivated for a number of
years and then left lying fallow for some time. In very
recent years, however, even the steppe-peasant has had to
face the hard necessity of going on to the intensive methods
of cultivation.
The agricultural implements of the Ukrainian peasants
have undergone a great change. The primitive wooden
plough, without metal mounting, has been retained only in
places, in the Polissye region and the Carpathian country,
more as a relic of the fathers than as an agricultural imple-
ment. In the entire central zone of the Ukraine, the typical
Ukrainian plough, made of wood, with strong iron fittings,
is used. Iron ploughs are rapidly coming into use. In the
southern steppe zone of the Ukraine, the peasant has by far
the best implements. Iron ploughs of different kinds are
used here, in imitation of the German colonists, while
sowing, harvesting, and also threshing machines are found
as the property of large farmers or of agricultural co-oper-
ative associations.
It is possible, then, to note a certain progress in Ukrai-
nian agriculture. The Russian and White Russian peasant
is much more badly off, but the Ukrainian peasant, too,
has a long way to go in order to reach the level of even the
Ukrainian large landowners. Various agricultural co-
operative associations are working to raise the standard of
agriculture among the Ukrainian peasantry. One of these
co-operative associations has 90 branches, 1100 local
groups, and 27,000 members the Eastern Galician "Silsky
Hospodar." Such associations would, if not hindered in
their development (especially by the Russian Government),
become of great importance in raising the level of the
agricultural industry of the Ukraine, that ancient granary
of Europe.
The second cause of the sad condition of Ukrainian
agriculture lies in their unsound property conditions. The
foreign conquerors, who were continually attracted by the
fertility of the Ukrainian land, after taking possession of
the land, divided it among their upper classes. The
foreign conquerors have succeeded in denationalizing the
Ukrainian nobility, have succeeded even in developing
the republican Cossack organization into a new class of
landowners and, very largely in russifying them. Foreign
rule in the Ukraine has always supported foreign ownership
of land on a large scale, and the Ukrainian peasant must
be satisfied with small, mediocre and widely scattered
bits of land.
Now for a few corroborative figures. In the Ukrainian
part of Galicia the large estates embrace 40.3% of the total
area. In the Governments of Chernihiv, Poltava and Khar-
kiv, the proportion of peasant-owned land is still rather large
(53%, 52%, 59%), because here the property of descendants
of the old-time Cossacks is included. Far worse are the
conditions in other parts of the Ukraine. In Volhynia the
peasant-owned land constitutes only 40% of the area, in
Podolia 48%, in Kiev, 46%, in Kherson 37%, in Kateri-
noslav 45%, in Tauria 37%, while in the Polissian Govern-
ment of Minsk the peasants retain only 28% of the land.
The results of such unsound property conditions are
fatal to the ever-increasing density of the peasant popula-
tion. Land-famine has become chronic all thru the Ukraine.
The parcelling out of the large estates which began with
such fine results in Galicia a few years ago has now come to
a halt, and the Stolypin radical agrarian reform in the
Russian Ukraine has thus far only slight results to show.
To be sure, the amount of property of the medium land-
owners is decreasing, but the giant estates are not only not
losing ground, but even show a steady, tho gradual, growth.
As a result of the ever increasing scarcity of land, the
Ukrainian peasants are splitting up their property more and
more, trying to rent as much land as possible from the large
landowners, and seeking subsidiary occupations in do-
mestic work; but a large percentage find it necessary to
leave their fatherland and to seek homes in Caucasia,
Turkestan, Siberia, Canada, Brazil and Argentina. And
this sad fact need not amaze us. For, while the foreign
colonists who settled in Southern Ukraine upon the invi-
tation of Catherine II were given 65 hectares of land per
head, the Ukrainian peasant, after the abolition of serfdom,
in 1861, was given a maximum of 3J^ hectares, and in many
cases only 1J4 hectares per head. In half a century the
rural population has doubled, while the area of cultivation
has not increased perceptibly at all. Thus, there existed
in the Government of Poltava, as early as twenty years
ago, more than 60% of peasant-farms with an area of
cultivation of only 1.3 desiatins, while another four percent
of estates occupied more than 5 desiatins. How can one
speak of progressive farming under such property con-
ditions? Those 60% of peasant farms resemble very
closely the sort of plots occupied by cottagers or squatters.
And the consequence: 62% of the emigrants who emi-
grated to Russian Asia in 1910 came from the Ukrainian
governments, that "granary" of Russia. And not only
from the thickly populated districts of Kiev or Poltava,
but also from the comparatively thinly populated, very
fertile districts of the Ukraine from Kherson, Katerinoslav
and Tauria.
The third reason for the sad condition of Ukrainian
agriculture, is the community ownership of land estab-
lished in the Eastern Ukraine. The basis of their system,
which is in vogue everywhere in Great-Russia, is that the
land is not owned by the individual peasant, but by the
entire community, which apportions it among its individual
members. This Muscovite property system is unbearable to
the Ukrainian peasant and causes him to neglect his land,
since it does not really belong to him. It does not pay
him at all to cultivate the ground better than his neighbor,
since, in the new apportionment, the carefully improved
patch may fall to someone else.
If, therefore, despite all these unfavorable conditions,
the agricultural production of the Ukraine and its exports
of food stuffs are very great, this fact is due, above all, to
the great fertility of the Ukrainian soil and the economic
policy of the large landowners, who, in spite of the frequent
danger of famine in their own country, continue to export
the products of their great estates beyond the borders of
the land.
After these general observations, we proceed to a short
survey of agriculture in the Ukraine. None of the European
countries (with the exception of Russia) possesses as great
an area under cultivation as the Ukraine. It ammounts
to more than 45 million hectares, that is, more than 32% of
the area of cultivation of European Russia, which is six
times as large as the Ukraine. The proportion of the area
of cultivation in the Ukraine is nearly 53% of the total
area of the country. In this respect the Ukraine is sur-
passed only by France (56%). In Germany, the proportion
is only 48.6%, in Austria 36.8%, in Hungary 43.1%, in
Russia 26.2%. To be sure, the proportion of the cultivated
area is very different in different districts of the Ukraine.
The most agricultural land is found in the steppe and
transition regions: Kherson 78%, Poltava 75%, Kursk
74%, Kharkiv 71%, Voroniz and Katerinoslav 69% each,
Podolia and Tauria 64% each, Bessarabia 61%, Kiev 57%,
Chernihiv 55%. The forest regions possess much less
farm land: Galicia 48%, Grodno 40%, Volhynia 37%.
Minsk 24%, etc. Besides this, the farm land within each
of the above mentioned regions is diversely distributed.
In Galicia, for example, the area of cultivation is appor-
tioned as follows : In Eastern Podolia 75 80%, in Western
Podolia 6075 %,in Pidhirye only 2030%, in the Hutzul
country only 10%, of the total area. Similar conditions
prevail in the Bukowina, in Upper Hungary, Caucasia.
In the level regions of the Ukraine these local differences are
slighter.
To calculate the general agricultural production of the
Ukraine is difficult, if not impossible. By combining
various reports, we get, for the yearly average in the
beginning of the 20th Century, a grand total of 150 million
metric hundred weights. (This number, however, includes
only the wheat, rye, and barley production.) In this
respect, the Ukraine surpasses all the countries of Europe
except Russia. Its production is greater than that of
Austria, Hungary or of France, to say nothing of other
European States.
Following are several figures about the harvest yield of
the Central regions of the Ukraine in 1910. Volhynia
produced 73.4 million puds (1 pud=16.4 kilograms),
Kiev 113.4, Podolia 115.9, Kherson 188.6, Chernihiv 40,
Poltava 113.6, Kharkiv 95.9, Katerinoslav 194.9, Tauria
138.3, Kuban 214.4 million puds. The total yield of the
central regions of the Ukraine (without the borderlands,
which also produce a great deal, as for example, parts of
Kursk, Voroniz, the Don region, etc.) totalled 215 million
metric hundred weights, and was, consequently, six times
as great as the harvest yield of Russian Poland, and
comprised 39% of the total production of European Russia
and over 33% that of the entire Russian Empire. If we
consider now that the Russian Ukraine comprises only a
twenty-ninth part of the gigantic Russian Empire and
barely one-fourth of its population, we recognize the great
importance attached to the Ukraine as the granary of
Russia.
Among the species of grain grown in the Ukraine, wheat
is without doubt of the first importance. In the Southern
Ukraine wheat takes up half the area of cultivation,
decreasing rapidly toward the north and west. In the
Government of Kherson .the wheat fields cover 51% of the
cultivated surface, in Katerinoslav 50%, in Tauria and in
the Don region 49%, in Bessarabia 36%, in Podolia 30%,
in Kharkiv 29%, in Poltava and in Kiev 22%, in Galicia
14%, in Volhynia 11%, in Grodno 4%, in Minsk 3%, in
Chernihiv only 1%. In Kiev, Podolia, Volhynia, Galicia,
more winter wheat is raised; in the Southern Ukraine,
more summer wheat. The mean annual yield per hectare is
10)^2 hi. for winter wheat and 7J^ hi. for summer wheat.
The mean annual yield of wheat in the first decade of the
20th Century in Russian Ukraine was 68 million metric
quintals, that is, over 46% of the production of European
Russia. (In Eastern Galicia it was 1.9 million q.). The
chief centers of wheat production in the Ukraine are
Kuban (17 million q.), Katerinoslav (12.4 million q.),
Kherson (12.4 million q.), Tauria (9 million q.), Poltava
(6.3 million q.), Podolia (5.8 million q.), Kharkiv (4.9
million q.), Kiev (4.2 million q.), Stavropol (3.3 million q.),
and Volhynia (2.7 million q.). Wheat is one of the chief
exports of the Ukraine.
Rye is cultivated chiefly in the northern and western
districts of the Ukraine, where it is the chief grain used for
breadmaking. In Chernihiv, Minsk and Grodno, rye takes
up 48% of the farm land, in Volhynia 38%, in Poltava 3%,
in Kharkiv 29%, in Kiev 28%, in the Don region 22%, in
Katerinoslav and Podolia 19%, in Tauria 18%, in Kherson
and Galicia 17%, in Bessarabia only 7%. Rye (almost
everywhere winter rye) yields on the average 10}^ hi. per
hectare. The chief districts of production are Poltava
(55 million q..), Volhynia (4.9 million q.), Kiev (4.8 million
q.). The total rye output of the Ukraine is as high as
42 million q., that is, over 20% of the Russian output.
Barley is raised mostly in the Southern Ukraine, where
it takes up 28% of the farm land in Tauria, 26% in Kater-
inoslav, 21% in Kharkiv and Kherson, 18% in Bessarabia,
17% in the Don regions. The chief districts of production
are Katerinoslav (9.2 million q.), Kherson (7.9 million q.),
and Kuban (6.9 million q.) Barley is also an important
export of the Southern Ukraine. In other regions of the
Ukraine less barley is raised, e. g., in Poltava 13%, in
Polissye and in Galicia 9%. The barley production of the
Russian Ukraine amounts to 49 million q., therefore 61%
of the Russian production of barley.
The importance of the remaining grains is, of course,
comparatively slight. Oats take up on the average 16%
of the farm land in the Ukraine (21% in the Polissye region,
17% in Galicia, 16% in Chernihiv, 11% in Kharkiv and
Poltava, 5% in Southern Ukraine). The total production
is 28 million q. Kiev, Volhynia and Poltava take first
rank. As a bread cereal, oats are of some importance
only among the Carpathian people of the Ukraine. The
Eastern Galician oats production amounts to 4.5 million q.
Spelt is raised very seldom and then only along the western
borders of the Ukraine. Buckwheat is of the greatest
importance in the Chernihiv country (about 27% of the
farm area and a yield of 0.8 million q. a year), and Kiev,
Volhynia, and Poltava each produce almost as much. In
other regions of the Ukraine, buckwheat is raised much less
frequently (7% in Polissye, 2% in Galicia), in the southern
part of the Ukraine almost none at all. Millet is raised
chiefly in the Government of Kiev (10% of the farm-land,
2.3 million q. annual production) and Voroniz (9%). In
Kharkiv and Poltava the amount of land used for millet is
only 4%, in Galicia 1%. In Kherson the cultivation of the
Chugara-millet has been begun. The chief region of
Indian corn cultivation is Bessarabia, where this crop takes
up 32% of the area of cultivation. Indian corn is also
grown in the adjacent regions of Podolia (7%), Kherson
(3%), Galicia (3%), and the Bukowina, playing an impor-
tant part in feeding the population in these regions. The
chief regions of corn production are Podolia (1.8 million q.),
the Ukrainian part of Bessarabia and Kherson (each 1.1 mil-
lion q.) and Southeastern Galicia (0.9 million q.).
Besides grains and cereals, some other species of
plants are of great importance in the agricultural production
of the Ukraine. The first of these is the potato. The fact
that the yield of the potato is six or eight times that of the
other plants makes it a very important staple. Yet this ad-
vantage of the potato is but little exploited in the Ukraine.
Only in Galicia does the potato take up 14% of the farm-
land (annual production in Eastern Galicia 38.7 million q.).
Even in the Polissye region and in Chernihiv, only 6% of
the farm-land consists of potato-fields, in Poltava and
Kharkiv only 3%, in the Southern Ukraine barely 1%.
The total production of potatoes in the Russian Ukraine is
63.2 million q. annually, therefore 22% of the production of
European Russia. The large landowners use the potato for
distilling alcohol (especially in Galicia), or for cattle-feed.
Various species of beans and lentils are raised every-
where in the Ukraine, but on a small scale, chiefly in
kitchen-gardens. In Galicia these vegetables take up 3%
of the farm-land, in Polissye and Chernihiv 2% each, in
the other districts of the Ukraine still less. The culture
of forage (clover, lucerne, fodder-turnip) is still in its
infancy in the Ukraine. Only in Galicia do such plants
take up more than 10% of the farm-land.
The cultivation of commercial plants stands upon a
comparatively low level. Most extensive is the cultivation
of hemp and flax; but it takes up only a tiny part of the
general area of cultivation of the land. Flax is cultivated
chiefly in the Polissye region and in Katerinoslav (3% of
the farm-land). In Chernihiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, it takes
up 1 to 2% of the farm-land, in Galicia 1% (together with
hemp). In the Southern Ukraine a short-stemmed variety
of flax, raised only for obtaining oil, is cultivated widely.
Hemp takes up on the average 1% of the farm-land, only
in Chernihiv as much as 4%. All the hemp products are
used in home industry, while the flax products are mostly
exported. Another plant grown for the sake of oil thruout
the Ukraine, but especially in the eastern borderlands of
the country, is the sunflower. Rapeseed is grown only by the
large landowners, chiefly in Kherson, Kiev, Poltava, and
Podolia. Poppy is cultivated everywhere in the Ukraine
even by the peasants. Among the industrial plants of the
Ukraine the sugar-beet plays a very important part. In
the year 1897 Russia had 410,000 hectares of beet-fields,
330,000 hectars of this area being in the Ukraine. The
total Russian production of sugar-beets was 60 million
metric hundredweights, of which 50 millions, that is,
five-sixths, came from the Ukraine. The most important
centers of sugar-beet production lie in the Governments of
Kiev, Kharkiv and Podolia, much less being produced in
Volhynia, Chernihiv and Kursk. In the Austrian Ukraine
sugar-beet culture is developed only in Southeastern
Galicia and Northern Bukowina. Not only the large land-
owners, but also frequently the peasants, engage in sugar-
beet culture with great profit.
Another important commercial plant of the Ukraine
is tobacco, which takes up over 50,000 hectars of farm-land,
3000 hectares of it in Galicia. The chief districts of tobacco
production are Chernihiv, Poltava, Kuban and Tauria.
Much less is produced in the Black Sea region in Podolia,
Volhynia, Bessarabia, Kherson and Kharkiv. The tobacco
production in Russian Ukraine in 1908 amounted to over
660,000 q., that is, 69% of the total production of Russia,
in Galicia 50,000 q. Tobacco culture has a great future in
the Ukraine, because the ground and the climate are
wonderfully fit for it. But first the unfavorable conditions,
which lie chiefly in the poor organization of the tobacco
trade, must be removed.
Hops are raised in the Ukraine to a very slight extent.
In Galicia only the large landowners engage in a little hop
culture on 2300 hectars of ground. In Volhynia the Chekhic
colonists have introduced the cultivation of hops. It com-
prises about 3000 hectares of land and yields over 1 6,000 q. of
hops a year, that is 40% of the total Russian output of hops.
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