Ukraine, the land and its people : $b an introduction to its geographyRudnytskyi, Stepan
Science
Ukraine, the land and its people : $b an introduction to its geography
Rudnytskyi, Stepan
Ukraine; Ukrainians
The density of population of most of the districts of Southern Ukraine varies between
30 and 50, but the Districts of Eupatoria and Perekop, for example, have only 11 inhabitants
per square verst, the second Don District 12, the Sal only 6, the District of Batalpashinsk
in the sub-Caucasian country only 17.
From these figures we see that the Ukraine, as regards its density, is a genuine Eastern
European land. But in comparing its density of population with that of the Russian
Empire, or even of Russia in Europe, we perceive that the Ukraine is the most thickly
settled part of the giant Russian Empire, after Poland. Even the most thinly settled
southeastern border regions have a greater population to the square kilometer than
Russia’s average (25 per square kilometer). Almost one-fourth of the enormous human reservoirs
of Russia are found on Ukrainian territory. And yet the Ukraine, despite its great
size, is only one-twenty-ninth of the giant Russian Empire.
From these figures we see, furthermore, that trade, industry and commerce have, to
this day, been unable to influence the density of population of the Ukraine. The Ukraine
has remained in the original stage of development, [146]in which only the age of settlement and the fertility of the soil form the basis for
increase in the density of population. The history of the Ukraine has, to this day,
influenced the country’s density of population. The former central districts of the
old Ukrainian state of Kiev and Halich are still the most thickly settled; the southern
and eastern border regions, which have suffered most from the 500 years of the Tartar
scourge, the most thinly settled. This is the reason that Galicia, one of the poorest
regions of the Ukraine in natural resources, where industry and trade are so little
developed, is at the same time the most thickly populated region.
Similarly primitive, and betraying a low grade of culture, is the relation between
the city and country population of the Ukraine. Only a very insignificant fraction
of the population inhabits the cities and towns of the Ukraine. In Galicia (1910)
only 14½% of the population lives in places whose population is more than 5,000; only
9½% in cities of over 10,000. Similar conditions prevail in Russian Ukraine. Very
rarely does the city population exceed 10% of the total number of people, usually
keeping below this percentage, which is typical for all of Russia. Podolia has only
7% city population, Volhynia 8%, Chernihiv 9%, Poltava 10%, Kuban 11%, Katerinoslav
12%, Kiev 13%, and Kharkiv 14%. Only the regions colonized within the last century
in Southern Ukraine, with their large cities, have a large percentage of city population
(Tauria 20%, Kherson 29%).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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