Quite analogous conditions prevail, also, in the railroad traffic of the Ukraine. In this respect, too, the Austrian Ukraine surpasses the Russian Ukraine by far, despite the backward condition of the former. Galicia, for instance, has 5 kilometers of railroad for 100 square kilometers of surface, the Russian Ukraine barely 1 kilometer. Besides the loose mesh of the railway-net of the Ukraine, there is the additional disadvantage that its lines tend toward foreign centers, and consider the local needs of Ukrainian traffic only in rare cases. Galicia, separated from the rest of Austria-Hungary by the natural boundary of the Carpathians, has had to develop an independent system of railways, with the main junction at Lemberg. In the Russian Ukraine all the main lines were built only for the convenience of the Moscow center and the Baltic ports. Hence, there is no direct railway line between Kiev and Odessa, for instance, or to Kharkiv, while there exist almost straight line connections between Romen and Libau, between Sevastopol and Kharkiv and Moscow. Besides that, strategic factors were the deciding ones in the building of the railroads (particularly in Western Ukraine), and the economic life of the country often has had to suffer for it. A third disadvantageous aspect of the Russian Ukrainian railway system is its tariff regulations, the purpose of [300]which is to concentrate the greatest possible amount of traffic on the railroads of Central Russia and the Baltic provinces, and thus redound to their advantage. As a result of this tariff policy of the Russian Government, it happens that it is sometimes cheaper to transport goods from the Ukraine to the most distant Baltic ports, than to the adjacent ports of the Black Sea. Thus, the tariff rates for grain from Romen to Libau (1077 versts) are 21 kopeks per pud, from Romen to Mikolaiv (429 kilometers) 18 kopeks. It costs more money and trouble to transport coal from the Donetz region to the Black Sea ports than to the ports of the Baltic, which, of course, are far more distant. Naturally Pontian navigation suffers above all from this cause, but all Ukrainian trade in general suffers likewise.