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Caption: War Publications - WWI Compilation 1923 - Article 21
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EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:
I T H E R E P U B L I C O F UKRAINE The newly formed Republic of Ukraine stretches from the shores of the Black Sea and the Sea of Asov northward into the heart of what was formerly European Russia. Within her somewhat loosely defined borders are included the former Russian governments of Volhynia, Podolia, Kiev, Kherson, Tchernigov, Poltava, Kharkov, and Ekaterinoslav covering an area of about 150,000 square miles and having a population of approximately 35,000,000 souls. I t is thus composed not only of Little Russia (Ukraine proper) but also of Southern Russia, the new realignment having placed under the control of the Ukrainian government the northern part of the Black Sea littoral with its rich hinterland and with its important harbors of Odessa and Nicolayev. On the other hand Eastern Galicia and Northwestern Bukowina, which were at one time parts of Ukraine, are not included in the present Ukrainian Republic, The greater proportion of the inhabitants of this new political unit are Ukrainians, better known as Little Russians. They are a branch of the Russian Slavs although some recent leaders of the separatist movement working from and with the aid of the Imperial governments of Germany and Austria-Hungary have been trying to prove that there was nothing in common between the Ukrainians and their northern neighbors—the Great Russians. The seeds of discord which the workers for the dismemberment of Russia have been sowing found a fruitful soil in Ukraine because of the policy pursued by the old Czarist government of ruthlessly repressing every manifestation of national individuality. Ukraine means borderland and borderland this country has been through many centuries of its turbulent existence; borderland between the frivolous aristocracy of republican Poland and the autocratically ruled, communistically inclined Muscovites; borderland between the n omadic tribes sweeping from the plateaus of Central Asia and the sedentary populations of the Mediterranean regions. Over its large stretches of gently undulating steppes swept one after another the Huns a nd the Avars, the Khazars and the Pechenegs, the Kalmucks and the Tatars. Living on a frontier, constantly fighting, pillaging and in turn being pillaged, attracting to themselves all the lawless and all the liberty loving elements of the adjoining lands, the Ukrainians have developed certain qualities of mind and heart which distinguish them from their kinsmen, the Great Russians and the White Russians. As 3
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