EN
This article is the analysis of various sources on traditional culture of the Ukrainian population in Bessarabia in the XIXth and the beginning of the XXth. The author considers the dynamics of development of the ethnographic analysis of Ukrainians and distinguishes its three periods. In the first half of the XIXth century first ethnographic observations of Ukrainians were made on the margins of statistical, military, economical and political descriptions of Bessarabia. In 1860-1870s, when ethnography emerged as independent branch of science, there were several ethnographic expeditions organized, many books were published. It was also a time when first scientific associations and societies appeared in Russia, Ukraine and Bessarabia. At the end of the XIXth and the beginning of the XXth century, when there was a sufficient amount of collected materials, quite a lot of more analytical, comparative and theoretical studies were published.