Местная пресса УССР начала 1930-х годов как источник изучения истории Голодомора
The Local Press of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in the Early 1930s as a Source for Studying the History of the Holodomor

Summary/Abstract: During the years of the Holodomor, the press was the main instrument of the Communist propaganda. By the printed editions the Soviet regime was highlighting the “victories of the Communism building.” An important role in these processes belonged to the local press, the major aim of which was to inform even the most remote villages about the ideas formulated in Moscow. During the Holodomor, the staff and the freelance workers (workers’ village correspondents) of editorial offices were involved in the process of covering the truth. The source basis of the research is the local periodical editions for 1929–1934 and archive materials which contain the information on the Holodomor. The aim of this article is to analyze the process of the development of the local press in the Ukrainian SSR in the late 1920s to the early 1930s; to compare the articles printed with the archival materials and the testimonies of the Holodomor eyewitnesses; to explore the role of the freelance workers of the newspapers (workers’ village correspondents) in the process of the Holodomor implementation. The research showed that in the late 1920s to the early 1930s, in the Ukrainian SSR, the number and the circulation of the local newspapers increased. The Stalinist regime considered them as the tool for ideological influence onto the population. The majority of the materials in the newspapers in which it is written about the Holodomor were giving the information one-sidedly and subjectively. The regime was actively involving the freelance workers of the newspapers to the processes of collectivization and confiscation of the food products from the farmers.

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