Ukrainian Woman in the Whirlpool of the Liberation Struggle: Distinguishing Features of Publications in the Western Ukrainian Press of the 1920s–1930s.

Abstract

The article focuses on the distinguishing features of publications about Ukrainian women in the whirlpool of the Liberation Struggle of 1917–1923 in the Western Ukrainian magazines “Zhinka” [“Woman”] (1935–1939), “Zhinocha Dolia” [“Women’s Destiny”] (1925–1939), “Nasha Meta” [“Our Goal”] (1919–1920, 1922), “Nova Khata” [“New House”] (1925–1939), “Khronika Chervonoyi Kalyny” [“Chronicle of Red Kalyna”] (1929–1939), “Literaturno-Naukovyi Dodatok ‘Novoho Chasu’” [“Literary and Scientific Supplement of ‘New Times’”] (1937), “Nazustrich” [“Towards”] (1934–1938), “Kalendari Chervonoyi Kalyny na ... Rik” [“Red Kalyna Calendars for ... ”] (1925, 1928–1935, 1937), etc. The purpose of the article is to analyze the editorial policy regarding the coverage of heroic female figures involved in the Liberation Struggles of 1917–1923, based on publications of the interwar period in women’s and socio-political periodicals. To achieve the goal, a number of tasks were performed: searching for publications and their analysis; characterization of the genres and methods of presenting materials. The following general scholarly methods were used in the study: descriptive, systemic, and analytical. The novelty of the research is due to the fact that for the first time the genre features of press publications of the 1920s–30s about the participation of Ukrainian women in the Liberation Struggles of 1917–1923 have been comprehensively analyzed, in particular, in the First World War, the Central Rada of Ukraine, the Directorate of Ukraine and the West Ukrainian People’s Republic, the Ukrainian Galician Army, the Ukrainian People’s Army, and guerilla units as a continuous chain of struggle for the unity of Ukraine. Fifteen little-known materials on the specified topic have been introduced into scholarly circulation. It was found that most of the publications are of a memoir nature, essays and posthumous mentions, unemotional records of the names of participants in the Liberation Struggles, and a synthesis of genres, in particular reviews and interviews. It is concluded that in Western Ukrainian publications of the 1920s–30s, the presentation of the material was diverse: publications were illustrated with photographs or artistic portraits of women; magazine issues opened with photographs of the heroines, and inside were their publications; sometimes the stories about the lives and activities of these prominent women were supplemented with their works of art or memoirs; alongside the list of participants in the Ukrainian Galician Army and the Ukrainian People’s Army, works of art by female authors were sometimes included as illustrations of the difficult everyday lives of female soldiers or nurses; often, magazines published only photographs or portraits of female participants in the Liberation Struggles without stories about them.