Features of Interviews in the interwar Western Ukrainian press

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of thirty-five interviews with prominent socio-political and religious figures, published in Western Ukrainian press during the interwar period, was conducted. These interviews featured notable individuals such as Avgustine Voloshin, Julijan Rewaj, Konstantyn Hrabar, Yaroslav Nečas, Dionisije Njaradi, Andrey Sheptytsky, and a range of writers and artists, including Olha Kobylianska, Bohdan-Ihor Antonych, Sviatoslav Hordynsky, Sofia Yablonska, Iryna Vilde, Stepan Levinsky, Yaroslav Muzyka, Margit Sielska, Osip Sorokhtei, and director Yurii Avhustyn Sherehii. Thematic interviews were examined, and the role of interviewers and their impact on the quality of publications were assessed.

It was found that interviews were actively published in the Western Ukrainian press of the interwar period (often with photographs of the interviewees or reproductions of their works of art) in such publications as «Dilo», «Nedilia», «Zhinka», «Svit», «Nazustrich», «Nova Khata», «Zhinocha Dolia», «Rusynъ», «Nova Svoboda» ta «Nova Stsena», which genre-wise diversified the periodicals, made them visually attractive, and aroused great interest among readers.

It was found that that the interview genre was not only popular but also extraordinarily diverse in Western Ukrainian publications of the interwar period; interviews bordered on essays, creating an intriguing synthesis of genres; they were monologues rather than dialogues; they were fictional; they were collective and had a collective interviewer (fictional readers and editorial staff); the interviewees were a group of people, but none of the participants names were given; they resembled theatrical performances or radio plays; they covered a wide range of topics, with the subjects of conversation being a resonant play production, a girl from a painter's painting, anonymous fugitives from the Soviet «paradise», the wedding of a young movie star, the election of a beauty queen, the orange boom in the market, and even an ordinary horse.

The study showed that in the Western Ukrainian press of the specified period, interviews with well-known journalists, editors, and writers, including Mykhailo Rudnytskyi, Olena Kysilevska, Roman Holiian, Vasyl Grendzha-Donsky, Yosyp Boichuk, Volodymyr Birchak, Olha Dutschyminska, Anatol Kurdydyk, Kharyta Kononenko, Vasyl Tkachuk, and others, vividly reflected the sentiments of the contemporary cultural space and the location of the conversation, recreated the dynamics of the conversation, and the psychological and spiritual world of the interviewees.