News from Ukraine

News from Ukraine. A weekly paper published in Kyiv from June 1964 by the Ukraina Society aka Association for Cultural Relations with Ukrainians Abroad. A Ukrainian-language version, Visti z Ukraïny, appeared from November 1960. Both papers published propagandistic articles promoting Soviet Ukrainian cultural, economic, and political achievements and Soviet foreign policy. They refuted charges of Russification and criticism of human rights abuses in Ukraine. They regularly published diatribes against Ukrainian ‘bourgeois nationalists’ in the West, including ‘exposés’ of alleged war criminals and of relations between leading figures in the émigré nationalist community and ‘imperialist’ intelligence agencies and fascism in the West. In the late 1980s, in the spirit of Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost, the papers muted their attacks and concentrated instead on presenting more objective reports on developments in Ukraine and on the ‘blank spots’ in Ukrainian history; in the early 1990s the papers supported the new political order in Ukraine and adopted pro-independence profiles. They were widely distributed (often free of charge) among Ukrainians and pro-Soviet activists in the West, as well as in the developing world. Until 1990 they were not available in Ukraine and were rarely mentioned in official sources. In 1990 the editor in chief of News from Ukraine was V. Kanash. The editorial board included prominent writers (eg, Ivan Drach, Dmytro Pavlychko, and Volodymyr Brovchenko), scholars (Ivan Khmil), and athletes (Valerii Borzov). The papers ceased publication in 1998.

[This article was updated in 2022.]