Pravda Ukrainy

Pravda Ukrainy («Правда Украины»; Truth of Ukraine). A daily Russian-language organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR, and the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR until 1992. It began to appear in Kyiv in January 1938 as Sovetskaia Ukraina. During the Second World War it was published in Kharkiv, Moscow, Saratov, and Voroshylovhrad. In 1944 it was renamed, and returned to Kyiv. The paper was a parallel edition to the Ukrainian-language daily Radians’ka Ukraïna, although not all articles appeared in both versions. In practice Pravda Ukrainy contained more articles on the economy, science, and technology than its more propagandistic-ideological counterpart. Both papers, however, were inferior in content and style to such central papers as Pravda (Moscow) and Izvestiia. The paper’s pressrun increased from some 300,000 copies in 1950 to 477,000 in 1970 and 550,000 in 1975, and fell to 220,000 in 1991.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]