Ridnyi krai

Ridnyi krai («Рідний край»; Native Land). The second Ukrainian-language newspaper established in Russian-ruled Ukraine. The initiator and first editor (together with Hryhorii Kovalenko) was Mykola Dmytriiev, and the first publisher was Hryhorii Markevych. It was published weekly in Poltava from 6 January 1906 until May 1907, when it was closed down by the tsarist authorities because of Dmytriiev's political activity. It was renewed in October in Kyiv by Olena Pchilka, who published it there weekly, three times a week from 1910 and then irregularly from 1913 until it was closed down again during the general crackdown against the Ukrainian press after the outbreak of the First World War. It was renewed again in Hadiach in 1915–16 by Pchilka, who circumvented the laws prohibiting publication in Ukrainian by printing the paper in the yaryzhka alphabet. Ridnyi krai covered political, economic, and cultural developments and published prose, poetry, and articles on farming, the co-operative movement, history, literature, ethnography, and education. The children’s magazine Moloda Ukraïna was published as a monthly supplement to Ridnyi krai.

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