Soviet-Era Ukrainian Newspapers

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The early 20th century was a fateful time in Ukraine’s history. Attempts to establish an independent Ukrainian state were fraught with revolution, civil war, and foreign invasions—events now referred to as the Ukrainian War of Independence or the Soviet-Ukrainian War.

This war resulted in the establishment of two countries by 1922: the Second Polish Republic, which occupied most of western Ukraine, and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which occupied the rest of Ukraine.

In the following years, rapid Soviet collectivization of agriculture in the Ukrainian SSR triggered the Holodomor: a famine that started in 1932 and killed millions of Ukrainians.

The Soviet-Era Ukrainian Newspapers (SEUN) collection traces the history of Ukraine during this tumultuous era—covering these and events leading up to WWII. Comprising five titles and over 50,000 pages, SEUN includes newspapers from three cities: Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Lviv.

This collection includes newspapers in both Ukrainian and Russian.

The Soviet-Era Ukrainian Newspapers collection is made possible through the generous support of the Center for Research Libraries and its member institutions. The collection is available for free to all CRL members institutions. Non-CRL institutions that wish to purchase the Local and Independent Ukrainian Newspapers collection should contact us for more information.

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Soviet-Era Ukrainian Newspapers

Collection Titles

The Soviet-Era Ukrainian Newspapers collection includes the following five titles:

  • Borot’ba (Боротьба), Kyiv, in Ukrainian, 1919–1920
  • Dilo (Діло), Lviv, in Ukrainian, 1900–1939
  • Kievskaia mysl’ (Киевская мысль), Kyiv, in Russian, 1918–1918
  • Proletars’ka pravda (Пролетарська правда), Kyiv, in Ukrainian, 1924–1925
  • Visti VUTsVK (Вісті ВУЦВК), Kharkiv and Kyiv, in Ukrainian, 1922–1939
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About the GPA CRL Alliance

East View and the Center for Research Libraries have created the GPA CRL Alliance to steer the development of a series of thematically designed databases for East View’s Global Press Archive program to meet the specific needs and priorities of CRL members. Launched in 2019, the charter phase of the GPA CRL Alliance resulted in the creation of nine collections, encompassing hundreds of newspaper titles and totaling over 4.5 million pages, of which 3 million pages are fully Open Access.

The first of these collections – Late Qing and Republican-Era Chinese Newspapers, Middle Eastern and North African Newspapers, Independent and Revolutionary Mexican Newspapers, Imperial Russian Newspapers, Southeast Asian Newspapers, and South Asian Newspapers – are all Open Access collections and are the result of close collaboration between East View and CRL, with CRL advisors selecting and curating the content, and CRL members funding the collections to facilitate global Open Access.

Encouraged by the positive results of Phase 1, a second phase of the GPA CRL Alliance is now underway. The continuation of this highly successful academic-commercial partnership between CRL and East View will serve our shared values of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and continue to extend access to global newspaper collections to the widest possible audience. Fundraising for Phase 2 has ended but CRL members are still encouraged to contribute to the program.

Click the link below to learn more about the GPA CRL Alliance, available collections, and plans for the next phase of the Alliance.

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