Materials of the Local Media of Kyiv Region about Acceptance the Course of Authority by Peasant during the Holodomor of 1932–1933: Manipulations and Reality

Abstract

The article is devoted to investigating the specific of the information of Kyiv region’s local media to the conducive for authority cases of reaction of ordinary peasants for the grain procurement campaign of 1932–1933 as a key mechanism of the organization of Holodomor in Ukraine. The research strategy is based on the contextual analysis of different media materials against the broad background of the Holodomor, as well as the territorial and chronological representation of the newspaper’s information about the typically similar practices of the peasants. The research focuses on the analyses of the following messages of the local media: freewill execution and over-execution grain procurement plan by farmers and members of collective farmers; appeals to execute this plan and to oblige to additional plans; freewill participation the farmers, which were forced to give own grain, in doing of brigades for searching and expropriation its in another peasants; denunciations, peasant’s statement about advantage of the collective farm system. It was argued most of the newspaper’s information was manipulative. The so-called voluntary initiatives of ordinary peasants, often declared by the local media, actually appeared under the influence of the authorities. The empiric potential of district press gives more background information of documentary materials. Only the materials pertaining to the denunciations of the ordinary peasants and to the activity of the brigades for grain procurement reflected the reality. The local media deepen the notion regarding the motives of the peasants and the measures which were used by authority to enable the emergence the conducive information in local media. It leads to the investigation of the models of peasants’ existential choice, which were developed in the various circumstances during the Holodomor of 1932–1933.