Ukrainian Emigration in the Struggle for Ukrainian Broadcasts of “Voice Of America”: the 1940–1950s

Abstract

The article is based on the materials studied by the author in Taras Shevchenko Library Archives of the Union of Ukrainians in Great Britain. It focuses on well-planned and organized actions of Ukrainians of the Western diaspora related to their longterm efforts to launch the Ukrainian edition under “Voice of America” radio station and exercise the rights of Ukrainians for receiving truthful information about the situation in the world and in sub-Soviet Ukraine in their native language. The prerequisites, forms, and methods of conducting the public action “The Ukrainian Radio Movement”, which began in Ulm, Germany, under the leadership of the well-known publicist Ivan Bahrianyi, and spread to Ukrainian centers in the United Kingdom, France, USA, and Canada, are analyzed. The article is based on the rare prints of newspapers “Ukrainski Visti” (Ulm) and “Ukrainska Dumka” (London), the evolution of this initiative traced down to its positive outcome. The information about the first “Voice of America” broadcast in Ukrainian, published in “The New York Herald Tribune” (November 23, 1949), is translated into Ukrainian. A review of the protests of the “Russian World” adherents against Ukrainian-language broadcasts of the global radio, published on the pages of the Russian emigration body in Paris, “Russkaya Mysl” , is conducted. Separately, the article dwells on the establishment of public control over the content of radio programs by the members of representative organizations of the Ukrainian diaspora. The necessity of such an initiative was caused by the fact that at the initial stage, the content produced by the Ukrainian editorial staff was untruthful in terms of the Ukrainian history.