EXPLAINER: The Birth of an Independent Ukrainian Press: From Samvydav to Modern Journalism

Before Ukraine had a free press, it had “samvydav” – the self-published, uncensored typescripts that circulated in semi-underground networks among Ukrainian dissenters and oppositionists through the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The word, a Ukrainian rendering of the Russian samizdat, means “self-published.” It described citizens reproducing and passing along texts the Soviet state would never allow into official print. Bohdan Nahaylo, then Director of the Ukrainian Service of Radio Liberty, meeting with his correspondents for the first time in Kyiv in June 1990. From left to right: Leonid Miliavsky, Bohdan Nahaylo, Svitlana Riaboshapka, Serhii Naboka. JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. The most celebrated of these publications was the Ukrainian Herald, though similar, more modest journals and bulletins appeared in many cities and regions, not only in Western Ukraine. Among the dissident movement’s leading figures were Viacheslav Chornovil and Oles Shevchenko, both journalists by profession. Both served time as political prisoners. Both, after their release, became prominent figures in Ukraine’s national resurgence of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The thaw under glasnost A free press could not flourish under Soviet authoritarian rule; official media served the state under tight censorship. By the late 1980s, though, Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of “glasnost” and “perestroika” had loosened Moscow’s controls, and some official publications began showing a new outspokenness. Other Topics of Interest Russian Drone Strikes on Kherson Injure 4, Including Child A 10-year-old boy was hospitalized in moderate condition after a Russian drone struck a car in Kherson’s Korabelnyi district. In Ukraine, this was most visible in Literaturna Ukraina, the newspaper of the literary establishment, and to some extent in Kultura i Zhyttia. Both took up questions of national cultural revival: recovering suppressed historical memory, rehabilitating persecuted writers and intellectuals, and covering the emergence of Rukh, Ukraine’s coalition of democratic forces. Two ideological opponents face off: Bohdan Nahaylo interviewing Leonid Kravchuk in his Kyiv office in October 1990. From around 1988, unofficial publications multiplied – no longer typed in small batches but printed and circulated more widely. The newly created Ukrainian Helsinki Union, organized by Chornovil and other former political prisoners, quickly became the central organizing force behind Ukraine’s self-published periodicals, establishing a press service and information bureaus in Kyiv, Lviv, and Moscow to coordinate the collection, editing, and distribution of material. On its behalf, Serhiy Naboka and his colleagues in Kyiv, produced in 1989 Holos Vidrodzhennya (“Voice of Revival”), in effect the first unofficial newspaper to circulate openly. In Lviv, young activists connected to the Lev Society (Tovarystvo Leva) produced a journal called Postup (“Progress”); several of its contributors, most notably Oleksandr Kryvenko, went on to careers in journalism and public life. The voice of encouragement from Munich Throughout this period, Radio Liberty – Radio Svoboda – the American-funded broadcaster transmitting from Munich in the languages of Soviet peoples, remained a crucial source of uncensored information. (Its sister service, Radio Free Europe, served audiences in communist Eastern Europe). Soviet jamming of Radio Liberty’s Ukrainian broadcasts did not end until November 1988. After that, millions of listeners could tune in freely to programming that included not only international news but increasingly news from within Ukraine and coverage of hitherto banned historical, cultural, and religious themes. I became director of Radio Liberty’s Ukrainian Service in April 1989. I wanted the service to amplify the most significant constructive voices within Ukraine – from the democratic camp around Rukh and the former dissidents, but also from more liberal figures within the communist establishment. I also wanted Radio Liberty to serve an integrating function: to allow workers in Donetsk to learn what was happening in Western Ukraine, or residents of Odesa to follow events in Kyiv or Chernihiv. Achieving this required building a network of correspondents inside Ukraine. I was able to bring on board Serhiy Naboka and his Kyiv colleagues, including Leonid Miliavsky and Svitlana Riaboshapka, and to establish correspondents elsewhere – among them Anatoliy Dotsenko in Moscow and Hanna Stetsiv (later known as Anna Herman) in Lviv. First uncensored live radio broadcast with the participation of a foreign "enemy" journalist, Kyiv, October 1990. This new network produced daily reporting from across Ukraine, adhering to Western standards of balance and accuracy. Its content overcame much of the provincialism and pathos that had characterized what came before. The breakthroughs of 1990 1990 brought several turning points. In January, UNVIS – the Ukrainian Independent Publishing and Information Union – was established by Chornovil and Naboka to provide a more independent, self-sustaining publishing structure, with its own periodicals, printing capacity, and network of correspondents. It cooperated closely with Radio Liberty. In April, the Ukrainian Helsinki Union itself reorganized into the Ukrainian Republican Party, a step that converted much of the earlier informal press network into party-affiliated publications. In June, I became the first senior figure from RFE/RL to be allowed into the Soviet Union. Many media people risked potential problems by wanting to interview me – the representative of a radio station Moscow had until recently jammed, who embodied an unmuzzled Western voice that was also at the same time Ukrainian. One of them was a bright young journalist from Molod Ukrainy named Vitaly Portnikov whom I invited to be a correspondent from Radio Liberty. In October, I interviewed Leonid Kravchuk, then Speaker of the republic’s parliament and Ukraine’s most senior communist official, in his office under a portrait of Lenin, without a pre-agreed list of questions. Around the same time, I took part in a live, unscripted national radio broadcast that invited listeners to phone in questions to me – the representative of an “enemy voice” – a first of its kind. The program was part of a series called Try Kolory (“Three Colors”), produced by young journalists at the official radio station on Khreshchatyk 26 in Kyiv, among them Andriy Derepa, Radyslav Chumak, and Dmytro Ponomarchuk. To guard against political fallout, the organizers arranged for a member of parliament, the writer Volodymyr Yavorivsky, to sit alongside me during the broadcast. Radio Liberty Ukrainian Service Chief, Bohdan Nahaylo, meeting with editors of the Lviv publication Postup in 1990. Left, Ihor Markov, right, Oleksandr Kryvenko. Another landmark was an appearance on the live television program “Pleiada,” which featured leading figures of the Ukrainian diaspora – historians, writers, cultural activists – who not so long ago were being denounced as “bourgeois nationalist” foes. The program was co-hosted by Ivan Dziuba, the former dissident and prominent literary figure, and Ludmila Lytovchenko. On this occasion, for the first time, viewers could also phone in with their questions or comments. Kyiv and Lviv remained at the forefront of the national revival. In Lviv, the newspaper Ratusha was founded in 1990 under editor Serhiy Herman – one of the first proper independent newspapers in Soviet Ukraine. Together with Postup, it played a significant role in setting an example for others. Post independence Ukraine’s independence in 1991 opened the way for television and radio, previously under communist-party control, to liberalize and modernize, and for independent publications to multiply. Many who led that expansion – among them Serhiy Naboka, and others trained in Western-style reporting through their work with Radio Liberty, as diverse as Vitaly Portnikov, or Savik Shuster, or later with the BBC – Mykola Veresen and Andrii Kulikov, were well experienced to do so. But the turn Ukraine was to take once the initial euphoria gave way to immense, unforeseen challenges from inside and outside the country would put the newly liberated media to severe tests.