Тhe agrarian issues depiction in рropagandistic literature of 1917–1918 during the period of Ukrainian revolution

Abstract

The propagandistic literature represent a wide range of personal views on the ways how to solve land issues in the Central Ukraine along both banks of the Dnipro River (Naddniprianshchyna). It deserves a special research from the Ukrainian historiography point of view. In 1917 appeared several short printed analytical surveys whose authors covered agrarian issued in a biased manner. They analyzed agrarian programmes of the political parties, anticipated how the Interim Land Law adopted by the Central Rada. Such authors among them Dmytro Antonovych, Borys Martos, Oleksa Syniavskyi, P. Syrotenko and others claimed that the way-out for the complicated Ukrainian conditions of that time were the overwhelming land reforms, development of production cooperation, strengthening of the individuallyowned farms, and application of the progressive experience in farming. The analysis of the first post-Revolution brochures shows that they can be reasonably classified as propagandistic source materials. The literature had some functions. For example, educative nature and facilitated the spread of economical and agricultural knowledge, formed some alternative choices in the wide range of the agrarian programmes by farmers, represented wide-spread opinions and estimates of the social, economic, historical, and legal expertise to solve agrarian issues in the early, democratic stages of the revolution.