bureau of the Ukrainian Press Agency (UPA)
was founded (Danilenko, 2011).
M. Muratov used to send the information
received from Ukraine to the “Freedom” radio
station and the Ukrainian Central Information
Service (USIS) in Munich; besides, M. Muratov
actively cooperated with T. Kuzio, the Ukrainian
Insurgent Army’s Director in London. From
T. Kuzio, he often received and then brought
over to his Ukrainian press service colleagues the
necessary office equipment: computers, printers,
facsimile devices, etc. Thanks to the Ukrainian
Insurgent Army, the informational materials
about the most important events in the Ukrainian
SSR, collected by the Ukrainian Helsinki
Union’s members, came to the British mass
media and the Australian radio listeners.
At the meeting of the All-Ukrainian
Coordination Council of the Ukrainian Helsinki
Union on January 21, 1989, the head of the press
service of V. Chornovil was also made
responsible for the technical means of the Union,
as well as for the contacts with its Kyiv, Donetsk,
Dnipropetrovsk, Ivano-Frankivsk, Moscow
branches. Simultaneously, V. Chornovil held the
post of a responsible editor of “Ukrayinskiy
Visnyk”. Ye. Proniuk, a famous patriot and
intellectual, became the head of the information
center of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union,
coordinating its activity: he carried out control
over the large-scale subscription campaigns and
communication with a number of regions
(Chornovil, 2009).
In 1989, material and technical capabilities of the
Ukrainian Helsinki Union’s press service were
extremely limited. The Union had six computers
(among them – three “Toshiba-1000”, two –
“Toshiba-1200PB” and one – “Spark”), six
printers (“Epson-RX-850”, “Brother" and
"Diconix") and one xerox (“Develop-100”,
printing speed – 5 pages per minute) (Kozhanov,
2014).
While speaking about the conditions under which
the Union had to carry out its information and
publishing activity, L. Lukyanenko, the head of
the Ukrainian Helsinki Union, recalled: “An
obstacle to increase the efficiency of all three
press centers of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union is
the lack of an all-Ukrainian network of
permanent professional correspondents of the
Union and the delay in informing. Continuation
of an unfair partocratic monopoly on the mass
media does not allow the Ukrainian Helsinki
Union to buy a printing house, have access to
state radio and television (Kipiani, 2011). Thanks
to the help of the representatives of our diaspora,
now almost all branches are provided with
portable dictaphones, there is a dozen of
computers and several camcorders. The lack of
technical culture leads to a frequent output of
computers. The Executive Committee has failed
to establish the training of the necessary
specialists to assure the technically competent
operation of such equipment” (Lukyanenko,
2010).
Among the editions founded by the Ukrainian
Helsinki Union during 1989, it should be
mentioned “Vilna Dumka” (published since
September, Lutsk), “Gomin Bukovyny” (since
October, Chernivtsi), “Sobornist” (since
October, Boryslav), “Shliakh do Voli” (since
December, Rivne) and “Obizhnyk” (Kyiv).
It is to be admitted, at that time, the Union had
actually “monopolized” all the information space
which remained beyond the state control: thus,
the Union published over 90% of all the
circulation of the Ukrainian self-published
periodicals. The activists of the Union’s centers
were members of the majority of editorial offices
of the Ukrainian off-censorial magazines.
However, at the same time, the influence of self-
published press on the Ukrainian society should
not be overestimated. The development of an
independent press was constantly hampered by a
chronic lack of funds, semi-legal status (freedom
of the press was proclaimed only in June 12,
1990, by the Law “On Press and Other Mass
Media”), lack of access to the printing base, and
the use of administrative pressure by the state
authorities in their struggle against
nonconformity. Thus, the self-published editions
could just rarely boast of their one-time
circulation exceeding 1000 copies.
In March 1989, a landmark event took place:
“Golos Vidrodzhennia”, one of the first
oppositional off-censorial newspapers in the
Ukrainian SSR, was published. The newspaper
was made and edited, with his own hand, by S.
Noboka, a well-known Ukrainian journalist, a
member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union.
Among other informal editions, the newspaper
distinguished not only in in its form (its
circulation, printed in Vilnus, exceeded 10
thousand copies), but also in content. The
thematic filling of the newspaper consisted of the
materials of social-political, cultural and national
historical issues. The newspaper highlighted the
actual Ukrainian and foreign news, published the
Ukrainian Helsinki Union’s policy documents of
the Ukrainian Helsinki Union, the People's