HROMADIANKA (THE FEMALE CITIZEN) JOURNAL AS A SOURCE FOR THE STUDY OF THE UKRAINIAN WOMEN’S ASSOCIATION IN EMIGRATION FUNCTIONING

Abstract

The paper contains an overview of the history of women’s monthly journal “Hromadianka” (“The Female Citizen”) issued in West Germany in 1946–1950. This periodical is an important source of the study of the position of Ukrainian women in emigration in the DP period. The “Hromadianka” journal was performing the function of an organ of press of the Ukrainian Women’s Association in Emigration, a women’s organization which was founded in December 1945 in the women’s congress in Augsburg.
Despite hardships of the life in emigration, the journal includes various materials of patriotic, historical, literary, ethnographical and political nature together with a series of practical sections for women. A significant part of the publications inthe journal exposes the situation of women in DP camps and can serve as a source for the research into the activity of Ukrainian women in West Germany after the Second World War.
The large majority of the publications in the journal are dedicated to organizational activity of the Ukrainian Women’s Association in Emigration. In particular, on the pages of “Hromadianka” the readers could find the materials of women’s congresses which took place in West Germany in 1945–1950, the information about the composition and functions of the Central Council of the Ukrainian Women’s Association in Emigration, speeches, statistic data on the number of the centers of the Association in West Germany, reports of plenary sessions of the Central Council and regional councils, notices of the functioning of specific delegations and members of the Association.
Specifically, the feminist ideology and women’s emancipation were not represented on the pages of “Hromadianka”. On the contrary, the journal cultivated national and patriotic ideology, women were assigned to the function of the teacher of conscious Ukrainians, and the guardian of Ukrainian traditions abroad, which was also closely connected with unification and assistance to the members of the Ukrainian community who found themselves beyond their native land and were undergoing all the difficulties of the post-war devastation and insecure position having the status of a political refugee.