Basenko I. The Perception of the Germans in Ukrainian- and Russian-language daily press of Kyiv (January 1914 - December 1918)

This dissertation uncovers both the Ukrainian and Russian perceptions of the Germans, as presented in the Kyivan daily press throughout the period of 1914 ‒ 1918. Based on the city’s prominent Ukrainian and Russian-language newspapers, the study addresses the problem within the time frames of prewar 1914, imperial Russia’s First World War participation and 1917 ‒ 1918 Ukrainian Revolution. Archival sources and literature utilized in the research allowed us to establish the factors of censorship and propaganda, compare Kyivan experience with the general perception of the Germans in Russian empire and amongst the Entente Powers. The study examines newspapers of various political and national agenda, thus exposing ideologically diverse, multi-ethnic media space of Kyiv. The investigation explains how the political and national beliefs have shaped newspapers’ vision of Germany. And vice versa, the image of the German “other” outlines the local images of “own self” ‒ in Kyiv as a center of the Southwestern Krai province of the empire, subsequent capital of the Ukrainian People’s Republic and the Ukrainian State. Some of the key images, scrutinized in this paper are: stereotype of the Germans as a “cultural model”, as a “geopolitical rival-militarist”, an “enemy-alien within the state” as well as the notion of “German betrayal”, war propaganda clichés of “the German beast” vs a sense of "the other human being", concept of the malicious German plan for united Russia partition and, simultaneously, Ukrainian expectations of “the German allied help” against the Bolshevik Russia’s aggression, finally, apprehension of the “German order” and “imperialism” during the 1918 foreign military occupation. In the final analysis, Ukrainian and Russian national stereotypes of the Germans remained solid despite the occasional turbulence of First World War and Revolution.