Interest in ephemeral material grows and grows, and a new Ukrainian arrival provides a good example: an exploration of adverts in West Ukrainian newspapers between 1919 and 1939.  Part of Poland during that period, the area continued to have a huge Ukrainian population (Poland’s overall Ukrainian population at the time was well over 10%).  Ukrainian newspapers proliferated, and the adverts they contained provide a fascinating glimpse into the lives of their readers beyond the articles they shared the pages with.

Reklama u zakhidnoukraïnsʹkiĭ presi (1919-1939 rr.) by Iryna Nironovych is divided roughly in half.  It starts with Nironovych’s academic study (to page 17o) and ends with just over the same number of pages given to facsimile reproductions of adverts from 20 newspaper titles (these are listed in the middle image above).

Among the examples contained in the images in this post are bells, milk centrifuges, veterinary equipment, food, drink, clothes, and a gun (a Browning).  Most are for companies or services based in the area, but some (including the gun) are for wares in Warsaw.

 

The crucial Library of Congress subject heading in the record starts with Advertising, Newspaper (as the LC file’s note for cataloguers says, “Here are entered works discussing advertising in newspapers. Works discussing advertising of newspapers are entered under Advertising–Newspapers.”).  There aren’t any other titles listed with that heading where it relates to Ukraine, but that could change with time.  At the other end of the 20th-century timeline, there’s a chapter called “Gender Dreams or Sexism? Advertising in Post-Soviet Ukraine” in the 2015 book New imaginaries : youthful reinvention of Ukraine’s cultural paradigm edited by Marian J. Rubchak.

Mel Bach