Emigration Journal Readers' Mail as a Source of Learning Abroad-living Ukrainians' History: on the Materials of Parisian Journal "Tryzub" ("Trident")

For the first time in journalism studies, readers’ mail of Ukrainian emigration periodical becomes the object of research. Such analysis was done on the basis of detailed and thorough study of archive documents and full collection of Parisian Ukrainian language journal “Tryzub” founded by Symon Petliura in 1925 in Paris (the journal was issued monthly up to 1940). In common characteristics of the editorial mail, the attention is paid to such a fact: for simplifying the preparation of readers’ letters the editorial board published requirements to author’s manuscripts: to write in copperplate handwriting or type on one side of a papersheet, giving author’s address and identification data. For more detailed and thorough analysis all the readers’ mail was divided into two groups: letters, published in periodical’s column; letters, not published but answered in written way. The letters content is analyzed according to such problem topics: requests for financial help; search of relative’s addresses, who were missing; defense of rights and property of single people who got into trouble; requests to find and send necessary books to given addresses; propositions to popularize Ukrainian culture among foreigners; wish to support different charitable actions of Ukrainians; letters-confessions, which do not express any requests. Written appeals to the editorial board from other editorial boards and institutions are analyzed separately. Such analysis gave the possibility to the author of the article to characterize the geography of such addresses, names of subscribers, list of institutions. The readers’ mail content analysis helped to single out the most important directions of journalistic, publishing, information, educational activities of this journal. The analysis of quantative coefficient of readers’ mail seems to be interesting: on average the editorial board received 300–400 letters per year. The majority of them were published, others were answered to in written way. Well-considered and systematic work with readers’ letters contributed to the enhancement of journal’s prestige among emigrants, increased the number of subscribers