Language Policy of the Ukrainian Government in the Editorial Policy of the Newspaper "Nova Rada" (1917 – Early 1918)

The purpose of the article is to analyse the publications of the Kyiv newspaper "Nova Rada" during the period of the Ukrainian Central Rada, which reflect the main directions of the Ukrainian government's language policy and the reflection of society. The analysis of the historiographical heritage allows us to assert that the publications of contemporary historians cover this topic in passing, mainly in the context of source research on the history of the Ukrainian press. However, in that period, newspaper periodicals were the mouthpiece of official state policy and reflected society's reflections on all state-building processes. One of the leading periodicals of the UCR period was the newspaper "Nova Rada", published in Ukrainian in Kyiv since March 1917. The editors were Andriy Nikovskyi and Serhiy Yefremov. The political positions of the newspaper indicated its closeness to government policy and, in general, its centrist position in the national liberation movement. The peculiarity of language policy during the UCR's activity was due to two factors: the fact that the young Ukrainian Republic was in a post-colonial language situation and the political course of the Ukrainian Central Rada in different periods of its activity. The main areas of language policy covered on the pages of “Nova Rada” were: granting Ukrainian the status of an official (state) language; spreading Ukrainisation in the office work, educational and cultural spheres; developing rules for Ukrainian spelling; and language policy towards national minorities. The newspaper publications were intended not only to confirm the legal status of the Ukrainian language and the beginning of the process of Ukrainisation but also to facilitate the actual implementation of the Ukrainian government's language policy in socio-political, cultural, and educational life