D. A. Ọbasá: The Man and the Significance of his Cultural Activism

Tis essay explores Adenrele ́ ́ Adetí mi ̀ ́kan Ò basa ̣ ’s creative ingenuity and ́ how he put that into use as a poet, cultural activist, journalist, printer, and publisher of a bilingual newspaper, The Yorùba News. The essay traces Obasa’s history; right from his birth to the period he became a renowned Yorùbá intellectual. The cultural identity theory which studies a person’s sense of belonging to a particular culture and accepting the traditions, heritage, language, religion, and social structures of such culture is adopted for the analysis in this study. The study shows how Obasa ̣ ́ projects himself as a unique individual who used Yorùbá culture to connect people. The essay concludes that Obasa ̣ ́ is a lover of his indigenous culture and language.

Establishment of a Periodic Printing System in Polyethnic Regions in 1900-1930s (on the Material of the Press of Kalmykia and Stavropol region)

The formation of the system of periodicals in two similar and dissimilar polyethnic regions in the south of Russia – Kalmykia and Stavropol – developed according to the same scheme, but had significant nuances. The Stavropol press, aimed at the Russian majority in the region, appeared earlier (in 1850) and was typologically more diverse and numerous until the 1920s, while the publications created for the Kalmyks were for a long time isolated projects: The Russian-Kalmyk Calendar (1911-1918), a newspaper in the Kalmyk language «Oordin ziang» (1917-1918), leaflets and the first bilingual newspaper «Red Kalmyk» (1919-1920). A new stage in the development of journalism in the regions begins with the establishment of Soviet power after the end of the civil war. The work of the press is under the control of the ruling party, and the unification of the system of regional and local periodicals begins. Gradually, both in Kalmykia and in Stavropol, a harmonious system of periodicals was formed, lined up vertically and horizontally: regional / regional mass sociopolitical newspapers – regional / regional youth newspapers – regional / regional children’s newspapers – district / ulus socio-political newspapers – large circulation newspapers – wall newspapers. In addition to newspapers, instructor magazines for party and Soviet workers, literary and artistic publications of regional writers’ unions were published. The polyethnicity of the regions influenced the information policy of local periodicals and the structure of the press: in Kalmykia there were publications in the Kalmyk language, in Russian and bilingual, in Stavropol, along with publications in Russian, there were bilingual publications in two districts.