Przymiotnik czerwony w polskojęzycznej prasie wydawanej na Ukrainie sowieckiej w latach 20. i 30. XX wieku

The subject of the article is the analysis of the meaning and collocations of the adjective czerwony 'red - Communist, Soviet' in the Polish-language press published in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s and 1930s. The press was primarily to function as a tool for the Sovietisation of the Polish minority, thus the periodical press was directly dependent on state publication policies. The research was conducted on a textual sample encompassing a selection of issues of 36 Polish-language press titles, diversified in terms of their scope, target group, and subject matter. The lexeme czerwony is characterised by a very high textual frequency, a few times higher than in the case of adjectives denoting other colours; thus, there are over 770 examples of the word czerwony, while the next in line are bialy 'white' - 135 and czarny 'black' - 110. The frequency is definitely increased by the fact that the adjective czerwony also constitutes part of various newly-formed proper nouns. In the analysed texts, czerwony has new meaning, not only 'revolutionary, Communist' (thus encompassing also people, places and actions generally linked to Communism, including outside Russia), but also with a semantic narrowing of meaning to apply to the Soviet situation - 'Bolshevik, Soviet'. The broad positive semantic connotations which make this adjective part of a bipolar system, i.e. good (red) - bad (not red), are also significant. The positive context, connected to people, organisations, places and actions whose attribute is czerwony, serves to meliorate the lexeme. Through such means, new collocations and lexemes are formed in Soviet Polish language with the participation of the adjective czerwony, written into the actuality of the USSR.