Additionally, more than 700 schools with Ukrainian as the language of instruction were opened, and the Kuban Pedagogical Institute had its own Ukrainian department. Numerous Ukrainian-language newspapers such as "Chornomorets" and "Kubanska Zoria" were published. According to historian A.L. Pawliczko, there was an attempt to have a referendum on the joining of Kuban to the Ukrainian SSR. In 1930, the Ukrainian Minister ("People’s Komissar") Mykola Skrypnyk, involved in solving national issues in the Ukrainian SSR, put forward an official proposal to Joseph Stalin that the territories of Voronezh, Kursk, Chornomoriya, Azov, Kuban regions be administered by the government of the Ukrainian SSR.