‘Compliance or contradiction’? Teaching ‘History’ in the ‘New’ Ukraine. A view from Ukraine's Eastern Borderlands

Abstract

Whilst much academic rigour has been devoted to analysing the ‘contents’ of historical textbooks in Ukraine, this article examines the teacher's role in the ‘transfer’ of the state's message to schoolchildren. This article demonstrates that in Ukraine's eastern borderlands teachers are highly active in negotiating the new historical narrative. Teachers are found to subtly change the accent or focus away from the ‘nationalist’ stance towards Russia, as found in the school history textbooks, to a more tolerant stance which aims to promote rather than negate Ukraine's historical interactions with Russia. Thus, this simultaneously reinforces a particular ‘regional’ understanding of historical events.

Notes

¹The author would like to make clear that whilst ‘negotiating’ entry into five schools in each of the three cities with the relevant education authorities, the author made it clear that a mix of schools was desired according to variables such as language of instruction, Ukrainian or Russian, private or state funded and according to the general socio-economic background of the pupils. The author is ‘happy’ that such guidelines were adhered to. Nevertheless it still needs to be made clear that these schools were ‘chosen’ by the local authorities themselves. In each of the schools, approximately three to five individuals were interviewed, with a total of 63 interviews taking place.

²A discussion of how textbooks utilised today in Ukraine differ from ones used in the early to late 1990s can be found in Rodgers (2006c).

³In the ‘field’, I spent many hours ‘observing’ history lessons in schools in the study areas. In several instances, teachers followed a clear ‘pick and choose’ methodology when utilising the history textbook in which a slightly different accent was placed on events than those that the textbook's architects may have wished. In one instance in a school in Luhans'k, one history teacher, whilst wishing to remain anonymous, stated openly how she simply ignored much of the discussions concerning OUN/UPA and instead concentrated on the sections regarding how the ‘Soviets’ liberated Ukraine from the Nazi aggressors.