The forced changes to the curriculum, upon which officials in Education mandated authors to rewrite textbooks, were not decreed by law. Similarly, on the Internet site of the MON (Ministry of Education and Learning) it is impossible to find the history curriculum for the schools, which are now shifting to an 11-year prorgramme. Instead, there is small file with the programme for only the 5th grade. It looks as though at the moment they are straining to censor the history of Rus’, the Kozak era, and of course, the turbulent 20th century.
Volodymyr Viatrovych
When today’s government was in opposition, not that long ago, they criticized the “Orangists” for excessive control over the humanities spheres. Nevertheless, on the basis of their own first steps, the new leadership demonstrated that they have now inherited control of this area. In fact, discussions about repressions, the Holodomor (genocide by famine in Ukraine, 1932-33), UPA, and other aspects of the Ukrainian past have not diminished in society; instead omniscient politicians rather than professional historians now put forward the primary interpretations of these events.
Accustomed to the idea that in Ukrainian politics “the winner takes all,” the new regime has decided to widen its governance to include the historical past. The newly elected president–who notwithstanding the facts of academic research, international recognition, Ukrainian legal decision, and Ukrainian law, publicly declared that the Holodomor was not genocide–initiated this process. In every aspect, the president’s ‘new’ conception of this tragedy echoes the Kremlin’s assertions about “common suffering” and “local excesses.”
It has become fashionable to assess our past according to how it appeals to our northern neighbour. And because for some years now our neighbour has been fancying “Joseph Stalin, the effective manager,” to whom the current Russian leadership compares itself, that is—the prime minister and the president, it has become inconvenient to speak of Stalin’s crimes. The fact that not only historians chronicle these crimes but that millions of documents testify to their veracity doesn’t seem to be a problem. The most important of these documents are still in the safes of the secret services (spetssluzhby), while the new head of the SBU, who swiftly grasped his place and function, announced on his first day in office that the full extent of the truth, which was necessary to reveal, has been disclosed. What he meant was: that’s all you’re going to get. If there are no documents there is no past; what exists is an imagined conception of the past, which can be harnessed by propaganda. This is the classical model of totalitarian control, practiced and validated by the theories and actions of Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler.
Dmytro Tabachnyk is the flag bearer of the current reevaluation of Ukrainian history; he is using his position to impose onto society his own conception of our history. His first announcement was about the need for new textbooks and for coordinating them with Russian colleagues. Clearly, “this historical discovery of Tabachnyk’s” implies a mandate to alter the curriculum of history courses, subscribing to the following theses: the “famine in Ukraine was not artificial,” “Stalin was a victor in World War II,” “Bandera and Shukhevych were Nazi collaborators.” It’s evident that an old history text has found its way into the hands of this doctor of historical studies–Dmytro Tabachnyk, a text published 25 years ago, in the years of his stormy youth, a text he is now using as an inexhaustible source for his reforms of the history curriculum. Thus, in actual fact, there is absolutely nothing new in the proposed reforms, as Soviet propaganda addressed these issues long ago and at great length. And did this help? Truth tore asunder not only Soviet historical myth, but also detonated a seemingly invincible empire. This doctor of history didn’t study his subject very well; he is not halting his useless but active project of censoring Ukrainian history.
Most people do not read historical texts or memoirs, let alone collections of documents. Their conceptions about the past are formed during their school years, at a time when whether a pupil wants to or not, he must study history as a compulsory subject. Consequently, in every society, whatever its nature, the main instrument of forging a conceptualization of the past is the history textbook. Thus, it is with good reason, that the history textbook is often considered an attribute of the state, such as the anthem, the flag and the crest. This point was well understood by the ideological inspiration of today’s “reformers,” that is Joseph Stalin, who personally took part in the creation of the Soviet historical cannon. His “Short Course of the History of the All Union Communist Party (Bolshevik)” was the original matrix on which all subsequent histories of the USSR were based. This matrix still regulates the conception of the past, which informs our politicians and rulers, as most of them have not read anything else.
But their time is inexorably passing. During the past twenty years of independence a whole generation of citizens has grown up with a completely different conception of the historical past. Even though these citizens live on streets named Lenin, Dzerzhinski or Molotov, or pass Soviet monuments on their way to work or school, they understand that the regime, which took the lives of millions of Ukrainians, was criminal. They understand that that regime was only able to realize its plans thanks to the silence of the majority. They understand that this kind of evil must never again return. For politicians who openly or secretly strive to shove Ukraine back to this “bright past” these young people are seen as a “lost” generation. In reality, they are a generation of hope for the future of Ukraine. So, in order for their ranks not to swell yearly, it has now been deemed necessary to “correct” the conception of the past in the emerging younger generations of Ukrainians. Dmytro Tabachnyk has taken this mission upon himself.
On the 1st of September (the opening of the school year) hundreds of thousands of 5th graders began their introduction to the study of the past with a textbook called “Introduction to the History of Ukraine.” Even though this book does not and cannot cover voluminous historical information, it is this book, which forms the first conceptions of the history of the past for the young pupils. So, the book’s significance is not to be underestimated. But this year’s 5th graders will see a different picture of the past than their mates who are one year ahead of them in grade 6. Let us try to understand the particulars of what was removed from this textbook for the 5th grade. No less interesting will it be to outline how these changes were made.
Changes to the history curriculum and programme occur periodically; every year there are more events, which become part of history and historians continue their labour by discovering new documents or elaborating on new and interesting analyses. The procedures of incorporating changes into textbooks are fairly protracted, however. Changes are preceded by lengthy discussions in academic meetings where proposed conceptions and alterations are deliberated and approved. Following these discussions there are various bureaucratic steps taken by the Ministry of Education, where proposals for changes are further discussed in committee meetings and conferences, after which more deliberations take place on the board of the Ministry of Education and Learning where there are representatives from the ministry, historians, instructors and education methodologists. Strictly speaking, it is only after all these discussions that changes to the curriculum or programme are accepted, and only finalized by a directive from the Minister of Education. So, it is in this way, through rather lengthy public discussions, often heated, and after consultation with some three hundred historians and teachers of history from all over Ukraine, after extensive community debates (in which the programme is discussed publicly on a community level for a two month period after the ministerial recommendations) that the final changes to the curriculum are accepted into the programme; this is how the last changes were effected in 2009.
However, this programme, which was the result of the work of many historians, pedagogues, and methodologists, for some reason no longer appears on the website of the Ministry of Education and Learning. Instead, here we find, amongst the programmes for other subjects, a course, which resembles the “Introduction to History” for the 5th grade, but one, which was never publicly discussed. Neither was there ever any announcement about the fact that it was to be reexamined by the board and nor did anyone see the directive to initiate changes by the Minister.
No less interesting is the manner in which the changes to the programme were delivered to the authors of the textbook, who had to adapt their texts accordingly. Victor Mysan described this in an interview, which appeared in Ukrainska Pravda: “The last edition of the programme was ratified by the Minister of Education and Learning in 2005 and further updated in 2009. The author was Vitaly Vlasov. Who brought in the changes into the curriculum this year, I do not know. In a telephone call the editor of the publishing house enumerated the changes. I did not see my text with the alterations.” Thus, discussions and appropriate bureaucratic procedure were hastily substituted with a telephone call in the spirit and custom of Soviet times.
Now let’s examine what “changes” were introduced into the programme in this brazen manner. The word “changes” I am obliged to use in quotation marks, for in point of fact there was only really one change: the term the “Second World War,” a term accepted and established in international historiography has been altered to “Great Patriotic War,” a term invented by Stalinist propagandists. Other “changes” were actually excisions. The following topics have disappeared from the history programme for 5th graders: “Ukrainian Sich Riflemen. Artistic accomplishments of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen,” “Western Ukrainian lands during the interwar period,” “the Great Terror,” “Repressions,” “Ukrainian liberation movements during the war years (OUN and UPA),” “Terminating the war, the post-war period, suppression of the liberation movement,” “Dissidents,” “the National-Democratic movement of the 1980-1990s.” These excisions were not accidental, but were prepared with the goal of eliminating information about the Ukrainian struggle for independence and its strangulation by the occupier of Ukraine.
This tendency appears often, even in a more brutal variant, not only in the programme, but in the “adapted” passages of the textbook, from which all information about the Battle of Kruty, the use of the term “artificial Holodomor,” texts and illustrations about UPA and the Orange Revolution have been eliminated. As Victor Mysan, the author of the textbook has indicated, in the above-mentioned interview, changes have even been made to the sections dealing with the Kozak era. Most of the alterations have to do with the rendition of Russian politics on Ukrainian territory, and the aim of this is to create a non-aggressive picture of our Northeastern neighbour. Ukrainians are supposed to forget why they languished for hundreds of years in the colonial yoke. Is it, perhaps, so that they do not notice its resurgence?
What’s interesting, is that on the Ministry of Education and Learning website where the programmes for all subjects are laid out, the Ministry has only posted the history prgramme for the 5th graders. Obviously, it takes a lot more time for a functionary to excise historical facts from the higher grades. As for providing time for a public and professional discussion or even the preparation of a directive from the Minister–there was clearly no thought of that. And so what do we have now? Texts adapted to an illegal programme, imposed from above. (Let’s recall that no one heard of any directive.) All this comes from the will of one person, who pretends to be the clarion of the only correct version of history.
When one reads about the kind of changes and how these were enacted in our history textbooks, it is difficult to escape the sense of government intrusion. In truth, all this has already existed before. Soviet in form and content, the pseudo reformers are a testament of the retrograde nature of the new government and its inability to tear itself away from the captivity of the Soviet past; but this augurs its lack of prospects.
Of course, there remains the possibility for the Ministry to press about “inaccurate criticism” and to claim that these were normative acts resulting from the transition to an 11-year schooling period. But the change in the scope of the material, which is taught in a given year, should not entail administrative exclusion of events, countries, movements, important personages, or even years and decades of our historical past. It looks as though the new Minister of Education is afraid of coming out into public with his “new” approach to history and having a professional discussion. But the past cannot be rubbed out. Opened up archives cannot be shut down, published documents can no longer be burned, and memory cannot be eroded. History is recounted not only in textbooks, but also by work weary parents. And even when someone rewrites a textbook, he will not be able to decree: “shut your trap” to our grandparents and parents. He will not even be able to mandate his view to all teachers.
Consequently, our history will not disappear. But this will teach us once again that the past can be repeated today only as farce. Today, we are the witnesses of the first acts of this farce. However, in the end result the kind of country we live in, a caricature of the USSR or a prospective democratic country, depends not only on the government but also on the citizens.
Translated by F. Ponomarenko.
04.10.2010
