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Tending to the “Native Word”: Teachers and the Soviet Campaign for Ukrainian-Language Schooling, 1923–1930

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Matthew D. Pauly
Matthew D. Pauly*
Affiliation:
Department of History, 301 Morrill Hall, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA. Email: paulym@msu.edu
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Extract

In the 1920s, the Ukrainian Commissariat of Education and a circle of progressive educators aimed to radically transform the educational system in Ukraine, and, as a consequence, the skills and mentality of its graduates. To do this, they would have to teach students in a language they understood. For nearly three-quarters of the juvenile population of Ukraine, this meant instruction in Ukrainian. Although this may have sounded like a simple proposition, it was not. Throughout the pre-revolutionary period, schools had educated Ukrainian children in Russian, and teachers, regardless of their ethnicity, were trained and accustomed to teaching in it. Pre-revolutionary publications, still widely used in Soviet schools, and even the early Soviet primers were overwhelmingly written in Russian. Ukrainian national leaders had made an attempt to set up a network of Ukrainian-language schools during the country's short-lived period of independence, but their attempts were disrupted by the chaos of civil war and the fall of successive governments. It was under Soviet patronage that the “Ukrainization” of the schools reached its greatest extent; however, it was an achievement that required effort, and real qualitative change in the language of instruction was gradual.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 37 , Issue 3 , May 2009 , pp. 251 - 276
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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References

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Derzhavnyi arkhiv Kyivs'koi oblasti (DAKO), Kyiv, Ukraine.Google Scholar
Tsentral'nyi derzhavnyi arkhiv hromads'kykh ob“iednan’ Ukrainy (TsDAHOU), Kyiv, Ukraine.Google Scholar
Tsentral'nyi derzhavnyi arkhiv vykonnykh orhaniv Ukrainy (TsDAVOU), Kyiv, Ukraine.Google Scholar
Narodnii uchytel', Kharkiv, 1925–1930.Google Scholar
Bilaniuk, Laada. Contested Tongues: Language Politics and Cultural Correction in Ukraine. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Blitstein, Peter A. “Nation-Building or Russification? Obligatory Russian Instruction in the Soviet Non-Russian School, 1938–1953.” In The State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin, edited by Grigor Suny, Ronald and Martin, Terry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001: 253–25.Google Scholar
Bolabol'chenko, Anatolii. SVU–sud nad perekonanniamy. Kyiv: Kobza, 1994.Google Scholar
Bondar, A. H., et al., eds. Narodna osvita i pedahohichna nauka v Ukrains'kii RSR. Kyiv: Radians'ka shkola, 1967.Google Scholar
Borysov, V. L. “Ukrainizatsiia ta rozvytok zahalnoosvitnoi shkoly v 1921–31 rr.” Ukrains'kyi istorychnyi zhural, no. 2 (1999): 76–80.Google Scholar
Danylenko, V. M., and Kravchenko, A. A. Volodymyr Durdukivs'kyi: pedahoh, krytyk, hromads'kyi diach (1874–1938). Kyiv: Nika Tsentr, 2000.Google Scholar
Edgar, Adrienne Lynn. Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Ewing, Thomas E. The Teachers of Stalinism: Policy, Practice, and Power in Soviet Schools of the 1930s. New York: Peter Lang, 2002.Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, Sheila, ed. Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928–1934. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, Sheila, ed. Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union: 1921–1934. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Hirsch, Francine. Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Holmes, Larry E. The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse: Reforming Education in Soviet Russia, 1917–1931. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Holmes, Larry E. Stalin's School: Moscow's Model School No. 25, 1931–1937. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Kelly, Catriona. Children's World: Growing Up in Russia, 1890–1991. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Khalid, Adeeb. The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Krawchenko, Bohdan. Social Change and National Consciousness in Twentieth Century Ukraine. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Kuromiya, Hiroaki. “Stalin'skii ‘velikii perelom’ i protses nad ‘Souizom Osvobozhdeniia Ukrainy,” Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 1 (1994): 190–19.Google Scholar
Liber, George. Soviet Nationality Policy, Urban Growth, and Identity Change in the Ukrainians SSR, 1928–1934. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Lozyts'kyi, V. S. “Polityka ukrainizatsii v 20–30-kh rokakh: istoriia, problemy, uroky.” Ukrains'kyi istorychnyi zhurnal, no. 3 (1989): 50–51.Google Scholar
Lypyns'kyi, V. V. “Kontseptsia ta model’ osvity v USRR u 20-ti rr.” Ukrains'kyi istorichnyi zhurnal, no. 5 (1999): 3–13.Google Scholar
Mace, James E. Communism and the Dilemmas of National Liberation: National Communism in Soviet Ukraine, 1918–1933. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1983.Google Scholar
Malii, Konstantin. “Ukrainizatsiia osvity. 20-ti roky.” Ridna shkola, no. 11–12 (1996): 29–30.Google Scholar
Marochko, Vasyl', and Hillig, Götz. Represovani pedahohy Ukrainy: zhertvy polichnoho teroru (1919–1941). Kyiv: Vyd. Naukovyi svit, 2003.Google Scholar
Martin, Terry. The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–39. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Partlett, William. “Breaching Cultural Worlds with the Village School: Educational Visions, Local Initiative, and Rural Experience at S. T. Shatskii's Kaluga School System, 1919–1932.” Slavic and East European Review 82, no. 4 (2004): 847–84.Google Scholar
Partlett, William. “Bourgeois Ideas in Communist Construction: The Development of Stanislav Shatskii's Teacher Training Methods.” History of Education 35, no. 4–5 (2006): 453–45.Google Scholar
Pauly, Matthew D. “Building Socialism in the National Classroom: Education and Language Policy in Soviet Ukraine, 1923–30.” Ph.D. diss. Indiana University, 2005.Google Scholar
Pauly, Matthew D. “Teaching Place, Assembling the Nation: Local Studies in Soviet Ukrainian Schools during the 1920s.” History of Education <http://www.informaworld.com/10.1080/00467600802563307>/./.>Google Scholar
Polemun, N. M., and Suravko, L. F. Ukrainizatsiia na Chernihivshchyni v 20–30-ti roky: zbirka dokumentiv, edited by Polemun, N.M. and Suravko, L.F. Chernihiv: Derzhavnyi arkhiv Chernihivs'koi oblasti, 1997.Google Scholar
Prystaiko, Volodymyr, and Sprava, Iurii Shapoval. “Spilky vyzvolennia Ukrainy”: nevidomi dokumenty i fakty. Kyiv: Intel, 1995.Google Scholar
Prystaiko, Volodymyr, and Shapoval, Iurii. Mykhailo Hrushevs'kyi i GPU-NKVD. Trahichne desiatylittia: 1924–1934. Kyiv: Ukraina, 1996.Google Scholar
Shapoval, Iurii, Prystaiko, Volodymyr, and Zolotar'ov, Vadym. ChK-GPU-NKVD v Ukraini. Kyiv: Abrys, 1997.Google Scholar
Skrypnyk, Mykola. Statti i promovy. Vol. 2. Kharkiv: Proletar, 1931.Google Scholar
Slezkine, Yuri. “The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism.” Slavic Review, no. 53 (1994): 414–41.Google Scholar
Smolii, V. A., ed. “Ukrainizatsiia” 1920–30-kh rokiv: peredumovy, zdobutky, uroky. Kyiv: Instytut istorii Ukrainy NAN Ukrainy, 2003.Google Scholar
Sukhomlyns'ka, O. V., ed. Narys istorii ukrains'koho shkil'nytstva (1905–1933). Kyiv: Zapovit, 1996.Google Scholar
Sydorenko, O. I., and Tabachnyk, D. V., eds. Represovane “vidrodzhennia” Kyiv: Ukraina, 1993.Google Scholar
Tron'ko, P. T., Vynokur, I. S., and Babenko, L. L. Represovane kraieznavstvo (20-30-i roky). Kyiv: Ridnyi krai, 1991.Google Scholar
Yekelchyk, Serhy. Stalin's Empire of Memory: Russian-Ukrainian Relations in the Soviet Historical Imagination. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Yekelchyk, Serhy. Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Zahra, Tara. Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008.Google Scholar