French media AFP Factuel asked “Smart Osvita” to comment on the coverage of the events of the Second World War in modern textbooks on the history of Ukraine.
Our methodologist, Yuliia Topolnytska, gave the comment, and the media published a wonderful article dispelling russian propaganda.
Education in Ukraine is carried out following the Law on Education. The Law states: (Article 12, Clause 4): “Primary education is acquired, as a rule, from the age of six. Children who are seven years old at the beginning of the school year must start primary education in the same school year.” (https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/2145-19#Text)
Primary education in Ukraine lasts 4 years (grades 1-4). The study of the integrated propaedeutic course of history and civic education begins in secondary school (in the 5th grade, the children are 11-12 years old). Before this time, at the age of 9-10 y.o. (3-4 grades of primary school), children do not study the history of Ukraine. However, beginning from the 7th grade, the history of Ukraine is studied according to the chronological principle. So, in the 10th grade (this is a high school, age of 15-16 y.o.) pupils study the Second World War.
All textbooks on the history of Ukraine are created according to the curriculum drawn up and approved by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine. Curricula and school textbooks are updated every 5 years. The last update of the programs was in 2022 (before that there was an update in 2017). New textbooks on the history of Ukraine for the 10th grade were approved in 2023 (according to the schedule). The program on the history of Ukraine, according to which the textbooks were created, can be downloaded from the link: https://mon.gov.ua/storage/app/media/zagalna%20serednya/programy- 5-9-klas/2022/08/15/Navchalna.programa.2022.WH.HU.6-11.pdf (Ukraine during the Second World War, pages 81-82). The study of the history of Ukraine elsewhere in big cities and small villages is going according to this one program.
The New Ukrainian School reform (NUS) is being implemented step by step. Currently, NUS has already been implemented in grades 1-6. Starting from the 2024 academic year, NUS will be implemented in the 7th grade. In high school (in the 10th grade) NUS will be implemented in 2027. Until this time, high school students (grades 10-11) will study according to one curriculum (updated in 2022, link above).
All theses that Ukraine is rewriting history are hostile Russian propaganda. After all, it is Russia that is rewriting history, manipulating historical facts to justify the russian invader’s plans of Ukraine.
Books on the history of Ukraine (10th grade) do not say that Hitler “liberated” Western Ukraine. Hitler’s Nazi regime occupied all Ukrainian lands, just like the Soviet one. Here is a book on the history of Ukraine approved by the Ministry of Education of Ukraine for the 10th grade in use: https://nx.litera.ltd/s/SoXWSCs3G5QCGaj (the electronic version is available for free on the publisher’s website)
Additional information
Back in the 1920s, most of the territory of Ukraine was occupied by the Russian Bolsheviks. As we know, in 1939 the two dictators Hitler and Stalin concluded the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The agreement consisted in the division of Europe between the USSR and Nazi Germany, Western Ukraine was to go to the USSR.
Western Ukrainian lands (the Lviv region, in particular) were occupied by the USSR in 1939, at the beginning of the Second World War. The Soviet occupation authorities started repression against the Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian civilians in the western Ukrainian lands, accusing them of being hostile to the communist totalitarian regime (pages 277-278 in the textbook, link above).
The population of Western Ukraine knew about the famines of 1921-1923, 1928-1929, the Holodomor-Genocide of 1932-1933, which were carried out by the Soviet authorities against Ukrainian peasants. The population of Western Ukraine also knew about the hundreds of thousands of tortured and executed representatives of the Ukrainian intellectual elite of Soviet Ukraine who fell victim to the Soviet repressive machine in the 1930s.
So, when in 1941, Nazi Germany occupied Western Ukraine, for the local Ukrainian population this occupation seemed a lesser evil than the Soviet one.
It should be noted that the initially loyal attitude of the population of Western Ukraine towards the Germans was an achievement of German Nazi propaganda in the first years of World War II. By the same propagandist means, Russia tried to convince the population of Ukraine of its “good” intentions during the occupation of Ukrainian territories since 2014. The spread of narratives about Hitler’s “liberation” of the lands of western Ukraine is part of the ideology of racism, which involves a propaganda cliché about Ukrainian Nazis. This is due to the fact that anti-Soviet and anti-Russian sentiments have always been most widespread in the West of Ukraine. So, Russia is currently using the Soviet propaganda narrative of World War II to portray Ukrainian patriots as supporters of Nazism before the world community.
Read the full article here
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