Why not synchronize our textbooks with those of Mongolia, Tatarstan, and Turkey?
The year 2002 was proclaimed by Russia as the year of Ukraine. By reciprocity, the year to follow will become the year of the Russian Federation in Ukraine. This gives us reason to expect the strengthening of economic and cultural ties between Ukraine and Russia, something of crucial importance to both countries. This opens ways to learn anew about Russia, a country that has changed completely during the last ten years, a terra incognita for us, in a way. Despite its dynamic development, Russia has never stopped to value and respect its past, the history of the USSR and Russian Empire, indicating the right of any people to its own history.
Nationals of Ukraine respect their millennium of history as well. We realize that our history is something more than just a scholarly discipline or academic course. History underlies national consciousness, offers examples to be followed, is a source of patriotism, a lever for self-assertion among neighboring peoples, a means of national identity.
The right to teach our national history in educational establishments was given to us by Verkhovna Rada’s Declaration of the Sovereignty of Ukraine of July 16, 1990. Before, a course in Ukrainian history in secondary schools was optional, encompassing a modest 30 hours. Most of it dwelt with the history of the USSR, i.e. the history of Russia. All this makes our own history a kind of a visiting card of our sovereignty.
To make it more than just a declaration, both countries’ officials had to draw up plans of significant steps aimed at bringing together Russia and Ukraine in all spheres of life. With this in sight, commissions in both governments were created to develop and implement such plans, among others, a commission on issues of the humanities. While shaping its agenda, the commission also touched on the issue of school history textbooks. Already last year, Russia’s Prosveshchenie Publishing House put forward the idea to engage Ukrainian and Russian scholars to jointly write a history textbook. I too received such a proposal. Like many others, I refused then, but the idea is still out there. That is probably why the Russian party in the commission on such issues proposed creating a team of Russian and Ukrainian authors to write school history textbooks. This information got onto the Internet, sparking off a tidal wave of public protest. A joint textbook is a sellout of the Ukrainian past, denying us the right to have our own history. It is quite clear who must refuse to be involved in this team. That is why the protest took the shape of protecting our domestic history textbooks.
Is there a problem of school history textbooks in the relations between Ukraine and Russia? If it exists, in what form then? I would like to dwell on these issues briefly. The problem of school history textbooks is always present in the relations between two neighboring states. Textbooks must mirror the history of their relations, which has not always been devoid of conflicts. Papering over conflicts and wars is not recommended, but writers must tell children about them in a way not to mold the enemy syndrome toward a neighbor.
The technique of dealing with the problem has been known long enough. First, the authors themselves must define the form of presenting negative information. Second, the content and form of a textbook is to be viewed from the perspective of a neighboring country historians. If this is done on a reciprocal basis, there will not be any grudges and children in both countries will not have a psychological barrier communicating with each other.
On my table there is a textbook, Poland and Germany in the Twentieth Century: Guidelines and Materials for Teaching History. The book was published in 2001 in Poznan (Poland) and dedicated to the thirtieth anniversary of work of a joint Polish-German commission on textbooks which was created in 1972 under a UNESCO program. The textbooks, written within its framework have been used to teach history to several generations of Poles and Germans, have and are substantially contributing to the integration processes within the European Union.
The book was presented to me by the chairman of the Polish-Ukrainian commission on textbooks, Prof. Wladislaw Serczyk. The decision to set up this commission was reached during the 1992 visit to Ukraine by the Polish Prime Minister Hanna Suhotska and her talks with Prime Minister of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma. In October 2002 Prof. Serczyk and his Polish colleagues are due to come to Kyiv for their next session with Ukrainian counterparts. Being aware of this scholar’s principled position, dedication, great learning, and expertise in this area (he has also written textbooks on the history of Ukraine), I foresee lengthy and detailed discussions on how Polish history is interpreted in new Ukrainian textbooks. On our part, we are preparing to discuss how the Ukrainian history is presented in new Polish textbooks.
It would be a good idea to create a similar Ukrainian-Russian commission on history textbooks having similar functions. Frankly, for many years I had not believed it could come true, as our histories had been too strongly intertwined, with the minds of modern scholars and pedagogues still too much dominated by Russian imperial and Soviet historiography. However, when a high-profile delegation of Russian historians headed by the director of the Institute of World History at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician Aleksandr Chubarian, came to the Institute of Ukrainian History last year, the idea of a joint commission began to acquire real dimensions. The agreement on cooperation between both institutes also dealt with the problem of school textbooks. We exchanged textbooks, read them, and were able to evaluate what children of both countries are taught in schools.
Replacing the commission, whose business is to make recommendations to the authors of existing textbooks, with a team of writers to create a single textbook, which provoked an upsurge of emotions in Ukraine, is clearly a misunderstanding. In fact, no answer has been given as to what kind of a joint textbook will be written, on the Russian or Ukrainian history?
Having recently screened up to twenty new textbooks on Russian history (in fact, there are many more), I have some questions for their authors. The first one for which I could not get a convincing answer is the history of what country our neighbors should study, modern or Soviet Russia (their borders coincide) or imperial Russia and the Soviet Union?
In 1990, Russia and then Ukraine opted for sovereignty, in so doing causing the breakup of the Soviet Union. The then stance of the Russian leadership, however, was based on tactical, rather than strategic considerations. Soviet Russia in 1922 was objectively the core republic for the creation of the Soviet Union. No wonder the meaning of a state holiday declared on June 12, 1990 to mark the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Federation is quite ambiguous. Still, it is for the Russian historians to define the territory of the country they study. To give you a complete picture, I would like to offer my personal view that speaking about Russia’s history one cannot confine himself to current borders. The borders of the republics were shaped only after the collapse of the empire.
Most Russian textbooks interpret historical events occurring on modern Russia’s territory. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s territory in the twentieth century is mentioned as a theater of military operations in the World War I, during the Russian Civil War, and World War II.
There is neither the need nor space in the present article to analyze specific textbooks. Still, some of them must be mentioned. One is struck with the incompetence of extremely qualified Russian historians, some of whom are quite well known in Europe, when they begin to deal with the facts of Ukrainian history. In particular, the History of Russia: Twentieth Century (written by O. Volobuiev, V. Zhuravliev, A. Nenarokov, and A. Stepanishchev and published by Drofa Publishers in 2001 gives only a quick mention to the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the 1917-1920 period, referring to them as “the troops of the Ukrainian People’s Council” (actually Central Council, then Directory, which was a bit different — Ed., p.120). This is how they call the army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic during the period of the Directory.
Those few textbooks which completely identify Russia with the Russian Empire include T. Chernikova’s History of Russia: Ninth-Sixteenth Centuries (Moscow, 2000) and History of Russia: Seventeenth-Eighteenth Centuries (Moscow, 2000). The author based her textbooks on the works of Russian renowned past historians Karamzin, Soloviev, and Kliuchevsky. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when these scholars developed their historical concepts, the existence of the Ukrainian language and culture, as well as the existence of the Ukrainian people as such was officially denied. Superficially, it might seem that these works reflected the historical realities. However, in the twentieth century the Ukrainian people not only proved its existence but also gained independence. How can one write a textbook referring to Kyiv a multitude of times, ignoring at the same time the existence of a nation of millions?
These are conceptual issues, which should be dealt with by the proposed Ukrainian-Russian commission on textbooks. I believe that by taking a joint effort we could overcome the age-old mental inertia, as we will be speaking about quite obvious facts. I am convinced that the commission could persuade the author of the History of Russia. Twentieth Century mentioned above to withdraw from the text of its further editions the statement that the Crimea was transferred to the jurisdiction of Ukraine “in violation of three articles of the Constitution of the Russian Federation” which renders the decision of the then Russian Federation Supreme Soviet Presidium “null and void as of the date of its approval” (p. 250). I am not speaking here whether Soviet constitutions were legitimate, given the Communist Party’s iron grip on political life, the latter, incidentally, not even mentioned in the textbook. I believe, it would suffice here to refer only to Article 2 of the agreement between Ukraine and Russia on friendship, cooperation, and partnership ratified by the Duma, the Russian Federation’s Council, and finally signed by the Russian president in April 1999. This article contains the recognition by both parties of the inviolability of their state borders, as well as the absence of any territorial claims toward each other at the moment of signing the agreement and in the future. Students of secondary schools for whom this textbook was written are Russia’s future citizens. I have no doubt that our Russian colleagues can find many things in Ukrainian textbooks with which they will not agree. Ukrainian historians are ready to analyze their claims and discuss them.
In the course of our work with Prof. Serczyk in the Ukrainian- Polish commission for textbooks he frequently managed to prove his point, making me change my views with regard to specific historical facts and definitions, including some those in my own textbooks. On the other hand, on a number of occasions we succeeded in talking our Polish friends into accepting our views. This is a normal process of bridging differences, which merely calls for goodwill, concern for the souls and minds of our children, and lack of any kind of extremism.
One can hardly challenge the idea that every people has a right to its own history. As professional historians and pedagogues, we must see to it when teaching domestic history in schools that opposing views on the same facts and events do not light a fire that could later burn the souls of our children.
