Building Socialism in the National Classroom: Education and Language Policy in Soviet Ukraine, 1923-30

Abstract

In the early 1920s, the Soviet government in the republic of Ukraine embarked on an ambitious project to teach Ukrainian children in their native tongue. The establishment of a network of Ukrainian-language primary schools was part of a republic-wide program known as Ukrainization, which called for the promotion of the Ukrainian language and professional advancement of Ukrainian ethnic elites. This study, based on archival evidence and contemporaneous press accounts, analyzes the Ukrainization of primary schools, arguably the policy's greatest success. It contends that educational planners pursued a program for social transformation by linking Ukrainian-language instruction with an innovative, progressive pedagogy. Soviet authorities believed that a Ukrainian "new school" would allow teachers to effectively and quickly train children for a public role in the new socialist state. However, the number of Ukrainian-speakers in the Communist Party remained proportionately small. Authorities relied on non-party intelligentsia for the design and implementation of Ukrainization. As educators assumed a central role in the campaign, the party grew apprehensive about its capacity to control their initiative. Complaints by Russian-speaking parents regarding the forced Ukrainization of their children also gave the party further reason for concern.

Although teachers' qualitative knowledge of Ukrainian continued to be poor after Ukrainization was formally achieved in the schools, this study concludes that the enthusiastic efforts of some educators and the ardent support of their patrons in the government unnerved the party's leadership. It condemned what it viewed as nationalism in the schools because it did not have direct management over the classroom and feared the potential corruption of the very generation it hoped would "build socialism." It ultimately sanctioned the arrest and trial of teachers who had too warmly welcomed Ukrainization and the pedagogical experimentation it had permitted.