World War II in Ukrainian school history textbooks: mapping the discourse of the past

AbstractThe main objective of this paper is to illustrate the conceptualisation of a textbook as a site of memory, a discourse and a genre. This paper investigates the semantic and linguistic elements of the discourse of World War II in Ukrainian school history textbooks for the 11th grade, centring on the following distinct key themes: the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the German attack on the Soviet Union and the ensuing Nazi occupation regime, the Soviet army offensive followed by the restoration of the Soviet regime, and resistance movements. The textbooks analysed dismantle the Soviet myth of the Great Patriotic War and reveal the atrocities of Stalinism. They also create a new hero-and-victim paradigm: the heroic deeds of Ukrainians in the Soviet army and of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) fighting for Ukraine’s independence are emphasised, as is the suffering of Ukrainians under the German occupation and the Stalinist regime.Keywords: World War IItextbooksmemorydiscourse analysisUkraine AcknowledgementsThe author thanks David Marples and the two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments, which allowed her to substantially improve this article.Notes1. For an analysis of the politics of memory in Poland, Russia and Ukraine, see the Memory at War project at http://www.memoryatwar.org.2. According to the official curriculum, high-school students in Ukraine are not exposed to the study of World War II prior to the 11th grade (the exception being an introductory course of Ukrainian history in the 5th grade). For the textbooks that have been adopted by Ukraine’s Ministry of Education for use in history lessons in schools in the years 1998–2010 see ‘Information Bulletin and Comments of the Ministry of Education, Science, Youth and Sports’. For the selection procedure of school textbooks in Ukraine see also Janmaat (2008) and Popson (Citation2001).3. At the same time, it should be noted that in the Ukrainian case, the state’s influence on the knowledge conveyed through official history textbooks remains limited. As observed in previous studies, the official history narrative is contested and negotiated in classrooms through students’ family memories and history teachers. For various aspects of history teaching in Ukraine, see Richardson (Citation2004) and Rodgers (Citation2007). Moreover, the production of a textbook involves various actors, ranging from government officials to academic historians, the civil society and publishers, whose interests and resources are constrained by the institutional framework.4. This understanding of language has been borrowed from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which focuses on how language functions in transferring knowledge and power and in organising social institutions. In this social construction of reality, language is not powerful on its own, but becomes powerful when people use it. For CDA see Wodak and Busch (Citation2004) and Wodak (Citation2008).5. The two textbooks analysed are also available in newer or older editions by the same authors. Essentially, the first authors of the textbooks (in collaboration with other authors) have dominated the establishment of 11th-grade history textbooks over the past 20 years in Ukraine. Fedir Turchenko is based at the Zaporizhzhia National University and Stanislav Kulchytskyi at the National Academy of Sciences in Kyiv.6. All translations from Ukrainian (in quotes) here and in further instances are by the author.