Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society

School Curricula

This section studies the representation of the OUN and UPA in the 1996, 1998, 2001, 2004, 2009, and 2012 curricula for the subject of history of Ukraine (Prohramy 1996; Prohramy 1998; Prohramy 2001; Prohramy 2005; Prohrama 2009; Pometun, Hupan and Freiman 2009; Kul’chyts’kyi and Lebedyeva 2009; Prohrama 2012; Prohrama 2012a; Prohrama 2012b) as well as in a draft curriculum developed by the working group in 2009. It analyzes the choice of terminology used to refer to the nationalist movement, coverage of controversial issues, and methodological approaches. During the Yushchenko presidency, three different versions of the secondary school curriculum were developed for different levels of specialization in history (standard, specialized, and non-specialized). All three versions are studied in the present article.

All the curricula analyzed here followed the approach introduced by Kul’chyts’kyi in the early 1990s whereby the Soviet partisans and the underground movement are regarded as two currents of the anti-Nazi Resistance movement in Ukraine—a compromise solution used in the official curricula to balance the conflicting regional versions of national memory. Notable changes in the curricula concerned the use of terms to refer to the nationalist organizations and the coverage of controversial issues. While the OUN and UPA were referred to as the “underground movement” or simply OUN or UPA in the earlier curricula, they were called the “Ukrainian liberation movement” for the first time during the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko (2005–2010). The mention of the Act of Restoration of the Ukrainian State (the proclamation of independence by the OUN-B at the beginning of Nazi occupation in June 1941 in Lviv) was introduced in the 1996 curriculum, removed in 1998, re-introduced under Yushchenko in 2009, and removed again under Viktor Yanukovych (2010–2014) for the standard level. During the Yushchenko years, the message about the OUN and UPA became highly contradictory. While praising the OUN and UPA as “the Ukrainian liberation movement,” some difficult issues such as the participation of Ukrainians in the German armed forces and in the SS Halychyna Division and the Polish–Ukrainian conflict were introduced for the first time. During the Yanukovych years, the terms “Volyn tragedy” and “collaborationism” were introduced to the curricula.

In the 2004 curriculum, approved at the end of the Kuchma presidency during the premiership of Viktor Yanukovych, the expected learning objectives included the ability to compare different points of view concerning the OUN and UPA actions during the war and to provide one’s own assessment of events. A section on local history was added to each theme (Prohramy 2005). In the curriculum for the standard level, the expected learning objectives included the ability to define the reasons for the creation of the UPA (Prohrama 2009). The curriculum for pupils not specializing in history included as the expected learning objectives the ability to “analyze, summarize, compare and critically evaluate different points of view” (Pometun, Hupan and Freiman 2009). The 2012 curriculum returned the expected learning objectives in relation to the OUN and UPA defined in the 2004 pre-Yushchenko curriculum (Prohrama 2012).

The 2009 draft curriculum developed by the Working Group provided a broader revision of the approach to the representation of the OUN and UPA than the official curricula. Most importantly, the Soviet partisan movement and the OUN-UPA fight were not depicted as two branches of the Resistance movement to the Nazi occupation but were presented as two separate themes. Other differences were that the draft curriculum referred to the OUN and UPA as the “radical nationalist movement,” positioned the OUN ideology in a broader European context of radical movements, and highlighted the tension between the goals of the fight for an independent Ukrainian state and the methods used. Part of the draft curriculum was also dedicated to questions of economy, culture, education, science, and everyday life of people for each historical period, with the aim of decentering the focus on national political and military history. At the same time, the draft curriculum also used both the terms “radical nationalist movement” and “Ukrainian liberation movement” to refer to the OUN and UPA.

School Textbook Narratives on Controversial Issues in the History of the OUN and UPA

One of the first pilot textbooks by Kul’chyts’kyi, Kurnosov, and Koval’ (1994) dedicated only a few paragraphs to the OUN and UPA and described the OUN as devoted to the fight against Poland, the spiritual renaissance of the nation and its historical traditions, and the creation of a sovereign Ukrainian state. It mentioned that the organizations were characterized by an atmosphere of deep patriotism and self-sacrifice in the name of the national idea (ibid.: 217). The authors carefully formulated the collaboration between the OUN and UPA and Nazi Germany and justified it by the fight against a common enemy: “with the approaching of the Red Army, the relations between banderivtsi and the occupants often acquired the character of neutrality or even mutual assistance in view of a common threat” (ibid.: 240). The textbook considered the organizations as participants in the Resistance movement along with Soviet partisans (ibid.: 241).

The textbook by Turchenko, the second edition of which appeared in 1998, expanded considerably the discussion of the OUN and UPA in comparison with the earlier textbook. It included a description of the OUN’s origin, ideology, and methods of action, and an excerpt from the OUN program among original documents. The main focus was the OUN and UPA contribution to the achievement of state independence. The textbook explained “the uncompromising methods of struggle that could unite all national groups around the goal of independence” adopted by the OUN by the fact that “legal methods of struggle were not suitable for the creation of an independent united [soborna] Ukraine in the existing system of international relations in Europe. Because of this, politically active Ukrainians were losing faith in traditional values of Western democracy” (Turchenko 1998: 289). Turchenko described the ideological stance of the OUN as based on the concept of “integral nationalism” developed by Dmytro Dontsov that declared the nation as an absolute value and the achievement of independence as an ultimate goal for which all methods were acceptable. The author recognized that the ideology had a totalitarian character but justified it by general European tendencies of the time and stated that: “Unlike the European totalitarian ideologies (National Socialism, Fascism and Communism), Ukrainian ‘integral’ nationalism emerged in the circumstances of the oppressed nation and aimed to achieve its [the nation’s] independence without infringing on the independence of other nations” (Turchenko 1998: 289). Turchenko (1998: 290) also mentioned that the main means of the OUN struggle were terrorist acts, the victims of which included Ukrainians who did not share the policies of the organization.

Similar to the 1994 textbook, Turchenko (1998: 328) described the OUN and UPA as an anti-Nazi Resistance movement oriented towards the creation of an independent Ukrainian state along with the Soviet movement guided by Soviet slogans. The textbook dedicated two pages to the discussion of the Soviet partisan movement and twice as much to the OUN underground struggle in 1941–42. On collaboration between the OUN and Nazi Germany, Turchenko (1998: 331) stated that the OUN “bestowed certain hopes on Germany” at the beginning of the war, seeing Bolshevism as a common enemy for both the OUN and the Germans. He mentioned the creation of the Nachtigall and Roland battalions manned by the Ukrainians seen by the OUN-B as the core of a future Ukrainian army. Some other narrative elements were also positioned in the framework of the struggle for independence: the proclamation of independence of Ukraine on 30 June 1941 by OUN-B, the action of the OUN “expeditionary groups” beyond Western Ukraine which led to “the spread of independentist views” in eastern Ukraine (Turchenko 1998: 333), and the evolution of the OUN’s ideology in 1943. The conflict with the Polish armed groups was explained by the fact that Poles aimed to restore Poland in its pre-war borders, and it was claimed that “the victims of these political antagonisms [between Poles and Ukrainians] were mainly civilian peasants” (Turchenko 1998: 352). Turchenko (1998: 358) only briefly mentioned the creation of the SS Halychyna Division in 1943, indicating that the Hitlerites envisioned it as playing the role of a “fifth column” and that its creation was opposed by the OUN-B.

The textbook published by Kul’chyts’kyi, Koval’, and Lebedyeva in 1998 toned down the celebratory language used to describe the commitment and sacrifice of the OUN and UPA in the 1994 pilot textbook. At the same time, the textbook referred to the OUN as “the driving force in the national-liberation struggle” (Kul’chyts’kyi, Koval’, and Lebedyeva 1998: 210). Similar to Turchenko (1998), Kul’chyts’kyi, Koval’, and Lebedyeva (1998: 195–96) explained the OUN’s adoption of the integral nationalism ideology by the dominance of extremist movements in interwar Europe, the authoritarianism of the Polish authorities, and the failure of liberal politicians of the previous decades to gain independence for Ukraine. The textbook discussed the reasons for collaboration with Nazi Germany in the following way: “the Ukrainian nationalists saw the German nationalists humiliated after the defeat in the World War as a natural ally in the struggle with the occupant states.” It noted that the use of terror by the OUN was a means to achieve independence for Ukraine (Kul’chyts’kyi, Koval’, and Lebedyeva 1998: 196). The authors (ibid.: 212) mentioned that the battalions Nachtigall and Roland, manned by Ukrainians in German army uniforms, were commanded by two Ukrainians, Roman Shukhevych and Yevhen Pobihushchyi, both Hauptsturmführers of the SS, and explained their creation by OUN’s goal of achieving the independence of Ukraine. While the 1998, 2000, and 2003 textbooks co-authored by Kul’chyts’kyi mentioned the association of Shukhevych with the SS, a textbook by Kul’chyts’kyi and Shapoval published in 2005 (34) removed the mention.

The textbook by Malii and Reyent (2001) described the integral nationalism ideology that justified any action in the name of the nation and state independence along the same lines as Turchenko’s 1998 textbook. The textbook by Danylenko, Huzenkov, and Kolodyazhnyi (2002) also provided a similar narrative. It explained the creation of the OUN by the hopelessness of the efforts to defend the Ukrainian nation’s right to self-determination in a parliamentary way and the failure of pro-Soviet illusions. Similar to other textbooks, it acknowledged that the OUN ideology was totalitarian but argued that it could not be equated with fascism because it emerged in the context of an oppressed nation struggling for national statehood (Danylenko, Huzenkov, and Kolodyazhnyi 2002: 202–3). Kul’chyts’kyi and Shapoval (2003: 84) expanded the discussion of the integral nationalism ideology in comparison with the previous textbooks and described it as a phenomenon that was “fully independent” from Italian fascism, German national socialism, and communism, as it was not a fully-fledged doctrine. Another textbook that appeared the same year by Hupan and Pometun (2003) included a rather short fact-based description of the OUN (less than one page, excluding biographies of Dmytro Dontsov and Stepan Bandera) with only one paragraph about the ideology and without any discussion of the broader European context as was the case in other textbooks. Both Kul’chyts’kyi and Shapoval (2003) and Hupan and Pometun (2003) referred to the OUN as a nationalistic organization, rather than describing it as a national-liberation movement as some other textbooks had done.

The 2005 textbook by Kul’chyts’kyi and Shapoval described the struggle between different factions of the nationalistic movement that did not appear in previous textbooks. The relations between the OUN and UPA and Nazi Germany at the end of the war, when the defeat of Nazi Germany became clear, were described as “mutual non-aggressiveness” (which replaced the term “mutual assistance” in the earlier versions of one of Kul’chyts’kyi’s co-authored textbooks) (Kul’chyts’kyi and Shapoval 2005: 41). Kul’chyts’kyi and Shapoval (2005: 41) also provided a more detailed description of the SS Halychyna Division which was supported by many Ukrainians except for the OUN-B. Finally, the textbook included a brief description of the Polish–Ukrainian conflict. According to the authors, the conflict was started by the mass execution of the Ukrainian population in the Kholm and Pidliashshia regions by the Polish Armia Krajowa in 1942 followed by an anti-Ukrainian action in Galicia and an anti-Polish one in Volyn in 1943. The authors concluded that “Volyn, Galicia and Zakerzonnia became the places of bloody encounter of the two sides, the victims of which were thousands of Ukrainians and Poles” (Kul’chyts’kyi and Shapoval 2005: 41–42). The textbook by Hupan, Pometun, and Freiman (2007: 15) claimed that the OUN was “[t]he only organized group that started to fight against Stalinist totalitarianism in the Western Ukrainian lands at the beginning of the 1940s.” Hupan, Pometun, and Freiman (2007: 59) mentioned that collaborative relations between Germany and the UPA were established in June 1944. The authors also stated that during the last months of the war, the UPA applied repressions against those who refused to join the army and undertook actions against its own “unstable members.” The authors cited a message by Shukhevych who called upon the OUN to exterminate everyone who recognized Soviet power (Hupan, Pometun, and Freiman 2007: 61).

The 2008 textbook by Turchenko, Panchenko, and Tymchenko had largely the same narrative about the nationalist organizations as Turchenko’s 1998 textbook. The only change was that Turchenko, Panchenko, and Tymchenko (2008: 70–71) underlined the spread of the pro-independence movement in Donbas, the south of Ukraine, and even in the Crimea. However, the authors noted that the Soviet and OUN representatives of the Resistance movement were divided by different visions of the future of Ukraine. They concluded that,

notwithstanding the fact that the fight for independence did not cover the entire country during the war, it is difficult to overestimate its impact on the future of the Ukrainian people. Together with the liberation struggle of 1917–1920, it became part of the historical consciousness of the Ukrainians and prepared them for the declaration of independence on 24 August 1991.

Another textbook by Turchenko published in 2011 for pupils specializing in history only slightly revised the narrative about the OUN and UPA in comparison with the earlier textbooks by the same author. One of the amendments included the introduction of a new section on collaborationism. However, the phenomenon was discussed in general terms without mentioning the OUN and UPA. Turchenko noted that an auxiliary administration, which included the local government, auxiliary police, and voluntary military units, was created by Germans from the local population who wished to collaborate with the occupants guided by the instinct of survival (Turchenko 2011: 31–32). Furthermore, Turchenko (2011: 52) updated the description of the Polish–Ukrainian conflict by adding a short paragraph about the “Volyn tragedy”—“the mass extermination of the local Polish and partly Ukrainian population in the region.” He also expanded the description of the SS Halychyna Division, explaining its creation by the German wish to exploit the human potential of Ukraine as “cannon fodder” and adding that military units of other countries of Europe were part of the Wehrmacht (Turchenko 2011: 58).

The 2011 textbook by Kul’chyts’kyi and Lebedyeva for the standard level provided a very short discussion of the OUN and UPA, however, it was a major revision of the narrative by the same authors. It used the term “liberation movement” instead of “Resistance movement” to refer to both Soviet partisans and the OUN and UPA. In the section on the liberation movement, the authors discussed the phenomenon of collaborationism in general terms without connecting it to concrete organizations. The narrative singled out part of the population of Poland and Romania annexed before the war who voluntarily collaborated with the occupants as they still did not consider themselves as citizens of the USSR. The textbook also mentioned that there were those who took part in punitive actions against civilians (Kul’chyts’kyi and Lebedyeva 2011: 48). Finally, the authors questioned and trivialized the national character of the nationalist movement: “The OUN tried to attach a national connotation to the underground-partisan struggle but overall it had a social-political character” (Kul’chyts’kyi and Lebedyeva 2011: 107).

Similar to Kul’chyts’kyi and Lebedyeva (2011), the textbook by Strukevych, Romanyuk, and Drovozyuk (2011) for the standard level added the discussion of collaborationism. The authors stated that “the Ukrainian national organizations collaborated for some time with the German civil and military bodies hoping for the revival of the state independence of Ukraine. However, very quickly the Nazis dissipated these illusions” (Strukevych, Romanyuk, and Drovozyuk 2011: 41). They also explained the military collaboration of the Ukrainian nationalists with the Germans in the form of Nachtigall, Roland, the SS Halychyna, and, by the end of the war, the Ukrainian National Army (UNA) by the organizations’ intention to create the Ukrainian armed forces (ibid.). Furthermore, they mentioned that among residents of Ukraine who joined the German auxiliary police were those who committed crimes against humanity. They explained collaborationism not only by survival strategy in the conditions of occupation, anti-Semitism, and propensity to violence in society but also the Soviet repressions and terror in the 1930s in Soviet Ukraine and Western Ukraine (ibid.: 43).

Strukevych, Romanyuk, and Drovozyuk (2011) discussed in detail the conflict between different factions of the nationalistic movement. In relation to the SS Halychyna Division, the textbook mentioned that while the OUN-B opposed the creation of the division, the division’s training centers were used for UPA training (Strukevych, Romanyuk, and Drovozyuk 2011: 48). The textbook also included a short description of the conflict between the Armia Krajowa and the OUN and UPA. The conflict was explained by the Armia Krajowa’s intention to take under its control the lands lost by the Polish state in 1939 and the enlistment of Poles by the German occupation authorities in the auxiliary police to carry out punitive actions against the Ukrainian civilian population. At the same time, Strukevych, Romanyuk, and Drovozyuk (2011: 49) mentioned that both parties contributed to the rise in animosity in Western Ukraine whose victims included “not only armed insurgents but also more than hundred thousand civilian residents, both Poles and Ukrainians.” The textbook also revisited the interpretation of the OUN and UPA as a resistance movement. Strukevych, Romanyuk, and Drovozyuk (2011: 48) referred to the OUN and UPA as a “national-liberation movement” and argued that in contrast to the Soviet partisans supported by the state, the UPA could rely only on its own forces and the support of the population. The authors concluded that the UPA did not see itself as a resistance movement but an insurgent movement which fought for the creation of an independent Ukrainian state against all those who constituted a threat to the Ukrainian statehood. They also discussed the spread of the OUN underground organizations in central and eastern Ukraine.

The last textbook considered in this article is the one by Pometun and Hupan for the standard level published in 2012. It included the discussion of “collaborationalism.” According to Pometun and Hupan (2012: 25), those who suffered as a result of collectivization, Holodomor, or mass political repressions inflicted by the Soviet regime tended to collaborate with the Germans. Collaborationists participated in the German armed forces, and served as guards in concentration camps, police, and in the local administration. Pometun and Hupan (2012: 26) discussed the Ukrainian nationalistic movement in the framework of collaborationism, however, at the end they acquitted the movement: “Hitler and his associates refused to support the state-creating projects of the Ukrainian nationalists… The German occupation did not give any chances for Ukrainian political collaborationism.”

In terms of methodological innovations, at the end of the 1990s, some textbooks (Turchenko 1998; Danylenko, Huzenkov, and Kolodyazhnyi 2002) started to include sections with excerpts from original documents (for example, the OUN program) and questions for discussion at the end of each textbook section. For example, the textbook by Danylenko, Huzenkov, and Kolodyazhnyi (2002: 204) included a question asking schoolchildren to reflect on whether terrorist activities could be justified. Hupan, Pometun, and Freiman (2007: 3) stated that the role of their textbook was to allow schoolchildren to formulate independent views about the events of the past. The authors claimed that in order to achieve this, they tried to present the material in a neutral way in the form of documents and tables without their own interpretations, and to include social history and the history of everyday life. The textbook also included excerpts from the OUN and UPA documents and from the report by the Working Group of Historians created by the Governmental Commission on the Study of the OUN and UPA Activity, as well as citing some academic historians. However, these additional sources mostly provided factual information without raising any controversial issues. Turchenko’s textbook (2011) included a list of additional academic literature comprising several sources which cover some controversial issues related to the OUN and UPA (such as works by academic historians Yaroslav Hrytsak and Ihor Iliushyn). The textbook by Strukevych, Romanyuk, and Drovozyuk (2011: 5) emphasized the importance of teaching schoolchildren to form their own conclusions and critically assess sources instead of simply memorizing facts and reproducing the textbook narrative. At the end of each section, Kul’chyts’kyi and Lebedyeva (2011) introduced questions for discussion in class, and asked schoolchildren to express their own opinion about certain issues and to work with historical documents. They also introduced oral history accounts (accounts by ordinary people, participants in historical events) which, according to them, made it possible to “comprehend general historical tendencies, and humanize and vivify the past” (Kul’chyts’kyi and Lebedyeva 2011: 4). The authors also stated that their textbook encouraged critical thinking and did not provide definitive answers (ibid.).

In summary, all the textbooks analyzed here contain a limited discussion of controversial issues related to the nationalist underground and tend to establish simple causalities between historical events. Overall, the textbooks present a single narrative of divisive and controversial events of the past without mentioning that some issues are disputed and controversial and that there are different social representations. Initially, the first post-Soviet history textbooks described the OUN and UPA as characterized by deep patriotism and self-sacrifice in the name of an independent Ukrainian state. While more controversial issues such as collaborationism, the SS Halychyna Division, the ethnic cleansing of civilians, and the Holocaust were later included in the textbooks, the descriptions have remained general and without discussing the involvement of the nationalist underground in these events. Collaboration with Nazi Germany was described as “neutrality or even mutual assistance in view of a common threat” (Kul’chyts’kyi, Kurnosov, and Koval’ 1994), certain hopes placed in Germany by the OUN in view of their common enemy (Turchenko 1998), or seeing Germany as “a natural ally in the struggle with the occupant states” (Kul’chyts’kyi, Koval’, and Lebedyeva 1998). In view of political priorities of the present, textbook authors adjusted their narratives on collaboration. During Yushchenko’s presidency, “neutrality or even mutual assistance” was replaced with “mutual non-aggressiveness” and the association of Shukhevych with the SS was removed (Kul’chyts’kyi and Shapoval 2005). During the Yanukovych years, the textbooks introduced the term “collaborationism,” however, most textbooks did not include the OUN and UPA in the framework of this discussion (Turchenko 2011; Kul’chyts’kyi and Lebedyeva 2011), and the two textbooks which included the organizations (Strukevych, Romanyuk, and Drovozyuk 2011; Pometun and Hupan 2012) justified and acquitted collaboration by the hope of the “revival of the state independence of Ukraine.” Only one textbook (Kul’chyts’kyi and Lebedyeva 2011) questioned the national-liberationist nature of the nationalist movement.

From the early 1990s, the OUN and UPA were legitimized at the national level through association with the dominant state-legitimizing narrative of the Soviet period of Victory over Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic War. Soviet partisans and the OUN underground movement were presented as two currents of the anti-Nazi Resistance movement in Ukraine in all but the last two analyzed textbooks. Such representations ignored and obfuscated the conflicts and divisions. Furthermore, the OUN and UPA were described in some textbooks as representing the views of the entire population of Western Ukraine and even of the entire country. One textbook directly connected the OUN and UPA fight to the achievement of post-Soviet independence (Turchenko, Panchenko, and Tymchenko 2008). Some textbook authors constructed the narrative of a victimized nation by arguing that the OUN ideology differed from those of other totalitarian movements of interwar Europe as it was an ideology of an oppressed nation that aimed to achieve independence (Turchenko 1998; Malii and Reyent 2001; Danylenko, Huzenkov, and Kolodyazhnyi 2002). Some textbooks also justified the use of violence in the name of the fight for independence and the ineffectiveness of “legal methods of struggle” for an independent state. Past conflicts were obfuscated and their impact minimized. The conflict in Volyn was described as the “Polish–Ukrainian antagonism” or the “Volyn tragedy” and some textbook narratives stated that it was started by the Polish side. Thus, since the institutive period in the early 1990s, narratives about the nationalist underground have only been marginally modified with the change of government, however, more fundamental changes proposed by the Working Group and the Nova Doba have not been implemented.