Ukrainian-language education and derussifying Ukrainian cities

Below we focus on a limited but distinctive aspect of Ukrainisation: a push to gradually Ukrainise Ukraine’s heavily Russophone cities through a Ukrainised education system.

What was the wider context in which “educational Ukrainisation” happened? From the tsarist era, Soviet authority inherited majority Russophone cities and an urban culture that denigrated Ukrainian culture as “peasant culture”, alongside a rural Ukraine that was overwhelmingly Ukrainophone, and which had historically offered resistance to Bolshevik power during the Civil War. Rural Ukraine was, as Terry Martin notes, precisely the example that motivated Lenin’s korenizatsiia in 1919. (Martin, 2) Urban Ukrainisation, then, arose in order complement rural korenizatsiia.

As it turned out, a disproportionately major aspect of Ukrainisation was Ukrainian-language education: this addressed deeply-held misgivings in Ukrainian Party about “forcibly Ukrainising the urban proletariat”, and instead made children the target of Ukrainisation. In practice, this meant pressuring ethnic Ukrainian parents to send their children to Ukrainian-language schools. But due to resource constraints, a distinctive feature of the Ukrainian-language educational system was the significant autonomy afforded to the Ukrainisers it employed – front-line teachers and academics, many of who were independent of the party. These were a constant source of concern for the KP(b)U. (Pauly, 171)

The Soviet strategy to Ukrainise heavily Russophone cities, then, was to play the long game: gradually building a Ukrainian-speaking mass in Ukraine’s cities through both education of a new generation, and migration from the countryside.

Below, we explain why Soviet authorities justified the two distinctive features of “educational Ukrainisation” – its disproportionate importance in urban Ukrainisation, its reliance on non-Party “Ukrainisers” – in the context of the NEP 20s, as a pragmatic means of implementing Ukrainisation and furthering Soviet power. We end our account in 1930, with the SVU show trials (familiar from Brown) and and the purging of non-party educators from the educational Ukrainisation effort. To finish we explain why Soviet strategies changed in this period of Stalin’s “socialist offensive”, and how they concretely led to the purging of Ukrainisation efforts.

A chronology of educational Ukrainisation.

A cartoon in the newspaper of the Ukrainian teachers’ union, mocking teachers resisting Ukrainisation. The syringe reads “Ukrainisation”, and the caption translates to “Hippopotami: vaccinations for the thick-skinned.” From (Pauly, 166).

First, though, we give a brief chronology of educational Ukrainisation. Although the importance of education in Ukrainisation efforts was already recognised by Lenin in 1919 as he formulated Bolshevik nationalities policy, (Martin, 78) little progress was made towards a Ukrainised educational system in the first half of the 1920s. Soviet authorities were aware of a deep-rooted disregard for the Ukrainian language in both urban culture, leading to parental resistance,  as well as in the white-collar KP(b)U rank-and-file, leading to bureaucratic resistance. “Ukrainising the proletariat” became a point of contention within the Party.

But Ukrainisation remained core Bolshevik policy: some compromise was simply needed. In 1925, Ukrainisation was given fresh impetus with Stalin’s appointment of Leon Kaganovich, a trusted deputy, to first secretary of the KP(b)U with a mandate to ensure the success of Ukrainisation. However, his approach involved a fundamental compromise. This was the policy formula he arrived at: while the Ukrainian language should replace Russian as the language of urban culture, the proletariat, he asserted, should not be forcibly Ukrainised – only their children. (Pauly, 141) Party policy, then, acknowledged this compromise by making educational Ukrainisation a key means of urban Ukrainisation. Educational officials were to increase the enrollment of Russified Ukrainians in Ukrainian-language schools on the basis that they spoke a Russified Ukrainian, rather than Russian. Pressure was put on officials to rapidly hire educators proficientt in Ukrainian – in the heavily Russified urban context, though, this meant educators with closer ties to Urkrainian-language orgnisations, rather than the Party. (Pauly, 157)

This line towards Ukrainisation was accepted throughout the latter half of the 1920s, if tempered by the party and the Ukrainian GPU’s wariness towards the role of non-Party specialists in the Ukrainian educational system. These anxieties came to light in 1929, with the advent of Stalin’s “socialist offensive”: the SVU show trials allowed Soviet authorities to comprehensively purge the Ukrainian educational system of non-Party specialists. Although Ukrainisation remained official policy through the 30s, especially insofar as it allowed for the integration of rural migrants into industrialization efforts, priorities had changed.

Teachers and students at the Taras Shevchenko Kyiv Labour School No. 1, held up as a model of Ukrainisation throughout the 1920s. In 1929, the school would be purged by the Ukrainian GPU as a supposed base of SVU organisation. From (Pauly, 59)

Justifying gradual Ukrainisation, and non-Party Ukrainisers

How did the party justify a gradual strategy Ukrainisation through the Ukrainian education system in the name of Soviet power? The decision revealed the KP(b)U’s ambivalence towards “Ukrainising the urban proletariat.” (Martin, 214) Ukrainians opposed to the promotion of Ukrainian culture saw it as trained by association with a historically anti-Bolshevik peasantry and, separately, an urban bourgeois intelligentsia.

In response, the party line conceived of Ukrainisation as in fact pre-empting nationalist forces, and above all the peasantry. Rural korenizatsiia was a key priority, especially in Lenin’s original formulation of nationalities policy, and urban Ukrainisation would be a key factor in its success. Urban Ukrainisation would lead to an urban culture in which rural migrants would assimilate, and could see social mobility in. Conversely, the Party needed a Ukrainised cadre – one that did not hold Ukrainian culture with contempt – to administer the countryside, effectively giving a local face to Soviet power. (Pauly, 35)

Similarly, what justified the prominent role of non-party Ukrainisers – teachers, educators – in this effort? Although the development of a distinctly Soviet Ukrainian culture remained a goal of Soviet power, given the Soviet foreign policy of wooing Ukrainians in bordering Poland, (M8) a vacuum of eager Ukrainians with connections to the Party forced educational authorities to be pragmatic. Not only did local authorities lack the resources to train Ukrainian-speaking teachers, products of a Russophone urban culture, at the pace required by government, they also faced opposition from existing teachers. (Pauly, 172) The result was a widespread culture of impunity against efforts to check Ukrainian-language proficiency in the Ukrainian educational service.

These restrictions, then, made turning towards non-Party specialists for Ukrainising a pragmatic choice, especially in the NEP era. Pro-Ukrainising educators were easy to find in cities – at once the historical site of Ukrainophilic cultural resurgence, alongside Ukrainian-denigrating culture. (Pauly, 172) The demand for Ukrainising educators was reflected in the high compensation they commanded, and their tendency to move on to more lucrative employment in other Ukrainising programmes. (Pauly, 172) Similarly, their links towards urban Ukrainian culture manifested in connections between professional networks of teachers and academics connected to other Ukrainising programs. To these, the KP(b)U and the Ukrainian GPU could only look on with alarm. (Pauly, 275)

Delegates from Khakiv, capital of the UkrSSR at the All-Ukrainian Teachers’ Congress. Professional networks of Ukrainising educators came to play a large role in Ukrainisation efforts; they soon came under suspicion. From (Pauly, 111).

The 1929 SVU trials, and the decline of educational Ukrainisation.

SVU show trials in session at the Kharkiv opera house, 1930. From (Pauly, 259).

The Party’s longstanding distrust of non-party educators and academics involved with Ukrainisation came to a head at the SVU show trials in 1930. These show trials explicitly targeted members of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, above all members of Ukrainian academia, accusing them of membership in a fictional Ukrainian nationalist organisation, the SVU. (Pauly, 237) Given the links between “public Ukrainisers” in different fields, prominent urban teachers were inevitably targeted as well. What followed after the trial was effectively a purge of the Ukrainian educational system. (Pauly, 265)

What had changed? Why did the KP(b)U’s pragmatism in seeking non-party educators to implement Ukrainisation no longer make sense? New ideological imperatives had come to play: the NEP era had ended in 1928 with the launch of Stalin’s “socialist offensive” and the First Five-Year Plan. These initiatives were accompanied by drives to consolidate the Party’s power over political and social processes in the USSR – and, conversely, to purge the Soviet Union of bourgeois elements associated with excesses of the NEP, including “bourgeois” urban nationalism. (Martin, 241)

The SVU trials, in particular, were driven by the Ukrainian GPU’s historical role as watchdog over Ukrainian nationalism: a mission it performed during the civil war, and continued to execute throughout Ukrainisation in the 1920s. In fact, the GPU actively collected intelligence on prominent Ukrainisers throughout the 1920s. Stalins’ campaign, Pauly argues, was simply the opportune moment for the GPU. (Pauly, 265) Educators were not exempt from accusations of anti-Soviet agitation. These teachers, the Ukrainian GPU said in public, were ardent Ukrainisers, but saw the USSR as an impediment to further Ukrainisation. Anti-Soviet agitation was the natural result. (Pauly, 274)

In the resulting political climate of “socialist competition” (Payne) and denunciation, Ukrainisation was actively avoided by means similar to passive resistance in favour of other, less politically suspect Soviet initiatives. Ukrainisation remained official Soviet policy, but the Russian language remained the language of social mobility. (Pauly, 344)

Works cited

Martin, Terry. 2001. The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Pauly, Matthew D. 2014. Breaking the Tongue: Language, Education, and Power in Soviet Ukraine, 1923-1934. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Payne, Matt. 2001. “The Forge of the Kazakh Proletariat? The Turksib, Nativization, and Industrialization during Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan.” In A State of Nations:Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin, 223–52. New York: Oxford University Press.