The Nation in Ukraine's History Textbooks: A Civic, Ethnic or Cultural Cast?

Abstract

Contextualisation This article combines insights from political science, history and sociology on the nature of nationalism in Eastern and Western Europe with empirical data on current educational practices in Ukraine. Although it is generally acknowledged that education is the major vehicle of state-led nation-building processes, not many scholars of nationalism have paid attention to education, nor have educationalists been much interested in examining the role of education in the transmission of patriotic values. This article is part of the growing body of literature that bridges the gap between these disciplines. Abstract: This article examines nation-building politics in the history textbooks of contemporary Ukraine. It argues that the textbooks advance a cultural conception of the Ukrainian nation based on the Ukrainian language. The choice for the Ukrainian language instead of other identity markers is explained by (1) the inability of Ukraine's current political institutions to provide alternative foci of identification, (2) the prevailing conviction amongst the political elite that language and nationhood are intimately related and (3) the need to distinguish Ukrainians from their 'elder brethren', the Russians. On the one hand, the finding that Ukraine adopts a cultural understanding of the nation supports Hans Kohn's civic-West / ethnic-East argument. On the other hand, this result does not exclude the possibility that the Ukrainian nation will increasingly define itself in civic terms, as Ukraine grows older.