Historical education in schools of Volyn region (the second part of 40s – the beginning of 50s of the 20th century)

Abstract

Today, school education in Ukraine is under major transformations designed to bring it to a qualitatively new level in order to ensure the sustainable development of Ukrainian society. Soviet state, Ukraine was a part of which for a long time, put school education under its full control, making it a kind of «factory» for the production of a «Soviet person». Among all the subjects taught in Soviet schools, the study of history, especially the history of the Motherland, was of the utmost importance for the formation of a communist worldview and loyalty to the state, its leader and party.
The research is devoted to the interesting and understudied problem of studying history in schools of Volyn region in 1944 – 1953. The aim of the study is to characterize the issue of studying history in schools of Volyn region in the post-war period.
The article emphasizes the peculiarities of the period under study for Volyn region, which are related to both: the reconstruction processes after the Second World War and the second wave of «Sovietisation» process. The full state control over all spheres of social and political life in the region also affected the situation of education.
The author points out the difficulties that arose in teaching history during the period under study. First of all, it is the lack of curricula, textbooks, visual aids (historical maps, tables, and diagrams), the lack of the necessary number of qualified teachers, etc.
History remained one of the most important subjects in Ukrainian schools during the first post-war decade. The example of Volyn region shows the difficulties that the authorities had to overcome in order to establish the educational process and the teaching of history in particular. The value of the subject was determined by the heavy ideological load. It were teachers of history who were supposed to demonstrate to students the advantages of a socialist state over capitalist states, spread the works of Marxism-Leninism, and form a communist worldview among young people. Teachers in the totalitarian Soviet state were forced to follow the party narrative, while being unable to convey the historical truth to students.