WHAT KIND OF HISTORY TEXTBOOKS
DO THE UKRAINIANS STUDY? Part III

Historical worldview of a person raised up on such books will inevitably be very narrow-minded. Besides that, if the polonization of the Ukrainian language would keep its pace, the informational barrier even between the western and eastern parts of the country will unavoidably appear. There’s a single reason for joy, however: the qualification of "svidomy¹" historians remains on the same level (i. e. — the invariably low one). And thus, any forgery stands out for a mile and it is easily exposed during the thorough research.

Other parts of the cycle

On the language of "Diyaspora²"

In order to continue the cycle of our publications regarding the Ukrainian history textbooks — which, frankly speaking, could have been called "Fairy-tales of the world nations" — we’d review yet another textbook: O. Reent, O. Maliy "History of the Ukraine for the 9th grade of comprehensive schools"; it was published in 2009 by the "Genesa" publisher’s house. This masterpiece is almost identical to the already reviewed textbook for the 9th grade and, on the face of it, there’s no point in spending the time for it. However, it features some fine details that worth separate mentioning.

First of all, the textbook was published almost recently and may be considered to be the indicator of the current state of the "nationally conscious" historical minds. Second of all, author of the book is quite curious by himself. In the April of 2005 Alexander Petrovich Reent was among those historians who composed the open letter addressed to Viktor Yushchneko calling for him to formulate a "Ukraine-centric concept of comprehending the events of the Second World War". And he had, probably, sincerely regretted that as long as — due to the contemporary "svidomy" criteria — the name of his dissertation was clearly anti-Ukrainian: "Labor class of the Soviet Ukraine at the final stage of the civil war (1920)".

By the time of making the textbook, the efforts to attract as many polonisms and other changes (intended to make it utmost dissimilar with Russian) into the Ukrainian language were under way. If you are having a hard time translating the text, churned out by such historians — get a Polish dictionary. This would help, I’m telling you.

Besides the borrowed Polish words, this masterpiece of the historically-lexical creativity demonstrates us whole set of terms and words that came from the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada and the USA. Or, to be precise, the "diyaspora", as long as that is the characteristic pronunciation of those who consider themselves to be the true informants of the Ukrainian language. In conformity with that, "militioner³" turned into the "militiant", "agency" into the "agencia", "hospital" into "spital" and the "airport" — despite its certainly foreign origin — turned into the mysterious "litovishche".



As far as on the page 7, the title "Formation of moderna Ukrainian nation" makes us thoughtful. As you may have guesses already, "the contemporary Ukrainian nation" is the subject of that section.

On the page 13 the paper named "The nationalism controversies: historical esseis" is adduced. One might thought — what do the Essei (the same as Kumranites — one of the Judaic sects of the first quarter of II century A. D.) have to do with nationalistic matters? After some researches we’ve found out that the word "essay" — that sounded absolutely identical to the Russian one — was transformed into the "Essei" and got the plural form on the top of it. There’s a following phrase on the page 55: "Landowners considered the peasants to be a living ‘remanent’ and were able to do whatever they’d like to them". Having learnt a lesson from my bitter experience, I’ve found the word "remanent" in the Polish dictionary in no time — it meant "inventory". Just as I expected, after looking through quite a number of Ukrainian dictionaries the term "remanent" was discovered in the book featuring the trident sign on its cover — its title read "Vocabulary of the sovereign Ukrainian language".

Couple times we’ve came across the word "czarism" weirdly converted into the "Czarata". The textbook was made up during the Yushchenko rule, that’s why there’s at least one mentioning of his favorite term "national self-consciousness" per every one and a half pages.

Original says "Russian Duke", while the translator insists that it is the "Ukrainian Duke"

A lot of attention was paid to the decorative design, textbook features multiple illustrations. There are really lots of them and they take up about a half of every page. It didn’t go without some curious accidents here as well. Authors state that the most part of the images portraying the Cossacks in the heroic postures were taken from Alexander Riegelmann book "Annalistic narration about the Little Russia, its people and about the Cossacks in general". In fact the name of the really outstanding Riegelmann’s work was a bit more extensive — "Annalistic narration about the Little Russia, its people and about the Cossacks in general, whence and from what nation do they derive from, and why do they inhabit their today’s territories, such as: Cherkassky oblast, Malorossiya and Zaporozhye; and from there the Don and Yaitsk who are today known as Ural, Greben, Siberian, Volga, Tersky, Nekrasov regions where the rest of Cossacks came from as well as the Slobodsky regiments". This, certainly, doesn’t agree the "Ukraine-centric" concept. Mind also, that first of all, Riegelmann was investigating the life of the Don Cossacks. Reent and Maliy quoted rather inconvenient book, thus. The very Riegelmann’s book adduces the words that, putting it mildly, don’t quite fit the successive line leading from the Atlantis citizens to the representatives of the ancient Tripoli culture, to Kiev Rus then and to the Zaporozhye Cossacks and contemporary sovereign Ukraine afterwards.

"Sich Cossacks have made the abatis at Dnieper and constructed large branch shelters over there, having called them kurens⁴, and settled there, doing their hunting, fishing and mead-making trade, abounding with...self-will and outrage. They’ve smeared their name with uprisings and robbery. They’ve turned their courage into rebellious fierceness, as long as they’ve been embarrassing themselves with the intestine strives and often killed each other — that’s why atamans and foremen felt the great fear all the time. Given all that, Zaporozhye Cossacks used to have two codes: to live in celibacy and severely punish the family members. The Cossacks were rude everywhere. On the contrary to them, Ukrainians, Cherkassy citizens or the Little Russian nation — such as Polish gentry, Cossacks and pospolits⁵ — lived their life in quite the other way. They had decent settlements in the cities, places, villages and homesteads; they were engaged in arable farming, gardening and gourd field sowing; they mastered all sorts of artistry, craft and peddling. Their manners were pleasant and endearing. They were the joyful people; they liked music and other kinds of fun. Almost all of them knew the Polish dances, and of course they could also perform in their own Cherkassy style..."

Shameless editing of engineer General-Mayor Riegelmann’s masterpiece doesn’t stop at that. On the page 10 there’s a picture with an explanatory inscription "Panna⁶ from the elderly Ukrainian family". And that would have been fine, but here’s the original of this illustration (the inscription says "Picture of the Little Russian mistress of the Polish gentry origin"). Do you see the word "Ukrainian" here?

Exhausting labor of the "svidomy" historians

And it goes this way all over the textbook — with all the "Ukrainian nobles" who originally were the "Little Russian mistresses of the Polish gentry’ origin". However, there’s nothing to be surprised with, really — after all, books of Mikhaylo Hrushevski — main ideologist of the Ukrainian independence — feature such "mistranslations" more often than not — for example you can clearly see the words "Russian Duke", while author translates it as the "Ukrainian Duke". In the cases when the authors lacked the resources for another shuffling the textbook has quite unpretentious explanations in it, touching in their naivety. Here’s the excerpt from the page 41: "The ‘Russian trinity’ — democratically-enlightening club, founded by the graduates of Lvov Greek-Catholic seminary — was the centre of the Western Ukrainian renaissance of the first half of XIX century (term ‘Russian’ really meant ‘Ukrainian’ then)".

All we can do is to pity for the "svidomy" historians who were placed into the situation when almost every single fact disproved the issued historian concept that was to be grounded somehow.

Here’s yet another example. It’s pointed out that Nicolay I "seemed to find separatism everywhere, which consequentially led to the further oppression of the Ukrainian nobility". And this is written, while featuring the direct reference to the abridged biography of V. Kapnist — one the ideologists of this very "imaginable separatism". Page 12 says: "Group of functionaries urging to bring back the hetman’s order using the help from the foreign states stood against the imperial policy with the utmost successiveness. On the 24th of April, 1791 in Berlin V. Kapnist was granted the audience of Herzberg — Head of the Prussian Cabinet of Ministers".

And again we’re anxious for the poor schoolchildren who have to comprehend the a priori incongruous facts. Our apprehends worsened after studying the questions for consolidation of the learnt material. Page 25. "In 1783 serfdom was imposed in the Eastern Ukraine. What century is this? What half of the century is it?" Let me remind you that this is a textbook for the 9th grade of a comprehensive school.

Creative development of the pupils also didn’t escape the author’s attention. Check out the page 76: "Compare the cultural-aesthetic tastes of bourgeoisie, labor class and the peasants".

It’s up to you, this can be the textbook of anything but the history. Besides that, we may congratulate the extant nationalists and late V. Kapnist: hetmans’ order, described by Riegelmann — "they’ve been embarrassing themselves with the intestine strives and often killed each other; that’s why atamans and foremen felt the great fear all the time" — has been completely restored recently, to crown the joy of the real free rein adherents.

Fight against the "means of russification"

Demonstration of the so-called authoritative sources, supporting the author’s concept — is truly a poem in prose. Quite often, reference link to the...absolutely the same phrase from another history textbook is given as the evidence favoring different theses. A vicious circle, you see.

Textbook is full of passages that would have been interpreted as the call for fomentation of the national and religious strife in any other country. Page 18: "Russian Orthodox Church became the tool of ‘zrossiyshennya’ and denationalization of the believers. Greek Catholic Church, however, being closely related to the nation itself, was more and more eloquently standing up for the Ukrainians". The unutterable quoted term replaced the emotionally calmer term "russification". Small remark wouldn’t be out of place here. Some of those who were "standing up for the Ukrainians" — I have no intention to discredit the whole Greek Catholic Church here at all — were acting in a rather artful way. They’ve mixed up the religious matters with the national ones, having portrayed not only Orthodoxy and Catholicism to be the implacable enemies, but — consequently — the Russian and Ukrainian people as well. We’re aware of the "Prayer book for the Orthodox Ukrainians" that was made up, however, in the end of XIX century. Greek, Roman and biblical names of the saints — that have become native, being in use for about thousand years in Rus — were replaced with their colloquial equivalents — Timosh, Gnat, Gorpyna, Natalka, Polinarka. Those, keen in theology state that the latter one is the equivalent of St. Appolinaria. Female names in this prayer book sound especially heart-rending for the orthodox believers — all the more when they begin with the titles "martyr" or "saint": saint martyrs Paraska, Todoska, Yavdoha. Had the orthodox believer suppressed the shudder caused by these not so pious literary experiments, he’d be finished off with the "Saint Gapka". She is followed by "martyrs Palazhka and Yulka" and so on — up until the "Saint Hivrya".

Crimean war was cut out of the program

Just like it was mentioned above — the content of the textbook is practically indistinguishable from the already reviewed material. The following fact was given as yet another evidence of the backwardness of the oppressive Russian Empire. "In the first third of the XIX century Russian Empire had no legislation regulating the relations between the manufacture owners and the laborers. Only in 1835 government adopted the ‘Code’ stipulating the provision of the industry with the hired workers".

At first we were really embarrassed. But then we’ve recalled that the first applicable laws in this field appeared in England in the very 1830s, while the rule of the 10-hour working day at the handicraft enterprises was imposed as far back as during the reign of Her Majesty Catherine II in 1785. We can only wonder why nobody blamed Russia for "backwardness" because of the absence of aviation and space travel science during the Catherine the Great times, for example.

And in conclusion — the main surprise from the authors. There’s no description of the Crimean war of 1853-1856. I mean it — nothing at all. One of the most important events of the European history (that took place in the middle of the XIX century) somehow disappeared even from the list of the memorable dates — like the date of the first Ukrainian steamer boat construction in 1823 — given in the end of the book.

Judging by the resume, we can make a conclusion — the disease aggravates. Historical worldview of a person raised up on such books will inevitably be very narrow-minded. Besides that, if the polonization of the Ukrainian language would keep its pace, the informational barrier even between the western and eastern parts of the country will unavoidably appear. There’s a single reason for joy, however: the qualification of "svidomy⁷" historians remains on the same level (i. e. — the invariably low one). And thus, any forgery stands out for a mile and it is easily exposed during the thorough research.

By Andrey Polevoy

To be continued

¹ Conscious, aware (Ukr.).
² Ukrainian pronunciation of the word "diaspora".
³ Police officer (Rus.).
⁴ Hut (Ukr.).
⁵ Little Russian peasants.
⁶ Young woman from the privileged class. Daughter of Pan (Polish landowner) (Pol.).
⁷ Consciousness, awareness (Ukr.).