Education

Education (освіта; osvita).

Until the mid-14th century. The Cyrillic script found its way from Bulgaria to Rus’ before the adoption of Christianity as the state religion by Prince Volodymyr the Great. This led to the ready acceptance of the Bulgarian (Church Slavonic) liturgy and religious literature under Prince Volodymyr, although the faith he had adopted came from the Greeks. Historians assume that at first the clergy were trained at episcopal cathedrals as was the practice in Byzantium. The princes were probably educated at home by private tutors. According to the Primary Chronicle Volodymyr the Great forced the children of the upper class to attend school and to acquire ‘book learning.’ Yaroslav the Wise assigned a stipend in 1037 for priests who taught the people to read and write at the churches. Inscriptions on objects of daily use indicate that a sizable portion of the urban population, including women, were literate. Fluency in foreign languages was highly regarded at the princely courts. Volodymyr Monomakh, for example, wrote that his father Prince Vsevolod Yaroslavych knew five languages, which was an ideal standard for the educated monarch in Europe at the time, and advised his children to imitate their grandfather. Greek was commonly known by church bookmen. The use of Latin at the court of the rulers of Galicia-Volhynia in the first half of the 14th century indicates the beginnings of a West European influence in education.

Mid-14th to 18th century. The Kyivan Rus’ state did not establish a clearly defined school system; hence, education could not be maintained at the same level after the loss of statehood. Lacking educational facilities, particularly higher ones, at home, Ukrainians sought higher education abroad—at the Latin universities of Cracow, Prague (where in 1397 the Lithuanian college, a residence house for students of mostly Ukrainian and Belarusian origin, was established), and in Western Europe. The level of education in Ukraine was low but it was widely accessible. The schools (sometimes called dydaskalii in the 16th century) were usually parochial schools taught by precentors (known sometimes as ustavnyky). Children began school at seven years of age. The wealthier families hired precentors as private tutors (a fact noted in Vasyl Zahorovsky’s testament of 1577). The primer published by Ivan Fedorovych (Fedorov) in 1574, which was based on Greek and Bulgarian models, gives us some idea of the curriculum.

In the 16th and early 17th century Protestant schools, and particularly Jesuit schools, spread rapidly in Ukraine and Belarus. The Calvinist school in Panivtsi in Podilia and the Socinian schools in Kyselyn (near Volodymyr-Volynskyi), Khmilnyk, Hoshcha, and Berestechko taught in Polish, German, or Latin. The Jesuits managed 23 schools in Ukraine, including colleges in Jarosław (1575), Peremyshl, Lviv, Lutsk (1608), Ostroh, Kamianets-Podilskyi (1610), Vinnytsia, Bar, Pynsk, and Kyiv (1647) and the Zamostia Academy (1595). Polish or Latin was the language of instruction in these schools. In order to counteract the influence of Protestant and Catholic education in Ukraine the Orthodox community sought to improve the level of its Church Slavonic schools. Imitating the Protestant and Catholic models, Prince Kostiantyn Vasyl Ostrozky established Orthodox schools in Turiv (1572), Volodymyr-Volynskyi (1577), Slutsk (1580), and Ostroh (ca 1580, see Ostroh Academy). Similar schools were opened in Smotrych (1579) and Kholm (1582). Besides Church Slavonic, Latin, Greek, and Polish were taught at the Orthodox schools.

The brotherhood schools, founded and supported by Orthodox brotherhoods, were an important new force in the history of Ukrainian education. At first the Greek influence predominated—the schools received support from the Greek patriarchs, imported Greek teachers, and emphasized the Greek language. The subjects and methods of instruction, school-parent relations, and so on were governed by school statutes, regulations, or articles of law, such as the statute of the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood School (1586) or the Lutsk Brotherhood of the Elevation of the Cross School (1624). Some information about the teaching methods used in the brotherhood schools appeared in the introduction to Meletii Smotrytsky’s grammar (1619). The brotherhoods were the first publishers of grammars, among them the three Church Slavonic grammar textbooks written by Ukrainians and published in Vilnius (1586 [see Khramatyka slovens’ka iazyka] and 1596) and in Yevie (1619), the textbook published in Kremianets (1638; see Kremianets Grammar), and the Greek-Church Slavonic grammar published in Lviv (1591; see Adelphotes). At the end of the 16th century Latin and Polish began to force out Greek, which disappeared from the curriculum by the mid-17th century.

The first brotherhood school was established in Lviv in 1586 (see Lviv Dormition Brotherhood School). The Kyiv Epiphany Brotherhood School was founded in 1615 and reorganized in 1632 into the Kyivan Mohyla College, becoming the first Ukrainian institution of higher learning. In spite of the opposition of some priests and Cossacks, Metropolitan Petro Mohyla introduced Latin and Polish into its curriculum and successfully defended the curriculum against Jesuit attempts to undermine it. A branch of the college was set up in Vinnytsia.

The Ukrainian language was not taught in the schools. Petro Mohyla took some measures to bring it into the curriculum by instructing teachers to assign his Ukrainian catechism (1645) to students, but there were no Ukrainian grammars or primers. The first ‘Ruthenian’ (ie, not Church Slavonic) grammar, was written in 1643 by Ivan Uzhevych and was based on a literary language incorporating both Ukrainian and Belarusian elements. It has been preserved as an unpublished manuscript in France and never came into use in either Ukraine or Belarus.

The Uniate church also made some efforts to improve the education of its clergy: the Kobryn sobor (1629) resolved to establish a seminary with Latin and Church Slavonic or Ruthenian as the languages of instruction.

At the same time eastern Transcarpathia experienced an educational revival when the ruler of Protestant Transylvania, Prince G. Bethlen, granted in 1627 to the bishop of Mukachevo, I. Hryhorovych, the right to set up ‘schools and gymnasia wherever there are churches’ and to teach Church Slavonic, Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and other languages.

By the mid-17th century elementary education in parochial schools was generally accessible in Ukraine. As Paul of Aleppo asserted in 1654, among the Ukrainian population governed by Bohdan Khmelnytsky ‘everyone or almost everyone, including most of the women and girls, can read and knows the sequence of prayers and hymns by heart; even the orphans are instructed by the priests and are not allowed to loiter.’

The Treaty of Andrusovo (1667) led to the decline of brotherhood schools in Right-Bank Ukraine, while the union with Muscovy led to the emigration of leading scholars from Left-Bank Ukraine to the new imperial centers. The Kyivan Mohyla Academy experienced a period of decline. Until the end of the 18th century no new grammar books appeared in print.

Hetman Petro Doroshenko’s plan to set up a second Orthodox college under the protection of the Polish state was never realized because of his defeat in 1676. For the Orthodox population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth the most important center of education was the monastery school in Hoshcha on the Horyn River (est 1638). Some Ukrainians under Polish rule, particularly the clergy, sent their sons to the Kyivan Mohyla College. This school experienced a revival with Hetman Ivan Mazepa’s accession to power (1687) and in 1701 received the status of an academy. Mazepa also permitted the Jesuits to open a school in Kyiv in 1690. After Mazepa’s defeat in 1709 the academy suffered a decline but it was revived again under the protection of Metropolitan Rafail Zaborovsky (1731–47). From the mid-18th century attempts were made to secularize the academy’s curriculum; for example, modern European languages, geodesy, and fortification design were introduced, but the academy was soon overshadowed by the secular university in Moscow (est 1755). In 1784 the Russian pronunciation of Church Slavonic was adopted at the academy. Finally, the Kyivan Mohyla Academy was closed down in 1817, to be reorganized two years later into the Kyiv Theological Academy.

Among the other schools in the Hetman state the more important ones were the school in Chernihiv (est 1689), which in 1700 became Chernihiv College and in 1776 the Chernihiv Seminary, and Pereiaslav College (est 1738), which in 1778 became a theological seminary. There was a wide network of parochial schools taught by local or itinerant tutors. Contributions (rokivshchyna or rokove of 1 shah per household) to support these schools were collected by the students themselves. In 1740–7 there were 866 schools in the 1,099 villages (ie, 1 school per 1.3 community), according to the statistics found in the books of 7 of the 10 Hetmanate regiments. The Zaporozhian Sich had its own schools—one for future precentors, church choir singers, and deacons, and one for orphans. Among other subjects, the military arts were taught.

In the 18th century the cultural importance of Slobidska Ukraine with Kharkiv as its center began to increase. In 1727 Kharkiv College was opened there with a more modern program than that of the declining Kyivan Mohyla Academy or the two other colleges in the Hetman state. Hryhorii Skovoroda taught in Kharkiv for a time. The use of the Ukrainian vernacular was tolerated in literary exercises at the college.

In Right-Bank Ukraine, after the decline of the Orthodox church at the turn of the 18th century, the Uniate church assumed responsibility for Ukrainian education. The Basilian monastic order, which maintained colleges in Volodymyr-Volynskyi, Uman, Liubar, Sharhorod (ca 1749), Buchach, and Hoshcha (in place of the former Orthodox school) and schools for the sons of impoverished gentry, was particularly active in this field. Among the subjects taught in these schools were Church Slavonic, Polish, and Latin. In 1781 the Polish Commission of National Education transferred some schools that had been run by the Jesuit order before its dissolution in 1773 to the Basilians. Among these was Ostroh College. In 1788 the Basilians began to use the vernacular for some subjects in the parochial schools, but in the following year the Commission of National Education ordered all Ukrainian parochial schools to be Polonized. The Piarists, who ran schools in Lviv, Zolochiv, Mezhyrich, and other towns, replaced the Jesuits as the strongest Polonizing force in education. Ukrainians also attended the Armenian Uniate college in Lviv.

In Transcarpathia West European influence in education increased after the union with Rome. In 1684 the Jesuits set up a seminary in Trnava, western Slovakia, for training clergy to serve the region. The bishop of Mukachevo, Joseph de Camelis, modernized the Catholic system of education in Transcarpathia. His successor, Mykhailo Olshavsky (1743–67), founded a theological school in Mukachevo in 1744, which was moved to Uzhhorod along with the seat of the eparchy and turned into a theological seminary by Bishop Andrii Bachynsky. As a result of the efforts of a number of bishops Transcarpathia possessed the best educational system in all Ukraine (300 schools in 1793) and provided scholars for other Ukrainian territories.

End of the 18th century to the First World War

Ukrainian territories under Russia. After Russia’s annexation of Right-Bank Ukraine in 1793–5, the Kremianets Lyceum (est 1819) and the Polish schools, including a Basilian school in Uman using Polish as the language of instruction, continued to operate until 1831 under the jurisdiction of the Vilnius school district, which was under Polish control. All other Ukrainian territories came under the Kyiv and Kharkiv school districts and were provided with Russian schools. After the suppression of the Polish Insurrection of 1830–1 the Russian school system was extended to Right-Bank Ukraine as well, and all Ukrainian areas were transferred from the jurisdiction of the Vilnius school district to the Kyiv and the new Odesa (est 1832) school districts.

In 1804 a network of four-year gymnasiums was set up in gubernial cities. These schools were placed under the supervision of universities. Kharkiv University (est 1805), the first university in Russian-ruled Ukraine, was given responsibility for the gymnasiums in eastern Ukraine, while the Polish university of Vilnius oversaw until 1831 the gymnasiums in Right-Bank Ukraine. Furthermore, two-year county schools under the supervision of gymnasium principals were set up in gubernial and county centers, and one-year church-parish (tserkovnoprykhodski) schools under the supervision of county school principals were established in small towns and villages.

In 1834 Kyiv University, the second university in Russian-ruled Ukraine, was established on the basis of the Kremianets Lyceum, which had been closed in 1831. In 1835 the universities were brought under the Ministry of Education and deprived of academic freedom. Other schools of higher learning were the lyceums, in particular the Nizhyn Lyceum (est 1825) and the Richelieu Lyceum in Odesa (est 1817).

Besides the gymnasiums, whose program was extended to seven years in 1817, secondary schools also included cadet schools in Kyiv and Poltava, finishing institutes for daughters of the nobility (see Education of women) in Kyiv (1837), Kharkiv, Poltava, Odesa, and other cities, and boarding schools (pansiony). The five-year junior gymnasiums were a lower type of secondary school.

The peasants preferred to send their children to precentors instead of Russian schools. In the 1820s some landowners organized Lancasterian schools for their serfs modeled on the educational system developed by J. Lancaster.

After the death of Nicholas I in 1855 the Sunday-school movement developed rapidly; by 1859–60 there were 68 Sunday schools in Ukraine. Instruction in these schools was given in Ukrainian and, because of a shortage of Ukrainian textbooks, in Russian. Taras Shevchenko, Panteleimon Kulish, and others prepared primers and textbooks. In 1862, however, the Russian authorities closed down the Sunday schools and punished their organizers. In 1863 a circular of the minister of internal affairs, Petr Valuev, prohibited the publication of textbooks and other books in Ukrainian.

A new system of elementary education was introduced in 1864, consisting of one- and two-classroom schools under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education, literacy schools (shkoly hramoty) under the jurisdiction of the Holy Synod, and three-year parochial schools. Some changes were made in the system in 1874. At the same time zemstvos, which had just been introduced in Left-Bank Ukraine and Southern Ukraine, were permitted to establish zemstvo schools. The number of these schools, which ranged from three-year to seven-year schools and even teachers' seminaries, increased from about 1,600 in 1877 to 4,700 in 1909–10. From 1870 efforts were made to introduce the Ukrainian language into the zemstvo schools, but they proved fruitless. The government was suspicious of these schools and preferred to support the more primitive parochial schools.

The Russian government doubted the loyalty of the nobility in Right-Bank Ukraine, which was predominantly Polish, and hence did not permit zemstvos to be organized in the region before 1911. This factor contributed to the political and cultural backwardness of this part of Ukraine. In 1910 the zemstvos prepared a plan for compulsory universal education, but it was never put into effect.

In 1912 the city schools (which replaced county schools in 1872) were reorganized into upper elementary schools with a four-year program. Most of them were coeducational. These schools were established even in the smaller towns and villages. However, by the outbreak of the Revolution of 1917 only 60 percent of the children in Left-Bank Ukraine attended school; the percentage was even lower in Right-Bank Ukraine (about 40 percent in Kyiv gubernia). Thus, under Russian rule the almost universal literacy in Ukraine of 1654 fell to 26 percent in 1897, that is, below the average for the Russian Empire.

In the 1890s the zemstvos began to organize kindergartens and nurseries. The first teachers' training school in Russian-ruled Ukraine was the Provisional Pedagogical School in Kyiv (est 1862). In 1869 the first teachers' seminary was opened in Kyiv, and by 1917 there were 33 such schools. In 1874 a teachers' institute was opened in Hlukhiv. By 1917 there were eight such institutes, which had a somewhat higher standard than the teachers' seminaries. (See also Pedagogical education.)

After the reforms of 1864 and the succeeding years, the secondary schools were divided into the classical gymnasiums with an eight-year program, Realschulen with a six- or seven-year program, cadet schools, four-year schools for children of the clergy, and theological seminaries, and various women’s secondary schools (see Education of women). Galagan College, founded in Kyiv in 1871, was a more advanced secondary school.

In the 1870s the zemstvos began to organize vocational schools such as the Gogol Art School in Myrhorod and the school of weaving in Dihtiari. By 1917 there were 93 secondary vocational schools in Ukraine.

In 1895 the first Ukrainian students' organization was formed at Kyiv University. By 1913 there were 22 such organizations, most of them clandestine. As a result of the Revolution of 1905 and the influence of students' hromadas some professors began to lecture in Ukrainian, but this was prohibited in 1910. Women were allowed to attend university only during the period of 1905–9, but there were various Higher Courses for Women dating back to 1878. Higher technical education was provided by the Kharkiv Veterinary Institute (est 1873 on the basis of a veterinary school founded in 1851; now Kharkiv Zootechnical-Veterinary Institute), the Technological Institute in Kharkiv (est 1885; now Kharkiv Polytechnical Institute National Technical University), the Kyiv Polytechnical Institute (est 1898), and the Higher School of Mining in Katerynoslav (est 1899 and changed to the Mining Institute in 1912; now National Mining University of Ukraine). By 1915 there were 19 higher technical schools in Ukraine.

Towards the end of the 19th century extramural education and particularly literacy societies began to spread (first society established in Kharkiv in 1869; see Kharkiv Literacy Society). New government-controlled Sunday schools were approved by the authorities in 1864. In the 1870s the zemstvos and later the clergy assumed responsibility for the Sunday schools. The public readings, first organized in Poltava in 1861 (in Russian), were prohibited and then again revived in the 1870s. In 1898 a group of Ukrainians in Saint Petersburg set up the Philanthropic Society for Publishing Generally Useful and Inexpensive Books, which began to publish self-teaching materials in Ukrainian similar to those published by the Prosvita society in Galicia. The Revolution of 1905 permitted a more open imitation of Galician models, and in 1905 the first Prosvita society was formed in Katerynoslav, followed by the appearance of similar societies in other cities.

In the Kuban there were separate Russian schools for the Cossacks and for the non-Cossacks (inogorodnye). Only the Cossack schools were free. In 1905 a Prosvita society was founded in Katerynodar.

Galicia. Austria’s annexation of Galicia in 1772 brought a temporary halt to the Polonization of education and raised the level of Ukrainian education in Galicia. In 1774 the Barbareum seminary was founded at Saint Barbara's Church in Vienna for the Uniates or, as they came to be known, the Greek Catholics of Austria. In 1777 three types of state-run schools were introduced in Galicia and throughout the Austrian part of the empire: the six-grade normal school (only one in Lviv), the four-grade major school (in middle-sized towns and monasteries), and the trivium school (the lowest and open to everyone). The language of instruction in the first two types was German, while in the third it was Polish or Ruthenian (an Ukrainian version of Church Slavonic, in fact). These schools were under the control of the Provincial School Commission.

In 1781 Joseph II introduced compulsory universal education in every locality that had at least 90–100 school-age children. Most of the schools were placed under the care of landowners, who in Galicia were mostly Poles, and some came under the state treasury. In the cities German was taught even in the trivium schools. Five five-grade gymnasiums with Latin as the language of instruction were opened, and from 1784 only graduates of these schools were accepted as candidates for the priesthood. In 1783 the Greek Catholic Theological Seminary in Lviv was established, followed by Lviv University (1784, with lectures in Latin). A temporary institute, the Studium Ruthenum, was set up within the university in 1787 for candidates for the priesthood who did not know Latin. In 1788 the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood was reorganized into the Stauropegion Institute, which published school textbooks and ran a school and a student residence.

Following the death of Joseph II a retreat from his enlightened policies began in 1792. As a result of Polish pressure instruction in Ruthenian was restricted to two hours per week, Greek Catholic priests were barred from teaching religion in public schools, Lviv University was demoted to a lyceum in 1805, compulsory universal education was repealed in 1812, and Ukrainian trivium schools were closed down.

A revival in education began in 1817 when Lviv University was reopened, this time with German as the language of instruction. In 1817 a group of churchmen in Peremyshl, including bishops Mykhailo Levytsky and Ivan Snihursky and Canon Ivan Mohylnytsky, founded an institute for sextons and teachers. As a result of the group's efforts, in 1818 the government accepted school instruction in Ruthenian and entrusted the Ukrainian schools (in practice only parochial schools) to the Greek Catholic clergy. The Peremyshl group began to publish Slavonic Ruthenian textbooks.

In 1818 the number of grades in the gymnasiums was increased to six. By 1843, of the 2,132 schools in Ukrainian Galicia 921 were Ukrainian (parochial schools), 190 Polish, 81 German, and 938 mixed. But only 50 trivium schools and one major school (run by the Basilians in the Lavriv Saint Onuphrius's Monastery) were managed by the Greek Catholic clergy. The standard of education in the Ukrainian parochial schools was significantly lower than in the trivium schools.

The Revolution of 1848–9 in the Habsburg monarchy resulted in the establishment of Halytsko-Ruska Matytsia, an educational organization in Lviv. In 1849 the chair of Ruthenian literature was established at Lviv University and was occupied by Yakiv Holovatsky. Hryhorii Shashkevych, who in 1848 was appointed chairman of the Department of Galician Public Schools and Gymnasiums within the Education Ministry in Vienna, achieved a great deal in publishing Ukrainian textbooks and in developing Ukrainian scholarly terminology. In 1855 Francis Joseph I placed the schools under the supervision of the consistories. Theoretically, this change gave the Greek Catholic consistory in Lviv a greater voice in the running of Ukrainian schools. In 1856, however, Ukrainian ceased to be a compulsory subject in the secondary schools.

In 1867 the government in Vienna transferred control of Galician affairs to the Poles. In the same year the Provincial School Board, consisting of four Poles and one Ukrainian, was established in Lviv and German was replaced by Polish in the secondary schools and at Lviv University. Ukrainian could be used as a language of instruction only in the lower grades of the Academic Gymnasium of Lviv. Six years of schooling became compulsory for all children. In 1868 the important self-educational association Prosvita was founded as a counterbalance to the Halytsko-Ruska Matytsia, which had adopted a Russophile policy. In 1869 the schools were separated from the church, which under the circumstances meant that Ukrainians could no longer influence educational policy through the Greek Catholic church. In 1871 knowledge of the two languages of Galicia—Polish and Ukrainian—became a requirement for the faculty members of Lviv University, yet the university remained a Polish-speaking institution. In 1876 the Russophiles organized the Kachkovsky Society to compete with Prosvita. The first Ukrainian newspaper devoted to education, Dom i shkola, appeared in 1875.

The elementary schools had a maximum of seven grades of which the last three constituted the so-called separate (vydilova) school (see Senior elementary school). Because of the policy of the Provincial School Board, one- and two-grade schools were predominant in Ukrainian villages. There were only a few Ukrainian four-grade schools and two private Ukrainian senior elementary schools for girls. On the eve of the First World War 70 percent of elementary schools in the Ukrainian part of Galicia were Ukrainian and 97 percent of Ukrainian children attended Ukrainian schools. Yet, educational opportunities were restricted: 30 percent of the population over nine years of age remained illiterate.

Ukrainians succeeded in gaining only six state (eight-grade classical) gymnasiums: two in Lviv and one each in Peremyshl (see Peremyshl State Gymnasium), Kolomyia, Ternopil, and Stanyslaviv, as well as parallel Ukrainian classes at the Polish gymnasiums in Berezhany and Stryi. While the Poles had one gymnasium per 60,400 inhabitants, the Ukrainians only had one per 546,000. In the Ukrainian part of Galicia there were seven teachers' seminaries for men and three for women, and all of them were bilingual (Polish and Ukrainian). There were no state-sponsored Ukrainian vocational schools, only one private secondary commercial school in Lviv run by Prosvita, and one private agricultural lower school in Myluvannia (est 1911).

In 1881 the Ruthenian Pedagogical Society (see Ridna Shkola society), which published the semimonthly Uchytel’ (1889–1914), was founded, followed in 1910 by the Provincial School Union, headed by Mykhailo Hrushevsky and Ivan Kyveliuk. These societies organized private Ukrainian schools. On the eve of the First World War there were 16 private Ukrainian elementary schools and 13 secondary schools, including 9 gymnasiums (2 of them for women), 3 teachers' seminaries (1 for women), and 1 lyceum for women.

In 1892 Rev Kyrylo Seletsky organized the first Ukrainian nursery school, run by the Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate. In 1901 the Ruska Zakhoronka nursery school society was founded. Some nurseries were organized also by the Basilian order of nuns.

The student movement in Galicia, which dates back to the Theology Students' Association formed in Lviv in 1830, expanded rapidly in the last quarter of the 19th century. Elementary school teachers were organized under the Ukrainian Teachers' Mutual Aid Society (est 1905), while secondary and higher school teachers belonged to the Teachers' Hromada (est 1908). These organizations published pedagogical journals, and the latter also published school textbooks. In 1911–12 Oleksander Tysovsky and several other teachers formed a Ukrainian scouting organization known as Plast Ukrainian Youth Association.

Ukrainians were unhappy with the Polish domination of post-secondary education and demanded a separate Ukrainian university. At Lviv University there were only eight Ukrainians among a faculty of 80, while at other institutions, such as the Lviv Higher Polytechnical School, the School of Veterinary Sciences in Lviv (est 1881), and the Agricultural Academy at Dubliany, the position of Ukrainians was even weaker. There was student unrest in Lviv in 1901 and 1907. Some students protested by enrolling at Prague University and other foreign schools. In 1912 the Austrian authorities agreed to set up a Ukrainian university by 1916, but the outbreak of the First World War prevented this project from being realized. During the Russian occupation of Galicia in 1914–15 the Ukrainian schools were closed down.

Bukovyna. Before Bukovyna’s annexation by Austria in 1774 educational opportunities were very limited: monasteries provided some schooling for candidates for the priesthood. In 1777 the same system of education as in Galicia was introduced. A normal school existed in Chernivtsi. Ukrainian was first taught at the German gymnasium in Chernivtsi in 1851. The Ruska Besida in Bukovyna self-educational society was founded in 1869 to serve the same purpose as Prosvita in Galicia. In 1875 the German Chernivtsi University was established; it had three Ukrainian chairs—in language, literature, and theology. In 1887 the Ruska Shkola educational society, which published school textbooks and the newspaper Rus’ka shkola, was organized. By 1896 there were 165 Ukrainian state-supported schools, including 34 bilingual Ukrainian-German and Ukrainian-Romanian schools. Ukrainian elementary schools spread slowly in the towns because much of the urban population was Jewish and supported German schools. In 1896 Ukrainian or Ukrainian-German state-supported gymnasiums were opened in Chernivtsi (see Chernivtsi Ukrainian Gymnasium), Kitsman, and Vyzhnytsia. A private Ukrainian realgymnasium was opened in Vashkivtsi. In 1908 the Skovoroda Society of Higher School Teachers was established in Chernivtsi. In 1907 the Ridna Shkola society opened a private Ukrainian teachers' seminary for women in Chernivtsi, and in 1910 a Ukrainian language division was set up at the state teachers' seminary in Chernivtsi.

In general Ukrainian schools were better off in Bukovyna than in Galicia, because the Austrian authorities were not as biased in favor of the Romanians as they were in favor of the Poles in Galicia. The Ukrainian schools were supervised by Ukrainians (Omelian Popovych on the Provincial School Board). By 1910–11 there were 224 Ukrainian schools, including 8 bilingual schools, compared to 177 Romanian, 82 German, 12 Polish, and 8 Hungarian schools in Bukovyna. Eight hundred teachers were employed in the Ukrainian schools. Ukrainian student organizations were active in Bukovyna from the 1870s.

Transcarpathia. After Bishop Andrii Bachynsky’s death the Ukrainian schools in Transcarpathia began to decline, because they received no government support. Bishop Vasyl Popovych of Mukachevo (1837–64) made an effort to improve the Ruthenian schools. In the 1840s the most prominent cultural leaders in Transcarpathia were Oleksander Dukhnovych, the author of the first primer written in the vernacular (1847), and Adolf Dobriansky, the founder of the Society of Saint Basil the Great (1866), which published school books and by 1870 had a membership of 700. Andrii Ripai published the state-supported paper Uchytel’ (1867).

The creation of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary in 1868 resulted in intensified Magyarization in Transcarpathia. Hungarian became the language of instruction in the public schools, while Ruthenian-Slavonic was retained only as a subject of instruction. Only the parochial schools remained Ruthenian. While in 1881 there were 353 Ruthenian public schools and 265 Hungarian schools, by 1906 there were only 23 Ruthenian schools and the rest were Hungarian. In 1907 the law introduced by the Hungarian minister of education, Albert Apponyi, abolished even these Ruthenian schools, leaving only the bilingual Ruthenian-Hungarian parochial schools, which by 1918 decreased from 107 to 34. Ruthenian language courses were offered in the gymnasiums, teachers' seminaries, and theological seminaries. In general the new Hungarian policy undermined the educational progress achieved by Ukrainians in Transcarpathia since the 17th century and led to an illiteracy rate of 60 percent.

1917–20. After occupying Volhynia, Podlachia, and Polisia, the Austrian and German authorities permitted Ukrainian schools (250 altogether) to be organized in these regions. The Austrian authorities did not permit Ukrainian schools in the Kholm region.

Following the February Revolution of 1917 the responsibility for organizing Ukrainian schools was assumed by the General Secretariat of Education (under Ivan M. Steshenko) of the Ukrainian Central Rada. The three former school districts were retained and renamed commissariats. The Society of School Education was established to prepare Ukrainian textbooks. In Kyiv the journal Vil’na ukraïns’ka shkola (1917–19) and later Narodna osvita (1919) were published. In August 1917 the first congress of Ukrainian teachers was held in Kyiv and the Ukrainian Pedagogical Academy was founded. After the fall of the Russian Provisional Government in November 1917 Ukrainian secondary education expanded rapidly.

In late 1917 a special commission of the Ministry of Education of the Ukrainian National Republic began work on the curriculum of the planned twelve-grade unified labor school. Under the Hetman government, however, the Ministry of Education, headed by Mykola Vasylenko, developed the school system according to West European models. In the summer of 1918 over 50 Ukrainian secondary schools were opened, some of which were converted from Russian schools. In Poltava the history and philology faculty of Kharkiv University, and in Kyiv the State School of Drama and the Ukrainian State Academy of Arts were founded. A system of adult education was organized under the direction of Sofiia Rusova. In the fall of 1918 two Ukrainian universities—the Ukrainian State University of Kyiv and Kamianets-Podilskyi Ukrainian State University—were opened in addition to the three existing universities, which were so far only partly Ukrainianized. New universities were established in 1918 in Katerynoslav (now Dnipro National University) and in Simferopol (Tavriia University, closed in 1925; see Tavriia National University).

In the Kuban, Ukrainian instruction was introduced in 1917 only in the elementary schools. In 1919 two Ukrainian gymnasiums were opened in Katerynodar and Okhtyrska Stanytsia and two teachers' seminaries were Ukrainianized, but most of the schools remained Russian.

In Galicia during the period of the Western Ukrainian National Republic, the schools were run by the State Secretariat of Education and by county school councils. Some of the Polish schools in the cities were Ukrainianized, and private Ukrainian schools were nationalized in February 1919. There were 30 Ukrainian secondary schools, including 20 gymnasiums, 3 Realschulen, and 7 teachers' seminaries.

Interwar period

Soviet Ukraine. One of the first measures in education introduced by the Soviet authorities was to ban religious instruction in 1919. In the spring of 1918 the Soviets accepted the concept of a unified labor school similar to the Central Rada’s. In 1920 the people's commissar of education for the Ukrainian SSR, Hryhorii Hrynko, and his assistant, Yan Riappo, introduced a version of the system somewhat different from that in the RSFSR. It was distinctive in its extreme emphasis on technical education and political indoctrination to the almost complete exclusion of the humanities and classical studies. The universities were replaced by institutes of people's education (INO). A positive aspect of this system was its accessibility: advancement from the seven-year elementary school to various technical secondary schools and then to the institutions of higher learning was relatively easy. The purpose of this educational system was to promote the transformation of Ukraine from an agrarian to an industrial country and to provide care for almost one million homeless children. The very existence of an educational system independent from Russia’s was an achievement that paved the way for the Ukrainization of the schools (the official policy of the CC CP(B)U from 1923 to 1933).

During Mykola Skrypnyk’s term as people's commissar of education (1927–33), enrollment in the Ukrainian schools of Soviet Ukraine grew from 78 to 88.5 percent of the total student population. In 1917–18 over 300 Ukrainian schools had been organized for the Ukrainian minorities in other republics of the USSR. The Ukrainization of the school system proceeded more slowly in the cities than in the countryside (43.8 percent of urban schools were Ukrainian versus 81.9 percent of rural schools in 1925–6); there was also more resistance in vocational schools (51.9 percent were Ukrainian) and institutions of higher learning (48.9 percent) than in the lower schools. In some schools minority languages (Yiddish, Polish, Bulgarian, Romanian, Belarusian, Greek, and German) were the languages of instruction.

Although a seven-grade (known as incomplete secondary) education was announced as the universal goal, in practice only the four-grade school introduced in 1925 was compulsory for all children. Even then almost one-third of the children failed to complete the four years of school in the 1920s. The children of well-to-do peasants (kulaks), merchants, or clergy (5 percent of the school children in 1928) met with discrimination and had to pay for their education, which for others was free. In 1930 seven-grade education became compulsory in the cities (see Seven-year school).

From 1921 vocational schools were under the jurisdiction of the Chief Ukrainian Administration of Vocational Education (Ukrholovprofos) of the People's Commissariat of Education. Most of these schools (79 percent in 1928) charged tuition, but children of poor peasants (nezamozhnyky) and workers were exempt. Vocational training of skilled industrial workers was conducted by the factory seven-year schools, which were mostly Russian (only 17.6 percent taught exclusively in Ukrainian in 1929–30). The tekhnikums were higher technical schools until 1928, when technical education within the USSR was standardized and the tekhnikums were reduced to the status of secondary schools, as in the RSFSR. Ukrainians were underrepresented in the vocational schools: they accounted for only 53.1 percent of the enrollment in 1929–30, at a time when Ukraine’s population was 80 percent Ukrainian. Only 53.1 percent of the tekhnikums and 59.1 percent of the vocational schools used Ukrainian as the language of instruction in 1929–30.

The main task of the institutes of people's education (INO) was to prepare propagandists for political agitation and teachers for the higher grades of the seven-year schools and for secondary vocational schools. Such institutes were formed on the basis of certain divisions of former universities in Kharkiv (see Kharkiv Institute of People's Education), Kyiv (see Kyiv Institute of People's Education), Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kamianets-Podilskyi or were newly organized, as in Mykolaiv, Kherson, Nizhyn, Poltava, Chernihiv, Zhytomyr, and Luhansk. In the early 1930s they were reorganized into more narrowly specialized institutions and their number increased to 42. Only 56 percent of the INO students at the time were Ukrainian and only 28.9 percent of the institutes used Ukrainian as the language of instruction (1929–30).

Politically dependable cadres were trained from 1921 to 1940 at two-year workers' faculties (robitfaky). In 1929, 57 percent of these students belonged to the Communist Party of Ukraine or the Communist Youth League of Ukraine. The language of instruction in most of these schools was Ukrainian (60.4 percent in 1929–30).

Frequent experimentation and changes in the school system and teaching methods had an adverse effect on higher education and made progress difficult; for example, in 1928 only 6 percent of the students enrolled in technical institutes graduated. The Chief Ukrainian Administration of Vocational Education appointed the rectors (directors) of the institutions of higher learning, while the CC CP(B)U appointed the political commissars. But by 1926–7 more than 90 percent of the rectors were Party members. Thus the position of commissar became superfluous.

The Prosvita society continued its activities in the early years of the Soviet regime: the number of branches increased from 852 in 1918 to 4,322 in 1921. But in 1922 the society was dissolved and some of its branches were reorganized into Soviet cultural institutions such as village centers (selbudy) and reading houses (khaty-chytalni). In 1921 a system for the elimination of illiteracy (Liknep) was initiated, and a network of educational centers was set up with compulsory instruction for illiterate adults up to the age of 50. The illiteracy rate was 36.4 percent in 1926. By 1939 it had fallen to 11.8 percent.

In 1930 many vocational schools were placed under the jurisdiction of various economic commissariats in Moscow. In 1936 institutions of higher learning were brought under the Committee for Higher Education in Moscow (through a similar committee in Kyiv). Thus, the People's Commissariat of Education of the Ukrainian SSR was in charge only of the lower and secondary schools, preschool education, and some tekhnikums. With Mykola Skrypnyk’s death in 1933 the policy of Ukrainization came to an end. The proportion of Ukrainian students fell from 62.8 percent in 1930 to 54.2 percent in 1938. Enrollment in Ukrainian schools declined from 88.5 percent in 1933 to 79 percent in 1940. The Ukrainian schools outside Ukraine were closed down in 1932–3. In 1934–5 the history of Ukraine ceased to be taught as a separate subject in the secondary schools and a positive evaluation of tsarist imperialism was reintroduced in history classes. In 1938, by secret decree of the CC CP(B)U, Russian became a compulsory subject at all levels of schooling. In 1940 some subjects were taught in Ukrainian at only 44 percent of the institutions of higher learning. The children of ‘class enemies’ were expelled from school.

Beginning in 1933 the distinctive features of the Ukrainian system of education as compared to the USSR system were steadily eroded. The restoration of the universities (Kharkiv University, Kyiv University, Odesa University, and Dnipropetrovsk University) in 1933, after merging the various institutes, was a positive step. In 1936 a Union-wide system was introduced, consisting of primary four-year schools, incomplete secondary schools of seven grades (see Seven-year schools), and ‘complete’ secondary schools of ten grades (see Ten-year school). Elementary education was compulsory in the countryside as was incomplete secondary education in the cities. The new system introduced privileged and underprivileged schools: the graduates of incomplete secondary schools did not have access to higher education. Even a ten-year school diploma did not guarantee admission to an institution of higher learning, because half of the entrants were admitted on the basis of political connections. Some of the institutes were turned into four-year pedagogical institutes. In 1940 labor reserve schools, with compulsory enrollment based on a selection system and involving work conscription, were introduced. At the end of the 1930s military training was introduced in the schools.

Ukrainian territories under Poland. When Poland occupied Galicia in 1919, it found a developed network of Ukrainian schools (about 2,500 elementary schools in 1915). In the northwestern parts of the Ukrainian National Republic seized by Poland at the time there were another 500 Ukrainian elementary schools. There were also about 25 Ukrainian secondary schools. At first the Poles maintained the Austrian school system in Galicia, but beginning in 1921 a unified system of education and administration was introduced on all Polish-ruled lands. The Ukrainian territories were brought under the Lviv, Volhynia, and Polisia curatoriums (school-governing agencies) and partly also under the Cracow, Lublin, and Białystok curatoriums. Education was compulsory up to grade 6 and was extended to seven years in 1932. On Ukrainian territories, however, the proportion of children attending school was lower than the average for Poland as a whole: 85 as compared to 90 percent in 1937–8. The proportion of the superior (seven-grade) elementary schools in the Ukrainian regions was also lower than average: 13.5 percent of the total number of elementary schools in Galicia and 8.5 percent in the northwestern Ukrainian lands as compared with 16 percent for Poland. Most of the elementary schools were of the lower, four-grade type.

In 1924 the Polish minister of education, Stanisław Grabski, introduced legislation (lex Grabski) that required that Polish and Ukrainian schools in a given area be unified into bilingual schools. The language of instruction in the schools in the Lviv school district and in Volhynia and Polisia was to be determined by a referendum submitted to the parents of school children. As a result of this law and its many abuses, such as tampering with referendum results, the number of Ukrainian schools in Galicia declined from 2,420 in 1921–2 to 352 in 1937–9. The Polish language and teachers dominated the ‘bilingual’ schools in Galicia. In Polisia all 22 Ukrainian elementary schools were closed down and bilingual schools were not introduced. The Ukrainian language was no longer taught even as a subject. It was forbidden to teach Ukrainian in the Kholm region and Podlachia; even Orthodox religion could be taught only in Polish. In Volhynia the number of Ukrainian schools fell from 443 in 1922–3 to 8 in 1937–8, but the number of bilingual schools rose sharply. In general, only 7 percent of Ukrainian school children could attend strictly Ukrainian schools by the end of the 1930s. Large numbers of Ukrainian teachers were transferred to schools in Polish territories or were dismissed. In Ukrainian secondary schools, most of which were privately operated, some subjects had to be taught in Polish. The only state-supported Ukrainian gymnasiums were those that had been established in the Austrian period. (Of these, the Ternopil gymnasium was closed down in 1930). There was only one state-run Ukrainian vocational school: the agricultural lyceum in Chernytsia. At the beginning of the 1930s all eight Ukrainian (in fact bilingual) teachers' seminaries were closed down.

Throughout this period leadership in matters pertaining to Ukrainian schools and education was assumed by the Ukrainian Pedagogical Society (after 1926, the Ridna Shkola society). Its work was limited to Galicia, since the Polish government did not permit the society into the northwestern Ukrainian lands. Among other activities, Ridna Shkola financed schools and student residences and published the pedagogical periodical Ridna shkola (Lviv). As a result of the efforts of the Ridna Shkola society the number of Ukrainian private schools increased from 9 secondary schools in the mid-1920s to 38 in 1938–9, and their standard was improved. From the 1920s this association and the Audit Union of Ukrainian Co-operatives also tried to organize vocational schools and courses; however, despite their efforts Ukrainian vocational schools constituted only 7 percent of all the vocational schools in Galicia. Ukrainian preschool education was well-developed. In 1934 the Basilian order of nuns opened the Nursery Teachers' Seminary in Lviv.

Ukrainian university courses were organized in Lviv in 1919. These were banned by the Polish authorities in 1920, but continued clandestinely as the Lviv (Underground) Ukrainian University (1921–5). The Lviv (Underground) Ukrainian Higher Polytechnical School (1922–5) functioned in a similar way. Although the Polish government was obligated by an international agreement to set up a Ukrainian university by 1924, it made no efforts in this direction. The only officially recognized Ukrainian school of higher learning was the Greek Catholic Theological Academy in Lviv (est 1928). Until 1925 Ukrainians boycotted the Polish institutions of higher learning, but the dissolution of the Ukrainian underground schools and the difficulty of obtaining foreign diplomas forced them to end the boycott. Yet the number of Ukrainians admitted to higher Polish schools was restricted. In extramural education Prosvita continued to be the most active organization in Galicia. At first the Polish occupation disrupted its work, and the number of its reading rooms fell from 2,869 in 1918 to 882 in 1922. But eventually the society recovered and by 1935 it was running 3,071 reading rooms. In the Stanyslaviv region, the Ukrainian Catholic educational society Skala and the Mohyla Scholarly Lectures Society were active in extramural education. The strength of the Kachkovsky Society in the region declined. In Volhynia and Polisia the Prosvita society was allowed to operate legally from 1928 to 1932. In the Kholm region and Podlachia, the Ridna Khata society conducted educational work until 1930, when it was banned by the authorities.

Transcarpathia. After Transcarpathia’s incorporation into the Czechoslovak Republic in 1919, significant advances were made in schools and education. Conditions for the development of Ukrainian education were more favorable in the eastern part, known as Subcarpathian Ruthenia, than in the western part (Prešov region), which came under Slovakia. The number of Ruthenian (Ukrainian) elementary schools in Subcarpathian Ruthenia increased from 34 in 1916 to 492 in 1938, including 23 municipal schools, junior high schools based on Czechoslovakian models. Ukrainian elementary schools formed a majority—492 out of 861 schools; the same was true of teachers' seminaries (4 out of 5 were Ukrainian in 1938) and vocational schools (138 out of 179 in 1938). The proportion of Ukrainian kindergartens (132 out of 252) and gymnasiums (5 out of 11) was lower. There was also a Greek Catholic theological seminary in Uzhhorod. In the Prešov region only 57 percent of Ukrainian children attended Ruthenian schools. There was a Greek Catholic seminary and a Ruthenian teachers' seminary in Prešov.

Initially, the language of instruction in Ruthenian schools was the object of several competing linguistic orientations: the local Ruthenian, sometimes with an admixture of Church Slavonic, standard Ukrainian, and Russian. After 1931, however, the trend towards Ukrainian became predominant in Subcarpathian Ruthenia. It was weaker in the Prešov region, where Russophilism was well entrenched.

Ukrainian teachers were represented by the Russophile Teachers' Society of Subcarpathian Ruthenia (est 1920), which published Narodnaia shkola, and the Ukrainophile Teachers' Hromada of Subcarpathian Ruthenia (est 1929), which published Uchytel’s’kyi holos and Nasha shkola (Mukachevo). Extramural education was organized by Prosvita (from 1920) and the Russophile Dukhnovych Society (from 1923). Several organizations such as the Pedagogical Society of Subcarpathian Ruthenia (est 1924), the Ruska Shkilna Matytsia educational society, and the Ukrainian Pedagogical Society in Prague (est 1930) assisted Ukrainian schools in various ways.

When Carpatho-Ukraine was established in the fall of 1938, the School Administration in Uzhhorod was turned into the Ministry of Education and was headed by Avhustyn Shtefan.

Bukovyna and Bessarabia. Having occupied Bukovyna in 1918, the Romanians imposed a state of emergency in 1919 and began to Romanianize the Ukrainian schools. This process continued until 1927. When the state of emergency was lifted in 1928 the government permitted in 1929 the partial use of Ukrainian as the language of instruction in the Romanian schools of Bukovyna, but reversed this decision in 1934. Ukrainian was taught secretly. In 1920–7 Bessarabia enjoyed greater educational autonomy and had 120 Ukrainian schools.

1939–45. In 1939–41 the Soviet system of education was extended temporarily to Galicia, Volhynia, northern Bukovyna, and Bessarabia.

Under the German occupation, Ukrainian lands incorporated into the Generalgouvernement (initially western Galicia, the Kholm region, and Podlachia) witnessed the development of a fairly large network of schools with Ukrainian as the language of instruction. By 1941 there were 911 Ukrainian schools (five of them private), managed by a special section in charge of educational matters under the Ukrainian Central Committee in Cracow and the Ukrainian Teachers' Labor Alliance, which published the journal Ukraïns’ka shkola. After the incorporation of eastern Galicia, there were 4,173 Ukrainian elementary schools in the Generalgouvernement in 1941–3, a number unprecedented in the entire history of the Western Ukrainian lands. In 1942 there were 12 gymnasiums and, in 1943–4, 9 teachers' seminaries, none of which had existed under the Polish regime. Higher education was available at the Lviv Technical Institute and at various state-run vocational schools; German was the language of instruction, although most of the students were Ukrainians.

In the Reichskommissariat Ukraine the Germans did not permit Ukrainian general schools above grade 4, except for some vocational schools.

In Transcarpathia under the Hungarian regime (1939–44) the number of elementary schools was reduced by one-third, and the number of Ruthenian (Ukrainian) gymnasiums fell from seven to three.

During the war with Germany the Soviets set up Ukrainian schools for Ukrainian evacuees in the RSFSR (71 schools in 1942–3), Kazakhstan (64), and other Asian republics. There were also 32 evacuated institutions of higher learning of the Ukrainian SSR that continued to function as separate establishments. On the return of the Soviets to Ukraine, night schools were established in 1943–4 for youth deprived of a normal education during the war period. Urban night schools were known as schools for workers' youth, and those in rural areas as schools for rural youth.

Ukrainian SSR after 1945. The rapid increase in the number of night schools in the cities from 876 in 1950–1 to 2,070 in 1964–5 (rural areas experienced a decrease in this period) reflected the difficulties facing the educational system in Ukraine in the postwar period. Courses for adults and vocational correspondence schools were also established. As a result of consolidation, the number of institutions of higher learning decreased from 173 in 1940–1 to 134 in 1958–9, while the number of students increased. In 1945 Uzhhorod University was founded. Only 55.7 percent of the students in Soviet Ukraine were regular day students in 1958–9; the rest were correspondence-school or night-school students. By 1965–6 the proportion of day students fell to 38.7 percent because of Nikita Khrushchev’s reforms, but began to rise afterwards.

The process of Russification continued in the schools of Ukraine. The proportion of students enrolled in Russian-language schools increased from 14 percent in 1938–9 to about 25 percent in 1955–6. Among the minority schools only Moldavian (Romanian), Hungarian, and Polish schools were retained (319 altogether in 1950–1). In 1946 almost all institutions of higher learning (except for pedagogical, medical, and art colleges) were brought under the direct control of the Ministry of Higher Education in Moscow. The republic’s Ministry of Higher Education in Kyiv was restored only in 1955 as a Union-republican agency, but its powers were greatly curtailed.

In newly incorporated Western Ukraine, the Soviet government proceeded to revamp the educational system. As many as two-thirds of the teachers were designated as unqualified to teach in Soviet schools and had to undergo ‘ideological’ retraining. About 35,400 teachers from eastern Ukraine were transferred to Western Ukraine between 1945 and 1951. Following the demographic changes that took place during and after the Second World War, this part of the Ukrainian SSR (consisting of Galicia, Volhynia, and Bukovyna) had the highest percentage of Ukrainian schools: 93.3 in 1946–7 compared to 86 in 1940–1. Twenty-two institutions of higher education were created here, most of which initially had Ukrainian as the language of instruction. By 1949–52, however, it was replaced by Russian. During the brief ‘thaw’ of 1953 the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Leonid Melnikov, was dismissed for instituting too flagrant a policy of educational Russification in Western Ukraine.

According to the provisions of the 1959 school reform the seven-year schools and ten-year schools were turned into eight-year schools (compulsory) and eleven-year ‘general education labor-polytechnical schools with production training,’ reminiscent of the former unified labor schools (see Secondary general-education school). Secondary school graduates, except for 20 percent of the best students, were obligated to spend at least two years in the labor force before applying to higher schools. Although this reform, as many others instituted under Nikita Khrushchev, was to a large extent abandoned in 1964–7, a few important elements remained intact: eight-year compulsory universal education was retained; tuition fees for secondary education and higher education were not reinstated; and the Ukrainian language and literature were no longer compulsory subjects in the Russian-language schools of the Ukrainian SSR. During this new offensive against the Ukrainian language the percentage of Ukrainian-language schools declined from 85.3 in 1955–6 to 81.1 in 1967–8. In 1978 several steps were taken to expand and improve the teaching of Russian in Ukrainian schools in order to raise the level of fluency in ‘the language of the great Vladimir Lenin.’

The majority of teachers in Ukraine are women (76 percent in 1982–3). In 1977–8, 45,700 teachers taught Russian language and literature in grades 4 to 10, while only 43,500 teachers taught the Ukrainian, Hungarian, Moldavian, and Polish languages and literatures. The teachers of Russian in schools with a language of instruction other than Russian were better qualified than their colleagues in Russian-language schools: 96.3 percent of the former had a higher education compared to 91 percent of the latter.

Day-care centers and kindergartens required parents to pay about one-third of the actual cost of maintenance. Most of the kindergartens in the cities were conducted in Russian.

In 1956 fee-charging boarding schools (shkoly-internaty) were introduced, followed by ‘extended day’ schools (shkoly prodovzhenoho dnia) in 1960. In 1968 students again began to receive military training.

In 1967–8 up to a half of the tekhnikum and vocational school students were still enrolled in correspondence courses and night schools. Most of them (45.3 percent) received training in industrial occupations and the building trades. Compared to the Western countries, the percentage studying commerce, finance, administration, and law was small (only 13.3 in 1967–8).

Military education was restricted to ‘closed’ (only for the sons of the military elite) secondary schools conducted in Russian—the Suvorov army cadet schools and the Nakhimov schools (named after the military heroes of imperial Russia). In 1966 there were nine higher military colleges in Ukraine, but no military academies (these were found only in Russia). The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine had a school in Kyiv.

In 1965 Donetsk University was established, followed by Simferopol University in 1972. From 1956 academic degrees were approved by the All-Union Accreditation Commission in Moscow. There was a sharp contrast between the standard of achievement in the natural sciences, which was high, and the standard in the humanities. As in secondary vocational schools, up to 41.8 percent of post-secondary students specialized in various industrial fields and construction, while only 6.8 percent studied finance, economics, and law (1967–8). Only 61 percent of the students in Ukraine’s institutions of higher education were Ukrainian. From 1967 veterans and former policemen enjoyed privileged access to higher education. Graduates of higher schools and vocational schools were obliged to work for three years wherever they might be assigned, usually outside Ukraine. In 1965 tenure was introduced for the faculty of institutions of higher education. At the end of the 1960s Ukraine had 25 percent fewer students per 10,000 inhabitants than Russia. In 1968–9 only 21.8 percent of the students lived in dormitories (hurtozhytky). Most of the students received scholarships, but the Communist Youth League of Ukraine had the right to increase or decrease the sum involved. In 1974 a secret order was issued requiring that not more than 25 percent of the freshman class at universities in Western Ukraine be drawn from the local population. Political dissent grew among the students in the 1960s–1970s, but was brutally suppressed.

(See also Agricultural education, Art education, Correspondence courses, Economic education, Education of women, Extramural education, Law studies, Medical education, Military education, Music education, Pedagogy, Pedagogical periodicals, Professional and vocational education, Secondary special education, Theater arts education, and Theological seminaries.)

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Ivan Bakalo, Tetiana Pliushch, Bohdan Struminsky

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]