Features of school education in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine and the District of Galicia (1941–1944)

For Ukraine, the beginning of Nazi occupation meant a change from one totalitarian regime to another. In Soviet times and during occupation alike, all spheres of public life, including the education system, were permeated with politics and ideology. There could be no talk about democratic principles in education. Schools were supposed to raise the new generation in the “right” direction for the authorities. Based on a review of Ukrainian and former Soviet literature as well as on archival research, this contribution makes the history of schooling in WWII-Ukraine accessible to international scholarship. Thereby, it yields new insights into the impact and limitations of Nazi educational reforms in occupied territories. During the Nazi occupation, Ukraine was divided into several occupation zones. Focusing on the zone with the most severe regime – Reichskommissariat Ukraine (RKU) – and the one with the softest one – the District of Galicia (DG) – the study shows it was mainly the occupying powers that shaped the educational processes in both zones in question. However, the role of local actors – Ukrainian intellectuals, former teachers, Soviet partisans, and members of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) – was also notable. Their interests were different and sometimes mutually contradictory. Members of local communities tried to help schoolchildren get at least some education, whereas the OUN tried to achieve their own political goals: i.e. overcome the Soviet tendencies, undercut the influence of Nazi ideology on the educational system, and reform the latter in order to unite the Ukrainian people into a strong national community

Democracy · Ideology · Nazism · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Ukrainian · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · European history and politics · Law · Polish Historical and Cultural Studies