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[SOVIET UKRAINIAN PRIMER OF LATE INDIGENIZATION ERA] Ukrainska mova. Pidruchnyk dlia III klasu pochatkovoi shko. ly z neukrainskoiu movoiu navchannia [i.e. Ukrainian language. A textbook for the 3rd grade of primary school with a non-Ukrainian language of instruction]

Hurvich, T[etiana], Temchenko, Ye[vheniia]

Item #2547

A variant title on the front cover: Ukrainska mova dlia shkil z neukrainskoiu movoiu navchannia. Tretii klas [i.e. Ukrainian language for schools with a non-Ukrainian language of instruction. Third grade]. 2nd edition. Zhovkva: Derzhavna drukarnia u Zhovkvi for Vydavnytstvo "Radianska Shkola”, 1939. 135, [1] p, ills. in text. 22,5 x 15,5 cm (8 ¾ x 6 in). Original publisher’s illustrated wrapper. In Ukrainian. One of 50 000 copies.

Good to very good condition. Partial discoloration of the wrapper. 2 cm tear to the bottom of the title page w/o paper loss.

From scattered information we were able to define the authors as Tetiana Lvivna Hurvych (1897-?) who was employed at Zhytomyr State University of Ivan Franko and educated the students both on Ukrainian and Russian literature. Her co-author should be Yevheniia Vasylivna Temchenko of whom little to nothing is known.

The book was printed at a noted local Zhovkva Vydavnytstvo ta drukarnia Ottsiv Vasyliian “Misioner”, that during the Soviet period was known as Derzhavna drukarnia u Zhovkvi. Active from 1895 as a key Galician publisher of the first half of the XXth century, it focused on religious literature, including periodicals and editions for children. As the Red Army occupied the region for a short time from Sept. 1939, the newly established government used the vast Eastern Ukrainain resources for its local needs. This primer was probably one of the first books printed in Zhovkva under the new regiment that lasted till 1941 and (after a short-lived Nazi Governorate military administration) from 1945 to 1991. In 1993 drukarnia Misioner was returned to Vasyliiany, a resurrected Ukrainian Orthodox Greek-Catholic monastic community.

The Galician region, captured by the Soviet army later than Eastern Ukraine, saw possibly the last wave of indigenisation across all Soviet State: a political move that was already insolvent through other areas. The Bolsheviks strived to find the grounds to quickly establish control of the territories dangerously adjacent to Germany. Thus they made a bet on the Ukrainian population. All the while the national minorities (noticeably Jewish and Polish ones) had to be Ukrainised with a broad selection of means first tested during early 1930’s in other regions; including a switch in the primary education relying on such primers. The publisher Vydavnytstvo "Radianska Shkola” functioned as a centralised press organ from the 1930's. After the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact took force, it readily started it’s operations in Galicia directly from Eastern Ukraine, where it already operated in a number of large cities. It is understandable that a quickly organised 2nd edition of such primers was distributed in the region in an effort to win sympathies of the local Ukrainians and to counter activities of local nationalists.

Similar to this primer, many textbooks for national languages deemed less important than Russian, were produced throughout the Soviet Union during the 1930’s. Those books mostly were done in a similar standardised manner. As the state-wide indigenization experiment was closing down, such textbooks and primers aimed for building a unified identity in the younger generation of controlled, party-led, good-willed “small adults”, future communists and factory workers, rather than joyful and free-spirited children of their nation.

The table of contents of the present book is divided into 3 parts: easy excerpts, advanced texts and grammar together with exercises. The larger advanced texts section includes Ukrainian classics like Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, Maksim Rilsky, fairy tales, folk songs, translated Russian authors like Leo Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky. There is however a noticeable balance of the subjects of selected texts: some stories are devoted to the newly introduced USSR symbols like Stalin, Lenin, the Kremlin, the pioneer movement and the multinational culture of the Union. However, the reader was still welcome to discover some warm words on familial values, traditional village mode of living and the beauties of nature. Of Ukrainian authors, the selection shows either harmless apolitical texts or accusations aimed at the exploiters and unfair life under the Romanov Tsar dynasty. Social injustice and class conflicts are also a common theme of many excerpts and short stories, including an exotic Nehrenia Tom tale that described struggles of an Afro-American slave in the USA. Basic black and white drawings accompany the texts, similar to any other primer of 1930’s era: nothing fancy nor experimental, just a plain affordable mass production of 10’s and 100’s of thousands of copies.

A 1945 4th edition of 140 p. and a run of 100 000 copies is mentioned in a thematic reference Ukrainska Ditiacha literatura 1940-kh rokiv u fondakh Pedahohichnoho muzeiu Ukrainy (Vinnytsia, 2021), #154. Ironically enough, a minuscule change of the title shows the irreversible end of indigenization politics: the 4th edition title reads as Ukrainska mova: pidruchnyk dlia 3-ho klasu pochatkovoi shkoly z rosiiskoiu movoiu [i.e. Russian language] vykladannia, rather than neukrainskoiu movoiu [non-Ukrainian] as it is present in our copy. Same Ukrainska Ditiacha literatura… reference book mentions that later editions were edited by Temchenko only and that similar primers were introduced for middle school, like the 5th grade.

The table of contents of the 4th edition provided in the aforementioned reference, shows a topical change in the whole selection of texts of the postwar era. Introductory texts are all devoted to the Stalin cult of personality. In comparison to our second edition, the fourth one provides much less fairy tales and folk songs. Also many excerpts on the war and military themes, but also some independence and freedom-related texts, though most of them are translated as not to indulge the readers in any nationalism-fuelled separatist moods that were a threat for the Soviets that aimed to deliver a blow to the national culture and the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists network still active in the country in 1940’s.

Not in the specialist reference on primers Pidruchnyky i navchalni posibnyky z humanitarnykh dystsyplin dlia pochatkovykh i serednikh navchalnykh zakladiv (1918–1945 rr.) z fondu Derzhavnoi naukovo-pedahohichnoi biblioteky Ukrainy imeni V. O. Sukhomlynskoho (Kyiv, 2014).

Rarity. Both KVK and WorldCat show a single copy of this 2nd edition, at the National Library of Poland. The pagination does not match as the copy at NLoP counts 229 p., while ours is 135 p. The cause of such a discrepancy is unknown, but our copy is undoubtedly complete.

Price: $950.00