Pauly, Matthew D Breaking the Tongue: Language, Education and Power in Soviet Ukraine, 1923–1934 (review)

Abstract

SEER, 93, 4, OCTOBER 2015 772 justify themselves, ahistorically, as responding to that very same ‘hammer’ which pounded the Oyfn sheydveg cohort. This splendid, scholarly work — like the thinkers to whom it is a tribute — offers a great deal of food for thought. Perhaps, inadvertently, Karlip also supplies a warning: that isolation, even if the ghetto is self-imposed and militarily mighty, is far from splendid. Department of Hebrew & Jewish Studies Michael Berkowitz UCL Pauly, Matthew D. Breaking the Tongue: Language, Education and Power in Soviet Ukraine, 1923–1934. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, ON, Buffalo, NY and London, 2014. xx + 456 pp. Map. Illustrations. Biographical sketches. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $85.00. Although it is perhaps a coincidence that Matthew D. Pauly’s impressive volume on the policy of Ukrainization in Soviet Ukraine coincides with the current Ukrainian crisis, its publication invokes an unintended emotional response. Might Ukraine, in fact, have escaped today’s fate and the calamity in the Donbas, if the 1920s policy, which sought to foster a strong republican identity with the help of Ukrainization, had succeeded? Pauly’s new book brings to light extensive archival material and offers a unique insight into the workings of the Soviet nationalities policy on the micro-level of the school. In contrast to many extant contributions focusing on ‘high-level political debates’ (p. 3) of early Soviet nationalities and language policies in different republics, the author approaches the subject from the opposite direction with the view ‘from the archive’ foregrounding the everyday, the mundane, and the individual, that made up the fabric of the policy’s implementation at local level. Crucially for our understanding of its achievements and failures, linguistic and cultural Ukrainization was an essential part of a comprehensive educational programme based on a ‘progressive methodology’ and aiming to create a distinct Ukrainian system of primary and secondary labour schools. Progressive education included teaching through the so-called ‘complex method’, in which the curriculum was organized around thematic complexes and promoted kraieznavstvo, or local studies, as its source for content material. More importantly, however, in the formalist fashion typical of the 1920s, the progressive method prescribed the form — complexes — but encouraged students’creativity,independentresearchandpersonalinputintotheircontent. The Ukrainian system of primary schooling was thus intended as a form promoting civic education of a conscious, responsible and active citizenry of the republic, achieved by means of the Ukrainian language and its new role as a REVIEWS 773 link between the republic’s urban and rural populations. Ukrainian-language instruction and the widespread Ukrainization of the public space were meant to overturn the old language and cultural hierarchies and to provide a bridge to modernity for Ukraine’s predominantly rural Ukrainophone population. It was, however, a potentially problematic issue from the very beginning of the campaign that the realization of its ambitious, delicate and politically sensitive goal was entrusted to non-party intellectuals and educators. Its reliance on public Ukrainizers, including hundreds of rank-and-file teachers, contributed to the Communist party’s feelings of vulnerability and suspicion of their influence in the classroom and possible nationalist co-opting of the Ukrainization message. This, Pauly argues, was perhaps the main factor presaging the outcome of the whole campaign. More generally, the Ukrainizers had to walk a fine line in their commitment to carry out a policy that from the outset was fraught with internal contradictions and ideological pitfalls, such as the professed goal to Ukrainize industrial centres and the long-standing prohibition against the Ukrainization of the working class. On a linguistic plane, the policy’s automatic equation of ethnicity with native language led to parental resistance to the perceived forced Ukrainization, dismal student performanceandtheheighteningoftheidentityissueintheso-called‘Russified Ukrainians’ group, specifically in the industrial east. Although outside its main focus, the book’s short survey of the SVU (Spilka vyzvolennia Ukrainy) show trial in 1929 is one of its most powerful sections. This is not only thanks to its personalized history presented through the archival records of the accused, but also as a result of the author’s masterful rendering of the irrationality and confusion the ‘asymmetrical terror’ caused among the Ukrainizers whose best efforts to implement the party line against all odds resulted...