SLAVIC COUNTRIES OF CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE DURING THE POST-COMMUNIST PERIOD ON THE PAGES OF UKRAINIAN TEXTBOOKS

Abstract

The purpose of the research – to reveal the scientific and methodological content of Ukrainian educational textbooks for higher educational institutions concerning the history of the Slavic countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in 1991 – 2000; to find out the main tendencies in the history coverage. The methodology of the research is based on the principles of scientificity, historicism, verification, systematization, an authorial objectivity, as well as on the general scientific methods (analysis, synthesis, generalization) and special historical (historical typological, historical genetic), the method of content analysis. The scientific novelty consists in the fact that for the first time in Ukrainian historiography on the basis of a wide range of educational publications as a historiographical source there has been carried out the analysis of the generalized image of the Western and South Slavic national communities of CEE on the way to the formation of market economy and democracy reflected in the educational textbooks for higher education institutions of Ukraine. The Conclusions. Considering the experience of the Slavic communities in national or regional contexts, the authors of educational publications started their analysis from the problems, which these communities solved. The image of the Slavic states of the region was depicted, primarily, through the reproduction of the political processes. Despite their complexity and uniqueness, the information on the political life of the countries is comprehensible and systematized, but the issues of a social history have not been fully elucidated. The authors of the educational publications refrained from categorical assessments when it concerned the recent past. There is every reason to state about a certain evolution in the interpretation of the image of the Slavic countries. If during the second half of the 1990-ies this image was replicated as a source of instability, during the 2000-s it began to be replaced by the one that diversified the complexity and ambiguity of the European continent's historical paths in asserting democracy and finding the patterns of an advanced historical development. The scientific and methodological content of the educational publications was the subject to correction.