Teaching place, assembling the nation: local studies in Soviet Ukrainian schools during the 1920s

Abstract

This study focuses on the Soviet introduction of local studies to Ukrainian schools during the 1920s. It argues that, through their efforts at pedagogical reform, educational planners sought a fundamental re‐imagining of place. The Ukrainian Commissariat of Education asked teachers and their students to engage the ‘productive’ world surrounding the school and make connections to an understanding of a nationally defined, territorial Ukraine. However, because the commissariat left decisions regarding curricular content to regions and municipalities, many instructors were able to resist this utilitarian notion of space. Local studies was the linchpin in Soviet educational reform for Ukraine, yet the state’s emphasis on decentralised planning created opportunity for ‘flawed’ interpretations of local and, consequently, national meanings.