What: Join us to discuss how Ukrainian national culture and language shaped early Soviet power in Ukraine.
When: Mon, 20 June 2022 19:00 – 20:30 BST
Where: 79 Holland Park, London, W11 3SW, United Kingdom
Tickets: £8
More About the Event
In a televised address on 21 February that served as a justification of the Kremlin’s escalated aggression against Kyiv, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that Ukraine was “entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia.” In fact, the true history of Ukraine’s early place in the Soviet Union is the opposite: a pre-existing Ukrainian national culture and language shaped the contours of Bolshevism in practice, not the other way around.
In 1923, the Communist Party leaders embarked on a novel campaign to use “national culture” to build socialism in Soviet Ukraine. Known as ukrainizatsiia (Ukrainisation), this effort to legitimize and consolidate Soviet power gave a central role to education. The Communist Party intended schools to be the training ground for a new generation of skilled, politically conscious, and economically informed Soviet citizens. It was through the national language, promoted by schoolteachers, that the Soviet ideal was to be realized.
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Tags: london seminars, panel discussion about ukraine, things to do in london, ukrainian history