Ukraine

Abstract

Union republics on national education also applied to the Ukraine. These laws complied in essence with Marxist-Leninist ideology and were characterized by their centralized organization and their claim to a unifying function (middle school, structure, curricula, etc.). Following the Declaration of Independence of the Ukraine on 24 August 1991 by the Supreme Soviet in Kiev, the Declaration of Sovereignty, which had been formulated a year before, contained a ‘cultural development’ section aimed at the educational domain which stipulated that, from then onwards, the Ukraine would act independently on all issues concerning education, sciences, and the cultural and intellectual development of the Ukrainian nation, and that all nationalities living in the territory of the Republic were granted the right to freely exercise their national culture. The Act on Education of the Ukrainian Socialist Republic, issued in June 1991, laid down the future direction of education and its place in society. The period from 1991 to 1993, which represented the beginning of the reorganization of the education system, turned out to be a phase of struggle against the Soviet legacy, which nothing concrete or new could counter. The public was not presented with a change of direction in national educational policy until the spring of 1994, when the state education programme, passed by Parliament on 3 November 1993, was made accessible under the title: ‘Education (Osvita) – The Ukraine in the Twenty-first Century’. The programme focuses on the three following sets of topics: Until the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, the laws of the USSR and of the