Teachers and students of the pedagogical institutes of Ukraine in the 1920 - 1960s through the prism of everyday

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Teachers and students of the pedagogical institutes of Ukraine in the 1920 - 1960s through the prism of everyday

LIFE Review of the monograph: Oleksandr Lukianenko. “The closest friends of the party”: collectives of pedagogical higher education institutions of Ukraine in the images of daily 1920s - the first half of 1960s. Poltava: “Simon” Publishing House, 2019. 658 p.

Nadiia Skotna

PhD hab. (Philosophy), Professor, Rector of Ivan Franko Drohobych State Pedagogical University Drohobych, Ukraine

Valentyna BODAK

PhD hab. (Philosophy), Professor, Vice-Rector of Ivan Franko Drohobych State Pedagogical University, Drohobych, Ukraine

ВИКЛАДАЧІ І СТУДЕНТИ ПЕДАГОГІЧНИХ ІНСТИТУТІВ УКРАЇНИ

1920 - 1960-х рр. КРІЗЬ ПРИЗМУ ПОВСЯКДЕННЯ

Рецензія на монографію: Олександр Лук'яненко. “Найближчі друзі партії”:колективи педагогічних вишів України в образах щодення 1920-х - першої половини 1960-х років. Полтава: Видавництво “Сімон”, 2019. 658 с.

The history of everyday life as a field of scientific historical research has become widespread in Ukraine over the last twenty years. Both large social communities (intelligentsia, peasantry), and small social and socio-professional groups have become the focus of researchers' attention. Among the latter, particular attention was given to primary and secondary school teachers, researchers, teachers of higher education institutions, and students. In particular, a few years ago O. Komarnitskyi's thorough work “Educational Students in the Modernization of Higher Education in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s and 1930s” appeared (Kamianets-Podilskyi, 2017). A young scientist Oleksandr Lukianenko works in the same direction. Certainly, his monograph is a thorough study of the everyday life of teachers and students of institutions of higher pedagogical education of Ukraine in the 1920s - 1960s.

The peer-reviewed monograph consists of an introduction, six sections, conclusions, a list of reference links and literature used, nominal and geographical indications. The first section, “Theoretical and Methodological Foundations of the Research,” analyzes the state of scientific development of the problem, the source base of the research and, in fact, its methodology. Relying on a semantic approach, O. Lukianenko highlighted several levels of research that were devoted to the subject under study, namely: macrolevel - works on history and theory of everyday life; mezzanine level - works that illuminate the awakening of Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s and 1960s; microlevel - works on the history of high school of Ukraine; nanolevel - works on the history of everyday life of pedagogical collectives. The macrolevel is mainly represented by the works of I. Karivets, M. Halushko, and Ya. Kudenko. The author used I. Karivets's view of everyday life as a “dynamic picture”, which is characterized by conflict, intentionality, divisions and discontinuities, as well as deliberate rationalization while understanding it as the unity of actions of the entities that produce sociality (p. 17). The historiographic microlevel of historical studies analyzed by O. Lukianenko is of interest to us. The author placed there works of both Soviet authors of the 1920s (for example, publications of People's Commissar of Education of Soviet Ukraine H. Hrynko) and works of modern scholars (O. Zaplotynska, S. Tarnavska, N. Vitraniuk). However, the author completely ignored the large-scale edition initiated by the President of the National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine V Kremen “Higher Pedagogical Education and Science of Ukraine”, which has two dozen volumes dedicated to each area. history everyday institute everyday

Analyzing the historiography of the problem, let us note that O. Lukianenko presented his interpretation of the concept of “collective” - a group of people connected by working together in one institution. The researcher emphasized: “Ascending to the level of a homogeneous group of higher education educators, connected with the only problems, with similar life orientations, guided by identical state acts, held with respect to homogeneous ideological boundaries, makes it possible to identify generalized motives for activities that become clearer and reactions become more specific” (p. 23). Certainly, O. Lukianenko focused not only on the “motives of activity” of subjects of the collective, but also on the material foundations of their lives. Finally, he identified the subject of his research as “the everyday life of the collectives of the higher pedagogical school of Soviet Ukraine as a complex of material (everyday life, food, earnings, etc.) and ideal daily practices of educators (morality, ideals, preferences, etc.)” (p. 6). We should also note that O. Lukianenko distinguished two areas of study of pedagogical collectives: 1) biographical approach; 2) the history of everyday life. By the way, among the works of the first direction he mentioned only the edition “History of Poltava Pedagogical University in Persons” (Poltava, 2004). However, almost every institution of higher pedagogical education in Ukraine has a similar publication. For example, in 2010 in Drohobych a collection of “History of Drohobych State Pedagogical University in Names” was published.

The source base of O. Lukianenko's work is quite large-scale. He has worked on the documents of the Central State Archives of Higher Authorities and Administration of Ukraine, the Central State Archives of Public Associations of Ukraine, the State Archives of Kyiv, and a number of regional archives (state archives of Poltava, Sumy, Kharkiv, Cherkasy regions). However, the researcher completely bypassed the archives of western and southern regions of Ukraine. The scientist worked on the archive of Poltava V. G. Korolenko National

Pedagogical University particularly careful. However, he did not visit any archive of another higher education pedagogical institution. However, he used published archival materials to the history of Berdyansk State Pedagogical University.

The scientist has divided the source base into several groups: 1) sources of official external influence (normative documents: laws, government decrees, orders and instructions); 2) sources of official internal influence (orders on institutes, decisions of public organizations operating in educational establishments); 3) personal sources - personal affairs of employees and students, their memories, as well as (which is very interesting) creative work of students; 4) sources of influence on the masses (the press, works by famous writers of the studied era).

The research methodology chosen by the researcher is characterized by an interesting attempt to apply the civilization theories of M. Danylevskyi and A. Toynbee to characterize the phenomenon of pedagogical collectives. O. Lukianenko introduces the concept of “pedagogical civilization”, considering different groups of people as separate closed social organisms, which are not determinative in the general development of the country, but are real subjects of history, carriers of micro- and often macro-historical reality (pp. 44-46). The author extrapolated the laws of civilization development of M. Danylevskyi to pedagogical collectives. However, in our opinion, such an approach is somewhat tense. One can still agree with the extrapolation of M. Danylevskyi's first law, which presupposes the existence of linguistic affinity of societies as the first sign of belonging to a particular civilization. In this context, the author speaks about the presence of his own professional terminology in the teaching collectives.

However, O. Lukianenko's attempt to see the following civilizational laws of M. Danylevskyi in the life of pedagogical collectives is somewhat grotesque. For example, the second law states the need for political independence of the people for shaping their culture. The author of the peer-reviewed monograph is trying to see the effect of this law in the autonomy of higher education institutions that seemed to have the right to self-government. Recognizing that in the Soviet totalitarian state there could be no question of the autonomy of institutions and universities, O. Lukianenko writes about the existence of self-governing institutions, their own structure, a system of levers of influence, awards and punishments in institutions of higher education. In fact, in the USSR, not the higher self-government was illusory, declarative, because neither the rector (director) nor the academic councils (and the latter, by the way, did not act in pedagogical colleges and teachers' institutes) were independent in decision-making and were always guided by the instructions “from above” or have taken into account the opinion of local branches of the Communist Party.

The third law of M. Danylevskyi provided for the originality of peoples, their material and spiritual culture, and the impossibility of transferring them to other peoples. Again, it is impossible to talk about the identity of the collectives of pedagogical universities, because their financial support and outlook were determined by national economic and ideological policy. The identity of the teaching collectives can only be referred to as a system of interpersonal connections, which are formed within the social group and depend on the psychology of the subjects of the collective, their communication style and behavior. The following law of M. Danylevskyi argued for the necessity of the existence in society of various ethnographic elements, which with certain independence make up the federation. O. Lukianenko could not see any ethnographic diversity in the pedagogical collectives, so he depicted each collective as a separate complex of all-Ukrainian and all-union “federation” of higher education institutions, that is, changed the perspective of the image from internal to external. The last

law of civilizational development likens a certain society to a living plant organism that has periods of flowering, fruiting, decay and death. The use of such organizational rhetoric on human communities and social groups is considered an outdated approach. Moreover, among the pedagogical collectives of Ukraine in the 1920s - 1960s, several dozen of them ceased to exist, but not because of aging, but with a view to the liquidation or reorganization (unification) of a higher education institution by the state. Moreover, many pedagogical universities that existed during the period under study are still in operation today. And if we adapt the organist's rhetoric to them, then we have to admit that they will have an inevitable death. It is interesting if the author is aware of the social “death” of collective of the university at which he is affiliated.

For this reason, we do not agree with the use of the term “pedagogical civilization” by O. Lukianenko in his understanding. The interpretation of pedagogical collectives as “microcivilizations” leads to the erosion of the very concept of “civilization”. After all, if you take the position of author, you can talk about “the collective farm civilization” or “Housing Maintenance Office civilization”. However, this is no longer the language of science, but the language of postmodernist non-scientific publicism.

In Section 2, “General Characteristics of Soviet Ukraine's Teachers' Colleges in the 1920s and the First Half of the 1960s”, O. Lukianenko tries to define more clearly the subject of the study - pedagogical collectives. This is really important, because at different times not only pedagogical institutes, but also teachers' institutes, pedagogical colleges and even pedagogical schools were enrolled in higher education institutions. The researcher quite reasonably shows the stages of changes in the substantive interpretation of the concept of “collective of higher education institution” and finally concludes that in the early 1960s there were 33 collectives of pedagogical universities (pp. 90-93). The author carefully calculated the contingent of students and teachers of pedagogical universities, and made a periodization of quantitative changes in the composition of these collectives in Ukraine from 1920 to 1964. It is important that O. Lukianenko explored the gender aspect, pointing to the aspect of feminization of the student collective of pedagogical higher education institutions in the postwar period (pp. 102-105). Determining the national composition of students, the researcher found it quite a problem, given the lack of appropriate statistics and political realities, in which Jews, Ukrainians, Germans often had to hide their nationality. Instead, the gender composition of teachers of pedagogical colleges of Ukraine O. Lukianenko showed only on the example of Poltava Pedagogical Institute, dominated by men. However, it is certainly not possible to extrapolate these ostensible to all pedagogical universities of Ukraine. It is interesting to study the situation of students of the correspondence form of study, whom the author expressively called “theirs among strangers, strangers among their own”. It determines the difference between full-time and part-time students by the difference between the intellectual space in which the first and the second are rotated.

At the same time, the researcher showed the evolution of the requirements for admission to pedagogical higher education institutions during the study period, and also outlined the “motivation for group membership” - motives, which were guided by young people who wanted to become educators. The scientist studied 1028 cases of students of the Poltava Pedagogical Institute for the years of 1943 - 1953 and singled out the following motives: continuation of interrupted war training, desire for knowledge, random choice of profession, search for any specialty, mercantile interests (student scholarship), health status (poor health made it impossible to study and work in another profession), a wrong choice. Somewhat incorrectly the author considers the so-called “professional orientation” to the motives of the entrants, which should rather be interpreted as a way of attracting the entrants to the ranks of students, during which various motivation of the entrants was emphasized.

The scientist paid attention to the taxonomy of pedagogical collectives, examining the division within the group (for example, scientific-pedagogical staff, teaching support and administrative and economic staff). He showed the “rules of the game” for state-established pedagogical staff (competitions, appointments, etc.). Finding out the ways of “outsourcing” by the author, removing to the margins of the community through conscious social distance, social and academic cleansing, denunciations, detecting unwanted family ties, exposing manifestations of dissent are important for understanding the mental characteristics of student collectives. Equally interesting in this context is O. Lukianenko's depiction of the mechanisms of student renewal in the community of pedagogical education providers, ways of their social rehabilitation.

The fourth section “Space of Life of Pedagogical Higher Education Institutions Collectives” is devoted to the historical-genetic and systematic analysis, first, the territorial location of educational institutions in the provinces/districts/regions, second, structural architectonics of pedagogical institutes, institutes of social education, pedagogical technical schools, teacher's institutes (division into faculties, departments, laboratories), third, the working space of pedagogical collectives (premises of institutes, organization of housing, including dormitories, etc.), and fourth, intellectual space of the higher education institution. The latter aspect seemed particularly interesting to us. The author paid attention to the description of the industry elite, the procedures of raising the mental and production capacity, the problems of promotion on the career ladder, questions of remuneration for advanced training, etc. (pp. 249-266). In general O. Lukianenko presented a unique picture of the low scientific level of teaching staff of pedagogical institutes in the 1920s - 1960s on the basis of archival materials. In addition, the researcher successfully characterized the process and consequences of introduction of polytechnical education of pedagogical institutes in the 1950s - early 1960s.

The fifth section, “Filling in Working and Leisure Time” is of particular interest, in which the researcher revealed the transformation of the work schedule of full-time and part-time teachers during the study period. O. Lukianenko cites many interesting facts, including the presence of “long working days” of collectives, teacher overload, which led to cheating, fraud (for example, adding hours) (pp. 289-291). The scientist also focuses on the difficulties of traineeship in primary and secondary schools as they find themselves “on the edge of two collectives”. The work provides many interesting illustrations of the types of leisure members of the staff of pedagogical higher education institutions (entertaining, interactive, educational, cultural, creative (artistic), religious, sports, recreation, medical leisure, tourism). The study of the so-called “religious leisure” of students is of particular interest. O. Lukianenko not only talks about the facts of the activities of anti-religious, atheistic societies in pedagogical institutes, but also presents numerous manifestations of religious views and practices among students (pp. 362-374).

The sixth section, “Space for the Basic Needs of Teachers of Pedagogical Higher Education Institutions” identifies ways to meet the basic needs of educators (food, money, clothing, health care). However, the first sentence of this section is alarming, in which the author asserts that “daily existence is, in fact, the satisfaction of basic (physiological) needs” (p. 383). This view can only be partially agreed, since spiritual, intellectual needs in the life of the teaching community may not always play the first, but not the second, role.

In the last section O. Lukianenko tried to show the life of the micro collective in extreme conditions. The researcher cited many facts about the life and emotions of the educated people during the “Great Famine” (1932 - 1933), during the genocide of the Ukrainian people by the Soviet authorities. In a separate paragraph, the scientist described the difficult conditions of everyday life of students in the Nazi occupation of 1941 - 1944.

The peer-reviewed study is an example of a thorough scientific analysis of the problem under study, a meticulous collection and analysis of facts, an understanding of the complex aspects of the daily life of colleges of pedagogical colleges in the 1920s - 1960s, which pushed the author to psychological aspirations. It is important that the author tried to give a theoretical characterization to each issue under study, in particular by constructing properly justified periods of unfolding of one or the other aspect within the specified chronological frameworks. Certainly, the monograph shows some inaccuracies. Thus, on page 77, the author provided a map showing the network of pedagogical institutes in Ukraine as of 1962. The map shows the city of Lviv as the center of one of the pedagogical institutes. However, it is known that Lviv Pedagogical Institute was annexed to the Drohobych Pedagogical University in 1960, so in 1962 there was no higher institution of pedagogical education in Lviv. Also the chronological framework of the study causes caution. The lower boundary (1920) is connected with the emergence of the Soviet system of higher pedagogical education. Instead, the upper boundary is tied not to the educational, but to the political aspects - the curtailment of the policy of de-Stalinization and the removal from power of Khrushchev in 1964. It is obvious that there is no correlation between the chronological boundaries of the study. However, these shortcomings do not obscure the pleasant impression of O. Lukianenko's monograph. We wish the author further achievements in the scientific field.

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