No Dostoevsky or Bulgakov: School curricula cleared of "Russian aggression"

All Russian and Belarusian authors of both Soviet and pre-Soviet periods will be removed from Ukrainian school textbooks. This is stated in the decision of the Working Group on updating the content of curricula of foreign literature at the Ministry of Education of Ukraine.

• The entire section "Bylinas" (Epic Ballades) will be removed from the school curriculum, and instead of "Ilya Muromets and “Solovei the Whistler-Robber" the curriculum will include "King Lear" and ballads about Robin Hood.
• Krylov's Fables will be replaced by La Fontaine's Fables.
• The works by Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev and Nekrasov have been ruled out as glorifying Russian aggression and are difficult to understand, so they will be partly replaced by Austen, Hugo and Bronte novels.
• Stories by Bunin, Chekhov and Korolenko, poetry by Tyutchev, Fet, Blok, Akhmatova, Esenin, Mayakovsky and Pasternak, fantasy novels by Belyaev (Amphibian Man) and Grin (Scarlet Sails) are excluded.
• The plays “The Government Inspector”, “The Nose” and “The Overcoat” by Gogol will be removed from the programme. Instead of reading 'Dead Souls', children will be offered the Canadian author's 'Anne of the Green Roofs'.
• Bulgakov's “The Master and Margarita” will be replaced by Camus' “The Plague”.
• War prose – "The Living and the Dead" by Simonov, "The Alpine Ballad" by Bykov, "Babi Yar" by Kuznetsov, "The Dawns Here Are Quiet" by Vasilyev – will be excluded under the pretext of programme unloading and Russian aggression. The same applies to war poetry.

The Working Group explained its decision by the "psychological and physical trauma of Ukrainian children as a result of hostilities" and "lack of a receptive context under martial law to study the works by Russian and Belarusian writers". Other reasons include "the importance of developing cultural ties between Ukraine and civilised countries" and "the need to strengthen the spiritual power of the Ukrainian nation through the achievements of classical and modern literature. The decision was passed unanimously.

Natalia Pipa, MP of the "Holos" party, one of the authors of the draft law №7213 on the ban of the UOC, participates in the activities of the Working Group.

The decision of the Working Group was supported by First Deputy Minister of Education and Science Andrey Vitrenko.

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