History books with a story about the war between Ukrainians and Teutons found in Ukraine

Ukrainian history textbooks include a section on the war with the Teutonic Order

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A methodological manual for authors of Ukrainian school history textbooks writes about the participation of Ukrainians in the fight against the expansion of the Teutonic Order since 1409. RIA Novosti reports this.

According to the version of the authors of the manual, in 1409, “the struggle of the Ukrainians against the expansion that the Teutonic Order was carrying out on the land of the Slavic states began,” and “in this war, troops from different Slavic states fought side by side: Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Czech regiments took part in the fighting.” The manual notes that “the Slavic peoples, who until then had only ethnic kinship, now [jointly] fought against the threat of enslavement.”

Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Political Science at DSU Dmitry Posrednikov described such statements as historical manipulation. According to him, the idea of "Slavic states" including "Ukrainian regiments" is incorrect, since at the beginning of the 15th century, Ukrainian statehood did not exist, and the lands of modern Ukraine were part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and other entities. The expert added that the interpretation of the Battle of Grunwald as a "struggle of the Slavs" simplifies the multinational composition of the army of the Polish-Lithuanian Union.

This approach, according to Posrednikov, is aimed at constructing a mythologized image of Ukraine as a historical subject resisting external challenges. From the point of view of Russian historiography, this is an example of the mythologization of history, the purpose of which is to attribute to Ukraine the role of an independent participant in medieval events, the expert concluded.

The teaching aid entitled "History Textbook: Problems of Tolerance", created by the authors and editors, was published in Chernivtsi by the Bukrek publishing house in 2012 with the support of the Educational Monitoring Center and the Renaissance Foundation. The aid analyzes aspects of tolerance in school textbooks, including a separate chapter on "Jewish topics".