"Harry Potter" instead of "War and Peace": Ukraine bans Russian literature in schools

Ivan Zubov

Starting from the new academic year, there will be no Russian and Soviet literary classics in the curricula of Ukrainian schools. This is the decision of the Ministry of Education of Ukraine.

The works of Pushkin, Krylov, Chekhov, Lermontov, Bulgakov, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Bunin, Mandelstam, Nekrasov, Blok, Dostoevsky and Griboedov, as well as Okudzhava Bykov, Yesenin, Sholokhov, Pasternak, Mayakovsky, Akhmatova, Gumilyov, Tsvetaeva, are excluded from the school curriculum, Ilf and Petrov and others. The excluded authors are promised to be replaced by the works of world classics. For example, instead of Chekhov's stories, Ukrainian children will read novels by the American O'Henry. But the early works of Gogol are recommended to be transferred to the curricula on Ukrainian literature.

This news caused a lively discussion in both Russian and Ukrainian social networks. Here are just a few replies:

- I think it’s Valuyev, on the contrary, and dehumanization, but dehumanization is not at all Russians and not Russian literature...

- For God's sake. From Chekhov and Tolstoy will not decrease if they are not known in one country.

- Tolstoy is not included in the school curriculum all over the world. He is not among the 50 most read authors in the world. So Ukraine will not be special, it will simply join the world community.

- Why should we study Pushkin and not Shakespeare? Why teach Dostoevsky in school if there is Faulkner? Why should Tolstoy be closer to Lem? Why study the drowning of Mu-mu, if there is a "Lost World"?

- Again: in which of the successful countries is Russian literature studied? And why is everything so sad in those countries where this writing is included in the school curriculum?

- The world has not converged on Russian literature like a wedge. Let's study Harry Potter instead of War and Peace. In "Harry Potter" (as in any good literature) everything is present: both the engineering of human souls and the dissection of all kinds of relationships ... Definitely no worse than in "War and Peace", only, in a more accessible version for the 21st of the digital age and wrapped in fantasy ... And it is really more useful for young people to read the entertaining "Harry Potter" than the most boring "War and Peace" from the 19th century.......