Disappointment in Education

This review was prepared within the joint “Book Review” project of the Political Sphere Institute and the Center for European Studies in Minsk.

Vital Kryvuts. Under the Label of “State Education”: The Implementation of Governmental Educational Concepts in Western Belarus, 1926–1939. Baranavichy: BarSU, 2010. 195 pp.

The review was prepared by historian Andrei Charniakevich.

Already in the introduction, from the very first sentence, the author defines the main subject of the work as the study of the educational policy conducted by the ruling circles of the state toward the younger generation. Yet the text soon moves from “ruling circles” to “ruling elites,” treating the two terms as synonyms. Similar simplifications appear from the very beginning of the book.

The reviewer points to a number of problematic formulations: the use of “Second Polish Republic” in an imprecise form, the description of Western Belarus as an “unofficial” name, and the assertion that by September 1939 the region was inhabited by about five million people, most of them Belarusians. Such claims are followed by equally paradoxical conclusions. The author first presents the region as a backward agrarian and raw-material appendage, but then notes that in the years of economic growth before the war several voivodeships reached French levels of grain and potato yields.

The book addresses an important topic: the policies of “state education” in the eastern territories of interwar Poland and their implementation in Western Belarus. This is a field that deserves careful study, since educational policy was closely connected with national, social and political projects. Schools, youth organizations, cultural institutions and state programs all became instruments through which the authorities tried to form loyal citizens.

At the same time, the reviewer stresses that the book suffers from conceptual and methodological weaknesses. The author often declares broad conclusions without sufficient clarification of terms or adequate engagement with the complexity of the region. The result is a study that raises the right questions but does not always provide convincing answers.

The disappointment mentioned in the title is therefore not caused by the topic itself, but by the gap between the importance of the subject and the quality of its treatment. The book may be useful as a collection of material and as an invitation to discuss state educational policy in Western Belarus, but it requires a critical reading.