Members of the Molody Rukh Youth Organization, critical of a decision to allow Russia a hand in writing Ukrainian history textbooks, demonstrated outside the Cabinet of Ministers building on June 11.
erhy Syrotenko, head of Molody Rukh in Kyiv, led a demonstration at the Cabinet of Ministers in Kyiv on June 11 to protest a recent agreement between Ukrainian and Russian officials to agree on content of school history textbooks – particularly the treatment of the Soviet era.
The two Ukrainian nationalists worry that the nation’s historical record will be altered if the Russian government is allowed to approve the text.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Volodymyr Semynozhenko and his Russian counterpart Valentina Matvienko recently agreed on the text.
During the demondstration Shamaida offered a Soviet-era history textbook to Semynozhenko.
“If Semynozhenko loves the Russian version of Ukrainian history so much, let him read those books. But spare us from reading them,” Shamaida said.
About 60 young people from Molody Rukh, the Ukrainian Youth Union and other youth organizations joined the hour-long protest, which they hoped would prevent the preliminary agreement from being adopted on the state level at a meeting of the Ukrainian and Russian prime ministers in Kharkiv on June 21.
