Ukraine to remove Tolstoy’s War and Peace from school curriculum

Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science has decided to remove War and Peace, a novel by Leo Tolstoy, from the school curriculum, First Deputy Minister of Education Andriy Vitrenko said during a telethon on Ukraine’s 1+1 TV channel.

“For example, we won’t study War and Peace in Ukraine anymore. Anything that praises the orcs (a term used by Ukrainians to describe Russian troops – editor’s note) will be removed from the foreign literature curriculum,” he said, quoted by Ukrinform.

Changes will also be made to history programs and to the Defence of the Fatherland course.

“We will strengthen national-patriotic education, and there will be a separate part of the course dedicated to mines. So that children understand that they can’t touch them, that they are dangerous,” Vitrenko added. The official stressed that Ukrainian schools plan to reopen on 1 September.

A month ago, Mediazona news outlet reported that Russia also plans to change its school curriculum. Employees of Prosveshcheniye, Russia’s leading educational publishing house, were asked to remove mentions of Ukraine and Kyiv from Russian schoolbooks. Editors had to change about 15% of texts.