Educational Assimilation: Financial Discrimination Against Teachers

As part of educational assimilation, aggressors may establish unequal pay conditions, rewarding teachers who teach in the language of the metropole while artificially lowering the pay rates of, or withholding bonuses from, teachers of the local language. The creation of financial inequality squeezes national cadres out of the education system and economically coerces schools into adopting the colonizer's standards.

ID: T0114.002
Sub-technique of:  T0114
Tactic: Persistence
People: Ukrainians
Contributors: decolonial.ist project
Version: 1.1
Created: 21 April 2026
Last Modified: 9 August 2026

Procedures Carried Out


January 1919
C0074 Soviet-Ukrainian War: Second Invasion and Resource Depletion (1919)
G0014 White Movement (AFSR)
S0012 Occupation and Controlled Administrations

General Mai-Maevsky, head of the Whites' administration in Katerynoslav, Kharkiv, Kursk and Poltava provinces, by order No. 22 of 3 August 1919 cut the Ukrainian school off from state money: "The release of credits from the treasury for the maintenance of educational institutions with instruction in the Little Russian language is not permitted"; the zemstvos - the organs of local self-government - and the towns he forbade to open or support such schools, and those already open he allowed to exist only "on condition of their being taken over for maintenance by private persons and societies." To the teachers the order closed off state standing as well: "the right of state service" was granted only to the teachers of schools recognized as "strengthening the idea of a single Russian statehood"[1]. In Kyiv that same autumn, by a summary of the Soviet side, "the release of credit to schools for the teaching of the Ukrainian language is discontinued"[2].

January 1978
C0054 Financial Russification of Schools (1978–1983)
G0010 USSR
S0008 Government

Financial privileges for teaching in the metropole's language: pursuant to the resolution of the CPSU Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers of 26 May 1983 No. 473 "On additional measures for improving the study of the Russian language in general-education schools and other educational institutions of the union republics," the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine and the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR, by a resolution of 10 June 1983 - signed by Shcherbytsky and Liashko, stamped "Not for the press" - raised from 1984 by 15 percent the salary rates of teachers of Russian language and literature and allowed classes of more than 25 pupils to be split into subgroups for Russian lessons[3][4].

References

  1. Гражданская война на Украине, т. 2 (1967), док. № 320; «Голос Юга», № 3, 8 августа 1919. (1919). Приказ главноначальствующего Екатеринославской, Харьковской, Курской и Полтавской губерний генерала Май-Маевского № 22.
  2. Гражданская война на Украине, т. 2 (1967); ЦГАОР УССР, ф. 2579. (1919). Сообщение о положении в Киеве при деникинской власти.