CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Institute of Education EPrints Citizenship Education in Ukraine and Russia: Reconciling Nation- Building and Active Citizenship Jan Germen Janmaat School of LEID, Institute of Education. Email
[email protected] Nelli Piattoeva Department of Education, 33014 University of Tampere, Finland. Email
[email protected] Abstract This article examines the discourses framing citizenship education in Ukraine and Russia from perestroika to the present. We argue that there is a tension between the discourses of democratization and state consolidation and that the intensity of these discourses varies in time in both countries. Russia and Ukraine display both similarities and differences in the kind and intensity of discourses, which we relate to differential points of departure and domestic political events. An important similarity is the emphasis on state cohesion from the mid 1990s. This concern was sparked by the emergence of separatist movements in peripheral regions. Pressure from the Council of Europe to implement the programme Education for Democratic Citizenship in the national curricula is not seen as an important factor shaping the citizenship education policies of Ukraine and Russia. From this we conclude that national politics and anxieties about state cohesion still far outweigh international pressures in the realm of citizenship education. Introduction The relationship between citizenship education and authority has been hotly debated by scholars from a range of disciplines. Central to this debate is the question of whether citizenship education should nurture loyal law-abiding citizens aware of their duties and responsibilities to state and society, or produce citizens who stand up for their rights, question state authority and are open to other views and cultures (McCowan, 2004).