Summary: The paper attempts to examine the presentation of the history of Bulgarian and the Balkan Peninsula in foreign history textbooks, specifically in Ukrainian ones. It analyses the curriculum for the lower secondary and upper secondary stages, which was updated by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine in 2018. According to the plan, world history starts to be studied from the 6th grade twice a week, but not as a separate subject, rather as part of the integrated course “General History and History of Ukraine”. “General History” is introduced as a separate subject in the 7th grade and is studied one hour per week in parallel with the subject “History of Ukraine” up to and including the 11th grade. The curricula of the subject “General History”, which regulate the structure of the General History course for the respective grade, are made in accordance with this plan. Accordingly, the history textbooks are also aligned with this structure. For the purpose of the study, the textbooks for the 6th grade (six in total published in 2019), 7th grade (five in total from 2020), 8th grade (four in total from 2016), 9th grade (ten in total from 2017), 10th grade (six in total from 2018), and 11th grade (six in total from 2019) are analysed. The analysis of the information extracted from them allows making an assessment of the place of Bulgarian history in Ukrainian textbooks, which is interesting both in itself and in relation to the presence of a large Bulgarian minority in this country.
Keywords: Bulgarian history; Balkan Peninsula history; Ukrainian history textbooks; subject “General History”
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