Happy VE Day Everybody

In honor of Victory in Europe Day I will be starting up the grill for the first time this year. I am grilling hot dogs tonight. The weather has decided to cooperate with these plans. It is not too hot and there is a slight breeze to wave the US flag.

In other news I am still waiting to hear on the job that interviewed me. I sent them an e-mail today. I hope to hear one way or the other by the end of the week. If I get the job I will take it for at least two years, probably longer. If they do not hire me I still need to know soon so I can get on with the rest of my life. If I do not get this job I do not think I will be wasting any more postage trying to get a position at a US university. I got a rejection today in the mail from a job I applied to long ago telling me they had hired a woman who has not even finished her Ph.D. yet. When an ABD at a US university trumps the fastest recorded Ph.D. at SOAS and multiple publications I have to conclude it is a hopeless cause I embraced.

I am writing a couple pages of real work a day now. Usually before 8 AM. I have now written 116 pages of Catherine's Grandchildren: A Short History of the Russian-Germans under Soviet Rule. I really only have the years 1917, 1918 and 1919 to finish. I finished up the chapter on the 1980s. Compared to the 1970s the first half of the 1980s was a much less active time period for the group. There was one well publicized demonstration in Moscow's Red Square on 31 March 1980 demanding the right to emigrate. Other than that there was not much protest activity. It was also a pretty short chapter since I only went up to 1987. In that year the Soviet government decided to allow unlimited emigration out of the USSR. Most of the Russian-Germans left for Germany in the next 15 years. The 1989 Soviet census counted just over 2 million Russian-Germans. During the 1990s over 1.5 million Russian-Germans settled in Germany. This trend has continued at a slower pace into the current decade. The 1987 removal of the restrictions on emigration out of the Soviet Union essentially announced the end of any significant Russian-German population in Russia, Kazakhstan and Central Asia.

I got a couple e-mails from the graduate student I helped right before Christmas recently. He has sent me another graduate student at a different institution to help. As always Guru Pohl welcomes all seekers of knowledge.