Merry Christmas

In case I do not have time to blog between now and December 25th, I wish all my readers a Merry Christmas. I get both Western (Catholic and Protestant) Christmas and Eastern (Orthodox) Christmas off this year. Well I got them both off last year too, but I was unemployed.

The Accordion Player

For most of the fall I walked past an old Russian accordion player on the way to work. I took to giving him four to five som each time I saw him. He always expressed great appreciation. When the weather got cold I did not see him for many weeks. Finally, yesterday it was quite warm and I saw him again. I gave him 10 som this time. Since I have finished all my work for the semester I figured it was a good way to start my Christmas break.

Election Day

Today they are holding parliamentary elections in Kyrgyzstan. I predict that President Bakiev's party, Ak Zhol, will win a majority of the seats. But, despite the elections, today looks like any other calm Sunday in Bishkek.

Possibly the coolest present ever (R-E-S-P-E-K-T)

Today was the last day of classes of my first semester of teaching. My final class was my Russian Politics course. I brought some snacks and most of the students showed up despite the class being optional. This was a bit of a surprise since the last class for my Democratization course had only four students show up. My last Political Culture class managed to have an even lower attendance with three students responding to my advertisement of free food. But, the biggest surprise was what the students gave me. They presented me with a shirt bearing the university emblem. Beneath it they had written out CCCP (USSR in Russian) and then vertically spelled out the acronym in Russian as Samyi, Samyi, Super, Respekt. The t in Respekt then intersected with Otto written horizontally at the bottom of the shirt. On the back of the shirt many of the students had written personal messages and thank you notes with their signatures. I spent a long time in the desert looking for "just a little bit."

"R-E-S-P-E-C-T"

Quoted material from A. Franklin

Almost Done

The semester is almost over. I am just waiting for 40 more research papers due tomorrow at 5pm Bishkek time so I can finish calculating final grades. Early this week my students filled out their evaluations of me . Today and tomorrow my classes are optional. My students can show up and hang out with me for a while over some snacks if they want. Or they can use the time to work on their research papers. So far most of my students have taken the second option.

Sunday at the office

Today I came into work to meet a student. While waiting for her I read and marked a draft of a research paper by another student. Now that our meeting is over I am going to delay going over any more research papers until tomorrow.

My bank's new building

This morning I went to my bank's new location around the corner from their old place to deposit a big chunk of my last pay packet. The new building is much larger and built like a fortress. They have metal detectors, armed guards and who knows what else. The actual deposit of money is even done underground behind bullet proof glass. So I think my money should be safe.

New Publication Coming Soon I Hope

I finally got my copy edited proofs for my chapter, "Loss, Retention, and Reacquisition of Social Capital by Special Settlers in the USSR, 1941-1960." It is scheduled to appear in Cynthia Buckley and Blair Ruble (eds.), Going Home? Population Movements and Belonging in Eurasia (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2008). I have a deadline of 28 December 2007 to make the corrections and return the proofs. So I hope the book finally sees print sometime early next year. The book is the result of two workshops I attended at the Kennan Institute in 2004 and 2005.

From One Semester to the Next

Now that I have nearly finished teaching a whole semester here, I think I have a better grasp on how to manage my time next semester. For one thing I know the subjects I am teaching next semester better than the ones I taught this semester. I also know more what to expect out of teaching here. Because I had been falsely led to believe that university teaching was something on the order of brain surgery or rocket science I started this semester with a lot of unjustified anxiety. I am still not sure why hundreds of people on search committees at universities including several here claimed I was "incapable of ever teaching." I found teaching much easier than working as a barrista.

At any rate I think this next semester I can make some time to do some research. Now that I have an institutional position I might even be able to get some funding to carry out this research. But, even if I fail to get any funding, I have a steady income now and should be able to gain access to Soviet era archives here in Bishkek. Previously I had no money and except for the US and Estonia no country would give me permission to look at any of their archival collections. Having removed the boulder of unemployment from my life everything else looks like a cake walk.

Today's Progress

Today I marked up two student drafts of research papers and wrote one letter of recommendation for a third student. I might have done more if I could have gotten the printer in front of me to work. I was too lazy to switch computer terminals and try another printer.

I Spoke Too Soon

It looks like I have more work this weekend than I thought. I have to grade three first drafts of research papers and write two letters of recommendation for students before Monday now. But, I think I can manage to get it all done tomorrow. That way I would at least have Sunday free.

Some Room to Breathe

It looks like I will finally get some free time this weekend. I have finished grading all the little papers I assigned and the big papers are not due until 14 December 2007. I also finished editing a journal article due tomorrow. I sent it off by e-mail today. As usual it took four times as long to get the citations and references into the proper format as it did to actually research and write the article. Or at least it seemed that way. The only work I have to do this weekend is to look over the draft of a literature review written by one of the honors students I am supervising. I do not anticipate that this will require more than a small part of my weekend.

Less Busy Now

I finally finished grading all the dozens upon dozens of late papers I have received since Friday. A full 70% of the grade for all three of my classes has now been calculated. Most of my students did pretty well. A very small number did not. Now I can finally do things other than grade papers all day and night.

Busy

I have been busy putting together grades. Way too many late papers have come to me in the last week. I finally finished grading everything I have for one out of three classes. Next semester I am not going to be nearly so lenient regarding late papers.

Giving Thanks

In case I do not have time to blog between now and Friday here are my thoughts on Thanksgiving. This year I am thankful to finally have a job and be earning an income after many years of unemployment. I applied for this particular job three years in a row. Had AUCA not fired the people preventing me from being hired here I would still be in Arivaca. Sometimes God works in mysterious ways.

Last few weeks of the semester

Right now I am busy trying to finish up the semester. I have three more weeks of class after this one. Two of those will be devoted to student oral reports. The last one will be a wrap up.

Most of my time right now is devoted to trying to get grades in order. I wish I had a grading assistant. Grading papers is taking up way too much of my time.

Correction

Evidently, I erred in referring to Ruth Derksen Siemens as Dr. Siemens. I misconstrued the phrase "Her PhD studies in the Philosophy of Language at the University of Sheffield, UK investigate letters.." to mean that she had already completed the degree. At her request I have reproduced her clarification of this matter below. I am sorry for any confusion my error may have caused.

To Ellwood and other naysayers

It is very important to read carefully before attacking a person’s credibility. Note that the statement in the website states: “Her PhD studies in the Philosophy of Language at the University of Sheffield, UK investigate letters …”. My research is complete and the “Viva” is scheduled for December 4th at the Bakhtin Centre, University of Sheffield , UK . Responders to my website often refer to me as Dr. Ruth Derksen (as do my students) but I correct this in my communication with them.

It is also important to rise above the petty slandering and remember the millions of innocent victims who died in the mines, forests, and industrial sites of Stalin’s Gulag. They deserve our energy, our time and resources. Let’s together demonstrate a higher moral standard.

Ruth Derksen Siemens

Political History of the USSR Syllabus

ICP 255
3 Credits
International and Comparative Politics
American University Central Asia
Spring Semester 2008
J. Otto Pohl, Ph.D.

Meeting Time: Monday and Wednesday 1:00 pm.

Course Description: This course is an introductory survey course to the political history of the Soviet Union. It will cover the political, economic and social changes in the USSR from the time of its founding until its collapse. Important political events that will be covered include the Bolshevik Revolution, the Civil War, the collectivization of agriculture, the Great Terror, World War II, and the reforms of the Khrushchev era. Special emphasis will be given to the multinational nature of the Soviet Union. In particular the course will pay attention to how different nationalities in the USSR experienced and remembered the events covered in class.


Requirements: The course will consist of assigned readings, lectures, discussions, short writing assignments, and a research paper. For each of the four weeks with supplemental reading assignments, students will be required to submit a 600 to 800 word summary and analysis of the material along with one question for class discussion. These supplemental readings are the four pieces by Long, Viola, Krieger and Khazanov. These papers are all due in class on the Wednesday of the week during which the material is discussed. Students will also have to complete a 1400 to 2000 word research paper on the history of their family in the USSR. Students may substitute a research paper on a different subject in consultation with the instructor. This paper is due the last week of class. All late papers will lose one letter grade for each day they are late. Students must come to class on time. Being more than fifteen minutes late will count as an absence. Students will lose one letter grade after four unexcused absences and fail the course after seven. Written proof of an emergency from a doctor or other appropriate authority is required for an absence to be excused. Please turn off all cell phones while in class. I will eject any students carrying on cell phone conversations during class from the room. This will count as an unexcused absence. Finally, I have a significant hearing loss and may have to ask people to repeat their questions or statements from time to time. You can minimize this by speaking loudly and clearly. This syllabus is tentative and subject to change.


Readings: The primary text book for this class is Geoffry Hosking’s, The First Socialist Society: The History of the Soviet Union from Within (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). In addition to this book there are four short readings by James Long, Lynne Viola, Viktor Krieger and Anatoly Khazanov that will be provided to the students by the instructor.

Policy on Plagiarism: Plagiarism will result in a zero on the assignment for the first offense. A second offense will result in a grade of F for the course. Please be sure to cite your sources.

Grading:

Four short papers - 60% (15% each)

Written research paper –20% (Due last day of class)

Class participation – 20%


Class Schedule

Week One: Introduction to the course and review of the syllabus.

Week Two: The Bolshevik Revolution.

Chapters 1 and 2 in Hosking, pp. 15-56.

Week Three: War Communism

Chapter 3 in Hosking, pp. 57-92.

Week Four: The 1920-1921 Famine

Read: James W. Long, “The Volga Germans and the Famine of 1921,” Russian Review, Vol. 51, no. 4 (Oct., 1992), pp. 510-525.

Week Four: Nationality Policy during the 1920s

Chapter 4 in Hosking, pp. 93-118.

Week Five: Economic Transformation in the 1930s.

Chapters 5 and 6 in Hosking, pp. 119-182.

Week Six: Destruction of the “Kulaks”

Read: Lynne Viola, “The Other Archipelago: Kulak Deportations to the North in 1930,” Slavic Review, Vol. 60, no. 4 (winter 2001), pp. 730-755.

Week Seven: The Great Terror

Chapter 7 in Hosking, pp. 183-204.

Week Eight: The USSR on the Eve of the Great War

Chapters 8 and 9 in Hosking, pp. 205-260.

Week Nine: World War II

Chapter 10 in Hosking, pp. 263-295.

Week Ten: World War II Continued

Read: Viktor Krieger, “Patriots or Traitors? – The Soviet Government and the ‘German Russians’ After the Attack on the USSR by National Socialist Germany” in Karl Schlogel, ed., Russian-German Special Relations in the Twentieth Century: A Closed Chapter? (New York: Berg Publishers, 2006), pp. 133-163.

Week Eleven: Late Stalinism

Chapter 11 in Hosking, pp. 296-325.

Week Twelve: Khrushchev

Chapter 12 in Hosking, pp. 326-362.

Week Thirteen: The Era of Stagnation

Chapter 13 in Hosking, pp. 363-401.

Week Fourteen: Nationality in the USSR after World War II

Chapter 14 in Hosking, pp. 402-445.

Week Fifteen: Nationality in the USSR after World War II Continued

Read Anatoly Khazanov, “People with Nowhere to Go: The Plight of the Meskhetian Turks,” (chapter 7) in After the USSR: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Politics in the Commonwealth of Independent States (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), pp. 192-210.

Week Sixteen: The End of the Soviet Union

Chapter 15 in Hosking, pp. 446-501.

Week Seventeen: Research paper due and concluding remarks.

Letters from Mennonite Special Settlers

Dr. Ruth Derksen Siemens has put together an impressive web site based upon letters written by the Regher family during the early 1930s. The OGPU (Soviet political police) exiled the Reghers from their home in Ukraine to a special settlement village in the northern Urals in 1931. Despite their punitive internal exile they continued to correspond with family members in Carlyle, Saskatchewan. Incredible as it sounds, hundreds of such letters from Russian-German Mennonites banished to special settlements made it to relatives in Canada during the 1930s. You can visit the web site here. I urge all my readers to go check out her web site. She also has both a book and a film documentary coming out early next year based upon these letters. Kyrgyzstan at one time had a fairly large Mennonite population including Maria Regher who settled here with her surviving children after being freed from the special settlement in the Urals in 1956. She died here in 1976. If not for the work of Dr. Siemens she and her family would have been completely forgotten like millions of other victims of Stalinist repression.

hat tip: Michael Miller

New Publication Finally in Print

In 2003 I wrote an article on the Soviet deportation of whole nationalities for an encyclopedia on European migration. I am not sure when the English language version of this work will be published. The German language version of the book, however, has been publicly available since 7 November 2007 . My article, "Deportierte in der Sowjetunion im und nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg" appears on pages 458 to 463 of the Enzyklopadie Migration In Europa: Vom 17. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Klaus J. Bade, Pieter C. Emmer, Leo Lucassen and Jochen Oltmer. The work is published by Ferdinand Schoningh out of Paderborn in cooperation with Wilhelm Fink in Munich. It has been a long time coming, but it looks really good. I am aware by the way that I have left out the umlauts in the German words and names above.

We Have Snow in Bishkek

This morning when I woke up it was snowing. A couple of hours later when I went to work it was still snowing. It is not too cold, but the muddy slush on the ground makes walking on the streets of Bishkek even more dangerous than usual.

Another Guest Lecturer

On Monday Greta Uehling spoke in front of my Political Culture class on the return of Crimean Tatars to Crimea. The talk went very well. I think my students were all quite disappointed today when it was only me lecturing in front of them with no pictures to show.

Migration and Borders Syllabus

ICP 329.5
3 credits
International and Comparative Politics
American University of Central Asia
Spring Semester 2008
J. Otto Pohl, Ph.D.


Meeting Time: Tuesday and Thursday 11:00 am

Course Description: This course will cover the topic of cross border migration. It will concentrate primarily upon the movement of people across international borders. However, it will also briefly cover the role of internal state borders with regards to forced migration in the USSR during the 1940s. The class will deal with various types of international migration in the 20th and 21st centuries including labor migration, forced migration and ethnic “return” migration. The course will emphasize the effects of state policies upon migrants in both countries of emigration and immigration. Case studies will be drawn from the US-Mexican border, Europe, the USSR and its successor states, and Palestine.

Requirements: The course will consist of assigned readings, lectures, discussion, short writing assignments, an oral report and a research paper. For each of the twelve weeks with reading assignments, students will be required to submit a 150 to 200 word summary of the material along with one question for class discussion. Students will also have to complete a 2500 to 3000 word research paper comparing and contrasting two case studies of migration. The paper is due the last week of class. In the two weeks prior to this deadline each student will be required to give a short oral presentation on the subject of their paper followed by a short question and answer session. Late papers will lose one letter grade for each day they are late. Students must come to class on time. Being more than fifteen minutes late will count as an absence. Students will lose one letter grade after four unexcused absences and fail the course after seven. Written proof of an emergency from a doctor or other appropriate authority is required for an absence to be excused. Please turn off all cell phones while in class. I will eject any students carrying on cell phone conversations during class from the room. This will count as an unexcused absence. Finally, I have a significant hearing loss and may have to ask people to repeat their questions or statements from time to time. You can minimize this by speaking loudly and clearly. This syllabus is tentative and subject to change.

Plagiarism Policy: Plagiarism will result in a zero on the assignment for the first offense. A second offense will result in a grade of F for the course. Please be sure to cite your sources.

Grading:

Twelve short papers – 36% (3% each)

Written research paper – 20% (Due last week of class)

Oral report on research – 10%

Class participation – 34%


Class Schedule

Week one: Introduction and review of the syllabus.

Crossing the Border

Week Two: Read “Border Crossings and the Transformation of Value and Valuers” (chapter six) in Hasting Donnan and Thomas M. Wilson, Borders: Frontiers of Identity, Nation and State (Oxford, UK: Berg, 1999), pp. 107-127.

Week Three: Read “Frontiers and Migration” (chapter five) in Malcolm Anderson, Frontiers: Territory and State Formation in the Modern World (Cambridge, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), pp. 127-150.

Labor Migration

Week Four: Read Thomas J. Espenshade, “Unauthorized Immigration to the United States,” Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 21 (1995), pp. 195-216.

Week Five: Read “Europe’s Immigrant Integration Crises” (chapter one) in Patrick Ireland, Becoming Europe: Immigration, Integration and the Welfare State (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004), pp. 1-26.

Ethnic Cleansing

Week Six: Read “Forced Migrations: Prehistory and Classification” (chapter two) in Pavel Polian, Against Their Will: The History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the USSR (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004), pp. 17-48.

Week Seven: Read Elza-Bair Guchinova, “Deportation of the Kalmyks (1943-1956): Stigmatized Ethnicity” (chapter seven) in Uyama Tomohiko, ed., Empire, Islam, and Politics in Central Eurasia, Slavic Eurasian Studies, no. 14 (Sapporo, Japan: Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, 2007), pp. 187-221.

Week Eight: Read Introduction and Piotr Pykel, “The Expulsion of the Germans from Czechoslovakia” (chapter one) in Steffen Prausser and Arfon Rees, eds., The Expulsion of the ‘German’ Communities from Eastern Europe at the End of the Second World War (Florence, Italy: European University Institute, 2004), pp. 1-20.

Week Nine: Read Rosemarie M. Esber, “Rewriting the History of 1948: The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Question Revisited,” Holy Land Studies, vol. 4, no. 1 (2005), pp. 55-72.

Ethnic “Return” Migration

Week Ten: Read “Did they jump or were they pushed?” (chapter one) in Hilary Pilkington, Migration, Displacement and Identity in Post-Soviet Russia (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 3-22.

Week Eleven: Read “18 May 1944: The Deportation of Crimean Tatars” (chapter one) in Forced Migration Project of the Open Society Institute, Crimean Tatars: Repatriation and Conflict Prevention, (New York: Open Society Institute, 1996), pp. 11-28.

Week Twelve: Read Laurie P. Salitan, “Domestic Pressures and the Politics of Exit: Trends in Soviet Emigration Policy," Political Science Quarterly, vol. 104, no. 4 (Winter, 1989-1990), pp. 671-687.

Week Thirteen: Read Rainer Ohliger and Rainer Munz, “Minorities into Migrants: Making and Un-Making Central and Eastern Europe’s Ethnic German Diasporas," Diaspora, vol. 11, no. 1 (2002), pp. 45-83.

Student Research

Week Fourteen: Review

Week Fifteen: Student oral presentations.

Week Sixteen: Student oral presentations continued.

Week Seventeen: Written version of the research paper due and concluding remarks.

A Taste of Home

On Saturday I purchased a big bottle of Louisiana hot sauce from Beta Stores on Chui. It has made my meals at the AUCA cafeteria much more enjoyable. The combination of hot sauce and plov reminds me of meals back in Arivaca with my uncle Jim.

Pictures related to my recent guest lecturer

If you follow this link it will take you to some pictures of Kristina Gray, her husband Ken and even me.

Guest Lecturers

Yesterday I had a guest lecturer speak in front of my Russian Politics course. Unfortunately, only six students showed up to class. But, other than that it went very well. Kristina Gray spoke mostly about the recent history of Ukraine. In particular she focused on the 1932-1933 famine and World War II. She showed a lot of photographs and had a lot of personal stories gathered by her students in Kiev. I am sure that the students that did show up found her approach a welcome change of pace from my usual teaching style. My only visual aid is a blue marker and a white board on which I write and draw things.

I am hoping to have another guest lecturer speak in front of my Political Culture class on 5 November 2007. Greta Uehling has tentatively agreed to speak about the Crimean Tatar return to Crimea on this date. We are covering a chapter from her book on the subject in the course. Since she is going to be in Bishkek anyways I thought it would be a good opportunity for my students to discuss the reading with the author herself.

If anybody else is going to be in Bishkek and would like to speak in front of one of my classes let me know. I can not pay you anything. But, if your talk is good enough I will buy you dinner at the Chinese restaurant a few blocks away.

Borders and Migration Course

Last week I did not have to teach any classes due to Fall Break. Instead I put together my course on borders and migration for next semester. The class will cover labor migration, forced migration and ethnic "return" migration. In particular with regards to labor migration it will deal with illegal Mexican immigration into the US and the integration of immigrants into the European Union. The section on forced migration has readings on Stalin's deportation of the Kalmyks to Siberia, Czechoslovakia's expulsion of its ethnically German citizens after World War II, and the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestinians during 1948. Finally, the last four reading assignments are on ethnically motivated migrations to "ancestral homelands." The four cases covered are ethnic Russian immigrants to the Russian Federation, the return of Crimean Tatars to Crimea, the immigration of Soviet Jews to Israel, and the settlement of ethnic Germans from the former USSR, Poland and Romania in Germany. I will put up the syllabus for the course in the next couple of weeks.

German Jazz in Bishkek

On Saturday I went and saw the German jazz quartet Sublim, fronted by saxophone player Angelika Niescier, play at the Philharmonic Hall here in Bishkek. The concert was sponsored by the embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Goethe Institute. I do not know much about jazz, but I liked the concert a lot.

Current Reading Habits

Currently my reading is almost entirely orientated towards facilitating my teaching. First and foremost this means a lot of rereading of the material I have assigned my students to read. Next it means reading literature related to the classes I will be teaching next semester. I will be teaching Political History of the USSR, Comparative Politics, and Borders and Migration. I have a syllabus for the first of these classes already. The second one I am co-teaching with another faculty member and will be using a standard textbook. It is the third class which I have to put together. It is the first class they are allowing me to design from scratch.

Ala-Archa

Yesterday my department had an outing at Ala-Archa, a mountainous state park outside of Bishkek. The climb up the mountain nearly killed me. I am still sore everywhere today.

Flying Pig

This last week I have been busy teaching classes, grading papers and advising students. I teach three classes and have five honors students to advise regarding their senior thesis. Other than work I have found that my social life tends to revolve around eating out. There is a great Chinese restaurant not too far from campus. They have a pork dish that resembles boneless buffalo wings. I call it flying pig.

Fall is almost here

Last night I finally wore a sweater for the first time since I arrived in Bishkek. It has been quite warm until now. Today the temperature is a bit cool and I put on a sweater again. Soon I am going to have to go get a winter coat.

Reading Assignments

In constructing my syllabi I tried to choose reading assignments that were short, clear and written for real people rather than ivory tower denizens. Unfortunately, given the nature of political science courses this was not always possible. In some classes like Democratization it was easy to find work written in English rather than academese. In other courses such as Political Culture it was much more difficult. But, the reaction from my students, a number who take more than one class from me, has been that they prefer the less pretentious writers. Robert Dahl and Fareed Zakaria have proven much more popular with my students than Barrington Moore Jr. To be honest I prefer them as well. However, I do realize that I am probably part of a very small minority of university professors in preferring popular to academic pieces.

Another Birthday

Unlike my birthday for the last two years, today I have to work. So instead of sitting in the Chicken Shack smoking mint shisha I will be lecturing students on Democratization and Russian Politics. But, I am happy that after three years of sending out job applications that I finally have a job.

Grading Papers

This week I graded my first batch of papers. Most of them were fairly good. A couple of them were outstanding. Finally, a few could have used some additional work. But, considering that none of my students are native English speakers, the quality of the writing was quite high overall.

More on Teaching

For the last couple of weeks I have focused my attention on teaching. I have spent quite a bit of preparatory time going over and familiarizing myself with the material I cover in class. I want to be able to answer any student questions or requests for clarification on the assigned readings. I feel they deserve nothing less.

One Week of Teaching Done

I have now been teaching for one week. Contrary to the academic orthodoxy I have not found this task impossible. As far as I can tell I have been able to successfully transfer some of my knowledge to the students taking my classes. What were those hundreds of people who rejected my applications on the basis that I was "incapable of teaching" thinking? Perhaps one of them can give me an explanation of their logic in the comments below.

My First Holiday in Bishkek

Today is Independence Day in Kyrgyzstan. As a result I did not have to work today. Under normal circumstances I would have to teach Russian Politics in fifteen minutes. But, it seems lots of people with citizenship in the Kyrgyz Republic did have to work today. Other than AUCA there were not too many other places closed for business that I could see. Almost all the retail outlets I passed walking into the center of town this morning were open for instance. Only a very few were closed for the day.

Students

For a while I used to read academic blogs. But, I really got fed up with anonymous usually female professors insulting their students. Now that I have taught three classes and sat in on a fourth I am even more baffled by these professors that hate their students. I have only good things so far to say about all the students I have met here. Prehaps somebody can explain to me exactly why they think that it is students and not bad professors that are the problem in higher education?

In a few hours I will be proving many people wrong

In less than two hours I am going to prove the entire academic establishment in America wrong. They all said that I was incapable of teaching because I had never done it before. Of course they had no evidence for this dogmatic position. Today I aim to provide concrete evidence refuting this academic orthodoxy. In a few hours I believe I will be completely vindicated in my faith that I was always right and they were always wrong on this issue.

Thank You to the People of Shaolin China

It is true as Wendell Shedd has noted in the comments to this blog that the little buses that form the bulk of public transportation in Bishkek are horribly overcrowded. However, there is one route that uses a bigger, roomier and airier bus. It is 149. The 149 buses were all donated by the city of Shaolin China and utilize a superior design to the other vehicles in service in Bishkek. I am now making it a habit to take the 149 or "Chinese bus" rather than the smaller ones whenever I can. It is definitely usually worth the extra ten minute wait.

The Longest Summer in my Life Finally Comes to an End

This summer seemed really long. Maybe it seemed so long because it just blended together with the rest of the three years I spent looking for a job since I got my PhD. Or maybe it is because almost everyday was warm and sunny during the two years I spent in Arivaca. Or maybe it is because I have spent the summer in three different places. First, I was in Arizona, then California and now finally I am in Kyrgyzstan. At any rate, tomorrow I start my first academic job. I will teach my first class ever at 4:00 pm Bishkek time. A lot of people spent a lot of time and effort to prevent me from getting this far. Up until a few months ago I honestly did not think I would ever get a university position.

Walking in Bishkek

In the evenings I will often walk back home from my place of work. It is about six miles (10 km), or almost the same distance as the route between Serenity Ranch and downtown Arivaca. The streets of Bishkek are lined with lots of trees planted back during the Soviet era. So it is a rather pleasant walk. But, one does have to be careful of the many uncovered manholes that punctuate the sidewalks here. Falling down one of them could result in serious injury or death.

Another Update on the Meskhetian Turks

I found a couple of new articles on the situation of the Meskhetian Turks recently. First there is the report in IWPR Caucasus Reporting Service by Natia Kuprashvili and Nino Gerzmava, "Georgia: Meskhetian Turks Closer to Return." This article deals with the ramifications of the recent legislation by the Georgian government regarding the repatriation of the Meskhetian Turks. Then there is the article "Exiled" by Alkan Chaglar in Londra Toplum Postasi. This article reviews the tragic history of the Meskhetian Turks since the end of World War II. There are currently over 30,000 Meskhetian Turks here in Kyrgyzstan.

Russian Politics Syllabus

Russian Politics
Fall Semester 2007
J. Otto Pohl, Ph.D.

Course Description: This is a course covering the political system of the Russian Federation. In particular it will examine the political geography of the state as an ethno-territorial federation. The course will start with a review of the history of the USSR followed by specifically looking at the formation and solidification of the RSFSR, the administrative territory that became the Russian Federation. It will then cover such issues as the structure of the federal system of the Russian Federation, ethnic identity, economic reform and the formation of political parties. Finally, the class will analyze the causes and consequences of the conflicts in Chechnya since 1994.

Requirements: The course will consist of assigned readings, lectures, discussion, short writing assignments, an oral report and a research paper. For each of the twelve weeks with reading assignments, students will be required to submit 150 to 200 word summary of the material along with one question for class discussion. Students will also have to complete a 1400 to 2000 word research paper on some aspect of Russian politics. The paper is due the last week of class. In the two weeks prior to this deadline each student will be required to give a short oral presentation on the subject of the paper followed by a question and answer session.

Policy on Plagiarism: Plagiarism will result in a zero on the assignment for the first offense. A second offense will result in a grade of F for the course. Please be sure to cite your sources.

Grading:

Twelve short papers – 36% (3% each)
Written research paper – 20% (Due last week of class)
Oral report on research – 10%
Class participation -34%

Class Schedule

Week One: Introduction to the course and review of the syllabus.

General History of the USSR

Week Two: Read “Legacies: The Burdens of Russian and Soviet History” (chapter one) in Robert Strayer, Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?: Understanding Historical Change (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1998), pp. 21-44.

Week Three: Read “Cracks in the Foundation: The Post-Stalin Years” (chapter two) in Robert Strayer, Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?: Understanding Historical Change (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1998), pp. 47-83.

History of the Formation of the Russian Federation

Week Four: Read Terry Martin, “An Affirmative Action Empire: The Soviet Union as the Highest Form of Imperialism” in Ronald Grigor Suny and Terry Martin, eds., A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin (NY: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 67-82.

Week Five: Read “The Reemergence of the Russians” (chapter ten) in Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939 (London: Cornell University Press, 2001), pp. 394-431.

Week Six: Read “The End of Communism in Russia” (chapter one) in Richard Sakwa, Russian Politics and Society (NY: Routledge, 1993), pp. 1-37.

Ethnicity, Demography and Migration

Week Seven: Read “What is Rossia? Identities in Transition” (chapter twelve) in Valery Tishkov, Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Conflict and after the Soviet Union (London: Sage, 1997), pp. 246-271.

Week Eight: Read “’Normal’ Deaths During the First Decade of Transition” (chapter six) in Michael Hayes and Rumy Husan, A Century of State Murder?: Death and Policy in Twentieth-Century Russia (London: Pluto Press, 2003), pp. 144-175 and Timothy Heleniak, “Migration Dilemmas Haunt Post-Soviet Russia,” Migration Information Source (Oct. 2002). Found at http://migrationinformation.org/feature/print.cfm?ID=62 and downloaded on 23 July 2007.

Week Nine: Review

Government Institutions, Political Parties and Economics

Week Ten: Read “Rebirth of the Russian State” (chapter two) in Richard Sakwa, Russian Politics and Society (NY: Routledge, 1993), pp. 38-93.

Week Eleven: Read “Development of Multi-Party Politics” (chapter four) in Richard Sakwa, Russian Politics and Society (NY: Routledge, 1993).

Week Twelve: Read “The Seventh Oligarch: The Jewish Billionaires of Post-Communist Russia” (chapter three) in Amy Chua, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (NY: Doubleday, 2003), pp. 77-94.

The Chechen Wars

Week Thirteen: Read “The Road to War” (chapter five) in Valery Tishkov, Chechnya: Life in a War-Torn Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 57-74 and “From Chechen Revolution to Jihad” (chapter fifteen) in Moshe Gammer, The Lone Wolf and the Bear: Three Centuries of Chechen Defiance of Russian Rule (London: Hurst & Company, 2006), pp. 200-218.

Week Fourteen: Read “Our New Middle Ages, Or War Criminals of all the Russias” (chapter two) in Anna Politkovskaya trans. Arch Tait, Putin’s Russia” Life in a Failing Democracy (NY: Henry Holt and Company, 2004), pp. 25-80.

Student Research

Week Fifteen: Student oral presentations.

Week Sixteen: Student oral presentations continued.

Week Seventeen: Written version of the research paper due and concluding remarks.

Another New Link

Again in the spirit of reciprocity I am adding a new link. Melissa just got back from the Republic of Georgia and is finishing up her degree in International Relations. She has started a new blog called The Apple Orchard. I encourage all my readers to go check it out.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is in Town

Today is the big summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Bishkek. For the last week the authorities have been cleaning the streets, putting up colorful signs and sending swarms of police men and women to stand guard in the center of the city. The police here are currently wearing white uniforms. They have taken to directing traffic and the number of vehicles traversing Chui Prospekt has plummeted as a result. Every so often they will block off the main streets to normal pedestrians and drivers so that long conveys of special cars escorted by police cruisers and very low flying helicopters can have the avenues to themselves. Presumably these special cars contain important people attached to the SCO delegations. For the government of Kyrgyzstan hosting the SCO is a big deal. However, my impression is that the US mainstream media has not given much attention to the event.

Democratization Syllabus

Democratization
Fall Semester 2007
J. Otto Pohl, Ph.D.

Course Description: This course will cover the process of democratization in an historical and comparative manner. It will start by examining the history and social origins of democratic rule. After reviewing the general history and theory of democracy the course will cover the transition from authoritarian to more representative political systems in various countries during the last couple of decades. In particular the course will deal with the process of democratization in Eurasia and the Middle East. The course will analyze both those factors which facilitate greater democratization and those which impede it.

Requirements: The course will consist of assigned readings, lectures, discussion, short writing assignments, an oral report and a research paper. For each of the twelve weeks with reading assignments, students will be required to submit a 150 to 200 word summary of the material along with one question for class discussion. Students will also have to complete a 2500 to 3000 word research paper comparing and contrasting the process of democratization in two different countries. The paper is due the last week of class. In the two weeks prior to this deadline each student will be required to give a short oral presentation on the subject of their paper followed by a short question and answer session.

Plagiarism Policy: Plagiarism will result in a zero on the assignment for the first offense. A second offense will result in a grade of F for the course. Please be sure to cite your sources.

Grading:

Twelve short papers – 36% (3% each)
Written research paper – 20% (Due last week of class)
Oral report on research – 10%
Class participation – 34%

Class Schedule:

Week One: Introduction to the course and review of the syllabus.

General History and Theory of Democracy

Week Two: Read “Where and How Did Democracy Develop?: A Brief History” (chapter one) in Robert A. Dahl, On Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 7-25.

Week Three: Read “The Twisted Path” (chapter two) in Fareed Zakaria, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (NY: W.W. Norton, 2003), pp. 59-87.

Week Four: Read “Democracy and Social Classes” (chapter one) in Tom Bottomore, Political Sociology (London: Pluto Press, 1993), pp. 12-27.

Week Five: Read “The Democratic Route to Modern Society” (chapter seven) in Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1966), 413-432.

Week Six: Read “Globalization and Ethnic Hatred” (introduction) in Amy Chua, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (NY: Doubleday, 2003), pp. 1-17.

Week Seven: Review

Eurasia

Week Eight: Read “Unintended Consequences: Economic Crisis and Social Awakening” (chapter four) in Robert Strayer, Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?: Understanding Historical Change (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1998), pp. 132-171.

Week Nine: Read “Strategies for Ethnic Accord in Post-Soviet States” (chapter thirteen) in Valery Tishkov, Ethnicity, Nationalism and Conflict in and after the Soviet Union (London: Sage, 1997), pp. 272-293.

Week Ten: Read “Epilogue: Memory” in Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps (London: Allen Lane, 2003), pp. 505-514 and Conclusion of Lynne Viola, Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements (NY: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 183-193.

The Middle East

Week Eleven: Read Marina Ottaway “The Missing Constituency for Democratic Reform” (chapter eight) in Thomas Carothers and Marina Ottaway, eds., Uncharted Journey: Promoting Democracy in the Middle East (Washington D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005), pp. 151-169.

Week Twelve: Read “Democracy and Authoritarianism: Turkey and Iran” (chapter fourteen) in William L. Cleveland, A History of the Modern Middle East (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000), pp. 267-292.

Week Thirteen: Read “The Third Republic: Turkey since 1980” (chapter fifteen) in Erik J. Zurcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd., 1997), pp. 292-342.

Week Fourteen: Read “Iran: Revolutionary Islam in Power” (chapter three) in John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, Islam and Democracy (NY: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 52-77.

Student Research

Week Fifteen: Student oral presentations.

Week Sixteen: Student oral presentations continued.

Week Seventeen: Written version of the research paper due and concluding remarks.

New Link

I am adding a new link in the spirit of reciprocity. Wendell Shedd's Accidental Russophile has been linked to my blog for at least several days now. However, I have been busy here in Bishkek doing other things. I am now rectifying the omission.

Work

I am starting to adjust to life here in Bishkek a little bit now. My chair approved the reading assignments for my syllabi. I am going to make a few clarifications regarding class requirements and alter the grade structure somewhat. But, I am not going to alter the actual content of the courses. I will post my syllabi for Democratization and Russian Politics later this week.

I also received my proofs for "A Caste of Helot Labourers" recently. It will be published by SOAS as part of the proceedings of the conference I attended in November 2005. It does not look like I have much to correct. Which is good since the corrections are due by 20 August 2007.

Getting Around Bishkek

I have been here almost a week now. I have finally learned the route from my flat to where I will be working. There are lots of little buses that run in between the two places. They cost 5 som each way. The exchange rate is about 37 som to the dollar. So a round trip ride is a little more than a quarter. That has got to be one of the best deals on transportation in the world.

To make it even better the Kyrgyz currency does not contain any coins. It consists solely of bills. So unlike almost every other country in the world one does not have to deal with collecting a large number of bulky and basically worthless coins. Instead you can put all the bills in your wallet. Kyrgyz money comes in 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500 and 1000 som notes. Most countries would have gotten rid of the 1 note and maybe even the 5. The UK does not have a one pound or two pound note anymore. They have one pound and two pound coins. Canada likewise has one dollar and two dollar coins rather than bills.

Now Living in Bishkek

I made it to Kyrgyzstan yesterday. I am still getting used to my new surroundings. Getting settled in has been taking up a lot of my time and energy. So it will be a while before I make any substantial posts about living in Bishkek.

On My Way

In a few hours I will be departing for the airport to begin my journey to Kyrgyzstan. I am scheduled to arrive in Bishkek very early Thursday morning. I will try and write a post in my new location sometime next week.

Real Syllabi

A while ago I posted a series of imaginary syllabi. Now that I will actually be teaching I have real syllabi. The first one is in the previous post. If anybody has any constructive criticism please put it in the comments or send me an e-mail. I can be reached at pohlcat [the at sign] rocketmail [the dot] com.

Political Culture Syllabus

Political Culture
Fall Semester 2007
J. Otto Pohl, Ph.D.

Course Description: This course will cover the subject of political culture and related concepts such as civic culture and civil society. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba defined the political culture of a society as “the political system as internalized in cognitions, feelings, and evaluations of its population.” (Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (London: Sage Publishing, 1989), p. 13. That is how members of a society view the role of government and their relationship to it. Almond and Verba conducted their comparative analysis of political culture among five long established states in Europe and the Americas. These states were the US, Great Britain, West Germany, Italy and Mexico. This course will begin with Almond and Verba’s work and then proceed to examine the various social structures that support political culture. In particular it will examine the social networks created by national, ethnic and religious kinship on one hand and class and professional ties on the other. The vertical ties of nationality, ethnicity and religion often cut across the horizontal ties of class and occupation. The social matrix of these networks or civic culture forms the foundation of political culture. The course will examine civic and political culture in Eurasia, Latin America and the Middle East. It will cover not only independent states, but also national groups such as the Chechens, Crimean Tatars, and Palestinians. Despite lacking independent states all three of these nationalities have well developed civic and political cultures. The development of political culture among these peoples will be contrasted to those controlling fully independent states.

Requirements: The course will consist of assigned readings, lectures, discussion, short writing assignments, an oral report and a research paper. For each of the twelve weeks with reading assignments, students will be required to submit a 150 to 200 word summary of the material along with one question for class discussion. Students will also have to complete a 1500 to 2000 word research paper comparing and contrasting some important elements of civil and political society among two different nations. The paper is due the last week of class. In the two weeks prior to this deadline each student will be required to give a short oral presentation on the subject of their paper followed by a short question and answer session.

Grading:

Twelve short papers – 36% (3% each)
Written research paper – 35% (Due last week of class)
Oral report on research – 15%
Class Participation – 14%

Class Schedule:

Week One: Introduction to the course and review of the syllabus.

Theory and General History

Week Two: Read “An Approach to Political Culture” (chapter one) in Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (London: Sage Publishing, 1989), pp. 1-44.

Week Three: Read “The Peasants and Revolution” (chapter nine) in Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in Making the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), pp. 453-483.

Week Four: Read “Social Movements, Parties and Political Action” (chapter two) in Tom Bottomore, Political Sociology (London: Pluto Press, 1993), pp. 28-41.

Week Five: Read “Illiberal Democracy” (chapter three) in Fareed Zakaria, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003), pp. 89-118.

Eurasia

Week Six: Read Vladimir Tismaneanu and Michael Turner, “Understanding Post-Sovietism: Between Residual Leninism and Uncertain Pluralism” (chapter one) in Vladimir Tismananu, ed., Political Culture and Civil Society in Russia and the New States of Eurasia (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1995), pp. 3-22.

Week Seven: Read “Post-Soviet Nationalism” (chapter eleven) in Valery Tishkov, Ethnicity, Nationalism and Conflict in and after the Soviet Union (London: Sage, 1997), pp. 228-245.

Chechnya

Week Eight: Read “Rehabilitation” (chapter fourteen) in Moshe Gammer, The Lone Wolf and the Bear: Three Centuries of Chechen Defiance of Russian Rule (London: Hurst & Company, 2006, pp. 185-198 and “An Ideology of Extremes” (chapter thirteen) in Valery Tishkov, Chechnya: Life in a War-Torn Society (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 196-209.

Crimean Tatars

Week Nine: Read “Houses and Homelands: The Reterritorialization of Crimean Tatars” (chapter seven) in Greta Lynn Uehling, Beyond Memory: The Crimean Tatars’ Deportation and Return (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 199-230.

Latin America

Week Ten: Read “Llama Fetuses, Latifundia, and La Blue Chip Numero Uno: ‘White’ Wealth in Latin America” (chapter two) in Amy Chua, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (NY: Doubleday, 2003), pp. 49-76.

The Middle East

Week Eleven: Read “State and Opposition in Islamic History” (chapter two) in John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, Islam and Democracy (NY: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 33-51.

Week Twelve: Read Amy Hawthorne, “Is Civil Society the Answer?” (chapter five) in Thomas Carothers and Marina Ottaway, eds., Uncharted Journey: Promoting Democracy in the Middle East (Washington D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005), pp. 81-108.

Palestine

Week Thirteen: Read “Steering a Path under Occupation” (chapter nine) in Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal, The Palestinian People: A History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), pp. 274-311.

Student Research

Week Fourteen: Student oral presentations.

Week Fifteen: Student oral presentations continued.

Week Sixteen: Written version of the research paper due and concluding remarks.

Getting Ready to Go

I am finishing things up here in Orange County before I fly off to Central Asia on Tuesday. Yesterday, I got my proofs for a chapter I wrote for a collected work being edited out of Canada. I made a few very minor corrections and sent the article back. My biggest project in the last couple of weeks has been putting together syllabi for my classes. I am almost finished. I will post them here after I have typed them up.

Still More on the Arivaca Tower

Here is another recent article on the Arivaca Tower.

Yet another article on the Arivaca Tower

I found yet another article on the Arivaca Tower.

A Family Link

My father, Dr. John H. Pohl and Dr. Charles F. Sanders have started a new blog. New Energy Technology deals with new and alternative energy sources. While a lot of blogs deal with these topics, the vast majority of them are long on opinion and short on expertise. Pohl and Sanders have been studying and working on the scientific side of these issues for decades. I encourage all my readers to go check it out. I have added a permanent link to their blog on my blogroll.

Map of Volga German ASSR

The blog strange maps has recently posted a good map of the Volga German ASSR.

hat tip: Randy McDonald

Leaving on 31 July 2007

I now have a plane ticket. I will fly out of Los Angeles on 31 July 2007 and arrive in Bishkek on 2 August 2007. I got the last seat on a British Airways flight.

Freedom

I am no longer trapped behind the Orange Curtain. My visa arrived today. Tomorrow I am buying a plane ticket on the earliest flight to Bishkek I can get. I hope to be there before the end of the month.

Another New Link

I noticed I got added to another blogroll today. So I am reciprocating the favor. Athens & Jerusalem is an academically inclined blog with a conservative bent. It has a lot of thought provoking commentary on political and cultural issues.

New Link

In the interest of reciprocity I have added a link to Andy Young's blog Siberian Light to my blogroll.

Yet another article on the Arivaca Tower

I found another article on the Arivaca Tower. Government Executive has an article on the wireless Internet frequency used by the towers. One of its features is that it blocks everybody in Arivaca from using the Internet. I myself frequently experienced this problem before I left Arivaca. It usually disrupted service four or five times a day. Sometimes at night it would interrupt Internet service for as long as seven or eight hours. Boeing claims it is working on solving this problem.

Any advice?

This fall I will be teaching Russian Politics, Political Culture and Democratization. I have noticed that a lot of other bloggers have managed to get suggestions on reading assignments for classes in their comment sections. I have a good idea of what I will be teaching, but free advice is always welcome. I am an historian by training and this is my first teaching job ever.

Happy Independence Day

To all my American readers I wish you a Happy Independence Day.

Meskhetian Turk Response to Georgian Bill

The reaction from the Meskhetian Turk diaspora to the recent bill in the Georgian parliament to allow them to repatriate is one of disappointment. The various restrictions on their return are seen as unacceptable by many Meskhetian Turks. In particular the Meskhetian Turks find the Georgian government's demands that they give up their Turkish ethnicity and become assimilated Georgians in order to return to their ancestral homeland to be offensive. The Turkish Daily News published an article on this subject today with interviews from members of the Meskhetian Turkish diaspora in the Turkish Republic and Kyrgyzstan.

Invitation to Delurk

This blog post is an open invitation for all my readers to come forth and introduce themselves in the comments. I have not had much luck with such invitations before. I am guessing I will probably get no comments on this post. But, it would be nice to know a little bit about my readership.

Behind the Orange Curtain

I am still in Orange County California waiting for my visa. I should get it sometime next week. In the meantime I have been doing a lot of reading for the classes I will be teaching this fall. I managed to find most of what I need at the UCI library.

Last week I went with my mother to the Pageant of the Masters in Laguna Beach. Finding a parking space was almost impossible. But, the actual event was well worth seeing. The people really did look like works of art.

Yesterday, I went with my brother and sister in law to Little Gaza. I had expected it to be bigger. It is really only about half a dozen small shopping centers. Little Gaza also still has a fair number of Mexican and Chinese places mixed in among the Arabic shops and cafes. I was expecting it to be almost all Arab.

Other than that I have not done much. Orange County is not an international hot spot like Arivaca. It does, however, have a better selection of ethnic restaurants.

Arivaca Tower Round Up

Sharon E. Herbert of ghosts in the machine has a round up of all the recent big news stories on the Arivaca Tower. She has been doing a very good job of covering the news around this issue. It is kind of strange to see so many people I know personally quoted in big name news media.

Arivaca Tower Makes NY Times

The New York Times has now published an article on the Arivaca Tower.

Another Article on the Arivaca Tower

I found another good article on the Arivaca Tower here.

Update on the Possible Repatriation of the Meskhetian Turks

In my last post I wrote about a bill in the parliament of the Republic of Georgia to allow tens of thousands of Meskhetian Turks to return to their ancestral homeland. According to the International Herald Tribune the bill passed by 134 to 14. It still has to go through two more readings. Even if it does pass there will still be obstacles to a large-scale return of the Meskhetian Turks to Georgia. But, the article in the International Herald Tribune notes that some 40,000 Meskhetian Turks have been actively trying to repatriate to Georgia even without the benefit of this new law. It is likely that this new law will increase the number of Meskhetian Turks attempting to settle in the land of their forefathers.

Will Georgia Allow the Meskhetian Turks to Return Home?

Recently the Georgian government introduced a bill into parliament that would allow tens of thousands of Meskhetian Turks to return to their ancestral homeland. The story from Turkish Daily News can be found here. Stalin deported the Meskhetian Turks from Georgia to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in November 1944. I have written about this ethnic cleansing here. The Soviet government did not allow the Meskhetian Turks to return home as it did the Karachais, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush and Balkars. Instead they have remained dispersed in exile across Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and since 2004 the US. I have some more information on the subject in this post. The Meskhetian Turks have now been forcibly separated from their homeland for over 62 years.

Getting Ready

I am busy preparing for classes and getting ready for the big move. If anybody has any advice you can e-mail me. Just make sure you put something in the subject heading to alert me that it is not spam. Otherwise I might delete it without reading it. My e-mail is pohlcat [the at sign] rocketmail [the dot] com.

Leaving Arivaca

I am now in California for a brief interlude before leaving the country later this summer. Yesterday I packed up most of my books and papers and put them in the attic. I also gave my small music collection and hookah away to Chris O'Byrne in a farewell ceremony. This morning I flew from Tucson to Los Angeles and then to Orange County.

14 June 1941 Baltic Deportations

I am too busy right now to write a new post for the 66th anniversary of the first mass wave of Soviet deportations of Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians. So I will refer you to my post for the 65th anniversary of this event. Also Peteris Cedrins has some very good material on the Soviet deportations from Latvia at his site. The deportations received a special commemoration in the US this year with the opening of the Victims of Communism Memorial.

Today

Early today I checked up on a number of pieces I have in the publication pipeline. That went fairly well. I heard back from three of the four people I wrote. I also sent off my last writing assignment to the editor today.

Later today did not go as well. For a couple of hours I thought I had lost a library book. I finally found it in a place it must have walked to on its own volition. I certainly do not remember putting it there.

More on the Victims of Communism Memorial

My friend Cassandra Clifford in Washington DC has posted an excellent article on the opening of the Victims of Communism Memorial. Please go read it. If anybody finds any other good posts on this subject please let me know.

A Very Cool Post on Arivaca

Sharon E. Herbert has put up a very cool post about Arivaca. It says some very nice things about me.

Some Russian-Germans Returning to Kazakhstan

Ben Paarmann has put up an English language translation of a German article on the desire of some Russian-Germans in Germany to return to Kazakhstan. So far only about 2,000 out of a population of over 800,000 have actually returned to Kazakhstan from Germany. I am sure this population will grow in the future. But, I am also sure that those opting to return to Kazakhstan will remain a small minority.

Last Week in Arivaca

This is my last week in Arivaca. Next Sunday I will be flying to California for a while and then I will be leaving the US again for an extended period of time. It may be several years before I have a chance to visit Arivaca again. I will miss Arivaca, but it is time for me to move on. After three years of applying for hundreds of academic positions I have finally landed a post as an associate professor.

I came here almost two years ago with almost no possessions and very few expectations. At that time I had no idea when I would be leaving. I found myself in a unique community in the middle of the Sonoran Desert on the very edge of the US. I believe God sent me here for a reason. At first I had no idea what tasks I needed to accomplish or what lessons I needed to learn before I could leave here. All I knew is that when I finished what I needed to do in Arivaca that God would send me elsewhere. I have now reached that point.

Although I am probably not aware of all my accomplishments here. I think two stand out. First, I finished writing my first non-academic book, Catherine´s Grandchildren: A Short History of the Russian-Germans under Soviet Rule. A task made possible by the very helpful and friendly librarians of Arivaca. They managed to get me a wide variety of obscure sources in English, Russian and German through the magic of inter library loan. Their ability to get me books from the University of Arizona and Arizona State University libraries compensated for my lack of access to any research libraries.

Second, I managed to organize and host an international academic conference with absolutely no backing or funding. This was not an easy task. It was extremely difficult to get anybody to come out to Arivaca. Not even people from Southern Arizona could be enticed to actually show up. Despite having already sent in their abstracts the entire contingent of people from the University of Arizona dropped out without any justification less than two months before the conference. These people are on my permanent black list. Nevertheless I did end up with four speakers and myself. About thirty five people showed up from town to listen and ask questions. All the presentations and question sessions went very well. Given that there was a very real chance up until the last few days before the conference that I would be the only speaker to show up, I think it went pretty well.

I will now be leaving Arivaca with almost no material possessions. But, I have a lot more experience and knowledge than I did two years ago. I have had the privilege of living in a community unlike any other I have encountered. Here people still love their neighbors. They wave to you when you pass them on the road. If you are walking they will stop and give you a ride. They raise money for those here in need of medical care beyond their financial means. They organize frequent events with lots of very good home cooked food. Here on the frontier I found the last remains of an older more communitarian America. I am leaving here with love and peace in my heart.

US civilian internment of citizens and permanent residents of German origin during World War II

During World War II the US rounded up and interned almost 11,000 permanent residents and naturalized American citizens born in Germany. In a number of cases American born minor children accompanied their parents into the internment camps since there was no one else to care for them. This selective internment failed to abide by even the most basic standards of due process. For a long time the myth that the US government only interned civilians of Japanese descent during World War II has been perpetrated by the American media and educational system. Unlike the interned permanent residents from Japan and Japanese-Americans, none of the internees of German descent have ever gotten an apology yet alone compensation. But, things may be changing. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently had an editorial condemning the World War II internment of German permanent residents and German-Americans. Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Charles Grassley (R-IA) are trying to get the US government to at least acknowledge this injustice. The continued refusal of the US government to even publicly admit to this mass violation of civil rights decades after compensating internees of Japanese descent is a travesty.

Arivaca Tower in the Washington Post

The Washington Post published a story today about the Arivaca Tower.

Finkelstein Denied Tenure

DePaul University has denied Norman Finkelstein tenure. The Chronicle of Higher Education has the story here. I think the decision to deny professors tenure because they are critical of the politically correct positions held by most academics sets a very bad precedent.

Victims of Communism Memorial

The Victims of Communism Memorial is set to be unveiled in Washington DC on 12 June 2007. For more information you can go to the official web site. The memorial is intended to honor all the victims of communist repression. This is a very large number of people from a great many countries. I can not begin to even outline the scale of this terror in a single blog post. But, below I have listed the nationalities deported in their virtual entirety by the Soviet government from their homelands to distant areas of the USSR with poor living conditions. In total they numbered nearly 2,000,000 people. Over 500,000 of them or more than one in four perished from the harsh conditions of the deportation and exile.

1. Russian-Koreans 1937

2. Russian-Germans 1941

3. Russian-Finns 1941

4. Karachais 1943

5. Kalmyks 1943

6. Chechens 1944

7. Ingush 1944

8. Balkars 1944

9. Crimean Tatars 1944

10. Meskhetian Turks 1944

New Link: Blog Devoted to Arivaca Tower

There is now a blog devoted to the Arivaca Tower. Southwind Dancer is a group blog maintained by local people from Arivaca. If you want to keep up with the story of the tower from a local perspective that is the place to go.

Arizona Fried Chicken

Tonight I made fried chicken. It was very good, much better than the fried chicken that claims to have originated in a state starting with the letter K. I dipped the chicken in a mixture of egg and milk. I then dredged it in bread crumbs spiced with paprika, thyme, sage, rosemary, nutmeg, dried chillies and lemon pepper. Finally, I pan fried it in oil. It turned out excellent. No greasy fast food franchise can compete with home cooking.

Lack of Feedback

I wonder why I get so few comments on this blog? It seems that I have a very low ratio of comments to readers. Which means that probably nobody will comment on this post.

Top Ten Things I will Miss About Arivaca

Well, I suppose I should start putting down my final impressions of Arivaca for prosperity. I have less than two weeks left here. It will probably be quite some time before I return to visit. So during the next two weeks I am going to post a series of entries on what these last two years in Arivaca have meant to me. I am starting out with a list which will serve as a kind of outline for these posts.

1. My uncle

2. The rest of the very friendly and helpful people here

3. The library

4. The peace and quiet

5. The potlucks

6. The free concerts

7. The free lectures

8. The Arivaca Film Festival

9. The warm and dry weather

10. Blaster

Transitions

This blog like the rest of my life is in a period of transition. I am not sure how much time and energy I will have to devote to it in the future. Right now I am mostly limiting myself to short journal type entries on my everyday life. I just do not have the extra hours and stamina to do any researched historical posts. They generally take about three hours or so to write. Some take longer. I am still not very clear about who reads this blog and what they come here to read about. But, I do know my family and friends read it to keep up on my life.

Yummy Things I Have Cooked this Last Week

As I mentioned before, Chris and Sara have a much better stocked kitchen than does my uncle. Tonight I cooked an omelet using fresh eggs, goat cheese, Serranos, sun dried tomatoes, tarragon and paprika. Two nights ago I made a great tomato based pasta sauce. I took fresh tomatoes, canned tomatoes, sun dried tomatoes and tomato sauce. I then added brown sugar, oregano, garlic, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, paprika and crushed dried chilies to the mixture. I cooked this concoction over low heat for two hours. It was mind numbingly good. Tomorrow I am going to make tacos. I think they will turn out quite well.

The Well Again

If you have followed this blog semi-regularly over the last two years then you know that the well at Serenity Ranch frequently goes on strike. Last week the pump finally gave up the ghost after over 30 years of fitful work. Today my uncle and I extracted it from the well shaft. This was not an easy task. It took hours to hoist up by rope. Even wearing gloves I got a nasty blister on my right index finger. Pulling up the pump in 100 degree weather has totally worn me out. I am very grateful I will not have to do this again.

Work that needs to be done

I only have one writing project left to finish this summer. It is a peer review report for a journal article. I am going to try and get most of it done by Tuesday. Once that is done I am not tackling any intellectual tasks not directly related to my new job for at least a couple of months.

It looks like the pump on the well at my uncle's ranch finally died. Tomorrow I have to help him pull it up from the well shaft. The pump is over thirty years old so it is a miracle it lasted this long. It is also probably fortunate for my uncle that it died before I left Arivaca. Otherwise he would be stuck doing the heavy lifting needed to replace it by himself.

The daily chores at Chris and Sara's place are pretty easy. They are certainly a lot easier than pulling up the pump from the well is going to be. The amount of labor needed to maintain a small egg laying chicken farm is amazingly minimal.

Another two scholastic citations

I noticed two new citations for my first book, The Stalinist Penal System (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997) in the last two days. This fall will celebrate the book's ten year anniversary. Despite its age it is still being cited in the current literature. The two new citations I came across today and yesterday are both from 2005. One is in Gennady Estraikh, In Harness: Yiddish Writers' Romance with Communism (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005). The other is in Golfo Alexopolous, "Amnesty 1945: The Revolving Door of Stalin's Gulag," Slavic Review, vol. 64, no. 2 (Summer 2005). That brings the total number of academic sources with citations of my published work that I have been able to verify up to 80.

More on the Chagossians

The Disillusioned Kid has a very good post up about the recent legal ruling regarding the Chagossians. Along with Edelstein his is one of the very few blogs that has been following this issue for years. Unfortunately, I do not know enough about the subject to join them in this coverage. But, please go check out the links.

Current Projects

I finished editing my book manuscript on Monday and e-mailed it off on Tuesday. My most important tasks now all revolve around getting ready to start my new teaching job in August. The most intellectually rigorous of these tasks is preparing to teach the classes themselves. Other than that I have only one other project to finish, a peer review of a journal article. I do not intend to take on any more projects for the next couple of months.

The Ongoing Legal Struggle of the Chagossians

Jonathan Edelstein has just put up a rather detailed analysis of the recent UK decision in the ongoing legal struggle of the Chagossians to return to their island homeland in the Indian Ocean.

Angry Chickens, Scully, and Tasty Falafel

Since Saturday I have been house sitting for Chris and Sara. This entails feeding and watering friendly dogs, angry chickens and thirsty plants. In my few free moments I have been watching lots of X-Files. Chris has the first five seasons on DVD. I am currently on season two. Even after fourteen years I still never get tired of watching Scully. My uncle comes by in the evenings and I cook us up dinner here. Chris and Sara have a much better stocked kitchen than Serenity Ranch. Among the goodies they left me was a giant tub of homemade hummus. Tonight I fried up some of the hummus in olive oil and made tasty falafel. The falafel turned out to be most excellent.

Happy Memorial Day

I hope all my readers have a very happy Memorial day. The weather here today in Arivaca is beautiful. This will be my last American Holiday in Arivaca. Or at least the last for a couple of years. I intend to relax and enjoy the day with my uncle.

More on computers and the manuscript

This morning I resurrected the computer that died yesterday. I did not lose any of the manuscript for Catherine's Grandchildren and the machine seems to be working fine. At least it is for now. I then tried to download the manuscript from the other laptop on to the two disks Chris O'Byrne had given me. The first one was formatted for a Mac so did not work. The second one also did not work for some reason. To make matters worse it caused an error in my word processing program. So I had to shut down the computer and restart it. Fortunately, the computer managed to recover the manuscript and I did not lose any material. I just had to save it again to the hard drive. After that I went back to editing the manuscript on the Lazarus machine. All I have left to do is finish the bibliography. I had five foreign language sources that for some reason lacked publisher data. Using the Library of Congress catalog I have found the missing information for these sources. I will finish editing the manuscript tomorrow and send it off on Tuesday.

Pictures of the Arivaca Tower

Photographs of the Arivaca Tower have now been posted on the Internet. You can go see them here. The same web site also has a plethora of information on the tower.

Always make back ups

This morning the laptop I was writing Catherine's Grandchildren on completely died. The thing was quite old. I am not sure exactly how old, but I know I had it when I first went to SOAS almost six years ago. Fortunately, I had saved everything on a disk yesterday. So I only lost what little editing I had done this morning. In total I only lost about 30 minutes worth of work.

I transferred the manuscript from the disk to another laptop which I think is about four years old. I hope it can last another three weeks so I can complete the book manuscript. At any rate after loading it on the other laptop and retyping the lost work I realized I only had one back up copy now. I also had no spare disks. So after some freaking out I decided the best thing would be to e-mail myself a copy of the manuscript. Now I have a safe copy in cyberspace. I also got a couple of spare disks from Chris O'Byrne today. Tomorrow I am going to put a copy of the manuscript on each one of them. That way I will have multiple back up copies of the manuscript and should be able to get the book finished by my 12 June 2007 deadline without any horrible mishaps.

Busy next few weeks

Well my time in Arivaca is coming to an end soon. I have been here almost two years now. I will have more to say about these two years in some future posts. In the meantime I have to finish editing the manuscript for Catherine's Grandchildren and prepare for the new job I will be starting in August. Since the job entails moving overseas as well as teaching three courses I have a lot to do. This is my first teaching job ever.

A Canadian View of the Arivaca Tower

I recently stumbled across this post on the tower in Arivaca based upon the Reuters story by Tim Gaynor earlier this week. It is an opinion from the other side of the US border with Canada. I am quite amazed at the amount of attention Arivaca has gotten recently.

The 18 May 1944 Deportation of the Crimean Tatars

On 18 May 1944 the NKVD began the systematic round up of the Crimean Tatars in accordance with GKO order 5859ss. In the early hours of the morning a total of 23,000 officers and soldiers of the NKVD internal troops and 9,000 NKVD and NKGB operatives started going door to door and expelling the Crimean Tatars from their homes. They quickly roused the still sleeping Crimean Tatars from their beds and transported them to rail stations. They had only a short time to gather a few possessions to take with them into exile. Tenzile Ibraimova’s recollection of being evicted from her home with her children on that morning is typical of most Crimean Tatar survivors.

We were expelled from the village of Adzhiatmak in Fraidorf district on 18 May 1944. The expulsion took place very cruelly; at three o’clock in the morning when the children were still asleep. Some soldiers came in and said we should get ready and be out of the house in five minutes. We were not allowed to take with us either possessions or food. They treated us so roughly that we thought they were taking us to be shot…My husband was fighting at the front; I was alone with three children. (Amnesty International, pp. 140-141)

The NKVD and NKGB took the unsuspecting Crimean Tatars to rail stations and stuffed them into train wagons designed for the transport of freight and live stock. The Soviet security organs worked extremely fast. Already by 8 pm on 18 May 1944 they reported loading 90,000 Crimean Tatars into 25 train echelons. The first 17 of these echelons had already left on their way to Uzbekistan with 48,400 deportees. During the next day the NKVD continued this frantic pace. The NKVD had counted loading 164,515 Crimean Tatars into train wagons and dispatching 136,412 deportees to Uzbekistan during these two days. Finally, the NKVD finished the operation on 20 May 1944. The officers in charge of the operation initially reported deporting 180,014 Crimean Tatars on 67 train echelons and mobilizing an additional 11,000 men for forced labor. The NKVD thus recorded the forced removal of 191,014 Crimean Tatars from their ancestral homeland in only three days. The Stalin regime had ethnically cleansed the Crimean peninsula of virtually all Crimean Tatars. (Bugai, docs. 11-13, pp. 138-139).

The NKVD transported the Crimean Tatars far from their ancestral homeland in extremely overcrowded and unhygienic train wagons. An average of 50 people had been stuffed into each wagon and lice infestations rapidly spread typhus among the deportees. Lack of water, food and adequate latrine facilities greatly contributed to the outbreak of disease among the Crimean Tatars in the deportation trains. The official reports on food provided to the Crimean Tatars during transit indicate that they received only an average of 340 grams per a person per day. The result is that thousands perished during the initial journey into exile. (Bugai, doc. 15, pp. 139-140 and fn. 1, p. 137).

Initially the Soviet government had planned to deport all the Crimean Tatars to Uzbekistan. On 21 May 1944, however, Stalin issued GKO resolution 5937ss diverting 31,551 Crimean Tatars on their way to Uzbekistan to the Urals. Here the NKVD assigned them to work felling trees in the cold wet forests of the region. A lack of food, clothes and adequate shelter afflicted the Crimean Tatars in the Urals. Diseases such as dysentery, mange, eczema and tuberculosis became common. As a result the Crimean Tatars in the Urals suffered an abnormally large number of premature deaths. Only a little over a fifth of the deported Crimean Tatars, however, ended up in the Urals. The vast majority of the Crimean Tatar deportees continued on their way to Uzbekistan. (Alieva vol. III, p. 66 and Bugai, doc. 20, p. 144 and doc. 26, p. 147).

Material conditions for the Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan were only marginally better than in the Urals. The milder climate of Uzbekistan slightly ameliorated the death rate of Crimean Tatar deportees compared to those sent to the Urals. Severe shortages of food and habitable shelter afflicted the Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan. Raging epidemics of malaria and intestinal illnesses plagued the new arrivals. The Soviet authorities had foreknowledge of the malaria epidemic and took no preventive measures to limit its effects. No extra quinine or other anti-malarial drugs existed in Uzbekistan at the time of the deportations. This callous policy resulted in massive deaths among the Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan. According to one Soviet document the NKVD recorded 13,592 deaths among the Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan from May 1944 to 1 January 1945. This constituted 9.1% of the Crimean Tatar deportees in Uzbekistan. A full 6,096 or almost half of these deaths occurred among children under 16. From 1 January 1945 to 1 January 1946 the NKVD recorded another 13,183 Crimean Tatar deaths in Uzbekistan. This represented 8.7% of the Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan. In total during the first year and a half of exile in Uzbekistan the NKVD recorded 26,775 deaths among the Crimean Tatars or 17.8% of their population. This horrible loss of human life has never been properly acknowledged by the legal successors of the Soviet government. Not a single Soviet official has ever been tried for this crime. (Ibragimov, doc. 26, p. 68).

Crimean Tatars and their friends have traditionally observed 18 May as a day to remember the victims of these terrifying events. I ask my readers to take a minute of silence today to honor their memory.

Sources:

Alieva, S.U., ed., Tak eto bylo: Natsional’nye repressi v SSSR, 1919-1953 gody (Moscow: Insan, 1993).

Amnesty International, trans., Chronicle of Current Events, no. 31, 17 May 1974 (London: Amnesty International, 1975).

Bugai, N.F., ed., Iosif Stalin – Lavrentiiu Berii. “Ikh nado deportirovat’,” Dokumenty, fakty kommentarii (Moscow: Druzhba narodov, 1992).

Ibragimov, Ayder, ed., Krimskii studii: Informatsiini biuletin, no. 5-6, September-November 2000.

More on the Tower in Arivaca

I missed the 15 May 2007 meeting at the Community Center. But, a reporter from Reuters named Tim Gaynor was there and wrote a story on it. You can find the 16 May 2007 report at the Reuters website by searching for Arivaca. Also MSNBC interviewed Mary Scott this morning. She is currently being interviewed by the Washington Post about the tower.

Now for some very good news

I have been offered the position of Associate Professor of International and Comparative Politics at American University of Central Asia. I have accepted this offer and will begin teaching classes in August 2007. I am very happy to have this opportunity.

63 Years Since GKO Order 5859ss

On 11 May 1944, Stalin signed GKO Order 5859ss ordering the ethnic cleansing of the Crimean peninsula of its entire Crimean Tatar population. An English language translation of the order can be found here. On the basis of this decree the Soviet NKVD deported nearly 200,000 Crimean Tatars from their ancestral homeland to remote areas of Uzbekistan and the Urals on 18-20 May 1944. In Uzbekistan and the Urals they languished under the harsh legal restrictions of the special settlement regime until 1956. In the first few years of exile more than one in four Crimean Tatars perished due to the extremely poor material conditions forcibly imposed upon them by the Stalin regime. For more information go to this page of the web site maintained by the International Committee for Crimea.

The Tower and its poorly chosen location

The location of the Arivaca tower is problematic for many reasons. Dr. Richard Conway, a local geologist has an analysis of why the proposed location of the tower is a worse choice than alternatives further away from town. Mary Kasulaitis has a list of the current activities that the tower would disrupt if built in its proposed location. For some reason it seems the US government has chosen the absolute worst spot to construct the tower.

New Link

In the spirit of reciprocity I am adding a link to Marginalia a blog written by Peteris Cedrins of Daugavpils Latvia. It has a lot of interesting stuff on the politics and history of Latvia. I encourage all my readers to go take a look at it.

More on the Arivaca Tower

The construction of a 98 foot tower on the edge of Arivaca is extremely unpopular among most residents of the town. Unfortunately, I could not attend the 30 April 2007 meeting at the Community Center regarding the tower. An article about the meeting, however, can be found here. It nicely summarizes some of the main concerns the people of Arivaca have about the tower. For more information on the tower from a local perspective see this article.

Arivaca in the News: The Tower

Yesterday the front page of the Arizona Daily Star had a story on Arivaca. It concerned the tower DHS is building outside of town. As I walked back to the library from the post office I noticed Channel Four News interviewing Roger, the owner of the Mercantile. Mary, the librarian tells me the story has also made NPR and Channel 13 News. I guess Arivaca is famous now.