Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Last Night BBC Called Me
Last night at about 10 pm I got an unexpected phone call. It turned out it was an employee of the BBC and she wanted to know if the figure of about a third of the total population was correct for the overall deaths suffered by the Crimean Tatars due to deportation and exile in Uzbekistan during the 1940s. I told her that it was.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Migration of Russian-Koreans from Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan, 1937-1959
Recently I have been reading a lot about Stalin's 1937 deportation of the Russian-Koreans from the Soviet Far East to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. One thing that I noticed is that the initial pattern of settlement in Central Asia was the reverse of what it became later and still is today. That is originally there were many more Russian-Koreans in Kazakhstan than in Uzbekistan. Whereas today there are considerably more Russian-Koreans in Uzbekistan than in Kazakhstan.
The original deportation of the Russian-Koreans to Central Asia favored Kazakhstan over Uzbekistan as a destination by a significant margin. Between 9 September and 25 October 1937, the NKVD forcibly removed 171,781 Russian-Koreans from the Soviet Far East (Li and Kim, doc. 40, pp. 103-104 and doc. 52, pp. 114-115). The Stalin regime initially resettled 95,256 of these deportees in Kazakhstan and 76,525 in Uzbekistan (Li and Kim, doc. 52, pp. 114-115). An NKVD count of Russian-Koreans in Kazakhstan taken in 1943, however, could only verify the continued presence of 45,905 of the deportees in the republic (Bugai, doc. 14, pp. 31-32). Obviously this number is incomplete, but the reduction of the Russian-Korean population in Kazakhstan since 1937 was quite real. The Soviet census in 1959 recorded 139,000 Russian-Koreans in Uzbekistan and only 74,000 in Kazakhstan (Ian Matley in Allworth, p. 110). These numbers indicate a significant migration of Russian-Koreans from Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan as well as the possibility of higher mortality rates and lower fertility rates in Kazakhstan than in Uzbekistan among the nationality.
It appears that the authorities in Uzbekistan were much better than those in Kazakhstan in providing grain promised as compensation for grain left behind in the Soviet Far East to deported Russian-Koreans (Li and Kim, doc. 82-a, p. 169). Thus Russian-Koreans living in Kazakhstan often moved to join relatives that had been sent to Uzbekistan where material conditions were in many cases better. This factor seems to account for the fact that net internal migration by Russian-Koreans in Central Asia flowed from Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan.
Sources
N.F. Bugai, ed., Iosif Stalin - Lavrentiiu Berii: "Ikh nado deportirovat'" : Dokumenty, fakty, komentarii (Moscow: "Druzhba narodov", 1992).
Li U He and Kim En Un, eds., Belaia kniga: O deportatsii koreiskogo naseleniia Rossii v 30-40x godakh (Moscow: "Interprask", 1992).
Ian Murray Matley, "The Population and the Land" in Edward Allworth, ed., Central Asia: 130 Years of Russian Dominance, A Historical Overview, 3rd Edition (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1994).
The original deportation of the Russian-Koreans to Central Asia favored Kazakhstan over Uzbekistan as a destination by a significant margin. Between 9 September and 25 October 1937, the NKVD forcibly removed 171,781 Russian-Koreans from the Soviet Far East (Li and Kim, doc. 40, pp. 103-104 and doc. 52, pp. 114-115). The Stalin regime initially resettled 95,256 of these deportees in Kazakhstan and 76,525 in Uzbekistan (Li and Kim, doc. 52, pp. 114-115). An NKVD count of Russian-Koreans in Kazakhstan taken in 1943, however, could only verify the continued presence of 45,905 of the deportees in the republic (Bugai, doc. 14, pp. 31-32). Obviously this number is incomplete, but the reduction of the Russian-Korean population in Kazakhstan since 1937 was quite real. The Soviet census in 1959 recorded 139,000 Russian-Koreans in Uzbekistan and only 74,000 in Kazakhstan (Ian Matley in Allworth, p. 110). These numbers indicate a significant migration of Russian-Koreans from Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan as well as the possibility of higher mortality rates and lower fertility rates in Kazakhstan than in Uzbekistan among the nationality.
It appears that the authorities in Uzbekistan were much better than those in Kazakhstan in providing grain promised as compensation for grain left behind in the Soviet Far East to deported Russian-Koreans (Li and Kim, doc. 82-a, p. 169). Thus Russian-Koreans living in Kazakhstan often moved to join relatives that had been sent to Uzbekistan where material conditions were in many cases better. This factor seems to account for the fact that net internal migration by Russian-Koreans in Central Asia flowed from Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan.
Sources
N.F. Bugai, ed., Iosif Stalin - Lavrentiiu Berii: "Ikh nado deportirovat'" : Dokumenty, fakty, komentarii (Moscow: "Druzhba narodov", 1992).
Li U He and Kim En Un, eds., Belaia kniga: O deportatsii koreiskogo naseleniia Rossii v 30-40x godakh (Moscow: "Interprask", 1992).
Ian Murray Matley, "The Population and the Land" in Edward Allworth, ed., Central Asia: 130 Years of Russian Dominance, A Historical Overview, 3rd Edition (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1994).
Friday, July 25, 2008
Syllabus for Ethnicity, Race and Nationalism
Ethnicity, Race and Nationalism
ICP
3 Credits
International and Comparative Politics
American University of Central Asia
Fall Semester 2008
J. Otto Pohl, Ph.D.
And
Munara Omuralieva
Course Description: This course will cover the relationship between the overlapping and interrelated concepts of ethnicity, nationalism and race. It will focus on the dynamics involved in transforming ethnic categories into national or racial ones. Throughout the course we will examine the cultural basis of ethnicity, the political claims upon territory by nationalists, and the essential and primordial definitions of racial groups created and enforced by the state. Among the topics that will be covered in this examination are the creation and survival of national diasporas, ethnic cleansing and genocide, and the construction of modern nation-states.
Requirements: The course will consist of assigned readings, lectures, student led discussions, an annotated bibliography, a literature review and two oral presentations. Each week between three and five students, one for each article, will be assigned to lead class discussion on the topic on Wednesday. Every student will be responsible for conducting class discussion once during the semester. Additionally, every student will have to compile an annotated bibliography dealing with ethnicity, nationalism and race in a specific country. This bibliography should contain no less than fifteen journal articles found on JSTOR or EBSCOHOST. Students will be required to give a short oral report on this bibliography during weeks five, six and seven. A written version is due on week seven. Students are then to turn this annotated bibliography into a formal literature review. They will be required to do an oral report on this work during weeks twelve, thirteen, fourteen and fifteen. A written version of the literature review is due at the start of week sixteen. The literature review should be between 3000 and 4000 words long. 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. No mobile phones are to be visible during class. They are to be out of sight and turned off. I will eject any student from class that has a visible cell phone or whose cell phone rings during class. 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: All of the required readings can be found on JSTOR. Finding these articles using the bibliographic information provided below is part of the assigned work for this class.
Policy on Plagiarism and Citations: I have a zero tolerance policy regarding plagiarism. If I catch any student plagiarizing once I will fail them from the course and recommend to the chairman of the ICP department that they be expelled from the program. Plagiarism includes any verbatim copying of from a source without using quotation marks or setting the text up as an indented single spaced block quotation. If I find that more than four words in a row in your paper show up in the same order in a Google search and you do not have the words in quotation marks or set up as a block quotation I will fail you. Putting a footnote, end note or other citation after the copied words without the quotation marks or block quotation form is still plagiarism, you are claiming to have paraphrased verbatim text, and you will still receive an F for the course and be recommended for expulsion from ICP. Taking text from a source without citing it and rearranging the words so that it does not show up in a verbatim Google search is also plagiarism. I will also do Google searches to see if you have taken text and merely rearranged the words. You must either paraphrase the sentence by putting it completely in your own words and citing it with the proper footnote, end note or in text citation or quote the actual text verbatim complete with the proper citation. Completely paraphrasing sentences in your own words, but neglecting to cite the source of the information is also plagiarism. All information that would not be known to the average person on the street with no university education must be cited. When in doubt always cite a legitimate source. Wikipedia is not a legitimate source. Books published by university presses and academic journal articles found on JSTOR are legitimate sources. Other sources may or may not be legitimate. If you have questions about whether a particular source is legitimate you can ask me. Using Wikipedia or other illegitimate sources will result in a reduction of one letter grade for each citation in a paper.
Grading:
Leading and conducting assigned seminar: 20%
Oral report on annotated bibliography: 10%
Written version of annotated bibliography: 25%
Oral report on literature review: 15%
Written version of literature review: 30%
Class Schedule:
Week One: Introduction to Course and Review of Syllabus
Week Two: Ethnicity and Nationalism
Calhoun, Craig, “Nationalism and Ethnicity,” Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 19 (1993), pp. 211-239.
Connor, Walker, “Nation-Building or Nation-Destroying?,” World Politics, Vol. 24, No. 3 (April 1972), pp. 319-355.
Eriksen, Thomas Hylland, “Ethnicity Versus Nationalism,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 28, No. 2 (August 1991), pp. 263-278.
Smith, Anthony D., “Culture, Community and Territory: The Politics of Ethnicity and Nationalism,” International Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 3 (July 1996), pp. 445-458.
Week Three: Diasporas
Armstrong, John, “Mobilized and Proletarian Diasporas,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 70, No. 2 (June 1976), pp. 393-408.
Clifford, James, “Diasporas,” Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 9, No. 3, (August 1994), pp. 302-338.
Cohen, Robin, “Diasporas and the Nation-State: From Victims to Challengers,” International Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 3 (July 1996), pp. 507-520.
Van Den Berghe, Pierre, L. “The African Diaspora in Mexico, Brazil and the United States,” Social Forces, Vol. 54, No. 3 (March 1976), pp. 530-545.
Week Four: Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide
Bryant, Chad, “Either German or Czech: Fixing Nationality in Bohemia and Moravia, 1939-1946,” Slavic Review, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Winter 2002), pp. 683-706.
Falah, Ghazi, “The 1948 Israeli-Palestinian War and Its Aftermath: The Transformation and De-Signification of Palestine’s Cultural Landscape,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 86, No. 2 (June 1996), pp. 256-285.
Hayden, Robert M., “Schindler’s Fate: Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and Population Transfers,” Slavic Review, Vol. 55, No. 4 (Winter 1996), pp. 727-748.
Mirkovic, Damir, “Ethnic Conflict and Genocide: Reflections on Ethnic Cleansing in the Former Yugoslavia,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 548 (November 1996), pp. 191-199.
Wood, William, “Geographic Aspects of Genocide: A Comparison of Bosnia and Rwanda,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2001), pp. 57-75.
Weeks Five, Six and Seven: Student presentations of Annotated Bibliography – Written versions of the bibliography due on Wednesday of week seven.
Week Eight: Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR
Martin, Terry, “The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 70, No. 4 (December 1998), pp. 813-861.
Morris, James, “The Polish Terror: Spy Mania and Ethnic Cleansing in the Great Terror,” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 56, No. 5 (July 2004), pp. 751-766.
Williams, Brian Glyn, “The Hidden Ethnic Cleansing of Muslims in the Soviet Union: The Exile and Repatriation of the Crimean Tatars,” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 37, No. 3 (July 2002), pp. 323-347.
Week Nine: Ethnicity and Race in the USSR
Hirsch, Francine, “Race without the Practice of Racial Politics,” Slavic Review, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 30-43.
Lemon, Alaina, “Without a ‘Concept?’ Race as Discurvsive Practice,” Slavic Review, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 54-61.
Weiner, Amir, “Nothing but Certainty,” Slavic Review, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 44-53.
Weitz, Eric D., “Racial Politics without the Concept of Race: Reevaluating Soviet Ethnic and National Purges,” Slavic Review, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 1-29.
Weitz, Eric D., “On Certainties and Ambivalencies: Reply to my Critics,” Slavic Review, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 62-65.
Week Ten: Soviet and Post-Soviet Nation Building
Blitstein, Peter, “Cultural Diversity and the Interwar Conjuncture: Soviet Nationality Policy in Its Comparative Context,” Slavic Review, Vol. 65, No. 2 (Summer 2006), pp. 273-293.
Handrahan, L.M., “Gendering Ethnicity in Kyrgyzstan: Forgotten Elements in Promoting Peace and Democracy,” Gender and Development, Vol. 9, No. 3 (November 2001), pp. 70-78.
Slezkine, Yuri, “The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism,” Slavic Review, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Summer 1994), pp. 414-452.
Suny, Ronald Grigor, “Constructing Primordialism: Old Histories for New Nations,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 73, No. 4 (December 2001), pp. 862-896.
Week Eleven: Ethnicity and Race in Israel/Palestine
Rouhana, Nadim and Ghanem, Asad, “The Crises of Minorities in Ethnic States: The Case of Palestinian Citizens in Israel,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (August 1998), pp. 321-346.
Shohat, Ella, “Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of its Jewish Victims,” Social Text, No. 19/20 (Autumn 1988), pp. 1-35.
Yiftachel, Oren, “ ‘Ethnocracy’ and its Discontents: Minorities, Protests, and the Israeli Polity,” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Summer 2000), pp. 725-756.
Weeks Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen and Fifteen: Student Presentations of Literature Review
Week Sixteen: Written Version of Literature Review due on Monday and Concluding Remarks
ICP
3 Credits
International and Comparative Politics
American University of Central Asia
Fall Semester 2008
J. Otto Pohl, Ph.D.
And
Munara Omuralieva
Course Description: This course will cover the relationship between the overlapping and interrelated concepts of ethnicity, nationalism and race. It will focus on the dynamics involved in transforming ethnic categories into national or racial ones. Throughout the course we will examine the cultural basis of ethnicity, the political claims upon territory by nationalists, and the essential and primordial definitions of racial groups created and enforced by the state. Among the topics that will be covered in this examination are the creation and survival of national diasporas, ethnic cleansing and genocide, and the construction of modern nation-states.
Requirements: The course will consist of assigned readings, lectures, student led discussions, an annotated bibliography, a literature review and two oral presentations. Each week between three and five students, one for each article, will be assigned to lead class discussion on the topic on Wednesday. Every student will be responsible for conducting class discussion once during the semester. Additionally, every student will have to compile an annotated bibliography dealing with ethnicity, nationalism and race in a specific country. This bibliography should contain no less than fifteen journal articles found on JSTOR or EBSCOHOST. Students will be required to give a short oral report on this bibliography during weeks five, six and seven. A written version is due on week seven. Students are then to turn this annotated bibliography into a formal literature review. They will be required to do an oral report on this work during weeks twelve, thirteen, fourteen and fifteen. A written version of the literature review is due at the start of week sixteen. The literature review should be between 3000 and 4000 words long. 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. No mobile phones are to be visible during class. They are to be out of sight and turned off. I will eject any student from class that has a visible cell phone or whose cell phone rings during class. 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: All of the required readings can be found on JSTOR. Finding these articles using the bibliographic information provided below is part of the assigned work for this class.
Policy on Plagiarism and Citations: I have a zero tolerance policy regarding plagiarism. If I catch any student plagiarizing once I will fail them from the course and recommend to the chairman of the ICP department that they be expelled from the program. Plagiarism includes any verbatim copying of from a source without using quotation marks or setting the text up as an indented single spaced block quotation. If I find that more than four words in a row in your paper show up in the same order in a Google search and you do not have the words in quotation marks or set up as a block quotation I will fail you. Putting a footnote, end note or other citation after the copied words without the quotation marks or block quotation form is still plagiarism, you are claiming to have paraphrased verbatim text, and you will still receive an F for the course and be recommended for expulsion from ICP. Taking text from a source without citing it and rearranging the words so that it does not show up in a verbatim Google search is also plagiarism. I will also do Google searches to see if you have taken text and merely rearranged the words. You must either paraphrase the sentence by putting it completely in your own words and citing it with the proper footnote, end note or in text citation or quote the actual text verbatim complete with the proper citation. Completely paraphrasing sentences in your own words, but neglecting to cite the source of the information is also plagiarism. All information that would not be known to the average person on the street with no university education must be cited. When in doubt always cite a legitimate source. Wikipedia is not a legitimate source. Books published by university presses and academic journal articles found on JSTOR are legitimate sources. Other sources may or may not be legitimate. If you have questions about whether a particular source is legitimate you can ask me. Using Wikipedia or other illegitimate sources will result in a reduction of one letter grade for each citation in a paper.
Grading:
Leading and conducting assigned seminar: 20%
Oral report on annotated bibliography: 10%
Written version of annotated bibliography: 25%
Oral report on literature review: 15%
Written version of literature review: 30%
Class Schedule:
Week One: Introduction to Course and Review of Syllabus
Week Two: Ethnicity and Nationalism
Calhoun, Craig, “Nationalism and Ethnicity,” Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 19 (1993), pp. 211-239.
Connor, Walker, “Nation-Building or Nation-Destroying?,” World Politics, Vol. 24, No. 3 (April 1972), pp. 319-355.
Eriksen, Thomas Hylland, “Ethnicity Versus Nationalism,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 28, No. 2 (August 1991), pp. 263-278.
Smith, Anthony D., “Culture, Community and Territory: The Politics of Ethnicity and Nationalism,” International Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 3 (July 1996), pp. 445-458.
Week Three: Diasporas
Armstrong, John, “Mobilized and Proletarian Diasporas,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 70, No. 2 (June 1976), pp. 393-408.
Clifford, James, “Diasporas,” Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 9, No. 3, (August 1994), pp. 302-338.
Cohen, Robin, “Diasporas and the Nation-State: From Victims to Challengers,” International Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 3 (July 1996), pp. 507-520.
Van Den Berghe, Pierre, L. “The African Diaspora in Mexico, Brazil and the United States,” Social Forces, Vol. 54, No. 3 (March 1976), pp. 530-545.
Week Four: Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide
Bryant, Chad, “Either German or Czech: Fixing Nationality in Bohemia and Moravia, 1939-1946,” Slavic Review, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Winter 2002), pp. 683-706.
Falah, Ghazi, “The 1948 Israeli-Palestinian War and Its Aftermath: The Transformation and De-Signification of Palestine’s Cultural Landscape,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 86, No. 2 (June 1996), pp. 256-285.
Hayden, Robert M., “Schindler’s Fate: Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and Population Transfers,” Slavic Review, Vol. 55, No. 4 (Winter 1996), pp. 727-748.
Mirkovic, Damir, “Ethnic Conflict and Genocide: Reflections on Ethnic Cleansing in the Former Yugoslavia,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 548 (November 1996), pp. 191-199.
Wood, William, “Geographic Aspects of Genocide: A Comparison of Bosnia and Rwanda,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2001), pp. 57-75.
Weeks Five, Six and Seven: Student presentations of Annotated Bibliography – Written versions of the bibliography due on Wednesday of week seven.
Week Eight: Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR
Martin, Terry, “The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 70, No. 4 (December 1998), pp. 813-861.
Morris, James, “The Polish Terror: Spy Mania and Ethnic Cleansing in the Great Terror,” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 56, No. 5 (July 2004), pp. 751-766.
Williams, Brian Glyn, “The Hidden Ethnic Cleansing of Muslims in the Soviet Union: The Exile and Repatriation of the Crimean Tatars,” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 37, No. 3 (July 2002), pp. 323-347.
Week Nine: Ethnicity and Race in the USSR
Hirsch, Francine, “Race without the Practice of Racial Politics,” Slavic Review, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 30-43.
Lemon, Alaina, “Without a ‘Concept?’ Race as Discurvsive Practice,” Slavic Review, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 54-61.
Weiner, Amir, “Nothing but Certainty,” Slavic Review, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 44-53.
Weitz, Eric D., “Racial Politics without the Concept of Race: Reevaluating Soviet Ethnic and National Purges,” Slavic Review, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 1-29.
Weitz, Eric D., “On Certainties and Ambivalencies: Reply to my Critics,” Slavic Review, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 62-65.
Week Ten: Soviet and Post-Soviet Nation Building
Blitstein, Peter, “Cultural Diversity and the Interwar Conjuncture: Soviet Nationality Policy in Its Comparative Context,” Slavic Review, Vol. 65, No. 2 (Summer 2006), pp. 273-293.
Handrahan, L.M., “Gendering Ethnicity in Kyrgyzstan: Forgotten Elements in Promoting Peace and Democracy,” Gender and Development, Vol. 9, No. 3 (November 2001), pp. 70-78.
Slezkine, Yuri, “The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism,” Slavic Review, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Summer 1994), pp. 414-452.
Suny, Ronald Grigor, “Constructing Primordialism: Old Histories for New Nations,” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 73, No. 4 (December 2001), pp. 862-896.
Week Eleven: Ethnicity and Race in Israel/Palestine
Rouhana, Nadim and Ghanem, Asad, “The Crises of Minorities in Ethnic States: The Case of Palestinian Citizens in Israel,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (August 1998), pp. 321-346.
Shohat, Ella, “Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of its Jewish Victims,” Social Text, No. 19/20 (Autumn 1988), pp. 1-35.
Yiftachel, Oren, “ ‘Ethnocracy’ and its Discontents: Minorities, Protests, and the Israeli Polity,” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Summer 2000), pp. 725-756.
Weeks Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen and Fifteen: Student Presentations of Literature Review
Week Sixteen: Written Version of Literature Review due on Monday and Concluding Remarks
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Under Jakob's Ladder
Recently I have been doing some historical consulting on a script for a movie. The film company is actually based in NY, however, not Hollywood. The movie is called Under Jakob's Ladder and tells the story of an ethnic German from Ukraine imprisoned by the Soviet regime under Stalin. Based upon the script and the short trailer of the movie it looks really good. The Moon Brothers deserve a lot of credit for taking on this subject matter.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Displacement, Diasporas, and Descendants
Lately I have been reading and thinking a lot about diasporas. In particular I have noticed that many diasporas are the result of multiple displacements and thus have multiple homelands. The connection to the "original" homeland thus becomes attenuated considerably. The Afro-Caribbean diaspora in the UK is an example of one such multiply displaced group as are the Sephardic Jews expelled from Iberia.
The ancestors of the Russian-Germans now in Germany originally left Hesse, Baden, Wurttemburg and other states in Central Europe to the Russian Empire during the 18th and 19th centuries. In between their initial settlement in the Russian Empire and the migration of their descendants to Germany in the 1990s these families often experienced as many as five or six displacements. For these people homeland has variously referred to not only Germany, but also to areas in the Russian Empire and USSR. These homelands have ranged in size from individual villages to the entire Russian Empire. For most of the Tsarist era the primary geographical identification of most Russian-Germans remained on the local level of the village. But, other larger geographical affiliations also developed and co-existed with this identification. On the largest scale, most Russian-Germans considered themselves loyal subjects of the Russian Empire and later loyal citizens of the USSR.
Exactly how various Russian-Germans have over the course of generations viewed themselves variously as villagers of Norka, Volga Germans, Soviet Germans, and Russian-Germans would be an interesting subject to research. The existence of multiple geographic identifications due to both the displacement and modernization of internal diaspora groups in the USSR would make a fascinating comparative study. How for instance do the Russian-Germans differ from the Russian-Koreans in their emotional connections to specific territories?
The ancestors of the Russian-Germans now in Germany originally left Hesse, Baden, Wurttemburg and other states in Central Europe to the Russian Empire during the 18th and 19th centuries. In between their initial settlement in the Russian Empire and the migration of their descendants to Germany in the 1990s these families often experienced as many as five or six displacements. For these people homeland has variously referred to not only Germany, but also to areas in the Russian Empire and USSR. These homelands have ranged in size from individual villages to the entire Russian Empire. For most of the Tsarist era the primary geographical identification of most Russian-Germans remained on the local level of the village. But, other larger geographical affiliations also developed and co-existed with this identification. On the largest scale, most Russian-Germans considered themselves loyal subjects of the Russian Empire and later loyal citizens of the USSR.
Exactly how various Russian-Germans have over the course of generations viewed themselves variously as villagers of Norka, Volga Germans, Soviet Germans, and Russian-Germans would be an interesting subject to research. The existence of multiple geographic identifications due to both the displacement and modernization of internal diaspora groups in the USSR would make a fascinating comparative study. How for instance do the Russian-Germans differ from the Russian-Koreans in their emotional connections to specific territories?
Monday, July 21, 2008
Some Things Remain the Same
Today I paid my electric bill at the main post office. The good news is that utility rates are still stuck in the Brezhnev era. The bad news is that the queue to pay my electric bill was also a hold over from the Brezhnev era. I would have gladly paid double not to have had to wait so long in line.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
My Papers Are All in Order
I have now have a new visa, new registration, new work permit and new contract for the upcoming 2008-2009 school year.
Monday, July 14, 2008
It is now hot in Bishkek
For the last couple of days it has been really hot and humid here. Granted it is not as hot as Arizona or as humid as Virginia. But, still it is considerably less comfortable now than it was just a few weeks ago.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Turkmen Dinner
Last night along with some friends and colleagues I enjoyed a dinner cooked by some Turkmen students here at AUCA. We ate Turkmen style plov with chicken for the main course. The Turkmen way of making plov is a lot less oily than that used by other Central Asian nationalities. It was quite good.
Monday, July 07, 2008
Race is not a "Social Construct"
Yesterday it occurred to me that despite the constant repetition that race is a "social construct" that this is in fact not true. Or it is only true if one is using the term "social construct" as a code word. In point of fact race is a legal category created and enforced by state violence. It does not matter what "society" thinks about race. What matters is what the people who control the guns think and do. Absent the coercive power of the state, the enforcement of racial boundaries is impossible in the long term. There are no cases of "society" without the backing of the state being able to enforce systems of racial exclusion such as existed in the American South of Jim Crow, Apartheid South Africa or Israel today.
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Latest Book Read - Hunted Through Central Asia by Paul Nazaroff
I recently read Paul Nazaroff, trans. Malcolm Burr, Hunted Through Central Asia: On the run from Lenin's Secret Police (Oxford: OUP, 2002). First published in 1932, this book narrates Nazaroff's flight from Tashkent through what is now Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan into Chinese Turkestan. Implicated in an anti-Bolshevik uprising in fall 1918, Nazaroff is arrested by the Cheka and then freed from incarceration by White forces. But, the Bolsheviks again gain the upper hand and Nazaroff finds himself taking refuge among the native populations of Central Asia as he makes his way out of the Turkestan ASSR. A lot of the book takes place in Pishpek as Bishkek was then known and the surrounding environs. His descriptions of the area at the time are absolutely fascinating. He presents detailed observations regarding the flora, fauna and geology of the region. He also has a lot of very interesting commentary about the domestic living arrangements of the Uzbeks, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz. The book resembles a thriller in its narrative structure and thus reads fast. If you are looking for something both entertaining and informative to read I highly recommend this book.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
New Policy on Plagiarism
Last semester I caught one out of every five of my students plagiarising. So for next semester I have revised my official policy on plagiarism. The paragraph below will appear in the syllabi of all four of my classes.
Policy on Plagiarism and Citations: I have a zero tolerance policy regarding plagiarism. If I catch any student plagiarizing once I will fail them from the course and recommend to the chairman of the ICP department that they be expelled from the program. Plagiarism includes any verbatim copying from a source without using quotation marks or setting the text up as an indented single spaced block quotation. If I find that more than four words in a row in your paper show up in the same order in a Google search and you do not have the words in quotation marks or set up as a block quotation I will fail you. Putting a footnote, endnote or other citation after the copied words without the quotation marks or block quotation form is still plagiarism, you are claiming to have paraphrased verbatim text, and you will still receive an F for the course and be recommended for expulsion from ICP. Taking text from a source without citing it and rearranging the words so that it does not show up in a verbatim Google search is also plagiarism. I will also do Google searches to see if you have taken text and merely rearranged the words. You must either paraphrase the sentence by completely putting it in your own words and cite it with the proper footnote, endnote or in text citation or quote the actual text verbatim complete with the proper citation. Completely paraphrasing sentences in your own words, but neglecting to cite the source of the information is also plagiarism. All information that would not be known to the average person on the street with no university education must be cited. When in doubt always cite a legitimate source. Wikipedia is not a legitimate source. Books published by university presses and academic journal articles found on JSTOR are legitimate sources. Other sources may or may not be legitimate. If you have questions about whether a particular source is legitimate you can ask me. Using Wikipedia or other illegitimate sources will result in a reduction of one letter grade for each citation in a paper.
Policy on Plagiarism and Citations: I have a zero tolerance policy regarding plagiarism. If I catch any student plagiarizing once I will fail them from the course and recommend to the chairman of the ICP department that they be expelled from the program. Plagiarism includes any verbatim copying from a source without using quotation marks or setting the text up as an indented single spaced block quotation. If I find that more than four words in a row in your paper show up in the same order in a Google search and you do not have the words in quotation marks or set up as a block quotation I will fail you. Putting a footnote, endnote or other citation after the copied words without the quotation marks or block quotation form is still plagiarism, you are claiming to have paraphrased verbatim text, and you will still receive an F for the course and be recommended for expulsion from ICP. Taking text from a source without citing it and rearranging the words so that it does not show up in a verbatim Google search is also plagiarism. I will also do Google searches to see if you have taken text and merely rearranged the words. You must either paraphrase the sentence by completely putting it in your own words and cite it with the proper footnote, endnote or in text citation or quote the actual text verbatim complete with the proper citation. Completely paraphrasing sentences in your own words, but neglecting to cite the source of the information is also plagiarism. All information that would not be known to the average person on the street with no university education must be cited. When in doubt always cite a legitimate source. Wikipedia is not a legitimate source. Books published by university presses and academic journal articles found on JSTOR are legitimate sources. Other sources may or may not be legitimate. If you have questions about whether a particular source is legitimate you can ask me. Using Wikipedia or other illegitimate sources will result in a reduction of one letter grade for each citation in a paper.
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