65 Years Since the Ethnic Cleansing of the Kalmyks

It has been 65 years since the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet ordered the deportation of the Kalmyks from their homeland to Siberia. I do not have time to write a new post this year, but here are some of my previous posts on the subject.

Back to the Arivacan Homeland

Yesterday, I arrived in Arivaca, Arizona. The weather here is cold and rainy. But, the people are as friendly as ever. At 2:00 pm on Tuesday, 30 December 2008, I will be giving a talk on daily life in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The talk will take place at the Arivaca library.

Arrived in the USA

My first flight out of Bishkek was cancelled. So I ended up being delayed for a day. But, I am in California now.

Catherine's Grandchildren: A Short History of the Russian-Germans under Soviet Rule

My first book written for a general audience is now in print. The American Historical Society of Germans from Russia has published Catherine's Grandchildren: A Short History of the Russian-Germans under Soviet Rule. I will be donating a copy to the Arivaca Library.

Winning the War on Plagiarism

This semester out of 69 research papers from International and Comparative Politics students I only found one case of plagiarism. In percentage terms this is less than one tenth of what I found last semester. This is most likely because I have been conducting the War Against Plagiarism in International and Comparative Politics for almost a year now. It seems to be having results.

I am now done with the semester

This semester I taught five classes with ninety nine students. I just finished grading the last research papers and calculating final grades. I also finished writing one book manuscript, two journal articles and one encyclopedia article this semester. Now I have a few free weeks before work starts again. Next Sunday I am flying back to the US for a short break.

Fifty Final Research Papers Graded So Far

In the last two days I have graded fifty final research papers. I still have a big stack left to grade. According to my calculations I have forty left to grade. I hope to finish most of them before Monday.

Who exactly reads this blog?

This blog is definitely writer rather than audience driven. But, it would be interesting to know if there are any regular readers out there that I do not know about. So consider this an invitation to post a comment if you are a reader that has never done so before.

Lessons Learned this Semester (fall 2008)

The first lesson is not to teach five courses on top of writing books, journal articles and encyclopedia articles. This is not to mention other types of work. Next semester I am only teaching three courses. Then I will not have to work seventy hours a week.

The second lesson is to not teach any more eight am courses. It is still dark in Bishkek at that time in the morning and there is no lighting on the street at seven am. I have already witnessed one pedestrian killed by a bus during my morning walk to work this academic year. I do not intend to share his fate.

Russian-Germans from Kyrgyzstan in the Labor Army

Russian-German men living east of the Urals before 1941 became subject to service in the labor army as a result of GKO Order No. 1281 ss of 14 February 1942. The Russian-German men inducted into the labor army due to this decree living in Kyrgyzstan and other Central Asian republics of the USSR as well as the Bashkir ASSR and Cheliabinsk Oblast found themselves building the South-Ural Railroad. The NKVD moved these forced labor conscripts to Cheliabinsk Station where they began construction. From February through April 1942, the Stalin regime mobilized nearly 40,900 Russian-German men living in the Urals, Central Asia, Siberia, the Soviet Far East and other regions into labor army detachments for railway construction and other physically demanding work.

Source:

A.A. German, "Mobilizovannye sovetskie nemtsy v lageriakh NKVD i na khoziaistvennykh ob'ektakh drugikh narkomatov v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny," in Stranitsy Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny (k-60-letiu pobedy): Doklady Akademii Nauk, No. 3, 2008 (15), pp. 171-172.

Russian-Koreans in Karlag

Russian-Germans were not the only nationality called up into the labor army to work in Karlag. In February 1942, the Soviet government began the conscription of Russian-Koreans into labor army detachments. From Kazakhstan alone they mobilized some 20,000 Russian-Korean men (64). A recorded 2,141 of these men worked in the mines at Karaganda from 1942 to 1945 (63). Other Russian-Korean labor army conscripts worked in mines, construction projects, and tree felling throughout Uzbekistan and Russia (pp. 65-66). To date comparatively little research has been done on the subject of non-German nationalities conscripted into the labor army.

Source:

Valeriy S. Khan, "Uzbekistani Koreans in the Labor Army during W0rld War II (Historiography of the Problem)", International Journal of Central Asian Studies, Vol. 11, 2006, pp. 59-71.

Blog Type

According to this website Otto's Random Thoughts is the following type of blog.

ISTJ - The Duty Fulfillers

The responsible and hardworking type. They are especially attuned to the details of life and are careful about getting the facts right. Conservative by nature they are often reluctant to take any risks whatsoever. The Duty Fulfillers are happy to be let alone and to be able to work in their own pace. They know what they have to do and how to do it.

Another Best Blog Darts Thinker Award

The Best Blog Darts Thinker Award for today goes to Russell Arben Fox at In Medias Res. He has a lot of interesting essays on modern communitarianism. Having lived in Arivaca Arizona for two years I am a big fan of communitarianism.

A Political Science Blog for Best Blog Dart Thinker Award

Today's Best Blog Dart Thinker award goes to Laura McKenna at 11D. I have now given out nine awards. I have six left to go.

Three Blogs Named After Frogs for the Best Blog Darts Thinker Award

The next three Best Blog Darts Thinker Awards go to a trio of related blogs on East Asian History. They are Frog in a Well Japan, Frog in a Well China and Frog in a Well Korea. These three blogs have a lot of interesting short academic pieces of an historical bent.

Three Best Blog Darts Thinker Awards for Writing on the Middle East

I have grouped these three blogs together because they all deal with the Middle East. In particular, they focus on the problems stemming from Israel's continued denial of national self determination, justice and human rights to the Palestinian people. The first award goes to Mark Elf and crew at Jews sans frontieres, the second to Philip Weiss at Mondoweiss and the third to Leila Abu-Saba at Dove's Eye View.

Today's Best Blog Darts Thinker Award

This is the second blog in my list of fifteen to get the Best Blog Darts Thinker Award. Today the award goes to Peteris Cedrins of Daugavpils Latvia for his very thoughtful blog Marginalia. It has a wealth of insightful essays on various aspects of history, politics and literature as it relates to Latvia. Although Latvia is a small country, it has a very rich and interesting history.

Best Blog Darts Thinker Award

Fear and Loathing in Georgetown has awarded my blog with a Best Blog Darts Thinker Award. This is the first time in over four years of existence that this blog has won any award. I am supposed to acknowledge the award and pass the award on to fifteen more blogs. However, I have not seen any requirement that I list all fifteen of these blogs in a single post. Also, FLG himself only named eleven blogs. Which I believe sets a precedent for procedural flexibility. I will name one blog that deserves the Best Blog Darts Thinker Award each day for the next fifteen days. The first one is Kristina Gray's excellent Kazakhnomad's Weblog. See the entry below and click on the links to see some of the reasons why she deserves this award.

Karlag NKVD

My friend Kristina Gray has a series of posts on her blog about Karlag, the labor camp complex that operated in Karaganada Oblast, Kazakhstan from 1931 to 1959. She visited Dolinka, the administrative capitol of this section of the Gulag Archipelago. Karlag prisoners engaged in a wide variety of economic activities including agriculture, coal mining, limestone quarrying, glass manufacturing and food processing. At the end of 1943, a contingent of Russian-Germans mobilized into the labor army arrived at Karlag. By January 1944 they numbered 1,280 people including 488 women versus 50,080 convicted prisoners of which 20,572 were women. The labor army colonies in Karlag primarily worked in coal shaft no. 4. In January 1946, the NKVD demobilized the Russian-Germans working in the labor army at Karlag and reclassified them as special settlers. However, they still remained legally obligated to remain working in coal shaft no. 4 and other Karlag enterprises. The corrective labor camp complex in Karaganda Oblast continued to house prisoners for another thirteen years.

Source: A.A. German, "Sovetskie nemtsy v lageriakh NKVD v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny: Vklad v pobedy," Voenno-istoricheskie issledovania v Povolzh'e , Sb. Nauch., (Saratov: Izd-vo: "Nauchnaia kniga," 2006), Issue no. 7, p. 297.

AUCA Professor Murdered in Bishkek

An unidentified man stabbed Maciej Chowaniok two nights ago in Bishkek resulting in Chowaniok bleeding to death. A citizen of Poland, Chowaniok taught journalism at the American University of Central Asia and Kyrgyz National University. He was 28 years old.

Article on Anti-Nazi Sudeten Germans: There were over 200,000 of them

A very large number of the Sudeten Germans forcibly expelled from Czechoslovakia actively fought against the Nazis. This article from a Czech source suggests that the number was certainly over 200,000. The expulsion of the Sudeten Germans included not only Germans who actively fought against the Nazis, but also German speaking Jews. Like the Soviet deportation of the Russian-Germans to Kazakhstan and Siberia and the Israeli expulsion of the Palestinians it was a racially based policy.

More Bishkek Blackouts

The government promised that there would be no more power cuts after 1 November 2008 until spring 2009. This promise has already been breached several times. Last night the power went out at my flat. Over fourteen hours later when I left for work this morning it still had not come back on.

Unionize It!

Today I joined the new faculty union being organized here. It always felt weird to be working in a country that officially celebrates May Day and not have a union card. Workers of the World Unite!

Winter has Arrived

Last night it snowed again and today it is cold.

Strange Weather

Yesterday it rained hard. Last night it snowed. This morning it was cold. Now it is warm and sunny. Kyrgyzstan has even more radical weather changes than Arizona. At least there are no monsoons here.

New Link - Moon Brothers

I have been working as an historical consultant for the film Under Jakob's Ladder since summer. In order to keep posted on the progress of this project I suggest you check out the Moon Brothers' own blog. I have added a permanent link to their blog to my blog roll.

The Dollar is Up

In the last couple of weeks the dollar has been going up. It has risen from 34 to almost 39 som. This is very good news for me.

Commemoration of Karachai Deportation

Here is a link to an article describing the recent activities in Karachaevo-Circassia to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the deportation of the Karachais.

More on the Karachai Deportation

For those interested in the ethnic cleansing of the Karachais 65 years ago here are some of my earlier posts on the subject. The first one is another post on the actual deportation. The next one is on the Karachai "special settlers" in Kyrgyzstan. The final post is on the Karachais sent to work in the Pakhta Aral region on cotton farms. From November 1943 to November 1944, the Stalin regime conducted a serious of punitive deportations against the Karachais, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars, and Meskhetian Turks. The Soviet government deported these nationalities in their entirety from their homelands to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and in the case of the Kalmyks to Siberia. Along with these wholesale deportations, the NKVD also ethnically cleansed Crimea of its Greek, Armenian and Bulgarian minorities and the border regions of Georgia of Kurds and Hemshins. I will try and cover the 65th anniversary of each of these deportations.

65 Years Since the Deportation of the Karachais

On 2 November 1943, Soviet security forces forcibly resettled almost the entire Karachai population of nearly 70,000 people from their North Caucasian homeland to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The Soviet government then dissolved the Karachai Autonomous Oblast and divided its land among other administrative territories. It also changed many of the geographical place names of within the region. It completed this ethnic cleansing by sending the Karachais living outside their national oblast or serving in the Red Army to join the rest of their kin in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. In exile in Central Asia the Karachais came under a series of legal disabilities that separated them from most other Soviet citizens. Classified as “special settlers” the Soviet regime imposed severe restrictions on the residency and movement rights of the Karachais. They also lived in conditions of extreme poverty and thousands died prematurely of malnutrition, disease and exposure. In the years after Stalin’s death there arose a movement by Karachai activists to lobby Moscow for the right to return to their former homeland. The Soviet government allowed the Karachais to return home to the Caucasus only after 1957. They, however, did not restore the borders of the Karachai Autonomous Oblast. Instead the Soviet government created a Karachai-Cherkess Autonomous Oblast by combining most of the former territory of the Karachai Autonomous Oblast with the Cherkess Autonomous Oblast. Nevertheless, the vast majority of the Karachai population in exile in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan opted to return to their ancestral homeland during the next few years. By 1960 over 80% of the Karachai population lived in this new administrative region. For more than a dozen years virtually the entire Karachai population lived as exiles and second class Soviet citizens in Central Asia far from their Caucasian homeland.

New Mobile Phone

Ten months ago I purchased my first mobile phone. It was a used and older model Nokia. It cost me 1700 som. Yesterday it died. The battery refused to charge. My girlfriend said she could get me a brand new phone for less than 2000 som. I was skeptical, but sure enough while I was at work yesterday she found a brand new current model Nokia for 1800 som. So I am thinking that I got seriously ripped off on the first phone purchase. A lot of merchants here seem to have no moral compunctions about stealing from foreigners. It is a primary reason why there is so little foreign investment here.

Rashid Khalidi (Mein Doktorgrossvater)

I notice that Khalidi's name is all over the blogosphere. I do not know the man directly. He was, however, the Ph.D. supervisor of my own Ph.D. supervisor. Or as I like to call him, my Doktorgrossvater. I saw him speak once at SOAS. I thought his talk was very good. It was certainly not "radical" compared to many other speakers on Palestine at SOAS. Indeed, other than in the context of US politics, where any criticism of the State of Israel is taken as "radical" could Khalidi be considered anything, but a moderate. But, of course in the US even opposition to such extreme Israeli policies as torture and killing children is often denounced as "anti-semitism."

I have not read most of what Khalidi has written. But, what little I have read is quite impressive. For my Politics of the Middle East class this semester I assigned the piece below.

Khalidi, Rashid, “Observations on the Right of Return,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Winter 1992), pp. 29-40.

Encyclopedia Article Done

Today, I finally finished writing my encyclopedia article on the Russian-Germans. Somehow, I managed to compress nearly 250 years of history into a mere two thousand words. I had to cut it down from an original rough draft of nearly three thousand words. Unwriting is always harder than writing.

Another Link on ALZHIR

Kristina Gray also has a number of photographs from the museum and memorial complex built to honor the victims of ALZHIR. You can see them on this post.

Link to article on ALZHIR

My friend Kristina Gray has written a very good post on her blog about ALZHIR, the labor camp in Kazakhstan established by Stalin for the wives of "traitors."

Tony Hillerman RIP

Tony Hillerman has died at age 83. I greatly enjoyed reading his novels about Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee. The Navajo background of his mysteries gave them an historical and anthropological edge over most other fiction in the genre. He incorporated various elements of Navajo history and culture into his plots and character development in a very entertaining manner.

My Third World Problems

I notice that a lot of bloggers refer to their first world problems. I have not lived in the first world for a while so I am not sure what they are complaining about. But, I do have some third world problems. First, the power cuts are quite frequent and irregular now. Since I have an old Soviet electric stove, instead of gas, this presents nutritional problems for me. Last night, the power cuts meant that my girlfriend could not steam the manti she had made until close to midnight. It also means I can not read either for work or pleasure most nights. On the upside the black outs have greatly reduced my electric bill. It is less than a third of what it was in August.

Second, it is now cold and there is still no heat in either my flat or my place of work. To make matters worse, the owner of my flat has still not fixed the broken window on the balcony after ten months. He is infinitely better than the land lady I had during the first five months I lived in Kyrgyzstan, she was unbearable, but I would like him to fix the window before it starts snowing.

There are many things I love about Kyrgyzstan. I have a job, a girlfriend and an apartment here, all things I previously lacked. But, light and heat are bourgeois luxuries that I greatly enjoy. In fact they are two of the very few bourgeois luxuries that I bother to indulge in anymore.

Cited by Black Book of Communism Author

After reaching over 100 verified citations of my published works in scholary books and journals I stopped making blog posts on them. But, the other day I found one by somebody so prominent that the citations deserve recognition. Nicolas Werth cites both of my books in his article "Crimes de mass et politiques genocidaires sovietiques" in Barbara Lefebvre and Sophie Ferhadjian, eds., Comprendre les genocides du xxe siecle comprarer-enseigner (Paris: Breal, 2007). Among other accomplishments, Werth wrote the chapter on the Soviet Union in The Black Book of Communism.

Going Home

This morning I purchased a plane ticket to fly back to the US. I will be arriving in Los Angeles at 6:15 pm on Sunday, 21 December 2008. I will be leaving the US to return to Bishkek on Friday, 9 January 2009 at 3:50 pm. If anybody in Southern California or Southern Arizona other than family wants to see me between these times please send me an e-mail.

Book Review Coming Soon

Finally, after a very long delay I have started reading Dr. Ruth Derksen Siemens, ed., Remember Us Letters from Stalin's Gulag (1930-37) Volume One: The Regehr Family. I received the book in the summer, but have not found the time until now to seriously start reading it. The other night I got through the first 158 pages. I will post a proper review of this book when I finish reading the entire thing. But, I will note now that this collection of translated letters from a Mennonite family exiled from Ukraine to a special settlement in the northern Urals in 1931 is extremely powerful. The physical suffering in the special settlement villages due to hunger, disease and inhumane work comes through very clearly in these letters.

New Website on Sudeten Germans

My friend, Dr. Rudolf Pueschel has a new website dedicated to the plight of the Sudeten Germans at the end of World War II.

New Publications Out Now

I have two new book chapters in print now. The first one is “Suffering in a Province of Asia: The Russian-German Diaspora in Kazakhstan,” in Mathias Schulze, James M. Skidmore, David G. John, Grit Liebscher, and Sebastian Siebel-Achenbach, eds., Germanic Diasporic Experiences: Identity, Migration, and Loss (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008). A description of the book is here. Here is the table of contents. Look under chapter 32. The other publication is “Loss, Retention, and Reacquisition of Social Capital by Special Settlers in the USSR, 1941-1961” in Cynthia Buckley, Blair Ruble, and Erin Trouth Hofmann, eds., Migration, Homeland and Belonging in Eurasia (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center and Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2008). My contribution is chapter seven. The two chapters both deal with Stalin's ethnic cleansing during World War II.

Fall Break in the Dark

We now have Fall Break and I do not have to teach any classes for a week. I am going to use this time to catch up on some other projects. I hope to finish my encyclopedia article in the next couple of days. Right now I have a little over half of it written. Next semester, I am not going to take on so much work.

The power cuts have become regular now. We only have power 16 hours a day. But, it is not the same 16 hours each day. It is also not the same 16 hours everywhere in the city. I noticed the post listing the power schedule for my apartment building this morning. I was on my way to work because there was no power in my building. We have no power on Sunday mornings from 6:00 am until 2:00 pm. One thing that is not readily apparent until you start living without power is that certain things like ground beef become dangerous to eat. So I am going to be avoiding certain foods that spoil rapidly without refrigeration from now on.

Recent Progress

I have now finished the revisions to the book manuscript and one of the journal articles. I now have one journal article and one encyclopedia article to finish writing. My recent writing seems to be focused on the history of the Russian-Germans. While I have written on a number of different nationalities in the past, all four of the pieces listed above deal specifically with the Russian-Germans. Of course, I still have five classes to teach and 45 written assignments to grade this week. Tomorrow, I only have one class to teach so I am going spend most of the day grading papers.

Current Projects

Currently, I have one book manuscript to finish editing, one encyclopedia article to finish writing, and two journal articles to finish. This is in addition to teaching five classes, serving on a university wide committee, and other academic work. Needless to say this leaves little time for blogging right now. I should have some of these projects wrapped up by November. Until then I will not be writing anything too long or serious here.

The CIS is in Town

The Commonwealth of Independent States will be having its annual summit in Bishkek this year. The actual meeting is on the tenth. The president of Russia, Medvedev, has already arrived in town. There are lots of signs, uniformed police and official vehicles appearing out of nowhere. I expect traffic in the center of town will be even worse than when the Shainghai Cooperation Organization held its meeting here in 2007.

I am still alive

Despite the paucity of blogging recently, I am still alive. I just have a lot of work to do. I hope to be able to finish some of it this week.

Genocide

Next semester I will be teaching a course on genocide. The current emphasis on "intent" or even worse "specific intent" in both international law and scholarship on genocide seems to me to be misplaced. Instead, I think the consequences of state policies are far more important. Whether Stalin intended to kill off a portion of the deported nationalities by his actions is really not important. Rather, what is important is the fact that his regime deliberately deported entire nationalities to barren wastelands and as a result large numbers of them perished. The inevitable consequences of this action differed only from shooting or gassing a fifth of the deported peoples in only one real sense. Those that died in the special settlements from exposure, malnutrition, typhus, malaria and other diseases had much more agonizing deaths than direct execution would have entailed. Yet, revisionists like Stephen G. Wheatcroft and others claim that these deaths caused by Stalin were not only not genocide, but not even murder, but merely manslaughter. Of course they would never claim that Jews that died of typhus in ghettos and concentration camps under the Nazis were not victims of genocide, but merely of manslaughter. Because that would be Holocaust denial.

Two for Two

I have now graded two assignments for two different classes. In both classes I have found one case of blatant word for word plagiarism from internet sites. I do not know why students do not think I am serious when I tell them I will fail them if I catch them plagiarizing.

Accordion Player Sighted Again

Today I saw the Russian accordion player again for the first time in many months. I was on my way to pay my electric bill and I saw him across the street from where I last saw him. He did not look as well as he did the last time I saw him. I hope he is not seriously ill. I gave him 10 som and continued on my way.

We have coffee now

The university recently acquired a coffee bar. I purchased a mocha from there on my birthday. It was OK, but at 60 som quite expensive.

Recent Happenings

I am pretty swamped with teaching right now. But, the next couple of weeks will be easier. In my Politics of the Middle East class the other professor will be lecturing during the next two weeks instead of me. In my Politics of Nationalism, Ethnicity and Race course the students will be giving oral reports instead of me lecturing. Unfortunately, this week has been less productive than I hoped due to becoming infected with some sort of flu virus. So I will be using the spare time in the next two weeks to catch up.

The War On Plagiarism Continues

The very first paper I graded this semester contained a massive amount of blatant word for word plagiarism. The entire first page consisted of two long paragraphs copied verbatim from an Internet site without any attribution. I am failing the student for the course and recommending to my department chairman that he be expelled from the program. I hope that this action has a deterrent effect upon other students.

The problem with course reading packets

I am still pretty busy. I still have students registering for classes. By now they have missed the first three weeks of class. Getting extra reading material photocopied for these students is becoming a major hassle. It seems that no matter how many readers I get made there are still students in my classes that did not get one. In the future I am going to only assign journal articles available on JSTOR and other databases for which the university has a subscription. I did this for one class this semester and it has saved me a lot of grief.

Buried in Work

Between teaching, writing and other work related projects I have been very busy recently. I should have a slightly lighter load in October when some of the writing and other projects are finished. Until then I do not have a lot of free time.

Classes Taught this Semester

This semester I am teaching five courses. I have listed them below. You should be able to find syllabi for all of them in the archives.

American Society

Democratization

Ethnicity, Race and Nationalism

Political Culture

Politics of the Middle East

Food Prices Increase and the Dollar Drops

Inflation is galloping along here in Bishkek. I have noticed a sharp increase in food prices recently. The price of a Bii Burger has jumped from 55 som to 60 som in the last week. Meanwhile wages remain frozen. To make matters worse the value of the dollar has dropped. It is now hovering permanently below 35 som. When I first came here a little over a year ago it was 38 som to the dollar.

Over 100 Academic Citations!!!

Checking on Google Books and Google Scholar today I noticed a number of new scholarly citations of my work. Most of them were in languages other than English. In particular a large number were in German, a language I can read. But, others were in Romanian, French, Polish and Turkish, languages I can not read. A few of them were even in English. Unfortunately, almost all of these newly found sources only have very small snippets available on the Internet. So it is impossible for me to get the context of these citations. Nevertheless, my goal of being cited by other scholars in at least 100 publications has now been fulfilled.

New Publication Coming Soon.

Cynthia J. Buckley, Blair A. Ruble and Erin Trouth Hofmann, eds., Migration, Homeland, and Belonging in Eurasia (Washington DC and Baltimore: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and John Hopkins University Press, 2008) can now be ordered online. For a description of the book and table of contents go here. I wrote chapter seven, "The Loss, Retention and Reacquisition of Social Capital by Special Settlers in the USSR, 1941-1960." The book cover looks rather nice.

The First Day of Classes for Fall 2008

The first day of classes went well. This semester in addition to teaching four courses in ICP I am also teaching a course in American Studies. It is the first time I have taught a course dealing with US history.

I also got some gifts from one of my Turkmen students today. For which I am very grateful. Maksat gave me a bunch of cool Turkmen gear. He gave me a hat, a necklace, a bracelet and some feet warmers. So all day I have been walking around dressed like a Turkmen. People kept asking who "Turkmenized" me.

American Society Syllabus

American Society
American Studies 260
3 Credits
American University of Central Asia
Fall Semester 2008
J. Otto Pohl, Ph.D.

Meeting Time: Monday room 225 and Thursday 312 at 8:00

Course Description: This course will examine the ethnic diversity of the United States within the historical context of colonization and immigration. The course will start with an examination of the core Anglo-Saxon or WASP ethnicity in the US. It will then deal with Native Americans, immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe including the Russian Empire and their descendants, Mexican Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans and finally Arab Americans.

Requirements: This course will consist of lectures, class discussion, short writing assignments, an oral report and a research paper. Students will have to write two short reflection papers between 600 and 800 words. The first one should be on differences between the initial British settlers and later European immigrants. The second one should be on the differences between European immigrants and later immigrants from either Latin America, Asia or the Middle East. Finally, students will be required to write a 1500 to 2000 word research paper on the history of one specific ethnic group in the US. Prior to submitting the paper, students will be required to give a short oral presentation on their chosen subject followed by a 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. 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 the readings are contained in the course packet.

Plagiarism Policy: 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, 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 putting it completely in your own words and citing 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.

Grading:

Class participation – 30%

Two reflection papers – 30% (15% each)

Oral report on research paper – 10%

Written version of research paper – 30%

Grading Scale:

100-96 = A
95-91 = A-
90-86 = B+
85-81 = B
80-76 = B-
75-71 = C+
70-66 = C
65-61 = C-
60-56 = D+
55-51 = D
50-46 = D-
45 and lower = F

Class Schedule:

Week One: Introduction to Course and Review of Syllabus

Week Two and Three: Is there an American Ethnicity?

Eric Kaufmann, “Ethnic or Civic Nation? Theorizing the American Case”, pp. 1-45.

Week Four: Native Americans

William H. Lyon, “The Navajos in the Anglo-American Historical Imagination, 1807-1870,” Ethnohistory, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Summer 1996), 483-509.

Week Five: Eastern and Southern European Immigrants and their Descendants

John A. Kromkowski, “Eastern and Southern European Immigrants: Expectations, Reality, and a New Agenda,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 487, (Sep. 1986), pp. 57-78.

Week Six: Other European Immigrants: The German Diaspora from Russia

Timothy Kloberdanz, “The Volga Germans in Old Russia and in Western North America: Their Changing World View,” Anthropological Quarterly. Vol. 48, No. 4 (Oct. 1975), pp. 209-222. First reflection paper due on Thursday.

Week Seven and Eight: Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the US

Gustavo Cano and Alexandra Delano, “The Mexican Government and Organised Mexican Immigrants in the United States: A Historical Analysis of Political Transnationalism (1848-2005), Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol. 33, No. 5 (July 2005), pp. 695-725.

Week Nine: Fall Break

Week Ten: African Americans

Jacqueline S. Mattis, “Religion and African American Political Life,” Political Psychology, Vol. 22, No. 2 (June 2001), pp. 263-278.

Week Eleven: Asian Americans

Helen Zia, “Surrogate Slaves to American Dreamers,” (Chapter 2) in Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People (New York: FSG, 2000), pp. 21-52.

Week Twelve: Arab Americans

Elias T. Nigam, “Arab Americans: Migration, Socioeconomic and Demographic Characteristics,” International Migration Review, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Autumn 1986), 629-649. Second reflection paper due on Thursday.

Week Thirteen, Fourteen and Fifteen: Student Oral Presentations

Week Sixteen: Final Remarks and Research Paper Due.

Syllabus for Politics of the Middle East

Politics of the Middle East
ICP 224
International and Comparative Politics
American University of Central Asia
Fall Semester 2008
J. Otto Pohl, Ph.D.
And
Cholpon Chotaeva, Doctor of History

Meeting Time: Tuesday room 308 and Thursday CH 2 at 2:10

Course Description: This course will cover modern political developments in the Arab states, Israel/Palestine, Turkey and Iran since the First World War. In particular the course will focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict with an emphasis on the central role played by Palestinian resistance to Zionist ethnic cleansing and colonization. By way of historical precedent the course will cover the successful Algerian Revolution against the French. It will also cover the rise of various forms of nationalism in Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. The course will then contrast the political developments in these Arab states with those in Turkey in Iran. Finally, the class will conclude with a discussion of the current war in Iraq.

Requirements: The course will consist of assigned readings, lectures, discussion, two short writing assignments, an oral report and a research paper. There will be two short reflection papers of 600 to 800 words. The first one should be on the development of nationalism in an Arab state. The second one should be on how the development of nationalism in either Turkey or Iran differed from the Arab states. Students will also have to complete a 1500 to 2000 word research paper on some aspect of either the Arab-Israeli conflict or the war in Iraq. The paper is due the last week of class. In the three 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. 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 (Dr. Pohl) 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 the required readings are contained in the course packet.

Plagiarism Policy: 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:

Class participation – 20%

Two reflection papers – 40% (20% each)

Oral report on research paper – 10%

Written version of research paper- 30%

Grading Scale:

100-96 = A
95-91 = A-
90-86 = B+
85-81 = B
80-76 = B-
75-71 = C+
70-66 = C
65-61 = C-
60-56 = D+
55-51 = D
50-46 = D-
45 and lower = F

Class Schedule:

Week One: Introduction to Course and Review of Syllabus

Week Two: The Mandate Period

Hourani, Albert “The Climax of European Power (1914-1939)” in A History of the Arab Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1991), pp. 315-332 and Andersen, Roy R., Seibert, Robert F., and Wagner, Jon G., “The Rise of the State System: 1914-1950” in Politics and Change in the Middle East: Sources of Conflict and Accommodation (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1982), pp. 74-93.

Week Three: The 1948 War and the Lasting Legacy of the Palestinian Refugees

Esber, Rosemarie M. “Rewriting the History of 1948: The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Question Revisited,” Holy Land Studies, vol. 4, no. 1 (2005), pp. 55-72, Alshaibi, Sama, “Memory Work in the Palestinian Diaspora,” Frontiers, Vol. 27, No. 2 (2006), pp. 30-53 and Khalidi, Rashid, “Observations on the Right of Return,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Winter 1992), pp. 29-40.

Week Four: The Algerian Revolution

Fanon, Frantz, “The Pitfalls of National Consciousness” in The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1965), pp. 148-205 and Gallagher, Nancy, “Lessons from the Algerian War of Independence,” Middle East Report, No. 225 (Winter 2002), pp. 44-49.

Week Five: Egypt under Nasser

Cleveland, William, “The Middle East in the Age of Nasser: The Egyptian Base” (Chapter 15) in A History of the Modern Middle East, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), pp. 284-303.

Week Six: Political Islam

Milton-Edwards, Beverly, “Past, Present and Future Politics: Political Islam” (Chapter 5) in Contemporary Politics in the Middle East (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2006), pp. 134-158.

Week Seven: Nationalism in the Arab East

Devlin, John, “The Baath Party: Rise and Metamorphosis,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 96, No. 5 (December 1991), pp. 1396-1407 and Salibi, Kamal, “The Lebanese Identity,” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1971), pp. 76-86. The first reflection paper is due on Thursday.

Week Eight: The 1967 War and the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip

“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 and Andoni, Lamis, “Searching for Answers: Gaza’s Suicide Bombers,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Summer 1997), pp. 33-45.

Week Nine: Fall Break

Weeks Ten and Eleven: Turkey and Iran

Cleveland, William, “Democracy and Authoritarianism: Turkey and Iran” (chapter fourteen) in A History of the Modern Middle East, Second Edition, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000), pp. 267-292 and Keddie, Nikki, “The Revolution” (chapter 9) in Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003). The second reflection paper is due on Thursday of week eleven.

Week Twelve: The War in Iraq

International Crisis Group, “Where is Iraq Heading? Lessons from Basra,” Middle East Report No. 67 (25 June 2007), pp. 1-19.

Weeks Thirteen, Fourteen and Fifteen: Student Oral Presentations

Week Sixteen: Concluding Remarks and Final Paper Due

Picture from the Lake

Picture from the Beach

Issyk Kul

I just got back from my first trip to Lake Issyk Kul. Actually, given its large size and relatively high level of salinity I would classify it as an inland sea rather than a lake. It certainly reminded me of the Pacific Ocean. My girlfriend had a lot of fun floating out to sea in her new inner tube. I was happy not to be working.

Mahmoud Darwish RIP

I am not much of a poetry fan. But, one poet that I did enjoy in translation was Mahmoud Darwish. Unfortunately, I am unable to read him in the original Arabic. Darwish wrote about the essential issues facing the Palestinian people and did it in an emotionally powerful way. Two days ago he died at age 67.

hat tip: Jews sans frontieres

More on the Migration of Russian-Koreans from Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan

The migration of Russian-Koreans from Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan started soon after their deportation in fall 1937. According to one Soviet document, the number of Russian-Korean households in Kazakhstan fell from 20,530 in late 1937 to 18,495 by 1 April 1939. This same document states that one of the two major reasons for this decline was the migration of significant numbers of Russian-Koreans to join relatives in Uzbekistan. The other reason for this decrease was the movement of Russian-Koreans from rural areas to towns and cities where they worked in enterprises and institutions and were not included in the 1 April 1939 count of Russian-Koreans resettled from the Soviet Far East to Kazakhstan (Li and Kim, doc. 66, p. 152). Unfortunately, from the limited data that I have, there is no way of knowing the relative weight of each of these causes in reducing the number of Russian-Koreans counted in Kazakhstan.

The movement of Russian-Koreans from Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan did not always occur at the instigation of those living in Kazakhstan. In some cases relatives living in Uzbekistan took active measures to bring their relatives from Kazakhstan to join them. One such Russian-Korean living in Uzbekistan was Nadezhda Kim. She worked on a silk sovkhoz (state farm) in the Khoja-Abad district of Uzbekistan, but her husband, brother's wife and three other relatives lived in the city of Karaganda, Kazakhstan. She wrote a letter on 10 February 1938 to the NKVD chief of her district asking for permission to travel to Karaganda and bring these relatives back to Khoja-Abad, Uzbekistan to live with her (document reproduced in V.D. Kim, p. 127). I do not know if she was allowed to travel to Karaganda or not. But, her letter certainly points to efforts by Russian-Koreans in Uzbekistan to bring their relatives from Kazakhstan to live with them.

Sources:

V.D. Kim, ed., Pravda-polveka spustia (Tashkent: "Ozbekiston", 1999).

Li U He and Kim En Un, eds., Belaia kniga: O deportatsii koreiskogo naseleniia Rossii v 30-40x godakh (Moscow: "Interprask", 1992).

A Ride to Khiva by Captain Federick Burnaby

Recently I finished reading Captain Frederick Burnaby, A Ride to Khiva (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). First published in 1876 this book details a rather extraordinary journey through Russia and Kazakhstan to what is now Uzbekistan. Travel to Central Asia even today consumes a lot of time and effort. When I came to Kyrgyzstan a little over a year ago it took me almost two days by plane to get here from Los Angeles. In the 19th Century things were considerably more difficult. In the middle of winter 1875, Frederick Burnaby, a captain in the British army, travelled from St. Peterburg to Khiva. He persevered despite a ban on European travellers to the city imposed by the Russian government. His main goal was to ascertain Russian military intentions in Central Asia with regards to British India. He like many other British officers feared that the Russian Empire's recent expansion in the region was ultimately aimed at the British Empire's possessions in South Asia. At this time the rail line from St. Petersburg only reached as far as Sizeran, a town west of Samara. The rest of the trip had to be made using horses. The result of Burnaby's overland trip to Khiva is a highly entertaining travelogue.

Any Advice?

Currently I am working on my syllabus for my Politics of the Middle East class. I am looking for good, easy to read articles or book chapters of around twenty pages each on the Arab states during the Mandate period, the Algerian Revolution against the French, Egypt under Nasser, and the current war in Iraq. Does anybody have any suggestions? The library here is limited, but I do have access to JSTOR and EBSCOHOST.

Solzhenitsyn RIP

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn recently died. Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago was the first book I ever read that I can remember Stalin's national deportations being mentioned. It was not the first book to deal with Soviet ethnic cleansing. But, it was the first exposure to these facts that many people in the US and other countries including myself received.

New Website for Savitsky Museum in Nukus

The Karakalpakstan State Museum of Art or Savitsky Museum in Nukus has a new website. Despite being located in a remote region of Uzbekistan, this museum has a strong international reputation based upon its collection of Russian avant garde art. I have not been to the museum itself, but the website makes it look pretty impressive.

Best Burger in Bishkek

The options for American style burgers in Bishkek are rather limited. But, Bii Burger which sells a messy two patty burger for 55 som is by far the best one I have found. Overall the bread and vegetables are better than most American fast food burgers. But, the patties themselves are very thin. Still, they are better than McDonald's.

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.

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).

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Happy Independence Day

I wish all of my American readers a Happy Fourth of July.

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.

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.

It is a Beautiful Day in Bishkek

The weather here is absolutely beautiful. I walked through a couple of parks earlier today. Everything seemed so green.

Remember Us: Letters from Stalin's Gulag (1930-1937) by Ruth Derksen Siemens

Yesterday, the office manager informed me I had received a package and that it was waiting for me at Post Office No. 40. I have only received snail mail once before in Bishkek and it arrived at the Main Post Office. At any rate I found out where branch number 40 was located and walked there this morning. The package was a book by Ruth Derksen Seimens, Remember Us: Letters from Stalin's Gulag (1930-1937) (Kitchner, ON: Pandora Press, 2007). I will post a review of the book after I finish reading it.

More Summer Reading

I just finished reading another anthology of scholarly articles. Yaacov Ro'i, ed., Democracy and Pluralism in Muslim Eurasia (London: Frank Cass, 2004) has nineteen chapters by various authors dealing with the progress and prospects of democratization in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Central Asia and the Muslim republics of the Russian Federation in the North Caucasus and the Volga region. Among the contributions are two specifically on Kyrgyzstan during the rule of Askar Akayev, "Liberalization in Kyrgyzstan: 'An Island of Democracy' by Leonid Levitin and "Political Clans and Political Conflicts in Contemporary Kyrgyzstan" by Vladimir Khanin. Living in Bishkek I am always trying to expand my knowledge of the country and these two pieces provided some good background material on the political situation here from 1991 to 2004.

I found the most interesting chapters to be those that dealt with the North Caucasus. I did not fully comprehend the complexity of the ethno-territorial state structure of Dagestan until I read Enver Kisriev's, "The Polticial Process in Dagestan: Prospects for Democracy." The State Council has 14 representatives, each one from a different ethnic group. They also have reserved 66 out of 121 constituencies for elections to the People's Assembly for specific ethnic groups. A total of 12 ethnicities have reserved constituencies of which the three largest are the Avars with 12, the Kumyks with 12 and Russians with 10. For those many people in the US who see antisemitism in every Muslim state it should be noted that the Jewish Tats have 2 reserved constituencies while the native Muslim Rutuls and Aguls do not have any (p. 335-336). Kirsriev argues that the complex ethnic structure of the Dagestani state in fact constitutes a consociational state (pp. 332-334). This state structure has made Dagestan more stable and less prone to ethnic conflict than neighboring multi-ethnic republics with presidential systems such as Karachai-Cherkessia and Karbardino-Balkaria, the subjects of the chapter by Svante E. Cornell, "Ethnic Relations and Democratic Transition in the North-Western Caucasus." The two essays side by side make a great comparison.

Overall Ro'i and his collaborators are not very optimistic about the prospects of liberal democracy in Muslim Eurasia. The historical precedents in the region do not translate well into forming modern western style democracies (pp. 375-379). Almost all of the impediments to liberal democracy in Muslim Eurasia, however, seem to be the same obstacles faced by other areas of the former USSR. A couple of comparative essays dealing with the problems of democratization in places like the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belorus, Georgia and Armenia all of which are predominantly Christian would have been instructive. But, it is hard to see from the Ro'i collection any problems of democratization in Muslim Eurasia that are distinctly Muslim rather than generally Eurasian.

Spicy Borscht

Yesterday the girlfriend made a huge pot of borscht. This, however, was not ordinary borscht. Her grandmother was Koryo Saram (ethnic Korean from the Soviet Far East), so almost everything she cooks gets Koreanized with chilies and other hot spices. It was quite good. I need to go buy some more smetana (Russian sour cream) today to go with it.

Most Recent Reading - Nationalism by Craig Calhoun

I just finished reading the short collection of essays, Craig Calhoun, Nationalism (Buckingham, UK: Open University Press, 1997). One of the great strengths of this collection is its review of other peoples theories and its use of a wide variety of historical examples. In particular the book makes frequent reference to the development of nationalism in France, Germany, China, India and Eritrea among other places. I will be assigning a piece by Calhoun for my class on Nationalism, Race and ethnicity next semester.

Recent Reading - Russia and Asia

I just finished reading Wayne S. Vucinich, ed. , Russia and Asia: Essays on the Influence of Russia on the Asian Peoples (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1972). In particular I found the essay by Vucinich, "The Structure of Soviet Orientology: Fifty Years of Change and Accomplishment", to be very interesting. He examines and evaluates the broad range of writing by Soviet orientalists from the 1920s through the 1960s. He notes specifically both their strengths and weaknesses. This is a far cry from Said's dismissal of all orientalist scholarship. It is also a far more difficult task.

Russian-Germans from Kyrgyzstan during World War II and the Labor Army

The Russian-German population of Kyrgyzstan avoided deportation during World War II as a result of its distance from the front. They did not, however, avoid induction into the forced labor battalions known as the labor army. On 14 February 1942, the Stalin regime began the conscription of Russian-German men in Kyrgyzstan into the labor army. Here they joined Russian-Germans deported from European areas of the USSR to Kazakhstan and Siberia and mobilized into the labor army. On 7 October 1942, the Soviet government expanded this mobilization to include women. This often resulted in children being abandoned without anybody to care for them. Only in 1946 did the Soviet government begin to dismantle the labor army, placing the released survivors under special settlement restrictions.

Looking for Books

I am looking for the following three books. If anybody knows how I might be able to purchase them here in Bishkek please let me know. Note all three of the books were published in Bishkek.

D.S. Kyzaeva, T.D. Dotsenko, S.I. Begaliev, Arkhivnye dokumenty svidetel'stvuiut: Deportirovannye narody v Kyrgyzstane (Bishkek: "Aibek", 1995)

A. Shtraus and S. Pankrats, Svidetel'stva prestuplenii (Bishkek: Ilim, 1997)

G.K. Krongardt, Nemtsy v Kyrgyzstane 1880-1990 gg. (Bishkek: Ilim, 1997)

Prickly Pear Juice

The other day I found prickly pear juice at the supermarket. Some company out of Poland specializing in exotic fruit juices had one called "Kaktus" which promised to have juice from the prickly pear tuna. Actually the concoction was mostly apple and lime juice with only a small amount of prickly pear in it. But, nonetheless I decided to buy a container. The flavor was mostly sweetened apple and the color was definitely from the lime juice. At 89 som a liter I do not think I will be buying it again. It was nice to have a reminder of Arizona, however.

14 June 1941 - Baltic Deportations

It has been 67 years since the first mass deportations carried out by the Stalin regime in the occupied Baltic States. I wrote a short piece about these deportations here on their 65th anniversary.

Almost One Year Since I Left Arivaca

It has been almost one year since I left Arivaca, Arizona. I left Arivaca on 17 June 2007. I then spent a brief period of time in Orange County, California before flying to Bishkek. I left LAX on 31 July 2007 and arrived in Bishkek on 2 August 2007. I have been here since then.

Victims, Perpetrators and Bystanders in Soviet Central Asia

I have been reading Kristina Gray's entries on Kazakhstan at her very informative blog. She has put up a couple of posts regarding the memory of Soviet repression in this region of the world. I agree with her that the negative aspects of the 1930s and 1940s are far too much of a black hole in popular memory here. Dekulakization, the "Great Terror", the Gulag, the deportation of nationalities and other Stalin era crimes are not taught well in school here in Kyrgyzstan. What is in the official history textbooks I have seen focuses almost entirely on victims among the Kyrgyz communist leadership executed during 1937 and 1938. They have nothing on the deportation of Karachais, Chechens, Ingush and Balkars to Kyrgyzstan in 1943-1944. Even some of my brighter students have told me they were unaware or only vaguely aware of Soviet policies geared towards the persecution of nationalities such as the Crimean Tatars and Russian-Germans. Despite being an independent non-Communist state for over 16 years there has not been any real coming to terms with the darker aspects of the Soviet past here.

I think this situation persists because the role of the titular nationalities in Stalin's crimes is ambiguous here in Central Asia. Some were victims, but others were perpetrators, others benefited materially from the deportation or arrest of their neighbors, and most were bystanders who did nothing to oppose the regime. I do not morally condemn the bystanders or even many of the perpetrators. Stalin's dictatorship imposed very harsh penalties for even the smallest acts of opposition. Unswerving loyalty to the official Communist Party line was the only real way to ensure a good material life for yourself and your family during this time. I do not think most Americans would have been any more moral or courageous when faced with similar circumstances. But, this ambiguity regarding the role of the Kyrgyz, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tajiks and Turkmen in the Soviet state during the Stalin era makes a full coming to terms with that past an uncomfortable proposition for many people here. It is not so simple to say that as nationalities they were victims of the regime. Nor is the more common tact of only looking at the positive legacies of Soviet rule such as education, economic development and improved health care an honest approach to the past. Rather a full and honest evaluation needs to admit that some were victims, some were perpetrators and most were bystanders. There are not a lot of heroes in this version of the past and there are some pretty horrible villains. But, the same can be said for the history of most countries.

Current Reading

I am currently reading Andreas Kappler, Gerhard Simon and Georg Brunner, and Edward Allworth eds., trans., Caroline Sawyer, Muslim Communities Reemerge: Historical Perspectives on Nationality, Politics, and Opposition in the Former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994).

Mennonites in Kyrgyzstan (Tsarist Times)

Another topic of research I would like to pursue here in Kyrgyzstan is the country's former Russian-German population. In particular I am interested in the Mennonites who were the first German colonists to settle in Central Asia. While there are not too many left today, they had a strong presence in the Talas region for over a century. Below is a short history of the founding of the various Mennonite villages in Kyrgyzstan during Tsarist times.

In spring 1882 the Russian government gave more than 2500 acres of land in the Talas Valley to 72 Mennonite families. Most of these Mennonites, 62 families (360 people) came from Taurida in the Black Sea region. They founded the villages of Nikolaipol, Gnadental and Gnadenfeld in what is today northwest Kyrgyzstan. Another 10 Mennonite families came from the area around Samara on the Volga. They established the village of Keppental. Together these four villages formed the Nikolaipol Mennonite Society. They specialized in the production of cheese (Krieger, p. 11).

In 1890 the Mennonites established a fifth village in the Talas Valley by the name of Orlov. By this time the five villages had 514 people, 309 horses, 250 cows, 1,519 sheep and 341 pigs. Each village also had a school that taught religion, German, Russian, geography and arithmatic. (Krieger, p. 12).

The Russian government gave Russian names to the original settlements in 1893. Gnandental became Andreevka, Keppental became Romanovka and Gnadenfeld became Vladimirovka. In August 1894 the five German villages became formed into a single administrative unit, Nikolaipol Volost (Krieger, p. 12).

Between 1907 and 1909 Mennonites founded a number of new colonies in Kyrgyzstan. In 1907, 21 Mennonite families from Nikolaipol and 9 from Orlov founded the village of Alekseevka in the Chu River Valley. In 1908 Mennonites established the village of Johannesdorf in the Talas Valley. Finally, in 1909 Mennonites from Ak-Mechet in what is now Uzbekistan founded the village of Hogendorf in the Talas Valley. (Krieger, p. 14). By 1912 there were 1,595 Mennonites in the region (Krieger, p. 37) of which 390 lived in Orlov, 208 in Alekseevka, 293 in Nikolaipol, 192 in Andreevka (Gnadental), 192 in Romanovka (Keppental) , 79 in Vladimirovka (Gnadenfeld) and the rest in other villages and towns (Krieger, table 1, p. 15).

The Mennonites in the Talas and Chu valleys survived the upheavals of the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution. Indeed the Mennonites in Kyrgyzstan generally fared far better than most of the Russian-German population of the USSR. I will write more on this later. But, despite adapting and surviving throughout the Soviet era, most of them have emigrated since the fall of the Soviet Union and the emergence of Kyrgyzstan as an independent state.

Source: Viktor Krieger, Rein, Volga, Irtysh: Iz Istorii Nemtsev Tsentral'noi Azii (Almaty: Daik-Press, 2006).

Graduation and Congratulations Firuza

Saturday was graduation here at AUCA. There were five awards given out for best senior research thesis. One of these winners, Tajik-Uzbek Water Disputes: Challenges and Opportunities for Resolution by Firuza Ganieva, was from my department. I was Firuza's supervisor for the thesis. I greatly enjoyed my small role in guiding this project to success.

Citations now up to 94

My published work has now been cited in 94 academic books and journal articles. Twelve of these citations are from the last two years. The latest one I found is below. I realize I have left out three umlauts. I do not know how to make them on this keyboard.

Helmut Altrichter, “Ilse Bandomir im ‘Jahrhundret der Deportationen und Vertreibungen” in Klaus Hildebrand et al, eds., Geschichtswissenschaft und Zeiterkenntnis: Von der Aufklarung bis zur Gegenwart Festschrift fur Horst Moller, (Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2008).

Still Working

There are not very many students around campus now, but I am still working. This morning I finished editing the proofs for "Suffering in a Province of Asia: The Russian-German Diaspora in Kazakhstan." Now I am working on other stuff. It is a lot easier to get things done when you only have to spend a half hour a day talking to students.

Recent Reading

I recently finished reading The Russian Far East: A History by John J. Stephan. It is a very well written and concise history of the eastern most regions of what is now the Russian Federation. Unlike a great many academic books it is not dry and boring. Instead it presents a compelling narrative of political, diplomatic, military, social and economic developments in the Russian Far East. It does a particularly good job of describing the events and changes from 1917 to 1956. Stephan writes with wit and in plain English rather than academic jargon. I highly recommend this book.

"Shoro - eto sila"

All along the main streets of Bishkek there are beverage vendors. They do not sell lemonade, however. Instead they sell Shoro or Tan. I am not a big fan of Tan, but I have developed a taste for Chalap Shoro. Both of these beverages are basically sour milk with salt and soda water. The word shoro means salted in Kyrgyz. It is definitely an acquired taste. But, it is very refreshing on a hot day. Hence their motto "Shoro - eto sila" which translates from Russian into English as "Shoro - it is strength."

Special Settlers in Kyrgyzstan

Now that classes are over it looks like I will have some free time to do some research this summer. I would like to do something specifically related to Kyrgyzstan. In particular I would like to research the special settlement system in Kyrgyzstan during the 1940s and 1950s. During World War II, Kyrgyzstan became "home" to over 100,000 special settlers, mostly deportees from the Caucasus. In October 1945 the number of special settlers in Kyrgyzstan reached 112,400. (Bugai, doc. 17, p. 237). The Karachais formed the first wave of war time deportees to Kyrgyzstan. The NKVD deported most members of this nationality, 68,938 people from their homeland on 2 November 1943. (Pobol' and Polian, p. 389). By 22 November 1943, 22,721 of these people had arrived in Kyrgyzstan. (Pobol' and Polian, doc. 3.82, p. 402). The Soviet government sent most of the rest of them, 45,500 people, to Kazakhstan (Bugai, doc. 2, pp. 97-98). After resettling the Karachais, the Stalin regime deported Chechens, Ingush, Balkars and Meskhetian Turks to Kyrgyzstan during the course of 1944. These people lived in Kyrgyzstan as internal exiles until the late 1950s.

Sources:

N.F. Bugai, ed., Iosif Stalin - Lavrentiiu Berii: "Ikh nado deportivrovat'" (Moscow: "Druzhba narodov", 1992).

N.L. Pobol' and P.M. Polian, eds., Staliniskie deportatsii 1928-1953 (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye Fond "Demokratiia", 2005).

Internal victim diasporas in the USSR

Americans often think of the Russian Empire as a country of emigration rather than immigration. But, the Russian Empire also took in a lot of immigrants from the late 18th century all the way through to its collapse. Among some of the largest such immigrant groups were Germans, Greeks and Koreans. All three of these initial labor and trade diasporas became victim diasporas in the USSR under Stalin. In 1937, the Soviet government forcibly relocated the Russian-Koreans from the Far East to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Four years later in 1941, the regime brutally dispersed the Russian-Germans from the Volga, Ukraine, North Caucasus and other European regions of the USSR across Siberia and Kazakhstan. Finally, during the mid to late 1940s, the government transplanted a large portion of the Greek population in the Soviet Union from Crimea, the Black Sea coast and Transcaucasia east of the Urals. The USSR seems to have been unique in transforming so many large groups descendant from immigrants into internal victim diasporas.

Reflections on my first year of teaching

I have now finished teaching my first full academic year. Overall it was a very good experience. Most of the students did all of the work and did not plagiarize any of it. I hope that most of them also learned something in my classes.

Learning English

My girlfriend has started taking English language lessons. Almost all of our conversations are still in Russian, but I have been spending a fair amount of time going over English vocabulary with her recently. Her pronunciation is quite good and she is very enthusiastic.

Nationalism, Race and Ethnicity

Today I am trying to work on my syllabus for my Nationalism, Race and Ethnicity course. I would like to stress the development of ethnic categories into national and racial ones in this class. So I will be pointing to case studies where ethnic categories became politicized into national ones and then biologized into racial ones. I am still looking for reading material to assign and would greatly appreciate any suggestions. Below I have listed a couple of the pieces I will definitely be using in the class.

Francine Hirsch, "Race without the Practice of Racial Politics," Slavic Review, vol. 61, no. 1 (Spring 2002), pp. 30-43.

Alaina Lemon, "Without a 'Concept'? Race as Discursive Practice," Slavic Review, vol. 61, no.1 (Spring 2002), pp. 54-61.

Nadim Raouhana and As'ad Ghanem, "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.

Amir Weiner, "Nothing but Certainty," Slavic Review, vol. 61, no. 1 (Spring 2002), pp. 44-53.

Eric D. Weitz, "Racial Politics without the Concept of Race: Reevaluating Soviet Ethnic and National Purges," Slavic Review, vol. 61, no. 1 (Spring 2002), pp. 1-29.

Eric D. Weitz, "On Certainties and Ambivalencies: Reply to My Critics," Slavic Review, vol. 61, no. 1 (Spring 2002), pp. 62-65.

Oren Yifachel, "'Ethnocracy' and Its Discontents: Minorities, Protests, and the Israeli Polity," Critical Inquiry, vol. 26, no. 4 (Summer 2000), pp. 725-756.

Summer

It is now very hot and humid here in Bishkek. I take the current weather to be a sign that summer is upon us. I have decided to stay here during the summer and go back to the US for Christmas this year. Now that classes are over I can devote my time here to doing things other than teaching. Today I finished revising a journal article for the third time. I hope I do not have to revise it again. I would like to work on other projects.