Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Vacation

The school is closed right now and I do not intend to go back to work until after the New Year. Instead I am spending the time with Oksana and Askarbek. Today Askarbek and I went shopping at Vefa and the little bazaar behind our apartment.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

The Other Accordion Player

There is a blind Kyrgyz accordion player on my street. He only plays during the day so I usually do not see him. However, since the end of classes I have been arriving at work later and going home earlier so I see him more often. I always make sure to tip him in coins so he can hear the money drop into his collection box.

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Are University Administrations More Lenient Towards Plagiarism Today Than 20 Years Ago?

In my most recent post on plagiarism, Walt commented that he felt there has been a significant change in administration culture in the last fifteen years. That is today university administrations are generally far more lenient towards plagiarism than they were two decades ago. My sense is that this is true. But, I have limited data points. So my question to anybody involved in education is has there been a signficant cultural change allowing for the tolerance of plagiarism by university administrators and if there has been when did it happen?

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Today there was a New Year's party for the children of employees of the university. I took Askarbek to it. He really liked the person dressed up in the Shrek suit. The party was held in the big concert hall with the giant portraits of Marx, Engels and Lenin. There is a blank spot where Stalin's portrait was painted over during the Khrushchev era. Tomorrow is Christmas for Catholics and Protestants here and I am taking the day off from work. I will be back at the grindstone on Boxing Day.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

A Good Link on Russian-Germans Deported to Kazakhstan

In keeping with the theme of the last post Reuters recently carried a very good story on Russian-Germans deported to Kazakhstan by Stalin.

Mortality Rates Among Soviet Deportees 1941-1945 Part II: Russian-Germans

The Russian-Germans deported during the fall of 1941 also suffered extremely high death rates during the Second World War. On 2 June 1942, the NKVD gave the number of Russian-Germans deported to special settlement restrictions as 807,293 (Zemskov, p. 97). By 1 January 1945, the number of Russian-Germans counted as special settlers had declined to 496,811. Part of the loss can be explained by the reclassification of Russian-German special settlers as members of the labor army. The total number of Russian-Germans serving in the labor army on 1 January 1945 reached 105,268 people (Zemskov, table 21, p. 119). This means that between 1942 and 1945 the number of Russian-German special settlers and labor army conscripts declined from 807,293 people to 602,079, a drop of 205,214 people or over 25%. Again as in the case of deportees from the Baltic States in 1941 there are no large scale releases of Russian-Germans during this time. Given this fact we can assume that the vast majority of the missing deportees perished due to malnutrition, disease and exposure. One additional thing to bear in mind is that not all of the 105,268 men and women in the labor army in 1945 were part of the original 807,293 Russian-Germans deported from west of the Urals. A large number of them were conscripted from the local Russian-German populations already living in Siberia, the Urals, Kazakhstan and Central Asia in 1941. The actual number of deaths among the deported Russian-Germans is thus greater than implied by the figures given above. In less than four years over a quarter of the Russian-Germans deported from western regions of the USSR perished. Again these are extremely high mortality rates under any circumstances.

Source:

V.N. Zemskov, Spetsposelentsy v SSSR: 1930-1960 (Moscow: Nauk, 2005).

Mortality Rates Among Soviet Deportees 1941-1945 Part I: Baltic States, Moldova, Belarus and Ukraine

Between 14 May and 15 September 1941, the NKVD forcibly deported 85,716 people from the Baltic States, Moldova, western Ukraine and western Belarus to Siberia, Kazakhstan and Kirov Oblast as "anti-Soviet elements". The contingent sent to Kirov Oblast consisted of 2,049 people from Estonia (Zemskov, pp. 90-91). The total number of deportees from these western regions is confirmed in an NKVD report dated 2 June 1942 (Zemskov, p. 97). By 1 October 1945, this number had been reduced to 43,099 people (Zemskov, p. 115). This represents a loss of over half the deported population. There are no records of any large scale releases of deportees from this contingent which consisted of 27,887 people from Belarus, 22,648 from Moldova, 12,682 from Lithuania, 9,595 from Ukraine, 9,236 from Latvia and 3,668 people from Estonia (Zemskov, p. 91). The deportees from Belarus and Ukraine in this contingent are seperate from the contingent of the 132,458 Polish settlers, 75,662 Polish refugees (mostly Jewish) and 66,000 family members of Polish military officers and government officials deported in 1940-1941 that had all been released by a decree from the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet issued on 12 August 1941 (Zemskov, p. 97 and pp. 89-90). The 2 June 1942 NKVD report confirms that these other contingents from eastern Poland had in fact been released (Zemskov, p. 97). All evidence points to deaths from malnutrition, disease and exposure as the reason for the overwhelming majority of losses among the missing 42,617 deportees from the Baltic States, Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus. This represents an average mortality rate of over 12% a year or 1% a month. The losses for the Estonians sent to Kirov Oblast were a little less than half of the average for the total contingent. The NKVD counted 1,553 deportees from Estonia in Kirov Oblast  on 1 October 1945 (Zemskov, p. 115). This represents a loss of 496 people or 24% of those deported in 1941. These are truly staggering losses even by Stalinist standards.

Source:

V.N. Zemskov, Spetsposelentsy v SSSR: 1930-1960 (Moscow: Nauka, 2005).

Unblocked Again

After nearly two weeks of being blocked, Blogger is again available today. As I explained earlier this seems to be a chronic problem. But, today it seems to be working so I will put up a couple of posts.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Another surge in the war on plagiarism

In my American Presidency class I have had to fail four students out of twenty for multiple cases of plagiarism so far. In my own department, International and Comparative Politics, I have not found any cases of plagiarism so far this semester. It appears that the ICP department has become a plagiarism free zone, but the rest of the university lags seriously behind.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Final Day of Classes

Today is the last day of classes before winter break. I just have one more class with six more presentations. Then it is back to working on a huge stack of grading, recommendations and other student related work.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Question

Just out of curiousity how many of my blog readers have read anything else I have written?

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

I will not be allowing any more of that

Today due to extreme student procrastination I had to listen to 13 student presentations in one hour. From now on I am not allowing any students to delay oral assignments without serious penalties. Inevitably too many people want to go on the last day possible. Next semester I will be assigning specific days to students for oral presentations and those not ready on their designated day will get a zero. Such draconian measures regarding written assignments have generally been effective in the past.

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

More Late Geek Blogging: District Nine

I saw District Nine this weekend. One thing that struck me was how inefficient private enterprise is compared to state socialism when it comes to ethnic cleansing. The corporate mercenaries in the movie allow themselves to be stymied by a pitifully small amount of armed resistance. This would never happen under a proper socialist regime. Stalin forcibly removed nearly 70,000 Karachais in a single day, more than 90,000 Kalmyks in two days, over 180,000 Crimean Tatars in three days, and close to 500,000 Chechens and Ingush in six days. Needless to say the Chechens put up far more armed resistance to Soviet rule than the aliens in District Nine did against a handful of South African mercenaries.

Monday, December 07, 2009

Quince Juice

Friday, I went to the supermarket to buy some juice. I purchased a liter of peach juice which is pretty common here in Bishkek. I also purchased a liter of juice made from a fruit I do not think I have ever consumed before, quince. It tasted a bit like tart apple juice.

Friday, December 04, 2009

It was too good to last

Today it is dark and wet again. So much for the nice weather. I knew it was too good to last.

Thursday, December 03, 2009

The Weather is Nice Again

Even though it is cold here in Bishkek today the sky is clear and the sun is shining. After a long string of dark, stormy and wet days this is a very welcome change. I hope it lasts for a few more days.

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Recent Doings

Recently I have been busy at work grading papers, helping students with research papers and writing letters of recommendation. As a result I have not had much time to do much serious writing either for the blog or other media. I hope to remedy this later in the month during winter break.

Monday, November 30, 2009

Classes I am Teaching Next Semester

Next semester I am teaching the following classes.

Politics of the Middle East

Democratization

Ethnicity, Nationalism and Race

End of the Semester is Near

There are only two more weeks left of the semester until classes are done. Then there is finals week which I will use to grade papers. After that I get three weeks off from teaching.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Back to Normalcy

Oksana and Askarbek came home last night. The boy has been watching Tom and Jerry cartoons all morning. For some reason Tom and Jerry was very popular in the Soviet Union and continues to be in Central Asia today.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Under Jakob's Ladder makes Poughkeepsie Journal

The Poughkeepsie Journal has an article about the most unsual actor in Under Jakob's Ladder. The film like all good prison movies has rats in it. One particular rat in the movie is a pet of one of the prisoners and named Stockings. The article on Stockings is below. Unfortunately Stockings is dying and will not be appearing in any future films.

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20091122/LIFE/911220315/1005/Stockings--a-rat--makes-her-movie-debut

Former Turkmen Students at AUCA Banned from Foreign Travel for Five years

According to the article below a number of my former students now trapped in Turkmenistan and unable to continue their education have been legally banned from travelling abroad for five years.

http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/civilsociety/articles/eav111309b.shtml

Blogger availability has been erratic

The availability of Blogger from Bishkek recently has been erratic to say the least. Today it is available from work, but this has become a rarity in recent weeks. So if I do not post anything for long stretches of a time it is because it has again become impossible to access Blogger in Bishkek.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving and the university is closed. But, blogger still seems to be blocked at work, I am not sure why. At any rate this year I am thankful for Oksana, Askarbek and Aliya. This last week Askarbek was at his grandmother's and the place seemed really empty with just two of us in the tiny apartment. Currently they are out of town, but Oksana and the boy will be back home next week.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Finally Blogger is Unblocked

For the last eleven days Blogger has been blocked in all of Bishkek and I assume all of Kyrgyzstan. I do not know why. But, it is now available again.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Raspberry Flavoured M&Ms

Yesterday I found raspberry flavoured M&Ms for sale at the lunch counter at work. I thought they were pretty good, but one of my students described them as the taste of "total perversion."

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

New Publication in Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism

My article, Italic"Volk auf dem Weg: Transnational Migration of the Russian-Germans from 1763 to the Present Day," has now been published in Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism: Vol. 9, No. 2, 2009.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

It is now Winter in Bishkek

Yesterday it snowed all day. I do not think we will be getting many more warm days here in Bishkek for the rest of the year. I also hope they turn the heat on soon. My flat is freezing.

Monday, November 09, 2009

I actually took two days off this weekend!

I decided not to work on Sunday either. I am pretty sure that is the longest stretch of time I have gone without working since January. Instead I spent the weekend with my girlfriend and her son. He is now starting to recite parts of Green Eggs and Ham

Friday, November 06, 2009

Revolution Day

Tommorrow is the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. That means that I get the day off. It of course falls on a Saturday this year. But, since I normally have to work on weekends, I am still counting it as a day off. After all the other two days I get off are Catholic and Orthodox Easter, both of which fall on a Sunday.

Thursday, November 05, 2009

71 Years Since Stalin Murdered Yusup (Jusup) Abdrakhmanov

Probably more than any other individual Abdrakhmanov is responsible for the creation of modern Kyrgyzstan. Although only 18 at the time he was instrumental in the creation of the Mountain Kara-Kyrgyz Oblast within the Turkestan ASSR in 1922. This territory, however, only included the northern regions of present day Kyrgyzstan. The status of the present day oblasts of Bakten, Osh, and Jalal-Abad still remained unresolved at this time. Two years later Abdrakhmanov played an important role in the formation of the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Oblast within the RSFSR. This second territory provided defined borders and state structures for the Kyrgyz people for the first time in modern history. Abdrakhmanov became the second secretary of the Oblast Committee of the Communist Party of this newly formed state formation.

On 25 March 1925, the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Oblast became the Kyrgyz Autonomous Oblast and on 1 February 1926 it became the Kyrgyz ASSR. Abdrakhmanov at age 23 became the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissariarts of this newly upgraded territory. His responsibilities included questions of land, finance, education, labor and the workers and peasants inspectorate. In 1933, the Stalin regime removed Abdrakhmanov from his post after falsely accusing him of abusing his position and transferred him to work first in Samara and then Orenburg. In 1937 he was again falsely accused by the Stalin regime. This time of having been a member of Alash-Orda. He was arrested and transferred to Frunze (Bishkek) for trial. On 5 November 1938, the Stalin regime executed Abdrakhmanov for his alleged membership in this party. He was 34 years old. The Khrushchev administration later formally rehabilitated Abdrakhmanov in 1958.

Source:

O. Dzh. Osmonov, Istoriia Kyrgyzstana: Kratkii kurs (Bishkek: Ministry of Education and Culture of the Kyrgyz Republic, 2003), pp. 206-217.

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

AUCA-Manas Agreement?

Today the front page of the student newspaper, New Star, has an article about what appears to be some sort of agreement between AUCA and the US military base at Manas. This is the first I was aware that there was any proposal for the university to openly cooperate with the US military. The article does not give much information and it has a lot of grammer and spelling errors, but I have reproduced it in its entirety below.

Sharing Common Interests

Students of American University visited the Manas Transit Center on October 17 with aim to start off the corroboration between two institutions. The visit was initiated by Tomas Joyes, the colonel order to raise awareness and understanding between representatives of American military and students of American University in Central Asia First meeting gave ideas for mutual collaboration. The military workers are planning to attend AUCA initiation ceremony and AUCA students in return will visit the Transit Center on Thanksgiving. The existing Manas Air base was renamed into Manas Transit Center in 2009, in order to clarify the function of the center in Kyrgyzstan. The main function of the Center is to operates transition of fuel, cargo and troops from USA to Afghanistan and backwards. Around 1800 military workers, both soldiers and technicians can go throw base to the country of their destination. The number of workers of the center made up from 1100 American military workers, of 200 European military workers and 700 Kyrgyz people who work on the center on different positions.

Ryskulova Nargiza

If anybody has any additional information regarding this "mutual collaboration" could you please let me know.

Monday, November 02, 2009

Registration for next semester

Today was the first day of registration for next semester's classes. So I spent much of the day signing my name over and over again. I will be teaching Politics of the Middle East, Democratization, and Ethnicity, Race and Nationalism.

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Russian Government Backtracks on Full Rehabilitation of Stalin

The Russian government has now publicly distanced itself from the full rehabilitation of Joseph Stalin. Medvedev recently strongly criticized the late Soviet dictator. See the BBC story in the URL below for more details.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8334009.stm

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Picture of me and two students


This is a picture from a while ago when everybody in the photograph was younger.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Late Geek Blogging: Watchmen

I finally saw Watchmen. I know all the real geeks saw it when it came out in the summer, but I see no reason to rush these things. For the record I have never read the comic book on which the movie is based. But, I did like the movie. I especially liked Dr. Manhattan. Since he achieved victory in Vietnam I bet he could do the same in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course Dr. Manhattan does not actually exist so the US might need some other strategy. However, I see nothing remotely as promising as having a big, blue, naked, radioactive guy march upon the enemy and blow them to pieces.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Why am I at work on a Saturday?

Yesterday I finished writing a journal article. Today I came into the office, but I have found myself completely unmotivated to do any actual work. Since it is Saturday and still fall break I am going to cease trying to get anything productive done today. Maybe I will have some motivation tomorrow. If not then work will have to wait until Monday like it does for everybody else.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Why is Rawls so boring?

Recently I tried reading John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, but have been unable to get past the first fifty pages. It is so boring. The other night I read about ten pages and lost all consciousness. It was like I injested a handful of Benadryl. I do not understand why he is so highly regarded. The ideas in the first fifty pages could have been presented in one paragraph.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Truly Random Events in my Life

Two of my Afghan students gave me a jar of fresh chili paste. It tastes like very good Mexican salsa. I have been eating it on Russian style rye bread for the last week.

Yesterday, I went to a kalian (hookah) lounge with some friends. If you are looking for good flavor combinations try watermelon and mint. Also quite good is melon with mint. In fact my new policy is mint in all my shisha blends.

I have spent most of fall break working. The afternoon I took off yesterday to go smoke minty fruits is the closest thing to a vacation I have gotten since January. I am hoping to be able to take some time off before I turn forty.

Link to my editorial on Suprun

The link below will take you to an abridged German translation of an editorial I wrote on the historical context of the recent persecution of Mikhail Suprun and Aleksandr Dudarev. You can see by the use of brackets and elipses that they cut out quite a bit due to length. However, if you go to the sidebars on the right you can get the complete English language original and its German translation in PDF format.

http://www.ornis-press.de/zurueck-in-die-zeit-des-grossen-schweigens.1196.0.html

Monday, October 19, 2009

More on Russian-German Gulag victims

Below is another memory book entry regarding ethnic Germans who perished in the Viatlag camps. Between 1938 and 1956 a total of 2,309 Germans, mostly Volga Germans, perished from hunger, disease and shootings in the Viatlag complex. Of this number only 540 were ever convicted by Soviet courts, the vast majority, 1,487 were special settlers and members of the labor army. Another 282 died while still under investigation before being convicted (Berdinskikh, p. 394). The single greatest year for mortality was 1942 with 1,185 deaths among ethnic Germans in Viatlag (Berdinskikh, p. 398). This year also saw 2,265 Russian-German deaths in Bogoslav, 302 in Tagillag and 925 in Usollag (Krieger, pp. 145-146). A recorded total of 11,874 Russian-Germans conscripted into the labor army died in NKVD camps during 1942 (German, table 4, p. 180). Some of these victims have been identified and their fate has been published in various memory books such as those for Viatlag. Mikhail Suprun and Aleksandr Dudarev were attempting to assemble a memory book for the ethnic Germans in the camps and special settlements of Arkhangelsk Oblast before the FSB confiscated their research. On 20 March 1949 there were 11,275 Russian-German special settlers in that region. Among this group were 809 Russian-Germans deported as kulaks during the early 1930s, 9,300 forcibly repatriated from Germany in 1945 and 1946 including 385 that had joined Andrei Vlaslov's Russian Liberation Army, 835 mobilized into the labor army, and 295 non-Germans sent into internal exile with German family members (Zemskov, pp. 127-128). Documenting the indivdual fate of these men and women is an important historical project which the Russian government currently seeks to make illegal.

Bezel

Albert Viktorovich

Born 1901 in city of Kamyshin (Pushkin Street, Building 20) Stalingrad/Volgorad oblast (Rossiia), German, citizen of USSR, white collar class background, education – 4 grades (Krasnokutsk gymnasium 1916), non-party, book keeper, white collar worker (chief book keeper city housing administration and reconstruction office), lived in city of Engles(?) Volga German ASSR, married, 1 child (son), convicted, sentenced in January 1941 by Supreme court of the Volga German ASSR under article 109 UK RSFSR (abuse of his official position, violating financial discipline) to 6 months forced labor with deduction of 25% of salary, sentence served in place of residence, served in RKKA (28 May – 10 October 1941, technical-quartermaster 2nd rank, active army, Western front, 320th artillery regiment), removed to reserves and exiled as a “person of German nationality”, place of settlement (from 17 November 1941) – Rossiia, Krasnoiarsk krai, city Minunsinsk, Lenin Street, building 160, labor army man, mobilized 25 January 1942 by Minunsinsk district military command, arrived in Viatlag 16 February 1942 from Krasnoiarsk, used for book keeping work in the financial section (12th lumber preparation detachment),confined under guard 16 July 1943 by chekist-operative section of Viatlag after being accused of “counterrevolutionary crimes” (“anti-soviet agitation”), sentenced 29 January 1944 by Special board of the NKVD USSR under article 58 point 10-2 UK RSFSR (“anti-soviet defeatist agitation”) to eight years of deprivation of freedom, started sentence 16 July 1943, was to finish sentence - 16 July 1951, died 25 March 1944 of tuberculosis of the lungs and alimentary dystrophy of the third degree, 12th camp point, station Ima (branch No. 15), rehabilitated 13 October 1989, archive personal file - No. 2515-m. (Reproduced in Berdinskikh, pp. 360-361.)

Sources:

V.A. Berdinskikh, Spetsposelentsy: Politicheskaia ssylka narodov sovetskoi Rossii (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2005).

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.

Viktor Krieger, “Einsatz im Zwangsarbeitslager,” in Alfred Eisfeld, ed., Von der Autonomiegrundung zur Verbannung und Entrechtung. Die Jahre 1918 und 1941 bis 1948 in der Geschichte der Deutschen in Russland (Stuttgart: Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Russland, 2008).

V.N. Zemskov, Spetsposelenty v SSSR, 1930-1960 (Moscow: Nauk, 2003).

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Fall Break

This next week is fall break. I am going to try and catch up on everything during this time since I do not have any classes to teach. This includes all those letters of recommendation I need to write for students.

Another Memory Book Entry

Here is another memory book entry taken from the same source as the one in my previous post.

Gaan

Genrich (Gennadii) Davidovich

Born 1917 in village of Mannheim (Mannheim – Mainskoe) Gnadenfliur canton(Federovsk district/?/) Volga German ASSR – Saratov Oblast (Rossiia) German, citizen USSR (according to him a citizen of Germany), from poor peasant class, education middle specialist (Krasnokutsk agro-technical school, Volga German ASSR 1937), candidate member of VKP (b) [All Union Communist Party (Bolshevik)] since 1939, agronomist, white collar worker (participating agronomist in Gnadenfliur machine-tractor station Volga German ASSR 1937-1940), married, lived in place of birth, from August 1940 – in RKKA (Red Army soldier 518th rifle regiment 129th rifle division), from 18.07.41 – in German POW camp, from 20.07.1941 – in German army (translator for commander of 733rd artillery division), captured and placed in POW camp 02.02.1943 by section of the RKKA at the Stalingrad front, arrested 17.04.1943 by Dubonsk district department UNKVD [Administration of Peoples Commissariat of Internal Affairs] Stalingrad oblast, sentenced 30.07.1943 by the military tribunal of the Stalingrad garrison under article 58 point 1-b UK RSFSR (treason to the motherland by military personnel) to 10 years deprivation of freedom and five years deprivation of rights with confiscation of property, began sentence 20.04.1943, was to finish sentence on 20.04.1953, arrived in Viatlag 09.01.1944 from Stalingrad (Volgograd), employed as a lumberjack (5th and 8th camp points), classified on 31.07.1945 as 4th (“nonworking”) category of work suitability (a traumatic injury to the spleen) died 14.08.1945 from tuberculosis of the lungs ([technical medical terms I do not understand in English yet alone Russian]), 4th camp point (“sangorodok”) settlement Polevoi-2, grave No. O-12, archive personal file - No. 74759 (26 pages).

Source:

V.A. Berdinskikh, Spetsposelentsy: Politicheskaia ssylka narodov sovetskoi Rossii (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2005), doc. 2, pp. 415-416.

Entry from a Memory Book

Since The Guardian ran an article on Thursday about the Russian government's persecution of Suprun and Dudarev the story seems to have gone viral. Almost all the new links are based on the article in The Guardian so I am not going to link to them. Instead I am going to provide some examples of exactly what got Suprun in trouble with the Russian government. He was compiling a memory book of the ethnic German victims of the Gulag labor camps and special settlements in Arkhangelsk. Memory books have been published in Russia before. They are nothing more than collections of basic biographical data of Stalin's victims. Sometimes they merely reproduce the information contained in the personal files of the victims. The entry below on Filipp Martinovich Ganzen (Genzen) was first published in a memory book dealing with ethnic Germans in Viatlag, Martirologa "Nemtsy v Viatlage", compiled by V. I. Verem’ev. It was later reproduced in V.I. Berdinskikh, Spetsposelentsy: Politicheskaia ssylka narodov sovetskoi Rossii (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2005), doc. 1, pp. 412-413. The translation below is my own and I have attempted to stay as close as possible to the literal rendering of Soviet jargon and euphemisms as possible. For instance alimentary dystrophy is a fancy way of saying starvation. The swelling form of alimentary dystrophy is the familiar image people my age have of children starving to death in Ethiopia during the 1980s as a result of that country's communist government emulating Stalin's agricultural policies.

Ganzen (Genzen)

Filipp Martinovich

Born in 1904 in the village of Mariental/Sovetskoe Mariental canton/Sovetskogo district Volga German ASSR/Saratov oblast (Rossiia), German, citizen of the USSR, from working (artisan-peasant/?/) class, education – four grades (1912-1916), non-party, fireman (chief of fire fighters), married, 3 children (two daughters and a son), lived in place of birth, exiled in September 1941 as “a person of German nationality”, place of exile – village of Uralka (?) Ordynsk village soviet Tiukhtetsk district Krasnoiarsk krai (Rossiia), labor army man, mobilized 23. 01. 1942 by Tiukhtetsk district military command, arrived in Viatlag 16. 02. 1942 from Krasnoiarsk, employed in fire fighting and general work (9th lumber preparation detachment), sentenced 28.01.1944 by permanent session of the legal board for criminal affairs of the Kirov oblast court in Viatlag under article 59 point 6 UK [criminal code] of the RSFSR [Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic] (failure to carry out labor duties) to 6 years deprivation of freedom and three years deprivation of rights, sentence started - 28.01.1944, was to finish sentence on 28.01.1950, on the determination of the legal board for criminal affairs of the Supreme court of the RSFSR of 23.03.1944 the sentence was annulled, the case was declared closed, he was freed from punishment on 24.04.1944, transferred to category of “labor mobilized”(in “work columns”), declared an invalid on 10.01.1944 (swelling form of alimentary dystrophy), died 01.07.1944 from alimentary dystrophy of the 3rd degree (swelling form) with diarrhea, 1st camp point, settlement Rudnichnyi, grave No. G-50, archive personal file – No 1180-m/77452.

(Card of special registration of Viatskogo ULIU. Archive)

Source:

V.A. Berdinskikh, Spetsposelentsy: Politicheskaia ssylka narodov sovetskoi Rossii (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2005), doc. 1 pp. 412-413.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Restaurants

The Chinese restaurant behind the university has closed. So recently I have been eating at an Azerbaijani kebab place not far from work. It is very good, but the menu is quite limited. In fact every time I have been there I have had the kofte kebab and shish kebab combination. It is probably the best place in town for grilled meat. I just can not eat kebabs everyday the way I can Chinese food.

Chon Bash for Two Days

The rest of the full time faulty in the ICP department were away today and yesterday so I got to be Chon Bash (Kyrgyz for Big Head). Fortunately, nothing beyond the means of my meagre administrative skills popped up. The most difficult decision I had to deal with was where to eat lunch.

More News Stories on Suprun and Dudarev

The following links have some more information on the ongoing attempt by the Russian government to suppress the research of Mikhail Suprun into the repression of Russian-Germans by Stalin during the 1940s.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jfpRI3pTnVJalXXbhQcyQmmOx5Kg

http://barentsobserver.com/-take-action-in-the-suprun-case.4643640-16180.html

http://yourfreedomandours.blogspot.com/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/15/russia-gulag-historian-arrested

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Another Good Sign: Berlin Takes Action Regarding Suprun

The German government has now officially complained to Russian President Medvedev about the political persecution of Suprun and Dudarev. The Russian government is seeking to imprison Suprun for up to four years for his research and writing on Stalin's repression of ethnic Germans in the USSR during the 1940s. The article below from The Moscow Times has more information on the case and the recent actions by the German government.

http://www.moscowtimes.ru/news/article/387359.html

A Small Important Victory in Reclaiming History

The attempt by the grandson of Joseph Stalin to sue Novaya Gazeta for libel after they correctly characterized the late Soviet dictator as a "bloodthirsty cannibal" has failed. This is a very important victory for human rights activists and others seeking to prevent Russia and other post-Soviet states from sliding back into absolute dictatorships. The New York Times has a good article on the trial with lots of great links at the url below.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/stalins-grandson-loses-defamation-suit/?hp

Monday, October 12, 2009

The False Charges of Treason Against the Deported Peoples Part II

Several years ago Karachai demographer D.M. Ediev pointed to a solid piece of evidence that the charges of wholesale treason against the Balkars came after the decision to deport them had already been made. On page 27 of his book, Demograficheskie poteri deportirovannykh narodov SSSR (Stavropol': StGAU "AGRUS", 2003) he quotes from telegram No. 6160 sent by Beria to Stalin on 25 February 1944. The archival citation for the telegram is GARF "Special File" of Stalin. Fond R-9401 s/ch. Opis 2. Delo 64. 1944: List 163. This document had been reproduced earlier by N.F. Bugai in a redacted form that did not indicate that the deportation had been decided upon before Beria began looking for "evidence" that the Balkars had collectively "betrayed the motherland."

Redacted Bugai version:

"I familiarized myself with the material on the conduct of the Balkars at the time of the offensive by the German-Fascist military in the Caucasus, and after their expulsion..." (Ediev, p. 26).

Full version reproduced by Ediev:

"In connection with the proposed exile of the Balkars from the North Caucasus, I familiarized myself with the material about their conduct during the time of the offensive by the German-Fascist military in the Caucasus, and after their expulsion..." (Ediev, p. 27). [Note that the italics were added by Ediev for emphasis.]

Source: D.M. Ediev, Demograficheskie poteri deportirovannykh narodov SSSR (Stavropol': StGAU "AGRUS", 2003).

The Current Status of Students from Turkmenistan

The few Turkmen students still here will probably all finish out this academic year at AUCA. This means that a large number of them will graduate. However, it looks like the Turkmen government will continue to ban those AUCA students still in Turkmenistan from coming to Kyrgyzstan to complete their educations. This ban appears at this point to be indefinite. It also appears very likely that no further Turkmen students will be allowed to leave their country to attend AUCA in the foreseeable future. I find this most unfortunate. Some of my best students have come from Turkmenistan. Their absence will make AUCA a less intellectually diverse place.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Jonathan Brent on the Rehabilitation of Stalin

The article by Jonathan Brent linked below provides a good background to the recent moves towards rehabilitating Stalin in the Russian Federation.

http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/117239.html

Links on the Suprun Affair

Here are a list of news articles on the Russian government's political persecution of Professor Mikhail Suprun and Col. Dudarev. The first article is in English, the second one in Russian and the third one in German.

http://www.cdi.org/russia/Johnson/2009-186-25.cfm

http://www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2009/109/02.html

http://www.ornis-press.de/staatsfeindlich-forschung-zu-russlanddeutschen-schicksalen.1184.0.html

Friday, October 09, 2009

FSB Arrests Historian of Stalinist Repression Against Russian-Germans

On 13 September 2009, the FSB arrested and interrogated Mikhail Suprun of Pomorsky State University of Arkhangelsk in connection with his research on Stalin era repression of Russian-Germans. They seized his computers and databases as well as a large number of books and documents. He was working on creating a memory book for the Russian-German victims of the Gulag's labor camps and special settlements in Arkhangelsk. Assisting him in this endeavor was Aleksandr Dudarev, the Head of the Information Center of the Arkhangelsk MVD, who provided Suprun with access to the relevant archives. The Russian government intends to prosecute both Professor Suprun and Col. Dudarev for their research into Stalinist repression. The official charges against Suprun are "divulging personal information" that is collecting the names and other biographical data of individual Russian-Germans repressed by Stalin for publication. He is also charged with urging Dudarev to abuse his authority by granting him access to the Arkhangelsk MVD archives. For more information see the links below.

http://www.khpg.org/en/index.php?id=1254770164

http://www.khpg.org/en/index.php?id=1254517948

Walt Richmond on the False Charges of Treason Against the Deported Peoples

My colleague Dr. Walt Richmond left the following comment on my last post, but its detail and importance certainly merit it having a more prominent place on this blog. I will post later on some additional evidence that the decision to deport the Balkars was made by the Stalin regime before they formulated the false charges of treason against the entire nationality. But, in the meantime please read Dr. Richmond's piece. The italicized part of this post is from Dr. Richmond.

There was also a lot of disinformation concerning the Balkars' deportation. From the original draft of my book, which unfortunately I had to significantly edit:It had long been assumed that the notion of deporting the Balkars was first proposed in January 1944. Additionally, in his memoirs Z. Kumekhov, First Party Secretary of Kabardino-Balkaria, asserted that he vehemently opposed the deportation, which he only learned of on 25 February. However, Balkar historian Khadzhi-Murat Sabanchiev has recently illuminated the process through which the decision to deport the Balkars was made. On 20 February NKVD Chief Lavrenty Beria arrived in Grozny to supervise the deportation of the Chechens and Ingush. At the same time two documents were prepared in Nalchik. The first described the location and numbers of the Balkar population. The second stated that despite the all the efforts made by the Communist Party to help the Balkars a portion remained hostile to Soviet power, and that agents had informed the Party of a counter-revolutionary movement among Balkar nationalists. Therefore, the note concluded, it was necessary to deport the entire Balkar nation. The notes were signed by Kumekhov, local NKVD Chief K. P. Bziava and local NKGB chief S. I. Filatov. Beria signed the second note on 24 February, and on the same day reported to Stalin that during the occupation “the Balkars were negotiating with the Karachays about the unification of Balkaria and Karachay,” 1227 “bandits” had been arrested, and that “362 people fled from Balkaria with the Germans.” It should be remembered first that 1227 represented three percent of the 1939 population of Balkaria (assuming all the arrestees were Balkars) and 362 was less than two percent of the entire number of people who fled the North Caucasus with the Nazis. It seems that Beria had already decided to have the Balkars deported and was merely looking for “a suitable cause,” as Stalin had phrased it a quarter century earlier prior to the deportation of the Cossacks. These three “facts” apparently suited Beria as sufficient, for in the same telegram he recommended the deportation of the Balkar nation as soon as the deportation of the Chechens and Ingush was completed. Stalin replied affirmatively the next day. On 26 February Beria issued Prikaz (Order) 00186 entitled “On Measures to Resettle the Balkar Population from the Kabardino-Balkar ASSR.” In the order he recommended transferring one raion to North Ossetia instead of Kabarda. This proposal was rejected; Elbrus and Prielbrus raions were transferred to Georgia and the remainder to Kabarda, which was renamed the Kabardin ASSR.

References:

Bugai, Nikolai. "Deportatsiia: Beriia dokladivayut Stalinu," Kommunist 3 (1991), pp. 101-12.

Pohl, J. Otto. Ethnic Cleansing in The USSR, 1937-1949. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999.

Sabanchiev, Khadzhi-Murat. “Vyselenie Balkarskogo Naroda v Gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny: Prichiny i Posledstviia,” Murad Esenov, ed. Tsentral’naia Asiia i Kavkaz. Online. Available HTTP: http://www.ca-c.org/datarus/sabanch.shtml (Accessed 10 April 2006).

Thursday, October 08, 2009

The False Charges of Treason Against the Deported Peoples Part I

Most scholars as opposed to Stalinist hacks have long maintained that the decision to deport the Kalmyks, Karachais, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars and Crimean Tatars had very little to do with the official Soviet claim that these people were guilty of mass treason and collaboration with the Nazis. Even the exaggerated and unsubstantiated charges made by Beria only accused 10% of the Crimean Tatars of serving in German units. A report from Kobulov and Serov to Beria on 22 April 1944 claims that 20,000 Crimean Tatars deserted from the 51st army in 1941. A direct translation of their message reads, "20 thousand Crimean Tatars deserted in 1941 from the 51st army as it retreated from Crimea." (Bugai 1992, doc. 2, p. 131). This claim was made despite the fact that the NKVD's own Section for the Struggle Against Banditism had only verified 479 cases of desertion and shirking of military service from the Red Army in Crimea for all nationalities versus 1,666,891 for the Soviet Union as whole for the years 1941 to 1944. (Bugai 1992, p. 286). Beria then repeated the claims of Kobulov and Serov in a message to Stalin with some alterations on 10 May 1944. His report states, "From sections of the Red Army in 1944 deserted more than 20 thousand Tatars who betrayed the Motherland, and went over to serve the Germans with arms in their hands and fought against the Red Army..." (Bugai 1991, p. 107). It is probable that Beria meant 1941 rather than 1944 since the information appears to have come directly from the earlier communication by Kobulov and Serov. The source for the 20,000 figure is unknown, but is probably an exaggeration. Soviet intelligence reported a total of 15,000 Crimean Tatars serving in eight German organized battalions in April 1942. (Bugai 2002, doc. 30, p. 62) In contrast the German enlistment records for these battalions show only 9,255 Crimean Tatars serving in them. (T.S. Kulbaev and A. Iu. Khegai, pp. 206-207). A number of these men died during the war and and others retreated to Germany with the Wehrmacht and avoided forced repatriation to the USSR. Which means that over 90% of the Crimean Tatars deported by the NKVD on 18-20 May 1944 were completely innocent. Since the vast majority of the deportees, more than 80% were women and children, this is not surprising. (Williams, p. 336) The condemnation of nearly 150,000 innocent women and children to eternal exile in Uzbekistan and the Urals as special settlers for the alleged crimes of 20,000 men represents one of the most disproportionate collective punishments ever carried out. Despite its immense brutality this crime still has a great many defenders among Russians and others seeking to rehabilitate the Stalin regime today.

Sources:

N.F. Bugai, ed., "Deportatsiia: Beriia dokladyvaet Stalinu..," Kommunist, no. 1, 1991.

N.F. Bugai, ed., Iosif Stalin - Lavrentiiu Berii: "Ikh nado deportirovat'": Dokumenty, fakty, kommentarii. Moscow: "Druzhba narodov", 1992).

N.F. Bugai, ed., Deportatsiia narodov kryma: Dokumenty, fakty kommentarii (Moscow, Insan, 2002).

T.S. Kulbaev and A. Iu. Khegai, Deportatsiia (Almaty: Deneker, 2000).

Alexander Statiev, "The Nature of Anti-Soviet Armed Resistance, 1942-1944: The North Caucasus, the Kalmyk Autonomous Republic, and Crimea," Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, vol. 6, no. 2, Spring 2005.

Brian Glyn Williams, "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).

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Blogger Again Available

For some reason the university blocked all blogger related web pages between Thursday and today. But, now they seem to work again without any problem. I am not sure what the deal was.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Survey Reports that the Majority of Central Asian Youth are Pro-Stalin

Vechernii Bishkek had an interesting article this Friday. It seems that a group called "Evraziiskii Monitor" did a survey of 20 to 35 year old respondents throughout the former Soviet Union and the Baltic States on their opinions of various historical figures. A full 61% of the youth in Kyrgyzstan had a favorable opinion of Stalin versus only 35% in Russia. Uzbekistan and Tajikistan fell in between Kyrgyzstan and Russia with 53% of young people having a positive view of Stalin. In contrast to the young peoples' enthusiastic support of Stalin only 27% of the youth in Kyrgyzstan had a favorable opinion of Andrei Sakharov. So much for inculcating a democratic political culture in Kyrgyzstan.

Source:

Vechernii Bishkek 25 September 2009, p. 15.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Genocide and Intent

The issue of genocide is one that has suffered from a severe narrowing of Raphael Lemkin’s original conceptions and constricted interpretations of the already watered down and politically deformed Genocide Treaty. At the heart of the matter is the claim that instances where deliberate state actions which directly lead to the death of hundreds of thousands of people belonging to racialized ethnic groups are not genocide because the element of “intent” is missing. In the case of the USSR this has led to Arseny Roginsky one of the founders of Memorial in Moscow to remark with regards to Stalinist terror that there are only victims and no crimes. The mass deaths caused by Stalin's deportation of whole nationalities are thus portrayed as purely accidental with no moral or legal responsibility accruing to the Soviet government for causing what were the inevitable consequences of their deliberate actions. Of course intent in such cases is always interpreted in an extremely narrow manner which makes it a synonym for motive or goal. That is the primary purpose of an action must be the extermination of a targeted group and that actions which inevitably have the effect of killing off large portions of specific nationalities undertaken for other reasons thus do not constitute genocide. This interpretation of the word intent is very different from the meaning of the word in Anglo-American common law. Under this definition it is not necessary for death to be the sole object of an action for it to be intentional. Rather it is only necessary for death to be the foreseeable consequence of a voluntary action for it to legally count as intentional. It is quite obvious that moving an entire national population numbering hundreds of thousands of people and consisting mostly of children, the elderly and the disabled in the middle of war time to desolate deserts and frozen taiga will result in a large percentage of them dying. This is exactly what happened during World War Two with the various nationalities deported by Stalin.

The defense that the deportation orders called for the local Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Siberian and Uzbek authorities to provide food, housing and other necessities for the deportees does not morally or legally absolve the Stalin regime of these deaths. The regime knew on the basis of previous deportations that the local authorities in Siberia and Central Asia did not have sufficient resources to provide enough housing, food, clothing and medicine to the deportees to prevent a large minority of them from dying. Rather these provisions appear to have been put in the deportation orders as a way of deflecting responsibility for any problems arising due to the deportations such as the spread of contagious diseases, housing shortages, and unemployment from the central government in Moscow to the regional authorities. Indeed in every single case the local authorities repeatedly reported a severe lack of food, housing, clothing, shoes, soap and medicine and consequently mass deaths due to malnutrition and disease among the deportees shortly after the first trainloads arrived.

FLG also has a post on his blog to which I have posted a comment. If anybody else picks up this discussion and links to me please let me know in the comments.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

New Publication in Journal of Genocide Research

The new special topic issue (Volume 11 issue 2 and 3) of the Journal of Genocide Research dealing with New Perspectives on Soviet Mass Violence is now out. It includes the article I co-wrote with Eric J. Schmaltz and Ronald J. Vossler, "'In our hearts we felt the sentence of death': Ethnic German recollections of mass violence in the USSR, 1928-1948," pp. 323-354. The abstract of the article is reproduced below.

Abstract:

This article seeks to examine the mass violence unleashed by Joseph Stalin and his regime against the USSR's ethnic Germans. It endeavors to comprehend how Soviet policies of repression progressed and intensified to the extreme detriment of this nationality group. It covers the tumultuous period between 1928 and 1948, when Soviet policies overall coarsened considerably, from the implementation of Stalin's First Five-Year Plan to the government decree banishing several Soviet peoples in their virtual entirety, including the ethnic Germans, to “eternal” exile east of the Urals. This process shifted from class-based reasons to ethnic ones as the 1930s progressed. The increasingly racialized nature of Soviet mass violence targeted the ethnic Germans as a large diaspora community ethnically linked to Nazi Germany, a country perceived as an ideological and military threat. During Stalin's war against the Soviet countryside in the early 1930s, ethnic German villagers at times felt compelled to conduct mass protests and even revolts against the authorities. Meanwhile, both an emerging ethnic German elite and ordinary German farmers and workers wrote about worsening conditions under Stalin. Besides petitioning the Soviet government, they delivered letters and various writings to friends and relatives by way of a vast underground network at home and abroad, and their relatives sometimes answered in return. A growing body of Soviet archival records and academic literature treating the Stalinist period has generally validated and expanded upon what the ethnic group as early as the 1920s and 1930s had exposed about mass terror under Stalin's regime.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Very Cool Movie Credits

If you want to see something supremely cool go to the credits of Under Jakob's Ladder and scroll down until you reach the position of Historical Consultants. Then scroll down to the part where it says, "The Producers Gratefully Acknowledge..." I am listed not once, but twice in the credits of a movie that is sure to become a cult classic.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

New Trailer for Under Jakob's Ladder

The Moon Brothers have just finished their new trailer for their soon to be released movie Under Jakob's Ladder. For those who have not been paying attention it is a movie that revolves around the religious persecution of ethnic Germans in Ukraine during the Stalin era. This is a topic Hollywood has steadfastly avoided. So I urge everybody to spread the word about this new film.

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Dying really revived Michael Jackson's Career

Since Michael Jackson's untimely death I have heard his music play all over Bishkek including on my girlfriend's radio. Before he died I never heard his music played here. It is a good thing Madonna is still in good health.

Thursday, September 03, 2009

Fall is here

Well it has finally cooled down somewhat in Bishkek. I hope with the colder weather that the insects that have devoured my hands and arms go someplace other than my apartment. I count eight insect bites on my right hand alone.

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Weekend

Well, I did not see anything resembling a Graffiti Festival this weekend. I did see lots of police, but I managed to avoid them. I also saw lots of weddings about town, but nobody invited me to any of them. But, mostly like every other weekend I prepared for class and did other work related activities.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Fellow Americans

Last night at the request of Kyrgyz Concept I joined a group of American and Canadian tourists for dinner at local Georgian restaurant. Most of the people were retirees enjoying their freedom from work to travel the world. I had a lot of fun answering their questions about life in Kyrgyzstan. I definitely would do it again.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Grafitti Festival

Our university web site every so often has information on local events that just makes my mind boggle. Evidently Bishkek will be hosting the "First International Festival of Street Art 'Graffiti' "on August 30-31. I might put up a post about it on Tuesday if it is at all interesting.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

More nuttery from America's most racist professor

I live and work in a country where the majority of the population is nominally Muslim. I have not had too many problems with most of the people here. The vast majority of them are very nice people. I certainly do not see them as fundamentally different from Christians and Jews in the US and Europe. My girlfriend and her kids are Muslims. I do not see how they are threats to the existence of Western civilization. Yet for some reason some professors at American universities entertain genocidal fantasies against a racialized Muslim collective. Imagine if he advocated similar policies against Black or Jewish people? But, American academia is perfectly content to allow the propagation of hate against politically incorrect groups such as Muslims, Palestinians including the Christian ones and ethnic Germans including women, children and anti-fascists.

Monday, August 24, 2009

First Day of Classes

Today we had our first day of classes for the semester. I only had one class to teach. Tomorrow I have three.

The Last Train West

The Stalin regime forcibly deported almost all of the Russian-Koreans living in the Soviet Far East to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in the fall of 1937. The total number of deportees is usually given as 171,781 people. This figure comes from a report by Yezhov to Stalin and Molotov noting that the deportations had been completed on 25 October 1937 and involved the resettlement of 95,256 Russian-Koreans to Kazakhstan and 76,525 to Uzbekistan. It further noted that an additional 700 Russian-Koreans that had been deported within the region as kulaks years earlier still remained in special settlements in Okhotsk and Kamchatka. These last remaining Russian-Koreans were scheduled for deportation on 1 November 1937 (Li and Kim, doc. 52, pp. 114-115). Most secondary sources do not further note what happened to these last 700 Russian-Koreans living in the Soviet Far East. In actuality the number of remaining Russian-Koreans later deported from the Soviet Far East numbered 816 and they departed the region for Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan on 3 November 1937 (Document reproduced in V.D. Kim, pp. 76-77). This final wave of deportees brought the total number of Russian-Koreans deported by train from the Soviet Far East to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to 172,597 people.

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).

Some Very Good News on the Turkmen Front

The student who was going to return to Turkmenistan because the Turkmen government was threatening his family just came to see me. I thought he came to ask about the reference letter which I was just starting to write. Instead he told me that he would be staying at AUCA to finish his degree. He informed me that the official making the threats against his father has himself been removed and that he did not anticipate any further problems. So I will be seeing the student in class later this week.

I am not sure about the Turkmen students still in Turkmenistan. But, I did receive an e-mail from one of them recently. She informed me that she wanted to continue her education at AUCA and believed she could be here by the end of September or the start of October. So maybe by then the problem will be resolved.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Thoughts on Turkmen Students

Well it does not look like there is much I can do to help my Turkmen students trapped in Turkmenistan. It does not even look like there is much I can do to help those still here to stay here. The Turkmen student I mentioned in my last post on the subject asked me to write him a letter of reference, but other than that there is not really anything I can do to assist him. The Turkmen government is being completely unreasonable and its actions are seriously disrupting the lives of these young people. If anybody has any ideas about steps I could take to help these students complete their educations please let me know.

Friday, August 21, 2009

How come I get so few comments?

I get very little feed back in the form of comments on this blog. If you are a regular reader let me know what type of posts you enjoy. As it stands I have no idea why anybody other than my parents and a few friends read this blog.

Sometimes even Terry Martin makes a mistake

Last night I reread Terry Martin's, "The Russian Mennonite Encounter with the Soviet State 1917-1955," The Conrad Grebel Review, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Winter 2002). It is overall a very good summary of the history of the Mennonites under Soviet rule. But, I did find one area of confusion which upon further investigation seems to have troubled other scholars. The Soviet regime divided the deported Russian-Germans categorized as special settlers into a number of sub-categories. One of these sub-categories was "mobilized." That is Russian-Germans conscripted to work in the labor army or "mobilized work columns." While the labor army existed such a category is rather straight forward. But, the category persists in Soviet records after the abolition of the labor army in 1945-1946. That is after the Stalin regime abolished the guarded zone around their barracks, reclassified them as special settlers and granted them the formal right to reunite with their families (Berdinskikh 2005, doc. 3, p. 332 and Bugai, doc. 50, pp. 77-78 and 51, p. 78) . Martin states that the category "mobilized Germans" consisted of labor army "veterans that did not go to the exile settlements - usually because they had no family to return to - and instead continued to work in their Trudarmei job." (Martin, p. 50). I looked this up in V. I. Berdinskikh's Kandidat Nauk dissertation and he described the category as those discharged from the Red Army and then sent to the labor army (V.I. Berdinskikh 2002, p. 55). While there were many former labor army veterans that remained tied to their former places of employment and many former Red Army soldiers sent to the labor army neither of these define the term "mobilized German" after 1946.

Rather the term refers to those Russian-Germans who were conscripted into the labor army from among the population already living east of the Urals in 1941 and hence not special settlers at the time of their mobilization. I found this definition in four primary source documents reproduced by V.I. Berdinskikh in Spetsposelentsy: Politicheskaia ssylka narodov sovetskoi Rossii (doc., 3, pp. 332-333, doc. 7, p. 338, doc. 8, p. 340 and doc. 9, pp. 342-343). When the Soviet government reclassified all labor army veterans as special settlers those that had been deported simply resumed their former legal classification. These people were added back to the contingent of "exiled" Russian-Germans. But, those inducted from Siberia, Kazakhstan, Central Asia, the Urals and Far East were not special settlers in 1942 and 1943. They became the new contingent of "mobilized German" special settlers after the elimination of the labor army.

It is hard to judge exactly what the split is between "mobilized" and "exiled" that were allowed to return home versus those attached to their former labor army jobs. But, it does appear that a sizable number of those not allowed to reunify with their families were in fact those Russian-Germans conscripted into the labor army after being deported to Kazakhstan and Siberia. One of the documents mentions 26,219 such people working in Moscow, Tula, Gorky, Stalingrad and Kubishev oblasts (Berdinskikh 2005, doc. 3, p. 332). So those remaining in central Russia working in industrial enterprises consisted of a large number of "exiled" rather than "mobilized" Germans.

It is unclear to me why the category of "mobilized" did not include those who had been deported, removed from the special settlement registers during their service in the labor army, and then reclassified as special settlers upon demobilization. It is even more unclear why the category of "local" Germans did not include those Russian-Germans from east of the Urals mobilized into the labor army during the war. But, Soviet accounting categorized labor army veterans that had lived in Kazakhstan, Siberia and the Urals prior to 1941 as their own sub-contingent.

V.I. Berdinskikh, Osobennosti formirovaniia infrastruktury sistemy spetsposelenii v SSSR 1930-1940-x gg. (Kandidat Nauk dissertation, Viatskii State Humanitarian University, 2002).

V.I. Berdinskikh, Spetsposelentsy: Politicheskaia ssylka narodov sovetskoi Rossii (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2005).

N.F. Bugai, Iosif Stalin - Lavrentiiu Berii: "Ikh nado deportirovat'": Dokumenty, fakty, kommentarii (Moscow: Druzhba narodov, 1992).

Terry Martin, " The Russian Mennonite Encounter with the Soviet State 1917-1955," The Conrad Grebel Review, Vol. 20, No. 1, (Winter 2002), pp. 5-59.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Update on the Turkmen Student Situation

The Turkmen government is still preventing about 130 students from leaving Turkmenistan to continue their education here at AUCA. Around 20 Turkmen students have gotten here. Most of them got here by coming before the Turkmen government started denying exit visas to AUCA students. Others got here by lying to the Turkmen authorities. But, it is unclear how many of them will be staying. The Turkmen government obviously will not renew passports of students to enable them to continue to study here. Even more ominously one student told me that he was returning to Turkmenistan because the government was threatening his father with arrest. Just to make sure the student knew they were serious they had already had the man fired from his job. It looks like the current batch of Turkmen seniors here may be the last Turkmen students to graduate from AUCA and even then there may be very few of them.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

A New Semester

Next Monday classes start again. Right now the halls of the school are in complete chaos as dozens of freshmen run about signing up for classes. Fortunately, I have finished writing all my syllabi.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Unexpected Visitor - General Petraeus

Yesterday the head of CENTCOM, General David Petraeus, stopped by our office unexpectedly. It was mostly just a big media event and I did not get to personally meet the man. But, it is the closest I have physically been to anybody of any major importance in many years.

Monday, August 17, 2009

New Syllabi

As can be seen from the two posts below, I have now finished typing up my syllabi for the Fall 2009 semester.

Syllabus for American Presidency

American Presidency
AMS 228
3 Credits
American Studies
American University of Central Asia
Fall Semester 2009
J. Otto Pohl, Ph.D.

Course Description: This course will cover the history of the executive branch of the US government and focus on the person of the president from George Washington to Bill Clinton. Among the topic covered will be the relationship between the president and other branches of the federal government in particular Congress, the role of the presidency in the US rise to global power and lasting legacy of particular presidential policies.

Requirements: The course will consist of assigned readings, lectures, discussion, short writing assignments, an oral report and a research paper. Students will be required to write two 600 to 800 word reflection papers. The first reflection paper will be on the relative historical importance of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to the US presidency. The second one will be on the lasting importance of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and its subsequent influence, both positive and negative on later presidential administrations. Students will also have to write a 1400 to 2000 word research essay on the enduring legacy of one US president since World War II. The paper is due the last week of class. In the four 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 ten percent 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. The main text for the class is Sidney M. Milkis and Michael Nelson, The American Presidency: Origins and Development, 1776-1993 (Washington DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2nd edition, 1994). Supplementary readings will be taken from Richard A. Watson and Norman C. Thomas, The Politics of the Presidency (Washington DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2nd edition, 1988) and Michael Nelson, ed., The Presidency and the Political System (Washington DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 4th edition, 1995).

Policy on Plagiarism and Citations: I have a zero tolerance policy regarding plagiarism. If I catch any student plagiarizing once I will fail them for the assignment. If I catch them a second time I will fail them from the class. 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 five 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. 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:

Two short papers – 30% (15% each)

Written research paper – 30% (Due last week of class)

Oral report on research – 15%

Class participation – 25%

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 the course and review of the syllabus.

Week Two: The Constitution and Historical Overview

Milkis and Nelson chapter 2, Watson and Thomas chapters 2 and 5, and Nelson chapter 7

Week Three: George Washington

Milkis chapter 3

Week Four: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams.

Milkis chapter 4

Week Five: Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan.

Milkis chapter 5

Week Six: Abraham Lincoln

Milkis chapter 6

The first paper is due at the end of the week.

Week Seven: Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin A. Harrison, Grover Cleveland again, and William L. Mckinley.

Milkis chapter 7

Week Eight: Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft

Milkis chapter 8

Week Nine: Woodrow Wilson

Milkis chapter 9

Week Ten: Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover

Milkis chapter 10

Week Eleven: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower

Milkis chapter 11

The second paper is due at the end of the week.

Week Twelve: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, and Jimmy Carter

Milkis chapter 12

Week Thirteen: Ronald Reagan and George Bush the elder

Milkis chapter 13

Week Fourteen: Bill Clinton

Milkis chapter 14

Week Fifteen: Wrap up and conclusion. The final paper is due at the end of the week.

Syllabus for Conflicts in the Caucasus

Military Conflicts in Asia: Conflicts in the Caucasus
ICP 410.3
3 Credits
International and Comparative Politics
American University of Central Asia
Fall Semester 2009
J. Otto Pohl, Ph.D.

Meeting Time: Tuesday room 308 and Friday room 216 at 3:35 pm

Course Description: This course will cover the five major military conflicts that have erupted in the Caucasus since the collapse of the Soviet Union. These conflicts are the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh, the two wars in Chechnya between pro-independence forces and the Federal government of Russia, and the conflicts between the Georgian government and secessionist movements in Abkhazia and Ossetia. The class will focus on the roots of these conflicts in the Russian Empire and USSR and concentrate on the historical, ethnic and geographic factors involved in sustaining continuing hostilities.

Requirements: The grade for this course will be based upon one geography test, two oral presentations and two papers. At the end of the third week I will administer a test on the political geography of the Caucasus. Students will be asked to identify the various political units of the Caucasus and their administrative capitals on a map. This test will form 10% of the total grade. Most of the course will be centered on student presentations. To this end students must give two oral presentations on a single conflict in the Caucasus. These reports are to be based upon written reports due exactly one week after the oral presentations. Presentations must be given on the day for which they are assigned. For the first set of reports students must have at least three sources for the oral presentation and five for the written paper. The first report and paper should provide a basic historical background to the conflict. This information should include the participants, their motives and goals, and the key events of the conflict. The oral presentations should be at least ten minutes long and no longer than fifteen minutes. The first written paper should be between 2000 and 2500 words. The second oral report should have at least five sources and the second paper ten sources. The second report and paper should expand upon the first one and deal with the reasons behind the prolongation of the conflict, international involvement in the conflict, and possible solutions to the conflict. The second oral report should also be between ten and fifteen minutes. The second written paper should be between 2500 and 3000 words. Finally, students are expected to actively participate in asking questions and commenting on the presentations of other students. Late papers will lose ten percent 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: Each week that there are presentations the students presenting are responsible for selecting the possible readings for the class. For the first presentation they should select three articles. For the second presentation they should select five. All presenters are to provide me with a list of their selected articles the week before their presentation. That way I can read the articles and judge whether they are appropriate. I will then assign at least one of the articles provided to me by the presenters to the entire class to read each week. Please only select academic journal articles. The easiest way to do this is to use JSTOR and EBSCOhost. Please avoid submitting articles posted on the internet that have not first been published in a peer reviewed academic journal. Providing me with appropriate articles a week in advance will form a significant component of the grade for the oral presentations. Failure to provide me with the requisite number of articles a week before the presentation will result in a 10% reduction of the grade for the oral report.

Policy on Plagiarism and Citations: I have a zero tolerance policy regarding plagiarism. If I catch any student plagiarizing once I will fail them for the assignment. If I catch them a second time I will fail them from the class. 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 five 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. 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:

Geography Test: 10%

First Oral Report: 10%

First Written Paper: 20%

Second Oral Report: 20%

Second Written Paper: 30%

Class Participation: 10%

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 the course and review of the syllabus

Week Two: Geography, Ethnicity and History of the Caucasus

Week Three: Geography Test

Week Four: First presentations on Nagorno Karabakh.

Week Five: First presentations on the First Chechen War.

Week Six: First presentations on Abkhazia.

Week Seven: First presentations on the Second Chechen War.

Week Eight: First presentations on Ossetia.

Week Nine: Review of material presented so far.

Week Ten: Second presentations on Nagorno Karabakh.

Week Eleven: Second presentations on the First Chechen War.

Week Twelve: Second presentations on Abkhazia.

Week Thirteen: Second presentations on the Second Chechen War.

Week Fourteen: Second presentations on Ossetia.

Week Fifteen: Wrap up and conclusion. The final paper is due at the end of week fifteen.

Friday, August 14, 2009

Summer is almost over

Summer is almost over. During this brief time I finished correcting the proofs for two journal articles that should be coming out in print in the next couple of months. I also wrote the first draft for a third journal article. I just finished writing it up this afternoon. Finally, I put together the syllabi and readings for two classes. I still have to write up two more syllabi next week. Now that I have got the draft of the last article done I can spend all day Monday working on the syllabi.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Are Bessarabian Germans still Russian-Germans after 1917?

I know the Bessarabian Germans are generally considered Russian-Germans because they settled the territory after it became part of the Russian Empire in 1812. Also like the Volga Germans (22 July 1763) and Black Sea Germans (20 February 1804) they received a guarantee of privileges and rights from the Russian government on 29 November 1813. But, I view the Bessarabian Germans in many ways as more similar to the Baltic Germans than the Volga Germans and Black Sea Germans. In particular the modern history of the Bessarabian Germans is much closer to that of the ethnic Germans from Estonia and Latvia than it is to those from the Volga and Black Sea regions. Like the Baltic Germans and unlike the ethnic Germans living in the Volga region, Ukraine, the North Caucasus, Crimea, Siberia and other parts of the Russian Empire, the Bessarabian Germans never came under Soviet rule for any appreciable length of time.

Instead the Bessarabian Germans came under Romanian rule in January 1918 and thus avoided the horrors of collectivization, dekulakization, famine, and mass executions that afflicted the rest of the Russian-German population in the 1930s. In 1940 after the Soviet annexation of Bessarabia the German government evacuated almost all of the 95,000 ethnic Germans from the territory to areas under German control. The German government also evacuated the ethnic Germans from Eastern Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia during this time. The Bessarabian Germans thus never experienced the mass deportations, special settlement regime and conscription into the labor army that defined the creation of a modern Russian-German identity. The historical experience of the Bessarabian Germans during most of the 20th century thus differs considerably from the ethnic Germans living in the Soviet Union. The history of the Bessarabian Germans since 1940 is instead much closer to the Volksdeutsche communities evacuated from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Eastern Poland at this time.

Given the huge divergence between the Bessarabian and other Russian-Germans in 1917, I think it might be more useful historically to think of them as a separate group after this time. Their experience from 1917 to 1940 has more in common with Germans living in Transylvania than those living in Ukraine. After 1940 they come under German rule and in the post-war period they resemble the expellees and refugees from Poland and Czechoslovakia far more than they do the Russian-Germans living in Kazakhstan and Siberia. So I would propose that the term Russian-German really should only apply to the Bessarabian Germans for the period of 1813 to 1917. After that they become a separate group from the Russian-Germans whose modern history and identity revolves around persecution in the USSR under Stalin.

Sources for further reading:

Polian, Pavel, Against Their Will: The History and Geography of Forced Migrations in The USSR (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004).

Prauser, Steffen and Rees, Arfon, eds., The Expulsion of the ‘German’ Communities from Eastern Europe at the End of the Second World War (Florence, Italy: European University Institute, 2004).

Schmidt, Ute, "Germans in Bessarabia: Historical Background and Present-day Relations," South-East Europe Review, March 2008, pp. 307-317.

Stricker, Gerd, "Ethnic Germans in Russia and the Former Soviet Union, " in Wolff, Stefan, ed., German Minorities in Europe: Identity and Cultural Belonging (NY: Berghahn Books, 2000).

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Newspaper Interview

Today I was interviewed by a journalist for a paper in the Netherlands.

New Link - Poemless

I have added a new link to this blog. Poemless as per the name has only prose and no verse.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

More article proofs

I just finished correcting the proofs for another journal article today. It now should be a while before I receive any more proofs to edit. Tomorrow I will get back to working on the first draft of a journal article on the Soviet treatment of Russian-Germans during World War II as an example of apartheid.

Monday, August 10, 2009

More on the Turkmen Student Situation

Today I saw three of the five Turkmen students at AUCA that have managed to make it out of Turkmenistan. Keeping track of the news it does not look like too many more will be joining them.

Turkmen Student Update

A source who wishes to remain anonymous sent me this link to a story in Chronicles of Turkmenistan: Publication of Turkmen Initiative of Human Rights. It looks like the government of Turkmenistan is prohibiting all Turkmen students from leaving the country to attend foreign non-state schools. This ban includes the American University of Central Asia.

Friday, August 07, 2009

Creating New Scholars

I think of my primary calling in life as transferring knowledge. I am not sure if knowledge wants to be free, but I feel compelled to share it. My great hope is that I can share enough knowledge with certain young people that they can then go on and do much better scholarship than me. When this happens I will have obtained the coveted Guru status that all true scholars desire. Those people who do not aspire for their students to become better scholars than themselves are obstacles to social process and selfish bastards. So I was thrilled when a student starting a Kandidat Nauk degree at another university asked me today if I would be his dissertation advisor. I do not even know if they are going to pay me for this work and honestly I do not care. This will be my first experience of supervising a doctoral level thesis.

Thursday, August 06, 2009

Afghan Hat

John Couper just returned from a trip to Afghanistan and brought me back a very cool flat topped hat similar to that worn by Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Lion of the Panjshir. For more information on Massoud and a photograph of him wearing the hat go to the link below.

http://www.afghan-web.com/bios/yest/asmasood.html

Here is a better picture of Massoud in color this time. It also has a short explanatory note about the hat which is known as a Pakol.

http://www.anusha.com/pakol.htm

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Trapped in Turkmenistan

It appears that all but four Turkmen students studying here at AUCA are trapped in Turkmenistan. The government is not letting them out to complete their education. Further, it is insisting that the male students perform their mandatory military service before they are allowed to leave the country. This means that when the new semester starts in a few weeks many of the students signed up for my classes will be involuntarily absent.

Monday, August 03, 2009

August

It is now August and things are still slow. I am still coming into work everyday Monday through Saturday and plugging along at my journal article. It is not due until the end of October so I should finish it way ahead of time.

Saturday, August 01, 2009

Street Beverages

Right now it is quite hot in Bishkek. Walking in this heat makes me thirsty. Fortunately, there are plenty of beverage vendors on the streets here. Most of them are set up like lemonade stands, except they do not sell lemonade. Instead they sell Shoro and Tan which are drinks made from sour milk, kvas which is made from bread, sherbet which is made from dried apricots and occasionally iced tea flavored with either mint, lime or peach. I especially like Shoro and kvas both of which have a slightly sour taste. They are definitely different from the overly sweet sodas that dominate the soft drink market in most other countries.

Friday, July 31, 2009

Simple Pleasures - Walking

I walk to work and back everyday. One reason is because I enjoy it. An even bigger reason is that I would rather be waterboarded than ride on another marshrutka. They are indeed that uncomfortable. Time spent walking is never time wasted. There are many, many hours in my life that I feel that I have squandered. But, none of those hours were spent walking.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Life in the Slow Lane

The university is pretty much deserted now in the few weeks before classes start again. Things are pretty slow. I do not have any pressing article deadlines right now. I have been plodding along on one article dealing with issues of race and migration with regards to the Russian-Germans, but other than that I do not have much work to do until classes start. So despite not getting out of Bishkek this summer I had a fairly enjoyable summer. One key lesson I learned early on in Arivaca is that happiness is about enjoying what you have and where you are in the present.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Election Results

Bakiev, the incumbent president won yesterday's elections. The Internet has a lot of stories of complaints about the election by opposition leaders. But, none of the Kyrgyz people I actually deal with on a day to day basis seem to care that much about the elections. I think political apathy is a lot more wide spread in Kyrgyzstan than it is in the US or UK.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Presidental Elections Today

Today the Kyrgyz Republic is holding its presidential elections. Except for some television cameras outside the polling place near my flat I have not noticed anything different from yesterday.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

A clean desk

Today I have not gotten much done at work. The last two days of proof editing used up a lot of my motivation to be productive. My big accomplishment this morning was to finish cleaning up the desk I am using.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Proofing Done

I finally finished editing the proofs of the article with the help of one of my co-writers today. It took a little longer than expected, but it is finally done. The article should be out next month.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Proof Corrections

I spent most of today at the office correcting the proofs for a journal article that should appear in print in August. Most of the corrections were in the end notes rather than the text itself. I will post the abstract for the article when it comes out in print.

Friday, July 17, 2009

Russian Politics Syllabus

Russian Politics
ICP 250
3 credits
International and Comparative Politics
American University Central Asia
Fall Semester 2009
J. Otto Pohl, PhD

Course Description: This is a course covering the political system of the Russian Federation. In particular it will examine the political geography of the state as an ethno-territorial federation. The course will start with a review of the history of the USSR followed by specifically looking at the formation and solidification of the RSFSR, the administrative territory that became the Russian Federation. It will then cover such issues as the ethnic structure of the Russian Federation, political culture, transition from a socialist to a capitalist economy, and human rights.

Requirements: The course will consist of assigned readings, lectures, discussion, short writing assignments, an oral report and a research paper. Students will have to write two short papers during the semester. These papers should focus on the assigned readings and be from 600 to 800 words. Students will also have to complete a 1400 to 2000 word research paper on some aspect of Russian politics. The paper is due the last week of class. In the two weeks prior to this deadline each student will be required to give a short oral presentation on the subject of the paper followed by a question and answer session. Late papers will lose one letter grade for each day they are late. Students must come to class on time. Being more than fifteen minutes late will count as an absence. Students will lose one letter grade after four unexcused absences and fail the course after seven. Written proof of an emergency from a doctor or other appropriate authority is required for an absence to be excused. Please turn off all cell phones while in class. I will eject any students carrying on cell phone conversations during class from the room. This will count as an unexcused absence. Finally, I have a significant hearing loss and may have to ask people to repeat their questions or statements from time to time. You can minimize this by speaking clearly and loudly. This syllabus is tentative and subject to change.

Readings: All the readings are contained in the course packet

Policy on Plagiarism and Citations: I have a zero tolerance policy regarding plagiarism. If I catch any student plagiarizing I will give them a zero for the assignment the first time. If I catch a student plagiarizing a second time in the class I will fail them from the class. 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:

Two short papers – 30% (15% each)

Written research paper – 30% (Due last week of class)

Oral report on research – 15%

Class participation -25%

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 the course and review of the syllabus.

General History of Russia and the USSR

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

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

Week Four Read: Yuri Veselov, “Changing Trust in the History of Soviet Society,” in Heiko Schrader, ed., Trust and Social Transformation: Theoretical approaches and empirical findings from Russia (Munster: Litverlag, 2004), pp. 55-78. The first short paper is due at the end of the week.

The Formation, Structure and Ethnic Nature of the Russian Federation

Week Five Read: Yuri Slezkine, “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.

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

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

Week Nine Read: Michael McFaul, “Lesson’s from Russia’s Protracted Transition from Communist Rule,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 114, no. 1 (Spring 1999), pp. 103-130. The second short paper is due at the end of the week.

Past Repression and Current Human Rights: is there a Link?

Week Ten: Read Arseny Roginsky, “The Embrace of Stalinism” at

http://www.opendemocracy.net/russia/article/The-Embrace-of-Stalinism

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

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

Student Research

Weeks Thirteen, Fourteen, and Fifteen: Student oral presentations.

Week Sixteen: Final research paper due and concluding remarks.

POST 1000

This is the 1000th post on this blog. It seems like a lot. But, over a period of almost five years it is not really much. A lot of blogs do 1000 posts a year or more.

Post Number 999

This is my 999th post to this blog. Right now I am the only person in the office. I might be the only faculty member at the university. It seems I am the only person still working in the summer. I am trying to clean up the desk I have been using, put together syllabi and write a journal article. All of these things are getting done slowly.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Story on Arivaca

Almost all the stories about Arivaca published in the Tucson media are extremely negative. All they ever report are the few spectacular crimes that occur on average once a year. So it was nice to see this somewhat positive piece from the Tucson Weekly.

http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/arivaca/Content?oid=1242330