Link to Jews sans frontieres

I noticed today that Jews sans frontieres has added me to their blog roll. So I am returning the favor. Mark Elf and crew have been doing an excellent job of covering events in Palestine for years now. Thanks a lot for the link.

I am not sure if it an act of war or a crime, but it is irritating.

In response to FLG's question as to whether the Russian attacks on Kyrgyzstan's Internet infrastructure are cyberwarfare or cybercrime I have the following answer. It is a big pain in the ass is what it is. During the time the Internet was barely working I had to submit three online recommendations for students for MA programs at Central European University in Budapest. It took me all day to get the applications to go through. Other professors here at AUCA had the exact same problem. Under normal circumstances I should have been able to do them all in less than an hour.

This might explain why the internet has been so slow recently

Evidently Russian hackers have been hitting Kyrgyzstan with denial of service attacks. See the article below for more details.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/158517/kyrgyzstan_off_net.html?tk=rss_news

Another New Link - Schaun and Rachel Wheeler

Schaun Wheeler and his new wife Rachel have a new blog. Schaun did much of the research for his dissertation in Kyrgyzstan and spent a lot of time hanging around AUCA. So far there is not much up on their blog, but I hope that changes soon.

New Link - Seamus O'Sullivan

My colleague Seamus O'Sullivan who used to teach in the American Studies department across the hall is now working at American University of Afghanistan. He has maintained a very interesting blog for some time, but I have neglected until now to link to it. Despite my previous neglect, I encourage everybody to check out his blog Intransigent in Kabul.

Things I have done this week

In addition to teaching three classes, I have had an unusual amount of extra work this last week. For instance, I have written a half a dozen letters of recommendation for students. It seems as soon as I finish one letter another one arrives for me to do. Currently, I have about a half a dozen more left to finish. I have also edited an academic encyclopedia article, given a guest lecture for another professor and helped put together a grant proposal. I hope next week things will settle down for a little while.

The Shelves of Ramstor

It appears that my fears of impending food shortages were unfounded. Last night when I went to Ramstor I noticed that they had more meat and lots of eggs. Their stock of milk products, however, was still significantly below their normal level.

Afghanistan

My Afghan sources have recently informed me that the country has become extremely dangerous. The country is also evidently experiencing real not foreshadowed food shortages. After over seven years of fighting, US military forces have still not managed to bring peace and prosperity to Afghanistan.

Food Shortages

I have noticed for the last week that the big modern Ramstor supermarket near me has had dwindling supplies of meat, milk products, and toilet paper. They are completely out of eggs. I hope this does not foreshadow a return to Soviet era shortages.

Solving Third World Problems

Since I have arrived back in Bishkek I have had to solve a number of third world problems. To date this has included restoring electricity to my flat, recovering my lost luggage from London, and getting a new stove. On the last point I believe that the old stove, an Elektra 1001, dated back to the building's initial construction in 1985. It still had CCCP prominently stamped on it. At any rate it refused to come back on with the rest of the electrical appliances last week. I think I now have all of my third world problems, except for the broken window, fixed for the time being.

New Book Published

My new book, Catherine's Grandchildren: A Short History of the Russian-Germans Under Soviet Rule is now available for purchase from the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia. You can order it from here. The book is $15 for members and $20 for nonmembers. This post is purely for noncommercial and informational purposes since I do not receive any money from the sale of this book.

The Dollar is Way Up

Yesterday I exchanged $100 US for Kyrgyz som. I got back over 4000 som. Just a couple of weeks ago it was only 38 som to the dollar.

GAZA and SOAS

It appears that lots of interesting things have recently been happening at the School of Oriental and African Studies where I did both my MA and Ph.D. SOAS Students in Solidarity with Gaza occupied the Brunei Suite in the Brunei Gallery for several days. They have their own blog recording their recent actions. For more news on what has been happening at SOAS in the last few days see Solomon's Mindfield. Things are not nearly so active here at AUCA. But, I did notice that students have put up a few signs and two collection boxes for the victims of Israel's assault upon Gaza.

Hat Tip: Mark Elf at JSF

Article on Stalinism

Russian historian, Arseny Roginsky, has written an excellent article in English on the continuing legacy of Stalinism in Russia.

Mass Grave Unearthed in Malbork/Marienburg

Polish excavators recently unearthed 1,800 corpses of German civilians murdered by the Red Army in 1945 in what is now Malbork Poland. Previously this city was named Marienburg and was part of East Prussia in Germany. This massacre took place as part of a larger ethnic cleansing of some eight million Germans from the eastern territories of Germany in 1945 and 1946. Der Spiegel has the full story in English at the address below.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,600216,00.html

The New Semester Begins

I got back to Bishkek yesterday okay, but my luggage did not. It is still on holiday in London. When I got back I found out we had no electricity in my flat. But, I managed to get that fixed yesterday. Today I taught my first class of the new semester, Politics of Genocide. Tomorrow I teach Political History of the USSR and Migration and Borders. Despite lots of little third world problems, life in Bishkek is very good. I have an enjoyable job, a wonderful girlfriend, and a conveniently located apartment.

Going back to Bishkek

This afternoon I am flying back to Bishkek. My three week vacation in the US went really fast. I had a great time.

Migration and Borders Syllabus

Migration and Borders
ICP 329.5
3 credits
International and Comparative Politics
American University of Central Asia
Fall Semester 2009
J. Otto Pohl, Ph.D.


Meeting Time: Tuesday and Thursday 10:50 am

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

Requirements: The course will consist of assigned readings, lectures, discussion, short writing assignments, an oral report and a research paper. Students will be required to write three 600 to 800 word reflection papers. They will have to write one paper on each of the three types of migration covered in this course: labor migration, forced migration and return migration. Each of these papers should engage with one or more of the readings assigned for the topic. They will also have to write a 2500 to 3000 word essay on one specific case of migration. The paper is due the last week of class. In the five 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. Please see the separate handout on late papers. Students must come to class on time. Being more than fifteen minutes late will count as an absence. Students will lose one letter grade after four unexcused absences and fail the course after seven. Written proof of an emergency from a doctor or other appropriate authority is required for an absence to be excused. No mobile phones are to be visible during class. They are to be out of sight and turned off. I will eject any student from class that has a visible cell phone or whose cell phone rings during class. This will count as an unexcused absence. Finally, I have a significant hearing loss and may have to ask people to repeat their questions or statements from time to time. You can minimize this by speaking loudly and clearly. This syllabus is tentative and subject to change.

Readings: All of the required readings are included in the course packet.

Policy on Plagiarism and Citations: I have a zero tolerance policy regarding plagiarism. If I catch any student plagiarizing once I will fail them from the course and recommend to the chairman of the ICP department that they be expelled from the program. Plagiarism includes any verbatim copying of from a source without using quotation marks or setting the text up as an indented single spaced block quotation. If I find that more than four words in a row in your paper show up in the same order in a Google search and you do not have the words in quotation marks or set up as a block quotation I will fail you. Putting a footnote, end note or other citation after the copied words without the quotation marks or block quotation form is still plagiarism, you are claiming to have paraphrased verbatim text, and you will still receive an F for the course and be recommended for expulsion from ICP. Taking text from a source without citing it and rearranging the words so that it does not show up in a verbatim Google search is also plagiarism. I will also do Google searches to see if you have taken text and merely rearranged the words. You must either paraphrase the sentence by putting it completely in your own words and citing it with the proper footnote, end note or in text citation or quote the actual text verbatim complete with the proper citation. Completely paraphrasing sentences in your own words, but neglecting to cite the source of the information is also plagiarism. All information that would not be known to the average person on the street with no university education must be cited. When in doubt always cite a legitimate source. Wikipedia is not a legitimate source. Books published by university presses and academic journal articles found on JSTOR are legitimate sources. Other sources may or may not be legitimate. If you have questions about whether a particular source is legitimate you can ask me. Using Wikipedia or other illegitimate sources will result in a reduction of one letter grade for each citation in a paper.


Grading:

Three Short Papers – 45% (15% each)

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

Oral report on research – 15%

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

Crossing the Border

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

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

Labor Migration

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

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

Ethnic Cleansing

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

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

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

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

Ethnic “Return” Migration

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

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

Week Twelve: Read Rainer Ohliger and Rainer Munz, “Minorities into Migrants: Making and Un-Making Central and Eastern Europe’s Ethnic German Diasporas,” Diaspora, vol. 11, no. 1 (2002), pp. 45-83. Watch the documentary, Through the Red Gate. The third paper is due Thursday.

Student Research

Week Thirteen: Student oral presentations.

Week Fourteen: Student oral presentations.

Week Fifteen: Student oral presentations.

Week Sixteen: Student oral presentations continued.

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

Political History of the USSR Syllabus

Political History of the USSR
ICP 255
3 Credits
International and Comparative Politics
American University Central Asia
Spring Semester 2009
J. Otto Pohl, Ph.D.


Meeting Time: Tuesday and Thursday 2:10 pm.

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

Requirements: The course will consist of assigned readings, lectures, discussions, short writing assignments, and a research paper. There will be two short 600 to 800 word papers due. The first one will be on collectivization and dekulakization. The second one will be on some aspect of World War II in the Soviet Union. Students will also have to complete a 1400 to 2000 word research paper on the history of their family in the USSR. Students may substitute a research paper on a different subject in consultation with the instructor. This paper is due the last week of class. All late papers will lose ten percent for each day they are late. Please see the separate handout regarding late papers. 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: The primary text book for this class is Geoffry Hosking’s, The First Socialist Society: The History of the Soviet Union from Within (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). In addition to this book there are a number of shorter readings that will be provided to the students by the instructor.

Plagiarism Policy: I have a zero tolerance policy regarding plagiarism. If I catch any student plagiarizing once I will fail them from the course and recommend to the chairman of the ICP department that they be expelled from the program. Plagiarism includes any verbatim copying of from a source without using quotation marks or setting the text up as an indented single spaced block quotation. If I find that more than four words in a row in your paper show up in the same order in a Google search and you do not have the words in quotation marks or set up as a block quotation I will fail you. Putting a footnote, end note or other citation after the copied words without the quotation marks or block quotation form is still plagiarism, you are claiming to have paraphrased verbatim text, and you will still receive an F for the course and be recommended for expulsion from ICP. Taking text from a source without citing it and rearranging the words so that it does not show up in a verbatim Google search is also plagiarism. I will also do Google searches to see if you have taken text and merely rearranged the words. You must either paraphrase the sentence by putting it completely in your own words and citing it with the proper footnote, end note or in text citation or quote the actual text verbatim complete with the proper citation. Completely paraphrasing sentences in your own words, but neglecting to cite the source of the information is also plagiarism. All information that would not be known to the average person on the street with no university education must be cited. When in doubt always cite a legitimate source. Wikipedia is not a legitimate source. Books published by university presses and academic journal articles found on JSTOR are legitimate sources. Other sources may or may not be legitimate. If you have questions about whether a particular source is legitimate you can ask me. Using Wikipedia or other illegitimate sources will result in a reduction of one letter grade for each citation in a paper.

Grading:

Two short papers - 40% (20% each)

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

Class participation – 30%

Grading Scale:

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

Class Schedule

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

Week Two: The Bolshevik Revolution.

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

Week Three: War Communism

Chapter 3 in Hosking, pp. 57-92.

Week Four: The 1920-1921 Famine

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

Week Five: Nationality Policy during the 1920s

Chapter 4 in Hosking, pp. 93-118 and read Yuri Slezkine, “The USSR as Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism,” Slavic Review, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Summer 1994), pp. 414-452.

Week Six: Economic Transformation in the 1930s.

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

Week Seven: Destruction of the “Kulaks”

Read: Lynne Viola, “The Other Archipelago: Kulak Deportations to the North in 1930,” Slavic Review, Vol. 60, no. 4 (winter 2001), pp. 730-755. Watch the video, Through the Red Gate. The first paper is due on Thursday.

Week Eight: The Great Terror

Chapter 7 in Hosking, pp. 183-204 and read James Morris, “The Polish Terror: Spy Mania and Ethnic Cleansing in the Great Terror,” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 56, No. 5 (July 2004), pp. 751-766.

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

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

Week Ten: World War II

Chapter 10 in Hosking, pp. 263-295.

Week Eleven: World War II Continued

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

Week Twelve: Late Stalinism

Chapter 11 in Hosking, pp. 296-325 and read Nicolas Werth, “The ‘Chechen problem’: Handling an Awkward Legacy, 1918-1958,” Contemporary European History, no. 15, 2006, pp. 347-366. The second paper is due on Thursday.

Week Thirteen: Khrushchev

Chapter 12 in Hosking, pp. 326-362.

Week Fourteen: The Era of Stagnation

Chapter 13 in Hosking, pp. 363-401 and read H.M. Joo, “Voices of Freedom: Samizdat,” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 56, No. 4, June 2004, pp. 571-594.

Week Fifteen: Nationality in the USSR after World War II

Chapter 14 in Hosking, pp. 402-445 and read Anatoly Khazanov, “People with Nowhere to Go: The Plight of the Meskhetian Turks,” (chapter 7) in After the USSR: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Politics in the Commonwealth of Independent States (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), pp. 192-210.

Week Sixteen: The End of the Soviet Union

Chapter 15 in Hosking, pp. 446-501.

Week Seventeen: Research paper due and concluding remarks.

Syllabus for Politics of Genocide

Politics of Genocide
ICP 425
3 Credits
International and Comparative Politics
American University Central Asia
Fall Semester 2009
J. Otto Pohl, Ph.D.

Meeting Time: Monday and Wednesday 9:25 am

Course Description: This course will focus on genocide in the 20th century. The first weeks will cover the theoretical and legal aspects of genocide studies. From the third week to the tenth week the class will focus on specific case studies. The exact emphasis of each week’s reading will be determined by the students. I have only provided broad categories based upon perpetrators rather than victims. Within these categories students will choose the exact material covered with my approval.

Requirements: This course will revolve around class discussion based upon readings chosen by the students. Each week from week three to week ten, students will lead discussion on readings they have chosen. All readings must be approved by me at least a week before the scheduled discussion. All the students in the class and not just those presenting that week are required to read these selections. The students leading discussion must submit a written paper between 1500 and 2000 words on the subject on the same day. Every student will be required to select class readings, lead discussion and submit a paper on the readings once. In addition all students will be required to write a 3000 to 3500 word research paper on one case of genocide. They will be required to give an oral presentation on this research in one of the last five weeks of class. All late papers will lose ten percent for each day they are late. Please see the separate handout regarding late papers. 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: I will provide students with the readings for week two. For all other weeks, the readings will be selected by the students. The students doing the selection should make sure that the readings are available to the entire class. The easiest way to do this is to select journal articles from JSTOR or EBSCOHOST.

Plagiarism Policy: Policy on Plagiarism and Citations: I have a zero tolerance policy regarding plagiarism. If I catch any student plagiarizing once I will fail them from the course and recommend to the chairman of the ICP department that they be expelled from the program. Plagiarism includes any verbatim copying of from a source without using quotation marks or setting the text up as an indented single spaced block quotation. If I find that more than four words in a row in your paper show up in the same order in a Google search and you do not have the words in quotation marks or set up as a block quotation I will fail you. Putting a footnote, end note or other citation after the copied words without the quotation marks or block quotation form is still plagiarism, you are claiming to have paraphrased verbatim text, and you will still receive an F for the course and be recommended for expulsion from ICP. Taking text from a source without citing it and rearranging the words so that it does not show up in a verbatim Google search is also plagiarism. I will also do Google searches to see if you have taken text and merely rearranged the words. You must either paraphrase the sentence by putting it completely in your own words and citing it with the proper footnote, end note or in text citation or quote the actual text verbatim complete with the proper citation. Completely paraphrasing sentences in your own words, but neglecting to cite the source of the information is also plagiarism. All information that would not be known to the average person on the street with no university education must be cited. When in doubt always cite a legitimate source. Wikipedia is not a legitimate source. Books published by university presses and academic journal articles found on JSTOR are legitimate sources. Other sources may or may not be legitimate. If you have questions about whether a particular source is legitimate you can ask me. Using Wikipedia or other illegitimate sources will result in a reduction of one letter grade for each citation in a paper.

Grading:

First Paper – 20%

Leading Class Discussion – 10%

Final Paper – 30%

Final Oral Report – 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: Theory and International Law

Read: Robert M. Hayden, “Schindler’s Fate: Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and Population Transfers,” Slavic Review, Vol. 55, No. 4 (Winter 1996), pp. 727-748, Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 1-40, and Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan, “The Study of Mass Murder and Genocide,” in Gellately and Kiernan, eds., The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 3-26.

Week Three: The Colonial World

Week Four: The Ottoman Empire

Week Five: The USSR in the 1930s

Week Six: Nazi Germany

Week Seven: The USSR in the 1940s

Week Eight: Cambodia

Week Nine: Yugoslavia

Week Ten: Rwanda

Weeks Eleven to Fifteen: Student Oral Reports.

New Link

In the interest of reciprocity I am adding a link to Fear and Loathing in Georgetown to my blog roll.

Pay It Forward

Today I was in Borders Books buying a few more tomes before returning to Bishkek. I was in the history section holding two large books when an older gentleman approached me. The books by the way were Michael Geyer and Sheila Fitzpatrick, eds., Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared (New York: Cambridge University Press), 2009 and Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. He asked me if I intended to purchase the books I was holding. I informed him that I did indeed intend to buy them. The man then told me he was going to do me a favor. Not wishing to be rude I politely listened to him. He took out a sheet of paper with official Borders writing on it and said he had a discount of 40% on any single book purchased. He said he would give it to me if I later did a favor for a stranger. I readily agreed and he handed me the sheet. The book by Kiernan cost $40, so I saved $16. When I get back to Bishkek I will be on the look out for a complete stranger to help.

Through the Red Gate

This is the first review and recommendation of a completed film ever on this blog. Under Jakob's Ladder is still in the production stage. As a general rule I have not been very impressed with the medium of film recently. Through the Red Gate, however, is a very welcome exception to this trend. My only complaint about the film is that is too short. It is only about 45 minutes. Its subject matter, the fate of Mennonites in the USSR during collectivization and dekulakization, could easily sustain several hours of informative documentation. The documentary is centered around interviews with surviving members of the Bargen and Regehr families who lived through the Stalin regime's campaign to "liquidate the kulaks as a class." The Bargen family left the USSR as part of the last batch of 5,461 Mennonites legally allowed to leave the USSR by the Soviet government near the end of 1929 (1). The Regehr family in contrast was not so lucky. The OGPU deported them to a special settlement village in the Urals in the summer of 1931. The two families are related and during the 1930s the Regehrs managed to smuggle out of the USSR a large number of letters to the Bargens in Canada. Many of these letters have been published in English translation in Ruth Derksen Siemens, Remember US: Letters from Stalin's Gulag (1930-37) Volume One: The Regehr Family (Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press, 2007). This surviving contemporary record along with personal memories of the events gives the documentary a strong primary source base. I intend to show this documentary to both my Political History of the USSR and my Migration and Borders classes next semester. For more information on the documentary and the related book see the excellent website of Dr. Ruth Derksen Siemens.

Cited Sources

1. Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 320.

I have Sympathy for the Devil, but not for Israel

One very nice thing about living overseas is that unlike in the US you are not subject to constant media bombardment praising every action of Israel and condemning all criticism of Israel as antisemitism.

Burgers in California

One of the things that Americans take for granted that does not exist in Kyrgyzstan is ready and cheap access to a wide variety of good burgers. Since returning to the US to visit family I have eaten four burgers. In order they were from Carl's Junior, Ruby's, McDonald's and In and Out. Obviously the one from Ruby's was the best. But, for a little over two dollars including tax, the one from In and Out was surprisingly very good.

Back from Arivaca

Yesterday I arrived back in California after a week in Arivaca, Arizona. My talk at the Arivaca library on daily life in Bishkek went well. About twenty people showed up for the presentation.