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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.