Another Post on Racism in the USSR and its Similarities to South Africa

The Soviet government never categorized people by biological categories of race based upon genetics like the Nazis. But, this does not excuse them from the accusation of racial discrimination. The white minority government in South Africa also did not categorize people on the basis of biological categories. It too used the language of culture, ethnicity, and volk (narodnost) rather than biology and genetics. Yet people like Francine Hirsch and Amir Weiner claim that the Stalin regime's deportation of whole nationalities was not racial discrimination because the government categorized the targeted groups in terms of natsional'nost rather than biological race. Using this logic apartheid was not racial discrimination either since the regime in Pretoria defined people to different 'racial' groups according to a concept of cultural essentialism not much different than the official Soviet and post-Soviet understanding of ethnicity. Despite a linkage of South Africa with Nazi Germany in the minds of many Americans, the white minority government was always careful to justify apartheid in terms that sounded very similar to Soviet rhetoric regarding their own nationality policies. The South Africans spoke of culture and levels of material development, much like the Soviets did, not skin color as the criteria that distinguished different groups of people. The sciences behind South African racism were the same ones behind Soviet nationality policy, anthropology and sociology, not biology and genetics as in the case of the Nazis. Yet, the world properly understood that apartheid was a system of racial discrimination. Unfortunately, it does not appear that the dominant scholars of Soviet nationality policies in the US will ever recognize the mass deportations of whole nationalities in the 1930s and 40s and the imposition of severe legal restrictions upon the deportees as acts of racial discrimination.

Report on Winneba Conference Published on Web

A report on the conference I attended in Winneba earlier this semester has now been published. Jan-Bart Gewald of the African Studies Centre in Leiden, Netherlands wrote the report on the conference on German Colonialism in West Africa: Implications for German-West African Partnership in Development that can be found here. Given that this was my first ever paper on an African subject I thought his write up on my own work was very encouraging.

Work Stuff

Today was a very warm Sunday in Legon. I had to go get my first set of exams printed up for tomorrow this morning, but it only took five minutes. I spent most of the rest of the day walking, eating, sleeping, and reading. I have started reading about the Ewe unification movement. It turns out that the British policy of partition had bad effects in West Africa as well as in Palestine, Ireland, and India. Now that classes are over I just have to administer and grade final exams and finish revising a journal article with a due date in mid-December. Then I will be free of any work obligations until the start of next semester at the beginning of February.

Giving up Obruni Foods

I have decided until I return to Obrunistan, and who knows when that will be, I am not going to eat any more White People foods. They are on the order of seven to eight times more expensive than African foods here. They are also not nearly as good. So I have been trying to eat a greater variety of Ghanaian foods and not just the red red and chicken, banku and tilapia, kenkey and fried fish, wakeye and chicken, fufu and goat, and jollof rice, chicken, and coleslaw that has made up most of my diet here for the last year. Last night I had tuo zaafi for the first time. Apparently it is porridge made out of some type of grain, either millet or sorghum I think. They served it with a brown soup with leaves in it and a red palm oil based broth and salmon. To be honest it was not my favorite, although the salmon in spicy palm oil part was pretty good. The next experiment went better. Today for lunch I finally had omo tuo or rice balls. They came in a combination of soups, one of which was quite spicy just like I like it, and with a piece of chicken. It was very good. I probably won't order the tuo zaafi a whole lot in the future. But, I will definitely be eating more omo tuo, especially since five rice balls only cost one cedi.

...and When They Shall Ask

I just finished watching a film on Mennonites in the Russian Empire and the USSR called ...and When They Shall Ask. Henry Epp in Canada was kind enough to send me the film on DVD. I believe this film has great pedagogical potential. I have had very good luck with showing Through the Red Gate, another film dealing with the Mennonite experience in the USSR, to students. I think these films do a very good job in dealing with the type of historical issues I like to address. They provide a number of first person perspectives on things like migration, diaspora, industrialization, and historical memory. I have noticed a disturbing trend by many "intellectuals" in the US to completely dismiss the oral documentation of the first hand experiences of people like the Russian Mennonites as merely "Cold War propaganda" rather than as valuable primary sources. But, I would note that the oral history of these refugees is far more valuable for understanding what really happened in the USSR than the government and party archives that Soviet authorities collected. Unfortunately, the established academic authorities believe that only official archives constitute legitimate primary sources for the study of national minorities in the USSR and completely discount oral history.

Giving Thanks to Mother Africa

Today I am very thankful that I am able to provide for my family and that my daughter is healthy and growing. I am thankful to Mother Africa for providing me with a job that allows me to send them enough money to pay for necessities. Africa has given me an academic career and respect as a human being, teacher, and scholar that I have not been able to find elsewhere. Here I am accepted as an equal not an inferior. I know that a lot of negative stereotypes still exist in the US and elsewhere about Africa. But, Africa is where human kind first developed. When Richard Pryor found this out he vowed never to use the "N" word again. Thus in a metaphorical sense Africa is the homeland of all men. It is now my home in a real sense. For that I give thanks.

Quotation of the Day

I agree with Solzhenitsyn that without repentance, we cannot change ourselves or our society. We must feel responsibility for our history. Who was it who made Stalin's terror? It was we - our  fathers - and we must now pay for our fathers. But this is repulsive to most people. They want to blame others. They accuse Jews or someone else. They do not want to accept responsibility.

Andrei Smirnov, Film Director, March 1990
Quoted in Hedrick Smith, The New Russians (New York: Avon Books, 1991), p. 121.

A cultural difference between academia in Africa and California

At the University of Ghana we use hot peppers to season food. At the University of California Davis they evidently spray it in peoples' eyes. I will leave it to my readers to judge which of the two places is more civilized.

Writing for the world's smallest audience

I am starting to get the feeling that nobody takes anything I write seriously. It is true that the ideas I express on this blog are completely outside the mainstream of US academia. But, things like the continued denial that Soviet policy under Stalin towards groups such as the Russian-Germans, Russian-Koreans, Kalmyks, Chechens, and Crimean Tatars constituted racial discrimination and genocide seem completely untenable. I guess the whole point of having an Ivory Tower is to completely isolate yourself from dissenting ideas.

More on Racism in the USSR

Despite the Soviet claims to the contrary racism always existed in the Soviet Union and not just in an unofficial underground fashion. The broad social racism expressed against certain groups drew its inspiration from official institutionalized discrimination endorsed from the top down. The Soviets and many Western apologists have tried to skirt this issue by claiming that the victimized groups were not "races", but "nationalities." Nobody brought this trick when the South Africans tried it, although most American liberals buy it when the Israelis pull it. This defense appears to be based completely upon the official terminology used by the regime itself uses rather than any empirical analysis of the actual function of the category and the practice of the regime. I can only assume that the people making this argument are well aware of how weak it is in reality and making it for reasons that have nothing to do with attachment to the truth.

Black Russians

Recently I have been reading about the small Afro-Russian population in the USSR. They are generally referred to as part of the Black Diaspora. But, unlike Blacks elsewhere outside of Africa, the Afro-Russians during the Soviet period seemed to have largely lacked some of the key components of being a diaspora. They did not seem to have any real connections with Africa, not even sentimental ties. Instead they seemed to be completely acculturated into Russian society on the surface including being legally classified as Russians in many cases on line five of their identification documents. They were of course subject to unofficial racial discrimination based upon their skin color and a presumption that they did not belong to the USSR. This outsider status was shared with a host of other groups in the USSR, most of which were also subject to varying degrees of official racialized discrimination as well as a broader social exclusion by Soviet society. This marginalization of course created an identification of being different by virtue of being Black, but there was no sense of a larger Afro-Russian community. There were a few villages in Abkhazia of people descended of African slaves that had become completely acculturated into the Abkhaz. But, most other Black Soviet citizens did not belong to any larger Afro-Russian community. They lived as dispersed individuals throughout the USSR in mixed race families with a White mother. They experienced racism thus entirely as individuals rather than as members of distinct communities. There is not an alternative word in the literature to replace diaspora when referring to Black Russians, however, I think the amorphous nature of this population makes them distinct from other Soviet diaspora groups such the Germans, Jews, Koreans, and Greeks.

What it is ain't exactly clear

It looks like the civil unrest in the US has finally been put down by law enforcement, apparently with some degree of violence.  I don't recall such problems in the US during the three decades I lived there. It seems that there have been substantial changes in the US while I have been out of the country. But, to be honest I find them difficult to comprehend. Maybe somebody could explain to me what has happened in America while I have been gone?

Where and What to Eat on Campus Part II

Legon Hall was the first residency hall built at the University of Ghana. It is also the one closest to my office. Its dining hall is pretty good. Senior members have their own section with waiters. Legon has good red red, wakeye, kenkey with fish and pepper, and fufu and goat in groundnut soup each for five cedis are less. In particular the dining hall has the best kenkey and wakeye on campus. They seem to be known for their kenkey. Like everywhere else in Ghana the portions are quite large. So I have taken to telling them to only give me one kenkey with my fish and pepper rather than the two they normally serve.

The Basement is a restaurant on the ground floor not in the basement of the old Central Cafeteria building which is now used mostly for lectures and religious services. They have the best red red on campus. They put sardines and those little green chilies in the beans. Their jollof rice and chicken is not bad, but I have found the soups they serve with their fufu to be noticeably less tasty than other places on campus. Their prices are around 4.50 cedis per a meal. But, adding a beverage moves the total cost up close to six cedis.

Akuafo Hall has an inexpensive dining hall and their chicken, jollof rice, fried rice, and red red are all decent. You can get a full meal for for about 3.50 cedis. You get your food from the counter rather than from a waiter so its also fast. But, overall the food is not as good as at Legon.

Supervision

I just got assigned as an additional supervisor to two PhD students who are in the middle of writing up their dissertations. They each now have five supervisors. Both of the dissertations deal with ethnic conflict in north eastern Ghana.

Arkhangelsk and the Labor Army

One of the topics that Suprun was doing research on that upset the Russian authorities enough to arrest him and put him on trial was the fate of Russian-German prisoners and labor army conscripts in Arkhangelsk. There was a corrective labor camp in Arkhangelsk during World War II devoted to the construction of a cellulose-paper complex. The camp was open from October 1940 until November 1944 except for a brief period from February to December 1942. The Soviet government employed a number of Russian-German labor army conscripts, almost all of them women, in the construction of the cellulose-paper combine as well as in other work such as lumber preparation. The first column is the total number of prisoners at the camp. The second column is the number of Russian-German women conscripted into the labor army and sent to the region to work.

Date                     Number of Prisoners  Labor Army Conscripts
January 1943        2,282                                       ----
July 1943              unknown                                  744
January 1944        1,649                                       722
November 1944    1,902                                      711
January 1945        ------                                        372

Source: A.A. German, "Sovetskie nemtsy v lageriakh NKVD v gody Velikoi Otchestvennoi: Vklad v pobedy," Voenno-istoricheskie issledovaniia v Povolzh'e, Sb. Nauch. (Saratov: Izd-Vo: "Nauchnaia kniga," 2006), Issue no. 7, p. 293.

Another Labor Army Document

Here is another document on the mobilization of Russian-Germans into the labor army. The translation from Russian to English is my own.

To Deputy Chief of the Special Settlement Section of the NKVD USSR Captain of State Security com.[rade] Konradov

April 1942   

 Mobilized according to the resolution of the State Committee for Defense No. 1123ss from 10 January 1942 into work columns Germans were moved to the following construction sites and camps of the NKVD:

1.  Bakalstroi - 11,772 men
2.  Ivdellag    -  12,899
3. Sevurrallag -    8441
4. Usol'lag      -    4940
5. Viatlag       -     6800
6. Kraslag      -     5084
7. Bogoslovstroi - 6900
8. Solikamstroi  -  2396
9. Tavdinlag      -  1918
10.  (point ten is missing from document)
11. Taglistroi       - 2870

    Total   -    67,961

     During the course of March were mobilized according to resolution of the GKO 1281ss from 14 February 1942 mobilized into work columns Germans moved to:

1. Construction of the railroad Sviazhsk-Ul'ianovsk - 17,823 men
2. Bakalstroi  -  14,752
3. Bogoslovstroi   -    5,411
4. Umal'stroi  -    952
5. Tagilstroi  -     501
6. Sevzheldorlag  -  900
7. Kraslag -   339
8. Solikamstroi  -  141 
9. Viatlag  -        45

               Total                         - 40,864

      Of this number on 9th April arrived at their place 7400 men. Found in transit 22,000 men. The remainder will also be dispatched in a day or two as arranged. 

Chief 2nd section GULAG NKVD USSR Captain of State Security Granovskii

Source: N.F. Bugai, ed., "Mobilizovat' nemtsev v rabochie kolonny...I. Stalin" Sbornik dokumentov (1940-e gody). (Moscow: Gotika, 1998), doc. 47, pp. 70-71.

End of Year Wrap Up

I have now finished teaching classes for the semester. Next week is revision week followed by exams. I have some revision deadlines of my own to meet during the next month. I have a revise and resubmit for a journal article as well as a book chapter that needs to be revised. I will start in earnest on these projects on Monday.

This semester went fairly well. I think the students learned something. I seem to be able to transfer knowledge from my head to their heads without too much difficulty. I am still not sure why everybody before 2007 said I was incapable of ever teaching because I had not taught before.

Where and What to Eat on Campus Part I

The cheapest place to eat hands down is the Bush Canteens. I am not sure if it is technically on campus, but it is at least adjacent to it. For a mere two cedis you can get a large fufu, a piece of meat (chicken, fish, goat, or beef) and light soup or groundnut soup. The only drawback is it is a bit of a walk away from my house and office.

Also cheap and a little closer and also near the grocery store and bank is the night market. You can get a couple scoops of jollof rice, a piece of chicken, salad, sauce, and pepper for between two and four cedis here. So far I have avoided buying a rice cooker because cooked and seasoned rice is still quite cheap here.

Wiltex is the closest place to eat from the history department. The most expensive thing on the menu is tilapia with pepper at four and a half cedis. If you throw in a ball of banku and a beverage it goes up to six. The cheapest thing is the fufu. You can get two fufus and a piece of goat in light soup for two and a half cedis. Finally, you can get a big plate of jolloff rice, fried rice, sausage in gravy, sauce, spaghetti, chicken, and steamed cabbage for less than five cedis. Their pineapple juice goes well with everything.

Response to an Old Friend

I thought it better to respond here than in the comments since it was such a long comment. Also I have not heard from Ben for a long time. So I think its only fair to give his statement a considered response. After all I still consider him a good friend even if it has been many years since I last saw him in person. The problem is not that he is wrong. He is actually right about most things. But, I still ended up wasting a big chunk of my life before I got here because I believed the lie propagated by academia that the only thing that counts is publications and that teaching is not considered important by universities. That turned out not to be true. You can argue I have nobody to blame but, myself for what happened. However, that just makes it worse because then I feel like an idiot for wasting so much time and effort.

OK, my friend Ben has a point that I do not think the people who control academia in the US gave me a fair shake. They did not. But, it is in the past even if nothing is forgotten and nothing will be forgotten. I think he is wrong about ideology playing no role what so ever. I have gotten a number of peer review reports claiming flat out that there was never any racial discrimination in the USSR under Stalin. This is different from people saying Stalin was a good guy. But, there is a very strong resistance led by people like Francine Hirsch to admitting that racism was ever an official practice against any group in the USSR other than Jews. However, all things considered it is probably only a minor factor as to why I failed to even get an interview in the US from 2004 to 2007.

The lack of teaching experience is directly tied with having a British degree. I am not sure why taking a long time to finish a PhD is considered a virtue. But, the problem is that a US citizen with a British PhD can't work in the UK or Canada very easily because they have laws giving preference to EU citizens and Canadian citizens before they even consider US citizens. At the same time since there is no teaching component to a UK degree you are effectively banned forever from working at a US university. This I did not know at the time because there is a barrage of propaganda claiming that publications are what are considered important not teaching. Nobody told me at the time that Africa was a possibility. Although to be honest part of this last failure is my own lack of imagination.

I am happy to be working in Africa. I am very happy to have fathered a child with a wonderful woman while in Kyrgyzstan. I hope to bring them here as soon as possible. Had I arrived where I am at now without being constantly mistreated, ignored, and disrespected I would have no complaints. But, even though I am in a very good position now I got here through a rather rocky road. If I was a better man I would have sucked it up and taken it. But, we all have our weaknesses. Currently, I plan to stay in Africa for a very long time. I have no real desire to go work in the US right now.  I don't see this changing in the foreseeable future. Like many other Americans to come to Ghana I feel alienated from mainstream American society. In particular I feel alienated from American academic society and culture. Ghanaian academia has been much more accepting of me than they could ever be.

New Syllabi

We are currently revising the curriculum. I will be designing syllabi for the history of the USSR, the history of Central Asia under Russian and Soviet rule, and a history of migration course. We have two Americanists and several Africanists, but I am the only Orientalist. If anybody has any suggestions of other courses I could offer please let me know in the comments.

More databases on Russian-German Labor Army Conscripts

I have found two more databases that list names of Russian-Germans conscripted into the labor army during World War II. The first is a list of 7,353 names from Tagilag. The second is a list of 20,711 names from Bogoslovlag. You have to enter the information of the person you are looking to find and the sites are in Russian. Earlier I posted a database for Usol'lag. I still have not found a database for Solikamlag.

hat tip: Ted Gerk

Come to Africa (A Response to Tony Grafton): Part I

Something very unusual has happened. I have been tagged by Historiann to write a piece on the failures of higher education. In particular in response to the recent article written by Tony Grafton. Almost everything written on this subject deals with either the US or to a lesser extent the UK. These are two countries I have never taught in. Although I do have my PhD from the UK which is one of the reasons I am for all practical purposes banned from ever teaching at a US university.  Instead all of my teaching experience has been in Asia and Africa.

I do not like writing long blog posts. That is what writing books is about. So I am going to do my contribution as a series of shorter posts. This will give me time to think about what I am writing and more importantly give my few readers time to absorb my random thoughts.

For a long time African PhDs left the continent to go work in the US, Canada, the UK, or Europe. Now that brain drain is starting to reverse. While history departments are shrinking in much of the English speaking world, one place it has been growing is at the University of Ghana. This year the department has hired six new people. Of these six I am the only one with a PhD not from the US. Other departments such as philosophy have also recently hired scholars from North America as well. So now there exists the first trickles of a brain drain of people with doctorates in the humanities from the US to Africa.

When I first got my PhD from SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) and returned to the US, I applied to over 300 universities in the US and did not get a single interview despite having two books and a number of peer reviewed journal articles published. What I learned is that publications do not count for anything in the hiring process. The only things that count are personal connections and ideological viewpoints. If you believe like I do for instance that racial discrimination was an official policy of the Stalin regime towards groups such as the Russian-Koreans and Russian-Germans you will find it nearly impossible to find a job at a US university. There are ideological gatekeepers. If I had been smart I would not have bothered to apply to any US institutions. It was merely a waste of time, effort, and postage. I should have been applying to schools in Africa.

So while I was the first to arrive here in January 2011, I am not the last.  I suspect that a lot of other qualified historians and others will find Africa an attractive place to work. Here I do not have to worry about ideological litmus tests. Here my publications actually count for something. Here I only have to teach two preps and four sections a semester. But, I get paid extra for the two sections I teach at City Campus. I know the University of Ghana does not yet have the international prestige of most large US universities. However, unlike many US universities, the University of Ghana like Ghana as a whole is on the way up. In contrast it looks like higher education as a whole in the US is in decline.

Another Publication in Print

Another encyclopedia article I wrote years ago has finally seen print this year. I wrote an entry on deported peoples in the USSR for The Encyclopedia of Migration and Minorities in Europe from the 17th Century to the Present Day published by Cambridge University Press this year. That makes six encyclopedia articles published this semester. I wonder if anybody other than the editors will ever read any of them?

The Vandals Elect a New Chief

Today apparently the Vandals initiated a new chief. This involved the typical Vandal behavior of parading around singing in Twi. It also involved two naked guys covering themselves with soap lather and running around. One of the naked guys frequently would stop to stand on his head. If anybody has a deeper knowledge of Vandal culture than me and can explain the ritual that went on today please leave your remarks in the comments. The other residency halls do not seem to engage in any comparable bizarre rituals.

Books I checked out yesterday

Seymour Becker, Russia's Protectorates in Central Asia: Bukhara and Khiva, 1865-1924 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968).

George Jabbour, Settler Colonialism in Southern Africa and the Middle East, (Khartoum, Sudan and Beirut, Lebanon: University of Khartoum and Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center, 1970).

Labor Camps with the Largest Contingents of Russian-Germans Mobilized into the Labor Army

The camps are list alphabetically according to the Cyrillic alphabet. Only the dozen largest by population of mobilized Russian-Germans are included below.

Bakalstroi (Chelyabinsk Oblast), industrial construction, 28,134 in January 1942

Bogoslov (Sverdlovsk Oblast), industrial construction, 12,758 in January 1942

Volzhlag (Ul'ianovsk Oblast), railroad construction, 16,712 in January 1942

Vorkuta (Arkhangelsk Oblast), coal mining, 6,873 in January 1944

Vosturallag (Sverdlovsk Oblast), lumber preparation, 5,252 in January 1942

Viatlag (Kirov oblast), mining and lumber prepartation, 5,444 in January 1942

 Ivdellag (Sverdlovsk Oblast), lumber preparation, 12,347 in January 1942

Kraslag (Krasnoiarsk Krai), lumber preparation, 5,313 in January 1942

Sevzheldorlag (Komi ASSR), railroad construction, 5,727 in April 1942

Sevurallag (Sverdlovsk Oblast), forest preparation, 4,262 in April 1942

Solikamsk (Molotov Oblast), industrial construction, 9,126 in January 1942

Usol'lag (Molotov Oblast), lumber preparation, 6,004 in January 1942

Source: A.A. German and A.N. Kurochkin, Nemtsy SSSR v "Trudovoi armii" . Moscow, 1998, pp. 163-169.

The War Against Plagiarism Opens a New Front

I was hoping against all odds that plagiarism would not be a problem here. But, I have just found eight repeat offenders. So I am going to have to bring down the hammer here. Fortunately, it is only a problem during mid-terms since finals are properly proctored.

Textbook Assignments

This semester I assigned Robert Gellately's Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe (London: Vintage Books, 2008) as the main text for my Aspects of World History 1914-1945. I am teaching the class next semester and debating whether I should continue with the Gellately or assign Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. Even though it is a 400 level class I am not sure if I could get a way with assigning them both to read. Right now the reading burden is about 75 pages a week which is a lot more than most other lecturers here assign. If I assigned both texts then the total amount of reading would be around 125 pages a week. This includes four journal articles in addition to the two books. Does anybody have any suggestions? Should I stick with Gellately, switch to Snyder, or try and get students to read them both?

Who Does Not Read this Blog Part II

I am pretty sure that nobody writing for any of the popular blogs on the Internet has ever read this blog.

More on Solikamstroi

Solikamstroi also known as Solikambumstroi or Solikamlag was a corrective labor camp devoted primarily to industrial construction. Located in Molotov (Perm) Oblast the camp centered around the building of a cellulose-paper combine and operated from January 1939 until the summer of 1946. The camp employed both convicted prisoners and Russian-Germans mobilized into labor army detachments. The population for each group confined at the camp is listed below for each January. After discharging them from the labor army in 1946, the NKVD assigned the Russian-Germans in the camp to continue working  in the enterprises formerly part of the Solikamsk ITL and placed them under special settlement restrictions.

1942 10,531 prisoners and 9,126 mobilized Germans
1943   5,986 prisoners and 9,089 mobilized Germans
1944   2,343 prisoners and 6,027 mobilized Germans
1945   9,123 prisoners and 5,980 mobilized German
1946  1,556 prisoners and  an unknown number of mobilized Germans

Source: A.A. German, "Sovetskie nemtsy v lageriakh NKVD v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny: Vklad v pobedy ," Voenno-istoricheskie issledovania v Povolzh'e, Sb. Nauch. (Saratov: Izd-vo: "Nauchnaia kniga," 2006), Issue no. 7, pp. 301-302.