Current small writing project

This winter is the 70th anniversary of  Stalin's mass deportation of four small Muslim nations from the North Caucasus to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The first were the nearly 70,000 Karachais on 2 November 1943. This was followed by the deportation of nearly 500,000 Chechens and Ingush (Vainakh) from their Caucasian homeland to areas of special settlement in Central Asia on 23-29 February 1944. Finally, the NKVD uprooted almost 40,000 Balkars, a people closely related to the already deported Karachais, on 8-9 March 1944. Interestingly enough all of these deportations as well as the 27-28 December exile of over 90,000 Buddhist Kalmyks to Siberia took place on or just before major Soviet holidays. February 23rd is Red Army Day and March 8th is International Women's Day.

At any rate I am currently working on finishing an article on the subject of the North Caucasian deportations and like everything else finding it going slower than anticipated. I have 20 pages of text or 6,500 words written so far and I am aiming for about 9,000. But, it still needs a lot of editing before it is ready. That is the problem with first drafts. They are always rubbish. However, you have to write them before you can write the better second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh drafts.