The occasional reader survey

It has been a while since I had a reader survey. I am not sure I have very many human readers left since this blog seems to be dying. It is well over a hundred in blog years after all. However, I still find it useful as a reference source to myself. I am also reluctant to let it completely cease to exist for purely sentimental reasons. The Golden Age of blogging has long passed and so has the Silver Age. At best we are now in the Iron Age. This blog has always occupied a very small niche, but lately I have been feeling I have come close to exhausting its potential, at least for now.  So blogging will probably continue to be slow for a while. On the other hand this thing has survived four continents. 

71 Years Since the Deportation of the Crimean Tatars

Today is the 71st anniversary of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars from their ancestral homeland on the Black Sea to the deserts of Uzbekistan and wet forests of the Urals. I don't have anything new to write about this tragic event today. But, for those that are interested I have linked to my previous years posts regarding this massive crime against humanity.The link from 2010 is a short article, "The False Charges of Treason Against the Crimean Tatars."

2014

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2006

Герои Советского Союза немецкой национальности

This is a great short film on Russian-German Heroes of the Soviet Union during World War II.

Социальная реклама

This film from Kazakhstan on the deportation of ethnic Germans from western regions of the USSR is quite good. Although in reality the Kazakhs were not always welcoming of the deported Germans. Also the figure 440,000 German deportees mentioned in the clip says it is for Kazkahstan and Siberia. In the Soviet archival documents the figure 440,000 German deportees is for Kazakhstan alone. A roughly equal number of deportees ended up in Siberia in 1941 for about 800,000 deported ethnic Germans.

The end of the semester again

Classes are over for the semester. Now I just have to give and grade final exams. Over all I think the students did well this semester. My graduate course on ethnicity and race which had five students has already finished their take home exam, but I still have not gotten their historiographical papers to grade. Over all I think this semester went fairly well. I managed the department seminar, teaching three classes, and submitted one book chapter. I also had two journal articles published.