At this point the main function of this blog is to provide notes to myself so I don't lose them. It really is just a private journal in cyberspace. It is true that theoretically people other than myself can read it. But, in reality except for a very few exceptions such as my parents I don't think I actually have to worry about other people actually ever reading it. I once thought I could get a dozen regular readers for this blog. But, after more than a decade I am pretty sure now that is an impossible goal.
I more or less gave up on my blog too. The Tolstoy blog gets between 30-75 hits a day, though.
ReplyDeleteAlways blog for yourself first. If other people benefit from your writing and research, as some will, that's a bonus but not essential.
ReplyDeleteDear Otto,
ReplyDeleteThank you for recently bookmarking the two articles:
Tsarist continuities in Soviet nationalities policy: A case of Korean territorial autonomy in the Soviet Far East, 1923-1937, by Jon K. Chang,
Soviet Koreans: Redemption through Labour and Sport, by Jon Chang and Jae Park,
of which I was apprised through the Academia.edu Weekly Digest by email message. I have bookmarked your blog: Otto's Random Thoughts, and check it every week, usually two or three times per week.
We authors plant the seeds of new ideas and the harvest will be in the future at God's Hands. I have wondered about who reads my papers too and if it ever made a difference. After all, we all are only human in nature.
Let me tell you about one individual, whom I had actually met once but only briefly, who later wrote to me that when he first came here to America, that he began saving and reading every paper that I wrote beginning from about 30 years ago. He has adopted my ideas in his technical writings and built upon them. Of course, with the ubiquitous oppression of the Cultural Marxist way of thinking permeating most of academia in the USA, he is another lone candle yes, but I see in him and those many others who have likewise adopted my ideas overseas that I have made a difference in their lives. My ideas have been accepted in some universities in France, China and Iran among other foreign countries, but not here. Here there are only two resident foreigners teaching in universities of which I am aware who are bucking the trend of uniformity in thought.
You have made a difference in my life and I shall never forget your Scholarship in the Truth! I am looking forward to many future research articles by you on the fate of ethnic Germans in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. For better or worse, I feel that die Heimat is the homeland tugging at one's heart.
Keep the faith, run the course and continue fighting the good fight!
Best regards,
Randy