London Link

I have added a new link to my blogroll. Lonely Londoner is the blog of an expat Ph.D. student in London. I am quite sure her experiences have been radically different then mine were. Nevertheless, I like to keep up on the university scene in London.

Mr. Toad

For the last three nights a rather large toad, about the size of a dinner plate, has taken to hanging outside the door to the kitchen. He appears to be there to eat bugs attracted to the light. He also keeps trying to sneak into the laundry room. Tonight he tried to hide behind the gun safe. After being expelled from the room he hopped up the outside stairs to some other location.

Quotation of the Day

The following quotation is from Akhmed Bairakhtov, a Meskhetian Turk veteran who fought in the Soviet army against Nazi Germany. In November 1944, while he was fighting against the Germans, the Stalin regime deported his family along with the rest of the Meskhetian Turk population to Kazakhstan and Central Asia. The quotation is from The Forced Migration Projects of the Open Society Institute, Meskhetian Turks: Solutions and Human Security (NY: The Open Society Institute, 1998), p. 5.

Along with a small group of demobilized Meskhetian Turk soldiers, I went to search for my family in Central Asia. We had no addresses, nothing. In December of 1945, I finally located my mother in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. She told me that my sister was living in Samarkand...I remember conditions during the first year in Uzbekistan were dire. There was nothing to eat. People were forced to eat cattle fodder in order to survive.

Progress

I got most of the office cleaned up today. I still need to reassemble a pdf file on the GULag I printed out and forgot to put a paper weight on top of. But, I tossed all the excess papers strewn about by the wind. I am going to organize the papers either tonight or tommorrow.

I got the first job application put together to send out. I will be doing at least one a day until the small pile is finished. Again thanks to everybody who gave me advice on the cover letter. I found the advice of New Kid on the Hall, Artichoke Heart and Miriam to be the most useful. I tried to show that I had a thought out plan of how I would teach even if it had never been put into practice. This first application asked for sample syllabi, so I think I have a shot at convincing them to give me an interview. If it works great. If it does not then I have resolved not to be bitter about it. All that does is make me unpleasant to myself and others. I am resolving once again to maintain a positive attitude. What I do need to do is find some sort of alternative career, however, in the event that none of my academic job applications pan out this year. I am not sure where to look in this regards. I will be asking around at the cotton conference in London which will have a number of non-academic participants.

Sometimes I just have to look back on the last five years of life and remember that compared to a lot of my recent past now is a really good time. I am way past the nadirs of my life. My prayers go out to those people still stuck in their nadirs.

Plans

Currently, Catherine's Grandchildren has been on another short hiatus. My plans for the rest of this week and next week are to get all my job applications out of the way.Then I will come back and finish the two remaining encyclopedia articles on modern slavery in Russia (1000 words) and Beria (500 words). They are due October 15th. I do not have any other deadlines set by contract.

But, first I think I am going to clean up my office so I can find stuff. I have been making some progress in the last two days. I need to make sure and weight down all the papers I have out so that the wind does not disperse them across the office. That will prevent the mess from arising in the first place.

Quotation of the day

The following quotation comes from the journal of the famous Russian-German autonomy activist, Dominik Hollmann. He wrote it in 1942 while serving in a labor army work site in Kirov devoted to felling timber. An English translation of the excerpt is reproduced in his daughter's memoirs, Ida Bender, trans. Laurel Anderson, Carl Anderson and William Wiest, The Dark Abyss of Exile: The Story of Survival (Fargo, ND: Germans from Russia Heritage Collection, North Dakota State University Libraries, 2000), p.101.

Every morning some of the men reported sick with diarrhea, caused by bad food and unsanitary conditions. Many had scurvy from lack of vegetables, legs swollen, entire body covered with sores. Many were weak and wasting away from starvation and disease. Men who previously had weighed eighty or ninety kilograms were down to forty or forty-five.

Weekly Reminder (Diaspora Carnival)

This is a reminder that I will be doing another Carnival of Diasporas on the 25th of October. I thought the best two entries of the last carnival were the ones on the Tongans by Jonathan Edlestein and the one on the Chagossians (Ilois) by Rich Hindes. Due to problems arising from the last carnival I will not be able to accept any posts on the Armenian diaspora for this or any future carnivals. I have for similar reasons removed the two Armenian related blogs from my blog roll. As an anti-troll measure, no future mentions of Armenia or Armenians will be allowed on this blog. If you have any diaspora related posts regarding other ethnic groups please send them to me. I am especially interested in posts on obscure diasporas such as those submitted by Edelstein and Hindes. My email is pohlcat [the at sign] rocketmail [the dot] com.

Finally finished the cover letter

I finally finished writing a new cover letter today. I did my best on the teaching paragraph. Left on my own I do not think I would have ever thought to tackle the issue. So I want to give a great big thanks to Dr. Camicao for all his help. Looking back over my blog he has left a lot of helpful tips and encouraged others to do so as well. If you are ever in the Gadsen Purchase area stop by Arivaca for shish tavuk and narghile.

I also got some of the clutter in my office cleaned up. In the next couple of days I will finish cleaning it up. Next week I will be sending out another load of job applications. They might not get me a position, but at least they will have a better chance then those with my previous cover letter.

Navajos

I have an interest in forced migrations and the resulting victim diasporas. In particular I find the question of why different displaced groups had different levels of cultural retention and political mobilization to be engrossing. Most of my research in this area has been on the deported peoples of the Soviet Union.

Since moving to Arizona, however, I have been trying to read up on the history of the region. In particular I have found the history of the Navajo or as they call themselves Dineh to be fascinating. In 1864, the US military deported most of the Navajo population from their homeland to Bosque Redondo. The Navajos refer to this ethnic cleansing as the "Long Walk." More than 9,000 Navajos found themselves confined to the Bosque Redondo reservation. Poor living conditions here resulted in over 2,000 Navajo deaths. In 1868, the US government allowed the survivors to return to the Dinehtah (land of the Navajos). This part of their history is quite similar to that of some of the deported Soviet nationalities such as the Chechens, Ingush, Karachais, Balkars and Kalmyks.

Despite the trauma of the "Long Walk" and their exile at Bosque Redondo, the Navajos have done a better job at retaining their language and way of life than almost any other Native American nation. I am interested in the factors that account for the differences in cultural retention between the Navajos and other native nations. Such a comparison represents an interesting parallel to my own work on deported nationalities in the USSR. I have just started reading about the complex history and culture of the Navajos, so I do not know what I will find regarding these matters.

Quotation of the Day

The following quotation comes from Tenzile Ibraimova, a Crimean Tatar woman who survived deportation to Uzbekistan and the harsh conditions of the special settlement regime. The testimony appeared in the Crimean Tatar Appeal to the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1966. This English language excerpt is taken from Amnesty International, trans., Chronicle of Current Events, no. 31, 17 May 1974 (London: Amnesty International Publications, 1975), pp. 140-141.

We were expelled from the village of Adzhiatmak in Fraidorf district on 18 May 1944. The expulsion took place very cruelly; at three o'clock in the morning, when the children were still asleep. Some soldiers came in and said that we should get ready and be out of the house in five minutes. We were not allowed to take with us either possessions or food. They treated us so roughly that we thought they were taking us to be shot...My husband was fighting at the front; I was alone with three children.

Comments Policy Reminder

Just to remind everybody that I have a strict civility policy in my comments sections. Personal attacks on myself and others will be deleted in the future.

Tommorrow will be better

Today was not a productive day. One of the many problems of being unemployed for an extended period of time is finding the motivation to do anything at all. No matter how much work I do in a day I will still be just as poor at the end of the month. I am usually pretty good at forcing myself to get stuff done for its own sake. The knowledge that if I do not write about things like Stalin's deportations that nobody else will keeps me from giving up completely. It seems like a moral obligation to counter the likes of Mark Tauger or just simple ignorance. I was kind of surprised last month when I discovered how few people knew about Stalin's ethnic cleansing of the Kalmyks. The total lack of any material incentives that comes with chronic unemployment, however, militates against doing anything at all. After all in such situations time is a limitless commodity. Things can always be done tommorrow and the economic consequences are exactly the same, nada. Today I never got my brain to get out of "manana" mode. Tommorrow I need to remind myself of the various non-material benefits being productive will bring me. I hate losing days because I did not have the discipline to work without financial compensation. By the way for any academics who hate their jobs I am willing to do all your work for $20,000 a year. Which by my standards is an incredible fortune. You can keep the remainder of your salary and all the benefits.

Praying Mantis moth buffet

One of the windows to my office currently has twelve praying mantises feasting off of moths. I have been watching the big green insects, they average about five inches in length, since they started appearing a couple weeks ago. They are pretty clumsy. It takes them alot of attempts to actually nab a moth and often even then the moths can escape. They crawl along the window screens chasing after the moths and repeatedly grab at them until they get one. Even so they definitely eat more moths, one of Arivaca Man's worst foes, than most other allied creatures. I have not seen Blaster eat a single moth since I got here.

Rhetorical Question

No US university would tolerate Holocaust deniers teaching in their ranks. Why then are minimizers, justifiers and defenders of Stalin's crimes such as Mark Tauger, Associate Professor of History at West Virginia University allowed tenure? The fact that Professor Tauger is employed to teach Soviet history baffles my mind. It is the moral equivalent of hiring David Irving to teach the history of the Holocaust. For a rather lengthy and detailed discussion of Professor Tauger's revisionism regarding the Holodomor (the man made famine in Ukraine during 1932-1933) go here and note that he uses the same tactics as Holocaust deniers. The critiques of Tauger by the late Professor Mace and other anti-Stalinist academics are especially insightful. Currently on H-Russia, Professor Tauger is seeking to justify and minimize other Soviet crimes. Far more so than Ward Churchill, Professor Tauger is a man undeserving of tenure.

Arivaca fashion

My uncle got me one of those cheap Mexican cowboy hats today. Next, for the complete Arivaca look, I need a tie dye shirt. I already have the mountain man beard going. I still don't have cowboy boots, however. I will get those after I get some tie dyes. Very soon I will have gone completely native.

Contemplating next week's great job search

Well last week I finished another encyclopedia article. I will type up the last few corrections tommorrow and e-mail it to the editor. Then I only have two left to write. These encyclopedia articles basically write themselves. Maybe I should look for some more after I am done with this batch.

The real task next week is to start sending out job applications again. I still need to finish the cover letter. I feel like I am just fumbling in the dark with regards to academic applications. For years everything I read and heard said what counted for academic hiring was publishing. It turns out that is not true. Evidently, teaching is considered much more important than any amount of research and publishing in the humanities. So far the number of applications is limited so it should not be too difficult to get them out of the way once I get the new cover letter written. Since I can not magically add any teaching experience I doubt it will do me much good. I did, however, recently find another journal article citing me to add to my ever expanding list. Evidently being cited does not count in job searches either. How a stupid TAship can trump two books I don't know. No wonder kids graduate from college in the US without knowing what years the Civil War was fought.

So rather than waste too much more time and effort on trying to get an entry level instructorship I think I am going to look outside of academia. I figure I could live in even a relatively expensive area like DC for $20,000 a year. Unfortunately, this is considerably more than minimum wage which is what most jobs I am qualifed for pay. Maybe Frank and I should go into business together as pimps in Hoboken. I would look good in pimp gear.

Quotation of the day

The following quotation is from Raisa Mikhailovna, a representative from a mine in Kyrgyzstan sent to a train station to collect Meskhetian Turk deportees as laborers. Her impression of the arriving special settlers as they exited the deportation trains is quoted in D. Sh. Kyzaeva, T.D. Dotsenko and S.I. Begaliev, eds., Arkhivnye dokumenty svidetelt'stvuiut: Deportirovannye narody v Krygyzstane (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan: Firma "Aibek", 1995), p. 22. The translation from Russian to English is my own.

When the doors of the wagons opened - the impression was one of horror: on the ground was strewn a huge pile of filth - excrement, etc. From the wagons came people: emaciated and exhausted. Out walked the sick and dying. Among the arriving people were those in military uniform: enlisted, officers and those with combat medals.

More on Toads

The toads have gotten quite big now. Some are about the size of a child's hand. They come out at night and hop into any illuminated area. This means the kitchen as I prepare dinner. Everytime I walk back into the house from checking on the chicken on the outdoor grill toads attempt to gain entry to the kitchen. They have gotten quite aggressive. Usually at least one mananges to hop past the threshold into the house. I have taken to sweeping them back outside with a broom. Even though toads are creatures allied with man they are not allowed into the house.

Carnival of Diasporas II

I am going to try and do another Carnival of Diasporas. I am setting the date for October 25th. I am going to also be posting a weekly reminder between now and then. So if you see any good blog posts on diasporas or have one yourself please e-mail them to me. Again my e-mail is pohlcat [the at sign] rocketmail [the dot] com. Also if anybody would like to host a Carnival of Diapsoras in the future let me know and I will gladly give you a franchise.

Quotation of the day

The following quotation is from a telegram sent to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin by Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion on 4 November 1948. An English language version of the telegram is reproduced in Eytan Bentsur, ed., Documents on Israeli-Soviet Relations, 1941-1953 (London: Frank and Cass, 2000), vol. 1, doc. 192, p. 395. It is from that period of time when Israel was dependent upon military and diplomatic support from the Soviet bloc to expel the Palestinians from their homeland. Despite a lot of later historical revisionism, the founding of Israel was a left-wing socialist cause heavily backed by the USSR under Stalin and the world's various communist parties. I will let the quotation stand without further comment.

In the name of the State of Israel and in my own name I am pleased to offer best wishes on the occasion of the anniversary of the October Revolution which guaranteed national equality to the peoples of the USSR, secured employment and a means of existence for all its workers, opened the path to social and spiritual progress for the urban and rural masses and gave birth to the powerful Red Army which achieved an immense feat in the war against the fascist Nazi threat. Our people will never forget the assistance rendered by the struggle for liberty and independence in its historic homeland. I wish the people of your country fulfillment, reconstruction in the wake of the war, economic progress, peace and international understanding.