Randy McDonald's Review of The Liquidator

Randy McDonald has posted a good review of Sidonia Dedina's Edvard Benes: The Liquidator (Mountain View, CA: RPF Publications, 2001). For my own review of the book you can go here.

Afghan Food

Last night I went to a dinner party sponsored by Afghan students graduating from AUCA. The food and hospitality was most excellent. It was probably the best meal I have eaten in Kyrgyzstan.

Surgun

The 18th of May marks the 64th anniversary of Stalin's mass deportation of the Crimean Tatars from their homeland to Uzbekistan and the Urals. I do not have time this year to write an extended article on this tragedy. So instead I will refer you to the article I wrote about it last year and the one I wrote the year before that. Please feel free to leave comments regarding these events under this blog post.

Almost Done for the Semester

I have now finished and posted final grades for both my Migration and Borders and Political History of the USSR classes. Now I just have to finish observing my Honors students defend their senior theses and confirm grades with my colleague Emir for my Introduction to Comparative Politics course. Then I can start working on syllabi for next semester.

Al-Nakba

A lot of self styled "liberals" and "progressives" in Blogestan have been celebrating the 60th anniversary of Israel recently. The formation of the State of Israel involved the forced expulsion of around 800,000 Palestinian civilians from their homes (Esber, pp. 69-70). While this may be considered a "progressive" outcome in the same sense as Stalin's deportation of the Volga Germans to Siberia and Kazakhstan, it is certainly not a humanitarian one.

Source:

Rosemarie M. Esber, "Rewriting the History of 1948: The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Question Revisted," Holy Land Studies, vol. 4, no. 1 (2005), pp. 55-72.

Weekend Reading

This weekend I read Karl Popper's The Poverty of Historicism. I agree with his criticism of historicism, but I think he could have made the argument in one page instead of a hundred and forty. But, maybe this is because I take empiricism to be self evidently superior to dogmatic interpretations according to supposed laws of history.

Victory Day

Today is a holiday in Krygyzstan. Like in Soviet times May Ninth marks the victory of the USSR over Nazi Germany. There are big billboards with sickles and hammers and red stars all over town to commemorate the occasion. In contrast to the Soviet iconography there is also a lot of capitalist activity on the streets as large numbers of vendors peddle bananas, shashlik, ice cream, beer and other goods to merry makers. This clash of socialist symbols and small scale capitalism seems to be typical of many Kyrgyz holidays.

Officially about 70,000 men from Kyrgyzstan died fighting in World War II. Considering that the total population of the Kirghiz SSR at the time was only about 1.5 million, this was a significant percentage of its young and able bodied male population. Kyrgyzstan suffered far greater military losses as a percentage of its population during World War II than did the US.

Better Ratio Today

Today I found one example of plagiarism and I graded eight final papers for Migration and Borders.

And still I find more plagiarism

I have now graded six final papers for Migration and Borders and found three cases of verbatim plagiarism.

Plagiarism Galore

I have now graded four final papers for Migration and Borders and found two blatant cases of verbatim plagiarism.

Plagiarism Again

So far I have graded one final research paper for my Migration and Borders Class and found one case of blatant plagiarism. As in the entire paper from start to finish was lifted from the Internet. This is not a good start. I have 27 more research papers to grade for that class.

Recent Events In My Life

Right now I am mired in grading for classes and it is only going to get worse between now and Wednesday when all my research papers are due. But, a few interesting things have happened to me recently. First in the world of electronic communication I got three interesting messages. First, I got an e-mail last Tuesday from BBC asking me if the British government knew anything about Stalin's deportation of the Crimean Tatars while the operation was occurring from 18 to 20 May 1944. I also got a request this weekend in the comments on an old blog post from a Turkish graduate student at the University of Arizona for a copy of my Ph.D. dissertation. Finally, also this weekend I got an e-mail from an old friend of mine in Sacramento that I had not heard from in over seven years. He wanted to know if I was still alive.

In the real world I got Thursday off and went with the girlfriend to Osh Bazaar to stock up on food. Food prices are rising rapidly here so we wanted to buy things like rice before they became even more expensive. Vegetables are still cheap, however.

Lesson I Learned this Semester

One lesson I learned is not to assign more than four papers total to any one class. I assigned 12 short one page papers to my Migration and Borders class this semester and getting the grades calculated has taken up an enormous amount of time. I am still not through sorting them out.

An Historian Trapped in the Body of a Political Scientist

Today I gave my last lecture of the semester. Now I just have to grade papers. This semester I taught my first history course. Despite being an historian by training I found this course a bit frustrating. I had a difficult time getting students to talk in the class. It almost seemed to me that they lacked passion over the events because they took place several generations ago. I would be curious if any other history professors have encountered this problem and what can be done to remedy it.

Winding up the semester

Last week I finished my last lecture for my Migration and Borders class. I have two more for my Political History of the USSR class. This means that soon I will have a pile of research papers that need to be graded. After which I will take a short break from things related to teaching before designing the syllabi for next semester's classes.

Academic Patches

Evidently research teams working on black budget defense projects get to wear really cool patches. See here for some examples. I think my department should have patches as well. I am thinking of having an AK-47 superimposed upon a globe resting on an open book for our emblem. Our location would be marked on the globe with a red star. Below the picture could be emblazoned the motto "Knowledge is Power."

Crazy Weather

Well today spring is finally back. But, it was still cold this morning and yesterday afternoon it snowed. I hope it does not snow again before November. I have had enough of winter for now.

What Happened to Spring?

Today it has been cold, windy and wet since early morning. During the walk to work it was both raining and hailing. I have never seen hail and rain come down at the same time before. Right now Bishkek's weather is like a really bad winter day in northern California. I hope spring comes back here soon.

I Can See Again

Yesterday I got new lenses for my glasses. My old ones were so scratched up that I could almost see better without them. There is only one lab that I found in Bishkek that can grind lenses for people with astigmatism. But, they did it only two hours and it only cost 500 som. The world looks much clearer now.

New Book on Northwest Caucasus Coming Soon

My good friend Walter Richmond has a new book coming out soon. The Northwest Caucasus: Past, Present, Future is now scheduled to be published by Routledge in July 2008. Up until now there has not been a comprehensive book on the history and politics of this region of the world. So I would strongly urge anybody interested in the Caucasus to go buy a copy of the book. He also cites my second book, Ethnic Cleansing in the USSR, 1937-1949 a number of times. Including Walt's book my citation number is now up to 93. I am getting very close to my goal of 100.