Abstract of "The Persecution of Ethnic Germans in the USSR during World War II"

I have an article, "The Persecution of Ethnic Germans in the USSR during World War II" coming out in the April 2016 issue (vol. 75, no. 2) of The Russian Review. Here is the abstract below.

The ethnic Germans were the single largest and one of the oldest diaspora groups in the USSR connected to a foreign state. During the Second World War the Soviet government forcibly resettled the German communities living in territory it controlled west of the Urals to Kazakhstan and Siberia. It placed these internal deportees under special settlement restrictions which greatly limited their freedom of movement and choice of residency. The NKVD counted, registered, and instituted a system of surveillance over the special settlers to prevent them from moving from their assigned places of resettlement. This in turn greatly constrained their options regarding education and employment. Initially almost all of the deportees including urban populations from Engles and other cities found themselves settled on kolkhozes and sovkhozes and assigned to unfamiliar agricultural work. The failure to integrate these men and women into productive agricultural work on the kolkhozes led to widespread unemployment, lack of work days, and subsequently severe food shortages. The Soviet solution to integrating them into the economy was to again move them and assign them to extractive enterprises. This took two forms. The first was a second deportation of tens of thousands of ethnic Germans to Siberia northward to work in the fishing industry. These men, women, and children remained special settlers. The second form was the mobilization of ethnic German men and later women into the labor army to work building factories, felling trees, and laying rail lines in NKVD camps, and mining coal, extracting oil, and manufacturing munitions for civilian commissariats under UNKVD supervision. The restrictions on the men and women in the labor army which ultimately comprised over a quarter of all ethnic Germans in the USSR were even more onerous than the special settlement regime and closely resembled the situation of convicted Gulag prisoners. The Stalin regime's policy towards its ethnic German citizens during World War II involved ethnic cleansing, the imposition of apartheid like residency restrictions, and their mass conscription into forced labor detachments.

Maru

Today I read Bessie Head's short 1971 novel Maru dealing with racism in Botswana by blacks against what are referred to in the book as Masarwa.  I think most English speakers are more familiar with the term Khoisan which refers to the the larger language group to which their indigenous tongue belongs. Even more common is the term "bushman" which is evidently considered highly derogatory. At any rate it was quite interesting. The final paragraph to the book is quoted below.

People like the Batswana, who did not know that the wind of freedom had also reached people of the Masarwa tribe, were in for an unpleasant surprise because it would be no longer possible to treat Masarwa people in an inhuman way without getting killed yourself.

Perhaps what is most interesting is that no white liberal or leftists in 1971 or even today for that matter can recognize even the possibility of black racism anywhere. But, Bessie Head, a South African born of a white mother and a black father and exiled to Botswana instantly saw the similarities between the Batswana treatment of the Masarwa and the situation in the country of her birth. To her it was obvious.

Ghana takes Yemeni detainees from Gitmo

Okay this is my first blog post of the year 2016. I haven't seen any blog posts on the following subject yet so I might as well be the first one. The US has released two Yemeni detainees from Gitmo to Ghana. Their upkeep will be paid for by the US. They also have to stay in Ghana for two years. There has been quite a bit of complaint about this by members of the opposition political party. It appears that President Obama wants to shut down the detention center in Cuba before leaving office by resettling its detainees in countries other than the US.

Happy New Years

Well 2015 is almost over. That means I have been in Africa almost five whole years now. It also means this blog is well over a decade old. So on average about one person has read it for every year it has been around. 

For 2016 blogging will probably continue to be slow. I have pretty much run of things that fit into a blog sized post to write about. Already this blog feels fairly repetitive. Instead I will be focusing more on writing longer pieces. 

The coming new year

Optimism is something that you acquire as a survival skill in Africa. I especially try to be optimistic when starting a new year which will happen in a couple of days. I am hoping that this next year that I can make some solid accomplishments.Converting those accomplishments into money, however, is another matter and considerably more difficult and less probable. Nevertheless, I am going to follow the advice of the quotation in the little square to the right here. If anybody has any suggestions on making this belief a reality please put them in the comments.

Happy Boxing Day

Today is Boxing Day which has an official status in most Commonwealth countries. When I was very young and first saw it on calendars I thought it referred to the sport of boxing. But, in reality it refers to boxing up left overs and giving them to the hired help.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to the half a dozen people that will see this blog post.

The Revival of Internal Colonialism as a Scholarly Model?

Between about 1980 and 2009 or so it seemed that the concept of internal colonialism completely disappeared from contemporary scholarship. However, in recent years I have seen an increasing revival of the concept. I am not sure what to make of this. I personally think the concept is a lot more useful than most social science models. But, for what ever reason it wasn't very popular in the 1980s, 1990s, or the first decade of the 21st century. Its recent revival also seems puzzling since there doesn't seem to be any single origin or inspiration for the new crop of scholarship making use of the model. If anybody has any insights into the reasons behind this new interest in a model that had seemingly died in the 1980s please leave comment below. My own contribution to the use of internal colonialism as a model for understanding the relationship between marginalized ethnic groups and their surrounding society and ruling government is here.

The Future

The year is coming to an end. As with most years I did not accomplish as much as a I wanted to. But, I did get some stuff done which is a lot better than getting nothing done. Next year I am hoping to figure out a way to greatly increase my productivity. Apparently a decent raise with promotion does not occur until one makes full professor which requires more publications to get at the University of Ghana than at any other institution in the world. So I should really be aiming at writing at least one journal article a month next year. Otherwise I could reach the mandatory retirement age of 60 before I make it up through the ranks from lecturer to senior lecturer to associate professor to full professor. I applied for promotion from lecturer to senior lecturer in April but apparently that will only increase my salary by about $200 a month. Whereas reaching full professor would more than double it to about $2,000 a month. I would still be making only about 10% of what US based professors make. But, that is a lot better than the less than 5% I am currently earning. If I make a serious push I might be able to make it to full professor in another five years. I just need to publish a whole bunch and submit for the next promotion as soon as the last one is approved.

Violence in Burundi

There are predictions that the recent violence in Burundi might escalate into a civil war or even another genocide like happened in neighboring Rwanda a little over twenty years ago. The African Union is threatening to intervene with a force of 5,000 peace keepers regardless of the wishes of the current government of Burundi. This in the wake of 87 deaths last week in an increasing spiral of violence. Since April more than 400 people have been killed in political violence in Burundi, 3,500 arrested, and 220,000 have fled the country. Violence of course is nothing new to Burundi which has been plagued by conflict between Hutus and Tutsis since gaining independence from Belgium. The silence by media, politicians, pundits, intellectuals, and others in the US is not new either. African lives just do not seem to concern them.

13 December 1955

Yesterday was the 60th anniversary of the decree from the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet removing the last of the ethnic Germans in the USSR from the restrictions of the special settlement regime.

On Lifting the Restrictions on the Legal Status of Germans and Members of their Families, found in special settlements. 

Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR from 13 December 1955

Having learned that the existing restrictions on the legal status of special settler-Germans and members of their families, exiled to various regions of the country, are no longer deemed necessary, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet resolves: 

1. To lift from the count of special settlement and free from administrative surveillance of the organs of the MVD Germans and members of their families, exiled as special settlers in the period of the Great Fatherland War, and also Germans - citizens of the USSR, that after repatriation  from Germany were moved to special settlements.

2. Establishes, that the lifting from Germans of the restrictions of special settlement will not lead to the return of property confiscated during exile, and that they do not have the right to return to the places from which they were exiled.  

Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR

K. Voroshilov

Secretary of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR

N. Pegov

Translated to English from Russian by J. Otto Pohl.

A.A. German and O. Iu. Silant'evoi, eds., "Navechno, bez prava: Ochevidtsy i issledovateli o nemetskom spetsposelenni v SSSR: Sb. nauchn. statei i vospominanii (Moscow: MSNK-Press, 2015), doc. 7, p. 99.

An Idea

I am wondering if maybe I should print out the better blog entries here and compile them into a book form. Or maybe print out the whole thing just to have it in book form? For me personally the journal like entries are the most interesting reread not the essays. Maybe I should make a couple of copies for family members? I am not exactly sure about the technical details that would be involved but I am pretty sure it is doable. If nothing else it could go into the family archives for anybody wishing to do research in the future. It is just an idea right now, however, I am thinking a bound copy of the blog would be nice to have around.

A Dying Breed

At this point this blog is a barely living dinosaur. It is the last politically reactionary blog written by a US citizen with a UK PhD in Oriental history in the world I believe. There were never very many academic right wing blogs. Academic blogs were for the most part dominated by the left and extreme left with almost all of the more moderate ones dying in recent years leaving only a few radical socialist group blogs still around. My readership was never large. But, it has gotten smaller as the years have gone by. It is now to the point where I can reach more people faster by e-mail or a phone call than I can with this blog. At this point I have completely given up on trying to get any readers other than the six I currently have. Other people on this planet who read English and have access to the internet obviously do not share any of my interests. If I wanted to be rich and famous I should have taken the opposite stand on everything from what I did. But, I am just too stubborn to do that.

Free Crimea

Writing about the mundane?

I am thinking about maybe trying to write something for commercial publication about my life and work in Ghana. I am not sure if there would be any interest by any periodicals in such a piece or not. Certainly, articles on life in Africa as normal rather than exotic are rather lacking in the US and other Western countries but, maybe such a piece would be different enough that I could sell it? I mean there has been some writing and film showing work and life in South Africa in this manner. Of course South Africa especially in cities like Johannesburg is much more economically developed and prosperous than Ghana. Nonetheless, in many ways Ghana even at its most mundane probably appears more exotic to many Americans than South Africa. In large part this is because there is not any settler population here with a standard and way of life comparable to North America or Europe. The population here is almost entirely black and the vast majority of them are not living nearly as well as most white people anywhere in purely material terms. On the other hand the stereotype of extreme poverty that many westerners have of Africa is for the most part not applicable to Ghanaians living in urban and especially exurban areas. If anybody has any suggestions leave them in the comments please.

Blogging for one

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.

HOPE

Africa of course is the continent of eternal hope and optimism. But, today I have a strange feeling that eventually Babylon will fall. It will not fall tomorrow or the day after, but my instinct tells me its days are numbered. I will outlive Babylon and be freed from its chains.

End of Semester Update for Fall 2015

I have now finished all my lectures for the semester. Classes went fairly well. I have now gotten to the point where I don't have to put in a lot of preparation to teach them. I have been teaching the same classes for almost five years now. I now have some time between now and February to catch up on some writing. These are the types of things I have been writing about for the past decade. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be anybody in the world willing to fund my research and writing about such things. Yet alone attending conferences. So far I have come up with nothing in my search for research funding. If you know of any possible sources of funding I might be eligible to receive please let me know. Given that due to the collapse of the cedi in 2014 and again this year my salary is now less than $900 a month any additional funding would help enormously. Even grants of only a few hundred dollars would greatly assist me.

Solidarity with the Students and Workers of SOAS

Demonstrations at SOAS

I did both my MA and PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Nobody in the US has ever heard of the place, especially not American academics, but it is very well known in the former British colonies throughout Africa and Asia. It was at one time the premiere institution of higher education in the English speaking world for the study of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Now the administration is seeking to cut 184 courses and the students are protesting. The local unions, most notably Unison have been in full support of the students over this issue. This has been happening at the same time as a major labor dispute at SOAS over the pay and conditions for the cleaning staff. This has led the administration to retaliate by suspending Unison branch secretary Sandy Nicoll from his IT job at the university. Cutting the courses at SOAS is stupid. Nicoll should not have been suspended and should be reinstated. I actually knew Sandy Nicoll. I can recall a conversation with him where he strongly argued with a third person that the advances in medical care and education in Cuba since 1959 in no way justified its political dictatorship and repression of dissidents. It was a very low bar. After all even the capitalist UK had state provided medical care and at that time still education. I bring this up because it is the only conversation I can remember having with Sandy Nicoll although I am sure there were a couple of others and it demonstrated to me that he was a morally serious person.