Exiled Forever

UKAZ


PRESIDIUM of the SUPREME SOVIET of the USSR

On the criminal responsibilities for flight from places of obligatory and decreed settlement of people exiled to distant regions of the Soviet Union in the period of the Fatherland War.

With the goal of strengthening the regime of settlement for those exiled by Supreme organs of the USSR in the period of the Fatherland War Chechens, Karachais, Ingush, Balkars, Kalmyks, Germans, Crimean Tatars and others, that at the time of their resettlement there was not a specified length of their exile, establishes that those resettled to distant regions of the Soviet Union by decrees of people in the high leadership are exiled forever, without the right to return to their previous places of residence.

For the voluntary leaving (flight) from places of obligatory settlement those exiles that are guilty will be subject to being prosecuted for criminal acts. It is determined that the punishment for this crime is 20 years of hard labor.

Cases related to the flight of exiles will be reviewed by Special Boards of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR.

People, guilty of harboring exiles, fleeing from places of obligatory settlement, or assisting their flight, giving permission for exiles to return to their places of previous residence, and rendering them help in accommodations in their places of previous residence, are subject to criminal penalties. It is determined that the sentence for this crime is deprivation of freedom for a period of five years

Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR

N. SHVERNIK

Secretary of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR

A. Gorkin

Moscow, Kremlin

26 November 1948



Document reproduced in V.N. Zemskov, Spetsposelentsy v SSSR: 1930-1960, Moscow: Nauka, 2005, p. 160. Translated from Russian into English by J. Otto Pohl.

Moving on up

The History Department of the University of Ghana is set to reclaim its former glory. We now have eleven full time lecturers of which eight have PhDs. That is our tiny department has eight times as many PhDs as does the entire faculty of AUCA. But, we are not done yet. The goal in the next couple of years is to have 14 full time permanent faculty all with PhDs.I understand that the money to hire three more faculty has in fact already been earmarked. Unlike Central Asian universities the University of Ghana has very good human capital in the form of its scholars. It is only a matter of time before we start to move up the African rankings and then the international rankings.

Work or what they pay me to do.

Yesterday I taught my class on world history between 1914 and 1945. The students asked a lot of questions. This means they are paying close enough attention to think about the lecture and formulate an inquiry. Answering questions has long been my favorite part of teaching. I honestly believe that the human capital at the University of Ghana is as good as anywhere else in the world including Harvard and Yale. It is just a matter utilizing this resource to its full potential.

 I also got a little bit done on my cotton in German Togoland paper. It is difficult to write a paper on a new subject. My knowledge base of African history is much smaller than my expertise on Soviet history. However, I think it is important that I make myself much more knowledgeable about African history for a whole host of reasons. Not the least being I now live and work in Africa.

Legal Status of Special Settlers after 8 January 1945

The Stalin regime classified the deported Russian-Germans as special settlers and imposed a number of legal restrictions upon them. Later these restrictions also applied to other deported nationalities such as the Karachais, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks. Up until 8 January 1945, the restrictions on the special settlers were ad hoc, mostly in the form of NKVD decrees. On this day, the SNK (Council of Peoples Commissariats) issued a succinct five point resolution listing the specific limitations imposed upon the rights of special settlers. This document became one of the most important pieces of legislation governing the lives of the special settlers.

Council of Peoples Commissariats Union of SSRs

Resolution No. 35

From 8 January 1945 Moscow, Kremlin

On the legal status of special settlers

Council of Peoples Commissariats Union of SSRs RESOLVES:

1. Special settlers enjoy all rights of citizens of the USSR, with the exception of restrictions, provided for in the present Resolution.

2. All able bodied special settlers are obliged to be engaged in socially useful labor. Towards this goal local Soviets of workers deputies in coordination with organs of the NKVD are to organize labor arrangements of the special settlers in agriculture, industrial enterprises, construction, and economic cooperative organizations and institutions.

The violation of labor discipline by special settlers is subject to punishment according to existing laws.

3. Special settlers do not have the right without the authorization of the NKVD special commandant to be absent from the boundaries of the region of settlement served by their special commandant.

Voluntary absence from the boundaries of the region of settlement, served by the special commandant, will be viewed as flight and treated as a criminal matter.

4. Special settlers – heads of families or people substituting for them are required within a three day period to report to the special commandant of the NKVD all events that change the composition of the family (birth of a child, death of a family member, flight, etc.).

5. Special settlers are obliged to strictly observe the established regime and social order of the places of settlement and obey all orders of the special commandant of the NKVD.

The violation of the regime and social order in the places of settlement by special settlers is subject to administrative sanction in the form of a fine up to 100 rubles or arrest up to five days.

Deputy Chairman

Council of Peoples Commissariats Union of SSRs

V. Molotov

Administrative Affairs

Council of Peoples Commissariats Union of SSRs

Ia. Chadaev

Document reproduced in V.N. Zemskov, Spetsposlentsy v SSSR 1930-1960, Moscow, 2005, pp. 120-121. Translated from Russian into English by J. Otto Pohl.

Remembering the victims 70 years ago

Today is the official day of remembrance for the deportation of the Russian-Germans from their homelands in the Volga, the Black Sea, the Caucasus and other areas west of the Urals to Siberia and Kazakhstan. It has been 70 years since the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet issued Ukaz 21-160 ordering the deportation of all ethnic Germans from the Volga German ASSR, Saratov Oblast, and Stalingrad Oblast. Please take a little bit of time today to observe a moment of silence in honor of the hundreds of thousands of innocent Russian-Germans that perished from Stalinist repression during the Second World War.

A collection of ealier posts on the deportation of the Volga Germans

Tomorrow is the official day of commemoration for the Stalin regime's deportation of the Russian-Germans in 1941. On this day the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet issued Ukaz no. 21-160 ordering the deportation of the Volga Germans to Siberia and Kazakhstan. The NKVD ruthlessly rounded up the Volga Germans in a brutal act of ethnic cleansing.  This sudden and violent expulsion took the Volga Germans almost completely by surprise. The Stalin regime quickly followed up this deportation with the systematic removal of Russian-Germans from other areas of the USSR west of the Urals. The exact number of people to suffer this fate is difficult to pinpoint due to inconsistencies in NKVD records.  The precise number of Russian-Germans to perish from Soviet repression during World War II is even more elusive, but the scale was certainly massive. What ever the exact number to perish, the suffering of individual Russian-Germans from the Volga and elsewhere is indisputable.

More on the 70th Anniversary of the Deportation of the Russian-Germans

Sunday marks the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the deportation of the Volga and other Russian-Germans from their ancestral territories in European areas of the USSR and the Caucasus to Siberia and Kazakhstan. According to one NKVD statistical compilation between September third and Christmas 1941, the Stalin regime ruthlessly uprooted 856,168 Russian-Germans from their homelands in the western USSR. Other Soviet documents give slightly different figures. On 25 December 1941, the NKVD issued a report on the number of Russian-Germans they had sent on trains headed for Siberia and Kazakhstan. This report provided a breakdown of the number of deportees by region of origin. Not all of these victims of ethnic cleansing made it alive to the eastern areas of the USSR. Many died en route.

Volga Region

Former Volga German ASSR - 446,480
Saratov Oblast -46,706
Stalingrad Oblast -26,245

Other Regions of Russia

Moscow - 3,524
Moscow Oblast - 4,925
Tula Oblast - 3,058
Kabardino-Balkar ASSR - 5,803
North Ossetia ASSR - 2,415
Rostov Oblast - 38,288
Ordzhonikidze Krai - 98,903
Krasnodar Krai - 37,300
Kubyshev Oblast - 8,787
Daghestan ASSR - 3,592
Chechen-Ingush ASSR - 420
Voronezh Oblast - 5,125
Gorky Oblast - 2,544
Kalmyk ASSR - 5,525
Simferopol' Crimean ASSR - 1,900 (Most of the Crimean German population was first forcibly evacuated to Ordzhnokidze Krai about 60,000 and Rostov Oblast about 3,000 starting on 15 August 1941. They are included in the figures for those two territories).

Ukraine

Zaporozhia Oblast - 32,032
Voroshilov Oblast- 9,858
Stalin Oblast - 35,477
City of Dnepropetrovsk - 3,250

Other Republics of the USSR

Armenia - 212
Georgia - 20,423
Azerbaijan - 22,841

Total

856,168

Source: O.L. Milova, Deportatsiia narodov SSSR (1930-e -1950-e gody. Chast' 2. Deportatsiia nemtsev (Moscow: RAN, 1995, pp. 47-56).

Yesterday

Things went pretty well this week. Yesterday I gave a presentation on the Russian-Germans entitled "The Transformation of the Russian-Germans from a Soviet People into an Enemy Nationality" in front of the history department faculty and graduate students. I think it was quite well received. I was surprised how smoothly it went since I only had three days to prepare for it.

70 Years Since the Deportation of the Volga Germans

The anniversary of the deportation of the Volga Germans and subsequently the other ethnic German communities of the western USSR is traditionally observed on the 28th of August. That is the date that the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet issued Ukaz 21-160. This decree was published in the Volga German ASSR newspapers Bolshevik and Nachrichten. But, the actual decision to deport the entire ethnic German population of the Volga German ASSR, Saratov Oblast, and Stalingrad Oblast came two day earlier on 26 August 1941. This decree does not accuse the Volga Germans of any crimes. Instead it merely orders their mass deportation to Siberia and Kazakhstan. The first clause of the decree is reproduced below. The translation into English from Russian is my own.

26 August 1941 Moscow, Kremlin

Council of Peoples Commissariats of the Union of SSRs and the C[entral] C[ommittee] of the A[ll Russian]

C[ommunist] P[arty] (B[olshevik]) resolves:

1. Resettle all Germans from the Republic of Volga Germans and oblasts of Saratov and Stalingrad to the following krais and oblasts:

Krasnoiarsk Krai - 70,000
Altai Krai - 91,000
Omsk Oblast - 80,000
Novosibirsk Oblast - 92,000
K[azkah] SSR - 100,000
Of these
Semipalitinsk Oblast - 10,000
Akmola Oblast - 20,000
North Kazakhstan Oblast - 20,000
Kustanai Oblast - 16,000
Pavlodar Oblast - 18,000
East Kazakhstan Oblast - 16,000

Resettlement is to be applied to all without exception to Germans residing in cities, and also in rural areas.

Source: A.A. German, T.S. Illarionova, I.R. Pleve, eds., Istoriia nemtsev Rossii: Khrestomatiia (Moscow: "MSNC-Press", 2005), doc. 8.3.1., p. 254.

Russian-German Timeline

Timeline for the German minority in the Russian Empire and USSR

1763 – Manifesto by Empress Catherine II inviting Christian foreigners to the Russian Empire

1764 – First German colonies established along the Volga

1804 – Tsar Alexander I issues invitation for Christian foreigners to settle in the Black Sea region

1871 – Revocation of self government from German colonies in Russian Empire

1874 – Russian-Germans subjected to conscription into the Imperial Russian Army

1915 – Liquidation Laws

1918 – Volga German Workers’ Commune established by Lenin

1924 – Volga German Workers’ Commune upgraded to Volga German ASSR

1935-1936 – Deportation of Russian-Germans from Polish-Ukrainian border

1937-1938 – Great Terror including the “German Operation.”

1941 – Mass deportation of ethnic Germans from European areas of the USSR to Siberia and Kazakhstan

1942 – Mass mobilization of Russian-Germans into labor army detachments and columns

1943-1944 – Mass evacuation of Black Sea Germans from Ukraine to Warthegau

1945 – Forced repatriation of ethnic Germans with Soviet citizenship from Germany to USSR

1955 – Ethnic Germans in USSR released from special settlement restrictions

1964 – Partial rehabilitation of Russian-Germans

1965 – Two delegations of Russian-Germans go to Moscow seeking restoration of Volga German ASSR

1972 – Russian-Germans finally given same right to choose residency as other Soviet citizens

1973 – Emigration movement begins

1979 – Failed attempt to create a German autonomous oblast in Kazakhstan

1987 – Soviet government removes all restrictions on emigration

1988 – 2005 – Mass emigration of Russian-Germans to Germany

A Black Day in History. Today in 1939.

On 23 August 1939, Molotov and Ribbentrop signed a "non-aggression pact" dividing up Central Europe between the USSR and Nazi Germany. This act led to the subsequent subjugation and colonization of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, eastern Poland, and the Bessarabian province of Romania. The Sovietization of these territories involved a great deal of violence directed by the Stalin regime against civilians. In terms of sheer numbers of victims the greatest acts of Soviet terror in this region were the mass deportation of Poles, Jews, Belorussians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, and Moldavians to eastern regions of the USSR. The NKVD forcibly uprooted and dumped over 400,000 people from these nationalities in the Soviet Far North, the Urals, Kazakhstan, Central Asia, and Siberia during 1940 and 1941. The Soviet government placed these deportees under special settlement restrictions in order to confine them to their new areas of settlement. The material conditions in these settlements proved to be deadly. Unable to leave the settlements, tens of thousands perished from malnutrition, disease and exposure. For a statistical analysis of the human losses involved see this post. Unlike their Nazi counterparts the Soviet war criminals responsible for these acts have never been brought to justice.

University Benefits

Yesterday, I got the anti-virus software subscription on my laptop renewed for free by the university. This is one of the great benefits I get here. Others include  free housing and medical coverage. The ICT people here are very good. They are friendly, competent, and prompt.

Faculty Meeting

Today we had our first faculty meeting of the semester. Last semester I was the only new person. This semester we have five new people. The new faculty consist of two Ghanaians, two Americans, and a Norwegian.

Ramen Noodles

Ramen noodles are universal. We even have them in Africa. I have taken to preparing them in a mixture of tomato paste, shito sauce, and ketchup. I like the spicy tomato broth that results from this combination.

Under Jakob's Ladder hits the Big Time

Under Jakob's Ladder is getting amazing press in the UK. It is beyond anything I could ever have imagined. If you go see the movie just make sure you pay attention to the credits where it says historical consultant.

Frugality

I have decided there is no point in wasting money. For instance a 1.5 liter bottle of water here costs 1.30 cedis. But, you can buy the same amount of water in bags for 30 peswas. There is not any difference in the water quality. You just pay a lot to have a plastic bottle. So now I am buying all my water in bags. This saves me about two cedis a day. Eating at indoor restraunts as opposed to outdoor ones is also considerably more expensive. Meals at the Guest Center for instance average about eight cedis. In contrast jollof rice, chicken, salad, and sauce at the night market is less than three cedis. At the Bush Canteen you can get fufu and chicken or goat for two cedis. There is also a lot shorter wait to get your food at the outdoor places.

Syllabus for Aspects of Early Modern European History

HIST 309

Aspects of Early Modern European History

Fall Semester 2011

Department of History

University of Ghana

J. Otto Pohl, Ph.D.

Meeting Time: Thursday 3:30-5:25 Linguistics Lecture Theatre

Course Description: This is a survey class covering various aspects of European history from the 14th Century until the end of the 18th Century. The core section of the course will focus on the 17th and 18th centuries. In particular it will concentrate on political history, but it will also cover religion, economics, art and philosophy. The course will focus on the larger and more powerful European states such as England, France, Prussia, Austria, and Russia. Special attention will be given to the political history of these states during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Requirements: Students need to attend class regularly and do the assigned readings. Material from both the readings and the lectures will appear on the final exam. No mobile phones are to be visible during class. They are to be out of sight and turned off. Finally, I have a significant hearing loss and may have to ask people to repeat their questions or statements from time to time. You can minimize this by speaking loudly and clearly. This syllabus is tentative and subject to change.

Readings: The readings for this course come primarily from two sources. The first is Birdsall S. Viault, Modern European History (New York: McGraw-Hill Inc., 1990) and the second is R.R. Palmer and Joel Colton, A History of the Modern World to 1815 Seventh Edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1992). In addition to these two survey texts I have assigned a section from Andreas Kappler, trans. Alfred Clayton, The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic Empire (Essex, UK: Longman, 2001).

Grading: The grade for the class will be based upon a mid-term exam and a comprehensive final essay exam at the end of the semester. The mid-term will be worth 30% of the final grade and the final exam will constitute the remaining 70% of the grade.

Class Schedule:

Week one: Introduction and Review of Syllabus

Week two: Leaving the Middle Ages and Entering the Modern Era
Read Viault, chapter one, pp. 1-15 and Palmer and Colton, pp. 46-53.

Week three: The Renaissance
Read Viault, chapters 2-3, pp. 16-43 and Palmer and Colton, pp. 53-75.

Week four: The Reformation, Counterreformation, and Wars of Religion
Read Viault, chapters 4-5, pp. 44-77 and Palmer and Colton, pp. 75-93 and 126-149.

Week five: Imperialism and Mercantilism
Read Viault, chapter 6, pp. 78-90 and Palmer and Colton, pp. 120-126.

Week six: Mid-Term Exam. The exam is worth 30% of the total grade.

Week seven: England in the 17th and 18th Centuries
Read Viault chapter, pp. 7, pp. 91-105 and Palmer and Colton, pp. 169-182.

Week eight: France in the 17th and 18th Centuries
Read Vialut, chapter 8, pp. 106-118 and Palmer and Colton, pp. 182-197.

Week nine: Central and Eastern Europe in the 17th and 18th Centuries
Read Viault, pp. 119-133 and Palmer and Colton, pp. 210-249.

Week ten: Russia Moves into Europe during the 17th and 18th Centuries
Read Kappeler, pp. 60-113.

Week eleven: 18th Century Wars
Read Viault, pp. 134-144 and Palmer and Colton, pp. 250-285.

Week twelve: Science, Philosophy, Art, Literature, and Music in 17th and 18th Century Europe
Read Viault, pp. 145-176 and Palmer and Colton, pp. 286-326.

This Month is the 70th Anniversary of the Deportation of the Russian-Germans

Stalin began the deportation of the ethnic German population of the European USSR to Kazakhstan and Siberia in August 1941. The official day of commemoration is the 28th of August when the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet issued Ukaz 21-160. This decree falsely accused the Volga Germans of harboring tens of thousands of Nazi spies and saboteurs. It then ordered the deportation of all ethnic Germans from the Volga German ASSR, Saratov Oblast, and Stalingrad Oblast to Kazakhstan and Siberia. However, the actual deportation of ethnic Germans began on 15 August 1941 with the forced evacuation of the Crimean Germans to Ordzhonikidze Krai and Rostov Oblast. My posts for the 70th anniversary of this crime against humanity will not be as thorough as the ones I put up five years ago due to time constraints. However, I will be putting up some new posts and linking to some older ones.

Today's Accomplishment

This morning I got about 500 words written on my cotton paper. Most of what I wrote was on the section describing the relative success of the Russian Empire in making Turkestan a major supplier of raw cotton for its textile industry. They eventually got over half their cotton from their Central Asian territories.

Why?

Why do most American liberals support the continued existence of Israel as an apartheid state when they would never tolerate apartheid in the US or South Africa? Is it purely a matter of identity politics?

I am a lot thinner now

Cotton Paper Proposal

The Relative Failure of German Togoland as a Model Cotton Colony

J. Otto Pohl and Felix Longi

History Department, University of Ghana, Legon

The Germans established the colony of Togoland for the purposes of economic exploitation. It provided raw materials for German commercial interests. In particular the German colonial administration sought to cultivate cotton in Togoland for Germany’s textile industry. The Germans sought to encourage the Togoland natives to grow cotton instead of food on their own small holdings. The German colonial authorities aimed to make cotton growing a Volkskultur. This contrasted with the earlier failed attempt to establish cotton plantations based upon wage labor in German East Africa. The creation of commercial cotton growing in Togoland on this basis took place under the direction of the colonial state. A key component in this policy was the founding of a model farm and later an agricultural school by African American experts from the Tuskegee Institute. This innovation initially demonstrated great potential in fulfilling the economic goals of the German colonial administration in Togoland.

During the 30 years of its existence German Togoland was commonly referred to as the “model colony.” Togoland consistently ran balanced budgets and required far fewer military resources than German East Africa or German Southwest Africa to control. While the success of the colony from the point of view of German imperialists is generally accepted by most scholars there has been considerable historical debate as to the overall treatment of the native population. Yet an examination of cotton cultivation in German Togoland reveals that it fell far short of providing a replacement for US cotton. Yields stagnated in 1909 and by World War I, all of Germany’s colonies in Africa and the Pacific only provided 0.5% of its cotton needs. Unlike British India or Turkestan in the Russian Empire, Germany failed to make Togoland into a major source of cotton for its textile industry.

This paper will examine the reasons why the colonial administration failed to make Togoland a major supplier of cotton to Germany’s textile industry. In particular it will take a comparative approach and look at the success of Russia in transforming Central Asia into the primary source of raw cotton for its textile plants during the same years Germany’s efforts in Togoland failed. It will also look at the later successes by the British Cotton Growers’ Association in the areas of Togoland annexed to the Gold Coast. Both external and internal factors will be looked at to determine these causes.

First Class of the Semester

Yesterday I taught my first class of the semester. Only six students showed up for the first day of class. I am tempted to make all the remaining students fend for themselves on getting the syllabus rather than passing it out again next week.

A Map of the Volga German ASSR from 1928

The History Department has gotten a lot bigger this semester

This semester we have a lot of new faculty in the History Department of the University of Ghana. There are five new lecturers joining us. In most of the rest of the world history departments are shrinking.

Groundnuts

Not only does Ghana have the best pineapples, mangoes and avocados in the world it also has the best groundnuts (peanuts) in the world.

Yesterday in Accra

Yesterday I went down to Accra and there was some kind of celebration in the region of the juncture of Jamestown and Usshertown. It included dancing, food, and really loud drumming. If anybody knows what the festivities were about could you leave a comment here?

My brain is still dead

I am still recovering from my marathon tricontinental journey back to Ghana. So I have not actually gotten any work done on my cotton paper, my book manuscript, or any other writing projects since returning. I hope to be able to rectify this soon.

Russian Publishing Trends

In Bishkek I noticed a large number of books imported from Russia praising Stalin and Beria. Every book store in the city had at least one whole shelf dedicated to this growing genre of popular literature. The development of a separate subordinate cult of personality around Beria seems to have grown considerably in the former USSR recently. Although Beria has not yet been officially rehabilitated by the Russian government there is a growing body of popular literature in Russia urging just such a course. The movement to annul Khrushchev's partial denunciation of Stalin of course has been around for a while and seems to grow stronger every day in the former USSR. The most disturbing aspect of this trend for me, however, is the appearance of Russian translations of American and other Western Stalinists and their frequent citation as supporting evidence in the popular literature written by Russian Stalinists. Almost all of the Stalinists in the above category hold tenured academic positions in the US. A particular favorite of the Russian Stalinists appears to be Grover Furr. Interestingly enough the literature does not generally deny the atrocities of Stalin and Beria, but instead seeks to justify them by portraying their victims as "traitors" to the USSR who deserved their fate. Nobody will ever be able to convince me that Volga German and Crimean Tatar children deserved to die the horrible and agonizing deaths they suffered during the 1940s. But, looking around the Internet it appears I am in a distinct minority.

Back to teaching

I am still recovering from jet lag, but I did finish writing up all my syllabi for classes this semester. Now I just need to get them photocopied. I start teaching again on Monday afternoon.

First we take Manhattan then we take the world

Under Jakob's Ladder recently won two awards  at the Manhattan Film Festival this year. It won "Best Film - Period Piece" and the leading man Jeff Stewart won "Best Actor." The movie is about Stalin's persecution of ethnic Germans in Ukraine during the 1930s. In decades past it would have been almost inconceivable that a film on this topic would ever be admitted to a film festival in New York, yet alone win two awards. For people that have been involved in preserving the memory of the Russian-Germans murdered by Stalin this is a huge event. I would describe it simply as totally awesome. I played a very small role in the making of this film as an historical consultant, but virtually all the credit for this movie's success must go to the Moon Brothers and their cast and crew. Very well done guys.

An old picture of me from Bishkek

It is a Beautiful Morning in Africa

Last night I arrived back in Ghana. This morning I went for a long walk and checked the ATM machine. While I was in Kyrgyzstan the university paid me my salary for July. I took out 100 cedis since the cab ride back to Legon from the airport had reduced the holdings in my wallet to 20 GH. I then checked my university e-mail and found they are ready to process my residence permit. So I will go up the hill later this morning. The weather here is nice and cool, but it has not rained yet since I got back. So far things are moving along much better than I expected. Although I miss my family I am happy to be back in Africa.

I Keep Moving Forward

I accomplished my main goal this summer with a week to spare. I hope I can keep up this record of success when I get back to Africa. I have a lot of work waiting for me in Ghana.

Nearing the end of my vacation

My vacation is almost over. Soon I will have to return to Africa and start working again. I did, however, recently receive a small grant to attend a conference in Ghana on German colonialism in West Africa. I will be presenting a paper on cotton in German Togoland. The conference will be in late September. I will post more on my proposed paper later.

The Embassy Called me on Monday

The US embassy called me on Monday and told me that my daughter's documents were ready. I went that afternoon and picked up her US birth certificate (CRBA) and passport.  I have now finished what I came to Bishkek to do this summer. My daughter now has ironclad evidence of her US citizenship and can enter the US without a visa.

Almost Done

I came to Kyrgyzstan this summer with one primary objective. This objective is to get my daughter a US birth certificate and passport. After four trips to the US embassy I have finished all the paper work. Now I just have to wait for the documents to be processed.

Third World Problems

I am getting closer to accomplishing what I came back to Bishkek to finish. I think there is some universal law that nothing in the third world ever works on the first try. Nothing ever works on the second try either. If you get really lucky you can get things to work on the third try. But, normally everthing takes four or more attempts before you can accomplish anything.

Bishkek

Kyrgyzstan is hotter than Ghana was when I left. Bishkek is a lot smaller and quieter than Accra. I have met with some old friends and not much seems to have changed in Central Asia since I left in December.

Back in the Former USSR

On Monday night I left Accra to go to Bishkek via London and Istanbul. I arrived in Bishkek on Wednesday morning. I do not recommend travelling from Africa to Europe to the middle of Asia in a single non-stop trip unless you are in a hurry. I will be here for about a month before I return to Ghana.

I have some things that need my attention

I know looking at this blog it looks like my personal life is rather limited. But, I actually do have a life outside of academia. Those of you who know me personally know what  I am talking about. I have not posted on it very much in order to protect the privacy of other people. At any rate I have to go take care of some matters pertaining to that personal life this month. So until the fall semester starts at University of Ghana blogging will be slow.

Five Non-Controversial Things I Believe

1. It is almost impossible to get a really good beef hamburger outside the US. You can find decent ones if you look hard, but not excellent ones.

2. There is nothing scientific about social science, political science, or any other like discipline.

3. The best library in the world is the Library of Congress.

4.  SOAS is the single best English language institution in the world for studying Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

5. Nobody will leave any comments on this blog post.

Half steps

Sometimes you can not accomplish everything in one attempt. You have to do it in two half steps. This is frustrating, but a half step is much better than no step. I am going by what I think is a Chinese proverb: "Fear not moving slowly, fear only standing still." Even if it is not a real Chinese proverb it still makes a lot of sense to me.

Pineapple and Watermelon

Today I came across a fresh fruit juice combination I had not seen before. It was pineapple and watermelon. It tasted pretty good. But, I still prefer pineapple and ginger.

Strategy for Progress

I have decided that the best strategy for getting through life is to accomplish a little bit each day. Days where I accomplish nothing are frustrating. Monday was such a day. But, since then I have been doing well. A little bit of progress each day means moving forward. It is days when nothing gets done that kill progress and hope.

Modernity and Genocide: The Circassians

Modernity is of course a relative term. But, for a while now many scholars have identified the German extermination of the Herero and Nama people in Namibia during 1904-1907 as the first modern genocide. However, it appears that all of the modern state technology and ideology necessary to commit genocide had been in place and used considerably earlier by another state. The Russian genocide against the Circassians during 1860-1864 appears to have all the elements at least in an embryonic form of more modern genocides such as the Holocaust and the Soviet mass deportations in the 1940s.

A good argument can be made that the US committed genocide against certain Native American nations earlier than 1860. I am thinking in particular of the forced relocation of the Cherokee and other peoples by Andrew Jackson. However, I think these earlier cases had not yet acquired all of the elements of modernity that are shared by genocides in the 20th century. They certainly had many of the same features as more recent cases of genocide, but the first fully formed case of an ideologically driven attempt to destroy a group of people as a distinct entity appears to be the Russian extermination of the Circassians. The emphasis on ideology rather than land I think is a key factor in modern genocides. The articulation of totalized exclusionary concepts of the state that did not allow for the survival of certain separate cultural groups within its territory had not yet fully evolved until the 1860s.

So while the forced relocation of the Cherokee certainly constituted a genocide in being a deliberate act that the US government knew would lead to large numbers of deaths, it lacked the modern ideological drive of dissolving them as a distinct group. The survivors were allowed to reorganize their national life in what became Oklahoma. The initial removal did not aim to liquidate the Cherokee as a coherent national group, but rather to violently displace them to a marginal territory of the US. Modern genocides driven by ideology in contrast have sought to eliminate the victim groups as national entities through various means. The Tsarist expulsion of the Circassians sought to completely annihilate the idea of a Circassian nation. There was no place within the Russian Empire for the Circassians, no matter how marginalized. The Tsarist government succeeded in permanently detaching the Circassians from their ancestral lands and deporting them to the Ottoman Empire. While Circassian communities continue to exist in Turkey, Jordan, Syria, and Palestine the dispersal prevented them from forming any large contiguous, coherent, and compact settlement from which to reclaim any political autonomy. It is only among the descendants of the small number of Circassians that avoided expulsion from the Caucasus that any territorial autonomy could be reestablished after the overthrow of the Tsarist regime.

Pocket Umbrella

Since it is the rainy season here in Ghana I have finally broken down and purchased a cheap umbrella. It is small enough that it fits in my pocket so I can carry it with me in case it starts to rain. I am not sure how much protection it will afford, but something is better than nothing.

Health Care: Ghana 1 US 0

Ghana routinely beats the US in football. But, it also seems to beat the US in providing health care to ordinary people. Timothy Burke, no stranger to Africa, reports that the waiting time to see a doctor at an ER in Fresno routinely averages nine hours. I have never spent more than two hours at the hospital in Legon. I went yesterday to see a doctor about renewing a script. I got there at 11:00 am. I saw a nurse and had my temperature and blood pressure taken by noon. I saw an actual doctor and got my script at 1:00 pm. This is the same pattern I have experienced here each of the last three times I have gone to the University of Ghana Hospital. Over all it seems amazingly efficient compared with Professor Burke's story out of Fresno. Now according to all the official statistics Ghana is a lot poorer than the US. So how come it can manage a working health care system and the US can not?

Moving on to my Second Semester in Africa

Now that I have entered my grades I am completely done with the academic work of my first semester at the University of Ghana. Now I have to prepare for next semester. I still have to complete a syllabus for Aspects of Early Modern European history. I already finished my syllabus for Aspects of World History, 1914-1945. I also have to teach each of these two classes twice, once at the main campus in Legon and once at the campus in Accra. In the research and publishing department I have one conference paper to co-write on cotton in German Togoland and a revise and resubmit for a journal article dealing with Soviet history. So it is more than the one class I taught last semester, but still a pretty reasonable work load.

My First University of Ghana Shirt

Yesterday I purchased a University of Ghana knit shirt. I had not seen them on sale before. However, yesterday I noticed that two men had set up a table with all kinds of University of Ghana paraphernalia at the main gate near the security office. I purchased a green one for 16.5 GH.

Grades Entered

Well I got some problems solved in the last two days. I got my grades entered today. The average for my class was a B, higher than a normal bell curve. I am not sure when I will next teach the class, but I think over all it went quite well. When I do teach it again I will change the readings somewhat. It makes sense to focus the class, Aspects of World History since 1945, on the Cold War. So I will probably remove the articles on collectivization in North Korea and the 1948 expulsion of the Palestinians. These events are only marginally connected to the conflict between the US and the USSR.

Busy

I am really busy this week. But, I should be able to moderate any comments you want to make on this blog. Consider this post an open thread post if you want.

Happy Independence Day

Tomorrow is American Independence Day. So to all my American readers happy Independence Day. I do not have anything special planned. I have a lot things I need to take of this week so I can not afford to take the day off. But, my thoughts will be with my fellow Americans.

A Walk in Legon

The weather today in Legon is beautiful. I took a walk this morning and ran into my Liberian friend. He is one of those people who can see the invisible sun. As much as I may feel sometimes that my life is not progressing right, I have never had members of my family murdered in front of me or been forced to live in a refugee camp. Yet, there are people who suffer from the fate above like my friend who manage to persevere and literally reconstruct their lives. He told me he is going back to Liberia at the end of this year where he still has some surviving family. Ghana is a very nice place to live in large part because it has been politically stable and peaceful for a relatively long time now. But, some of Ghana's neighbors such as Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, and Liberia have not been so fortunate in recent decades.

Comments made easier

I have made the comments function easier to use. I have enabled Open ID so you do not have to have a Blogger account to comment. I suspect, however, that my blog just does not have a large enough audience to garner any comments on a regular basis.

More on Cotton in German Togoland

Well if criticism of the founding of Israel is not going to garner me any comments then I doubt anybody in the blogosphere is going to care much about my thoughts on German Togoland. But, one never knows. The brief German colonial empire in Africa may become the next hot topic of historical debate. Of course even in this context, scholars have shown less interest overall in Togoland than in other parts of the empire such as Namibia.

At any rate last night I finished a draft of the proposal for my first conference paper on an African subject. As should be obvious from the information above it is on cotton in German Togoland. The conference is on German colonial rule on West Africa and will take place here in Ghana. Eastern Ghana used to be part of German Togoland.  I am going to write on the failure of the German colonial administration in Togoland to make the territory into a major supplier of raw cotton for the German textile industry. I am going to contrast this with the success of the Russian Empire during the same time in developing cotton cultivation in Central Asia to such an extent that it supplied most of  its textile industry. I am going to coauthor the paper with a post graduate student here in the history department. Right now he is looking over the proposal I wrote. I think transnational topics like the history of various commodities are a good way for me to broaden my portfolio to include some publications on topics directly related to Africa.

Tomorrow is Republic Day

Tomorrow is another big national holiday here in Ghana. This time it celebrates the adoption of a republican form of government by Ghana. Most everything will be closed until Monday which is Independence Day in the US.

Okay that didn't work

Well posting five controversial beliefs did nothing to garner me any comments other than one from Walt, my good friend of many years now. I think I first met him in New York over eleven years ago. So much for the suggestion that provocative postings would elicit comments. I do not think it even got me any new readers. Oh well, it was worth a shot.

Five Controversial Things I Believe

In an effort to be provocative enough to solicit comments I have listed five things I believe below that I think are definite minority opinions in American academia and the blogosphere.

1. The Soviet Union, particularly under Stalin, practiced racial discrimination against a number of nationalities and Jews were not the worst treated group by a long shot.

2. The mass deportation of nationalities by Stalin to Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Central Asia constituted genocide by any reasonable definition of the word.

3. The mass expulsion of ethnic Germans from their homes in Central Europe at the end of World War II was a crime against humanity with no moral justification.

4. The mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in 1948 was also a crime against humanity with no moral justification.

5. American academia is rigged so people like me who believe things like I listed above can not get jobs at US universities.

PhD training verus job requirements

The training to be a university history lecturer and the actual job are considerably different and I do not know exactly why this is the case. But, the specialization emphasized to get the doctorate contrasts sharply with the emphasis with the general knowledge needed to teach undergraduates. It seems here a greater emphasis on Western and Central Europe is more helpful than anything fancy. My post graduate training focused on areas almost completely outside Europe. My three MA courses were on Central Asia, the Ottoman Empire, and a methods course aimed at scholars of Asia and Africa. My PhD dissertation was on the deportation of Russian-Germans, Crimean Tatars, and Meskhetian Turks to Siberia, Kazakhstan and Central Asia. Europe as it is traditionally understood played a very marginal role in my post graduate studies.Yet, looking at my scheduled classes for the next year I have one class on European history each semester and one on world history each semester. So right now I am brushing up on European history from the fifteenth century through the nineteenth century. In retrospect I should have read a lot more 17th and 18th century French and English history while I was living in Arivaca. Instead I read a lot of Arizonan, Middle Eastern, Siberian, and Afghan history.

Evolution of the Blogosphere and the Death of Commenting

It seems to me the Internet and especially the blogosphere is a lot more civil now than it was five or six years ago. But, it is also a lot more boring and less dynamic. Somewhere along the line the medium ceased to be a forum for debate, some of it very hostile, and became a series of echo chambers. This may explain why I never get any comments anymore. People who agree with me feel no need to comment since they would not be adding anything new. This segment of the world's population is of course very small. In contrast those people who disagree with me, undoubtedly the vast majority of the planet, do not ever read my blog. They are off reading other blogs or more likely playing with Facebook or Twitter.

Still no comments

I wonder why other blogs get comments, but I never do?

Adjusting to different climatic cycles

Ghana is in the northern hemisphere. Therefore it should be summer now. But, it is a lot cooler now than it was in January when I first got here.

Today in Accra

Today I went shopping in Makola Market. Fortunately, before I went on my expedition I fueled up on a huge amount of fufu. Walking along the streets of the market is like being in a different world even from the surrounding areas of Accra. The place is a maze of stalls, tables, and porters with goods to sell. I did, however, manage to negotiate the labyrinth and find the item of my search. I purchased two of them, each from a different vendor.

The international role of the Tuskegee Institute

Yesterday I came across a bunch of articles on the development of cotton cultivation in German Togoland. A lot of them dealt with the role of African-Americans from the Tuskegee Institute. They established a model farm and school to train Togoland farmers on the best ways of cultivating cotton.  Evidently the Germans started to push for an increase in cotton farming in Togoland at the turn of the century in order to reduce the dependence of their textile industry upon American cotton. This has some interesting parallels to the development of cotton cultivation in Central Asia. Including the fact that there was also an experimental farm run by African-Americans from the Tuskegee Institute in the Uzbek SSR during the 1930s. Langston Hughes wrote about visiting it in his autobiography, I Wonder as I Wander. Apparently in the early 20th Century Tuskegee had the world's foremost experts on the cultivation of cotton and they were sought out by regimes as diverse as the German colonial administration of Togoland and the USSR under Stalin.

Book Progress

My book manuscript is coming slower than I would like. I am only up to 59,000 words. I hope to get some work done on it this weekend. For some reason I am finding it difficult to motivate myself to write more than a few hundred words a day on it.

Giant Mangoes

Last night I purchased a mango at the market so big that cut up it fills three bowls. I have eaten two bowls worth so far. I honestly did not think mangoes could grow that big.

There must be an invisible sun

I do not know how people manage to endure horrible tragedy and suffering and still have the strength to rebuild normal lives. I find my own burdens difficult to bear some days and they are far lighter than those of many other people. 

American Popular Culture

My access to American popular culture is obviously limited. I get some clues about what is going on via the Internet or from conversations with family, but I do not have a television so I can not follow events and trends in the US on CNN. Most of my exposure to American popular culture recently is in the form of mystery novels. The bookstore on campus seems to have a never ending supply of American mystery novels. Recently I have been reading a lot of Patricia Cornwell and Sue Grafton. As I have noted earlier a lot of the better mystery novels written in the last two decades seem to be written by women and take place in the American South. Grafton's novel's take place in California, but Cornwell has centered most of her writing around Richmond, VA. I am not sure if this is significant or not. I think in decades past most American mystery writers were men and there was a much more northern tilt to the genre.

Sources for Early Modern Europe?

I have to teach a course on Early Modern Europe next semester. Does anybody have any suggestions on sources? In particular I am looking for stuff  on 17th and 18th century England and France. I am trying both to brush up on my own knowledge and pick appropriate readings for the syllabus. It is a 300 level class.

Diaspora Nationalities in the USSR

Despite what everybody else says there was racism in the USSR and national equality did not exist in any real sense from the late 1930s onward. In particular Soviet citizens belonging to diaspora nationalities came under severe repression. On 31 January 1938 the Soviet Politburo passed a resolution regarding the extension of various national operations by the NKVD. Below I have provided a translation of an excerpt from the resolution. The capitalization is in the original.

Allow the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs to continue until 15 April 1938 operations to destroy spying-sabotage contingents of POLES, LATVIANS, GERMANS, ESTONIANS, FINNS, GREEKS, IRANIANS, KHARBINTSY, CHINESE and ROMANIANS, both foreign subjects and Soviet citizens, in accordance with existing decrees of the NKVD USSR.

The lack of differentiation between Soviet citizens descended of immigrants to the Russian Empire and foreigners is striking. The operating assumption of the Soviet government was that even after several generations national minorities would continue to owe their political loyalty to their ancestral homeland due to inheriting some sort of national essence from their parents. In all other historical contexts this assumption is called racism. I do not know why people give Stalin and his henchmen a free pass on this.

Source: S.U. Alievea, Tak eto bylo:  Natsional'nye repressii v SSSR 1919-1952 gody (Moscow: "Insan", 1993), vol. I., p. 253

Another lovely day

The weather in southern Ghana is a lot nicer than I expected it to be before I got here. Looking at a map it is quite close to the equator and I assumed it would be much hotter and more humid than it has been. Even though we are in the northern hemisphere, the temperature has been cooler now that it is summer than it was in January.

Sunday in Legon

Today the campus seemed particularly deserted even for a Sunday. Walking around I saw very few people. Despite being summer it is quite cool now. So the walk was quite pleasant.

Today's activities

Today I planned to get more done than I actually did. This afternoon I ate fufu and goat in light soup for lunch, drank a coconut, and then took a tro-tro to Nkrumah Circle and walked down to Makola Market. I got a late start and getting a seat on a tro-tro took over half an hour. So I did not get to the market until considerably after three in the afternoon. I took a cab home around four thirty so I could get home before it got dark. I wish there was subway system in Accra. It would solve a lot of transportation problems.

German Togoland

Last night I compiled a three page bibliography of sources to look at regarding German Togoland. This morning I found one of the shorter ones in the library and read all twenty pages. The scholarship on the colony is limited. I suspect in large part to its relatively small size, brief existence, and lack of large scale military conflict in comparison to other German colonies in Africa.

Updating the Blog Roll

Okay I have been lazy about just about everything recently. But, I have finally cleaned up my blog roll. Those blogs that have been inactive for a long time have been removed. I have also once again added Randy McDonald's A Bit More Detail. For a long time it was impossible for me to access Live Journal sites so I took them off the roll. If anybody would else would like me to add them to the list let me know. I only ask that you link to me in return.

Another accomplishment and it is still five minutes to noon

I finally got JSTOR to work on my laptop. Now I can actually do some research. If anybody knows any good articles on German colonialism in West Africa, I am interesting in German Togoland, please let me know now that I can download them. Most of the literature on German colonialism in Africa I have seen deals with Namibia.

Today's accomplishments

Today I finally finished grading final exams. I had been putting off the last seven for what seems like weeks. I still have to enter them into the computer, but I do not have to read any more student essays on the Cuban Missile Crises or the end of the Cold War for a while now. Overall the students did well. But, I think they did better in general on the mid-term. Nobody failed the exam and over half the grades were a B+ or better.

Even more thrilling, after weeks of failure I finally got the latest virus definitions for my anti-virus software to download onto my laptop. I had to wait until most people had left campus for summer break for the available bandwith to be sufficient for this task. But, I finally got updated today and a quick scan showed no problems.

Moving slowly, but surely

I have gotten up to 57,000 words done on the book ms or 200 pages double spaced. I also recently got invited to submit a paper to a conference on a subject that is rather new to me. But, I am excited about doing a paper on an African related topic and going to another part of Ghana to deliver it.

Good News

So far this week has gone well. I got a set of peer review reports back on a journal article and it was revise and resubmit, not a flat out rejection for a change. Getting a manuscript past both editors who are increasingly using desk rejections to limit the number of articles they send out for peer review and peer review itself seems to be taking longer and longer. In the days before the Internet it took months to get an article published now it only takes years.

Seventy Years since the Baltic Deportations of 14 June 1941

Today is the 70th anniversary of the first mass deportations of people from the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia to Siberia and other distant areas of the USSR by the occupying Soviet authorities. This forced resettlement of tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children led to predictable human suffering and mass mortality. I do not have time to write an extensive post about this crime today. But, I have written about this deportation in the past and the following links will take you to some of those pieces. Five years ago for the 65th anniversary I wrote a short summary of the deportations which you can find here. The following day I posted a short piece on the personal experience of a single Estonian woman who had survived the deportations and exile which you can find here.  Finally, for those that are interested here is an attempt to quantify the number of people to die as a result of the deportations. The deportations represented an attempt to violently remove the leading strata of the Baltic states in order to eliminate  resistance to Soviet colonial rule. As I noted earlier, Soviet rule over the Baltic states represented a classical colonial occupation complete with economic exploitation, foreign settlement, and armed resistance.

US Embassy

Yesterday and today I went to the US embassy to get more pages put in my passport. The embassy is a lot friendlier on the inside than it looks on the outside. The procedures are pretty streamlined and I was in the embassy less than an hour both days. Getting to the embassy, however, takes at least an hour even though it is less than twenty miles away. Accra has the worst traffic I have ever seen. It makes Los Angeles look good by comparison.

The sun is shining again

Yesterday it was gloomy and rainy all day long. Today the sun is shining and there is not a hint of approaching thunder clouds. Also even though it is summer it is not too hot.

Rainy Season

It is now officially the rainy season as if I had any doubts earlier. Today it rained for hours on end. I have been told that this will continue for some months.

Drinking from a coconut

Today I did not do much productive. I walked around campus, cruised the Internet, and ate cheap Ghanaian food. One of the things I ate was a green coconut. Actually you do not so much eat it as drink it since most of the edible part at this stage is still in the form of the liquid coconut milk.

More on publications and academic jobs

There seems to be a pervasive need by American academics to maintain the illusion of meritocracy by falsely claiming that publications count in hiring decisions. For the vast majority of hires at the assistant professor level this is simply not true. If it were I would have gotten at least one US interview from 2005 to 2007. Publications undoubtedly count for many other things, but for landing a first teaching job in the US they do not help at all and may very well hurt your chances. They can often signal to committees that your expertise is too narrow and outside the perimeter of what they are looking for in a candidate. Again for the most part they are looking for people to teach European history from 1400-1945 to freshmen, not anything specialized. I enjoy teaching in Africa so other than wasted time and effort being blacklisted in the US is not that big of deal for me. But, it really is misleading for American academics to be telling recent PhDs that if they just publish enough they will get a job. This is simply not true and in many cases publications might hurt their chances.

Russian-Germans in Kazakhstan 1950

After the Second World War had already ended on 9 May 1945, the Stalin regime subjected the Russian-Germans already living in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan before 1941 to special settlement restrictions. Between 18 September 1945 and 6 November 1946 the Soviet government extended the special settlement regime to 105,817 Russian-Germans living east of the Urals during the war and therefore not subject to deportation (Berdinskikh, doc. 9, pp. 341-343). The largest concentration of these local Germans was in Kazakhstan. The new decrees placed 59,365 Russian-Germans in Kazakhstan under special settlement restrictions and exempted only 107 of the ethnic Germans living in the republic (Krieger, note 24, p. 155). The legal basis for these restrictions was quite weak even by the standards of the time. A 12 August 1950 top secret report from the Minister of State Security (MGB) of Kazakhstan to Abakumov, the head of the MGB for all of the USSR noted the unsound legal basis for placing these local Russian-Germans under special settlement restrictions. I have reproduced the relevant passages below. The translation from Russian is my own. The underlining appears in the original text.

In Kazakhstan the record of special settlers includes 56,972 local Germans, not subject to resettlement in the Period of the Great Fatherland War. These Germans were taken into the registration of special settlers in 1945 by a telegraphed decree by the deputy minister of internal affairs of the USSR c.(omrade) Chernyshev. There has been no kind of government decision about the extension of these restrictions establishing them as evictees.

The General Procurator of the Union of SSRs has clarified to the Procurator of the Kazakh SSR that it is illegal to take these Germans into the registration of special settlers and they are subject to liberation. Guided by these instructions, the Procurator of the republic, and also oblast and raion procurators of the Kazakh SSR refuse to sanction the arrest and arraignment on criminal charges cases of flight by these Germans from places of settlement and do not sanction their arrest by administrative order for the violation of the regime in places of special settlements (Tsarevskaia-Diakina, doc. 200, p. 657).

The position of the General Procurator did nothing to change the legal status of the local Russian-Germans in Kazakhstan. They remained special settlers until 1954, well after Stalin's death on 5 March 1953. But, the complete lack of any legal basis for their restricted status did not go unnoticed even among the officials of the MGB.

Sources:

Berdinskikh, V.A., Spetsposelentsy: Politcheskaia ssylka narodov Sovetskoi Rossii. Moscow: Novoe literatunoe obozrenie, 2005.

Krieger, Viktor, Rein, Volga, Irtysh: Iz istorii nemtsev Tsentral'noi Azii. Almaty: Daik-Press, 2006.

Tsarevskaia-Diakina, T.V., ed., Spetspereselentsy v SSSR: vol. v of Istoriia stalinskogo Gulaga: Konets 1920-kh - pervaia polvina 1950-kh godov. Moscow: Rosspen, 2004.

More Book Progress

I have gotten up to 55,000 words on the book manuscript. It is coming along nicely. I have almost completely finished the section on the legal infrastructure of the special settlement regime. This weekend I am going to try and get a working draft of the section on the labor army finished.

Making Future Research Plans

I have been reading and thinking about comparative history recently. I have a couple of projects dealing with Russian-Germans I want to finish up. But, after I finish them I am going to change my research focus. It appears that I might be working in Ghana for quite some time. The source base here is best geared towards the colonial history of the Gold Coast, followed by the more recent history of the Republic of Ghana, and finally the history of Pan-Africanism as an ideology. I am told that the archives here especially for the colonial era are easy to access, well ordered, and contain a great deal of information. I am, however, not sure exactly what I would research. First, I obviously need to do a lot of background reading on African history. I would like to do something comparative that incorporates some aspect of African history. I have been thinking about maybe writing an extended comparison of Soviet policies towards deported nationalities, the special settlers, and South African apartheid. If anybody has any suggestions for me regarding sources on African history and possible comparative research projects I might be able to pursue please let me know. I will have some more thoughts on comparative history later.

Book Progress

I am almost up to 54,000 words on my book manuscript. That is 190 pages double spaced. I hope to get a completed first draft done sometime in August.

Easing into summer

Now that classes are over things are pretty slow on campus. I am almost finished grading final exams. I will definitely finish up this week. I also have some things I need to do in Accra, but they should not be too difficult. I have been working on my current book manuscript regarding Russian-Germans and have written a little over 53,000 words total. I would like to get a completed manuscript done before the middle of August. I hope to be able to read up on African history as well as prepare for next semester's classes in the next couple of weeks. It is very nice not having to teach four or five classes a semester.

If I knew then what I know now

Today I read over my old blog posts from when I lived in Arivaca Arizona. At that time I did not think I would ever get an academic job. If I had to do it again I would have done things differently. First, I probably would not have bothered to apply to any jobs in the US. I now know I never had a shot of even getting an interview with any US institution. Having a PhD from the UK and no teaching experience basically eliminated me from the first round of any search. No amount of publications could overcome this second disability. Anybody who tells you that publications are what get you hired as an assistant professor in the US is lying to you. I see this lie repeated a lot on academic blogs and I wish it would stop. Second, I would have sent an application to every history department in English speaking Africa regardless of whether they were advertising openings or not. While having a British degree hurt me a lot in the US job market since my degree is from SOAS not Oxford or Cambridge I believe it would have helped me in the African market. Not surprisingly the School of Oriental and African Studies is known and respected in Africa. This was the second university in Africa I even looked at and I got the job on the basis of my CV and publications without the need for an interview. Finally, I would have done a lot more to project myself as a generalist rather than a specialist. Universities are not looking for people to teach on the subject of their PhD dissertation. They are looking for people who can teach the broad outlines of several centuries of the history of whole continents. I honestly did not fully realize how far removed the daily work of a university lecturer is from the process of getting a PhD when I lived in Arivaca.

A Brief History of Communism in Africa

Despite Soviet rhetoric under Lenin and Stalin denouncing imperialism and colonialism there was little Soviet support of movements seeking independence in Africa before the 1960s. Most anti-imperialist activity undertaken by Moscow during this time focused on Asia. Even here, however, rhetoric trumped actual material assistance. As a result the vast majority of independence movements in Asia succeeded under non-Communist leadership. Nehru and Gandhi in India, Jinnah in Pakistan, and Sukarno in Indonesia to name only the leaders of the three most populous Asian states to gain independence after World War II, threw off European colonial rule without establishing a Soviet style system. The only successful anti-colonial movement to establish a communist government was the Viet-Minh under Ho Chi Minh fighting against French colonial rule. In 1954 they established a communist regime in North Vietnam after the signing of the Paris Accords with France. Successful communist revolutions after Stalin’s death were few until the 1970s. After North Vietnam there was only Cuba in 1959 and South Yemen in 1969. Successful communist revolutions against colonial regimes were even rarer. Cuba was already an independent state leaving only the British colony of South Yemen as an example of communism replacing colonialism between 1954 and 1975. The British and French empires collapsed in Africa without any communist governments replacing them. It was only in the mid-1970s that communism established a foothold on the African continent with the collapse of the imperial regimes of Ethiopia and Portugal.

Although Soviet support for national liberation movements in Africa gets rhetorical and limited material support starting in the early 1960s under Khrushchev it is only later under Brezhnev that this support becomes significant. Soviet support for national liberation movements in southern Africa such as the MPLA in Angola, FRELIMO in Mozambique, ZAPU in Rhodesia, SWAPO in Namibia, and the ANC in South Africa sought to buy the allegiance of these movements should they ever come to power. In the case of Angola and Mozambique this strategy was successful. In Rhodesia, the USSR bet on the wrong horse. Robert Mugabe’s ZANU movement came to power rather than ZAPU. In Namibia and South Africa the Soviet Union’s favored movements came to power, but they did not establish communist regimes. Moreover, the ANC came to power after the USSR disintegrated and ceased to exist as a state.

The first communist government in Africa was not established until 1974. The overthrow of Emperor Selassie in Ethiopia that year made it the first state in Africa to pursue the Soviet model of development. The collapse of the Portuguese Empire led to the establishment of two other Soviet style states in Africa that promptly allied themselves with the USSR, Angola and Mozambique. The MPLA in Angola and FRELIMO in Mozambique had received Soviet military assistance during their existence as guerilla organizations fighting against Portuguese rule. Upon the removal of Portuguese soldiers from Africa in 1975 they continued to receive Soviet military hardware as well as Cuban soldiers in their struggle against armed anti-communist movements backed variously by Rhodesia, South Africa, and the USA. Today Angola and Mozambique are at peace and the ruling parties have largely dismantled the Soviet style economic structures created in the 1970s.

Overall communist movements had limited success in Africa. Outside of South Africa, there were no organized communist parties prior to World War II. Communism came to power in Ethiopia through a military coup and in Angola and Mozambique through guerilla organizations more influenced by Castro’s Cuban Revolution than Lenin’s Bolshevik Revolution. Africa provided a weak social, organizational, and ideological environment from which communist movements could develop. Asia proved to be much more fertile ground for such movements. Communist governments came to power in China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia and at one time strong communist parties or movements existed in Burma, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia.

What I did today

Today I had to get a prescription renewed. The medical system here is pretty efficient. I would say it is comparable to the British NHS system with which I am familiar.  But, I wish the doctors would give me a prescription for longer than a month. It seems silly to spend a couple of hours every month just to get a prescription renewed. I hope the next time I go I can get more than a month.

Another trip to the mall

Yesterday I went to Accra Mall. It was crowded as usual. It amazes me that while in the US almost everything is made in China at the Game store almost everything is made in South Africa. Some of it like my Logik kettle is not made very well. I still have to return it since it is still under warranty, but in the meantime I have purchased a more expensive and hopefully more durable kettle.

Thanks for Commenting

Thanks for commenting people. Since 4:00 pm yesterday I have gotten five comments on my blog. That is more comments than I have gotten in the last two months.

More on working in Africa

This semester I spent a lot of time adjusting to life on a new continent. This is the fourth continent I have lived on in the last ten years. Which I think is part of the coming globalization of academic labor. Had I stayed in the US, I am pretty sure I would have had to stop looking for an academic job eventually. To date I have only had one phone interview for a US position in seven years during which I sent out hundreds of applications. I am not exactly sure why there is so much competition for lousy academic jobs in the US compared to much better academic jobs in places like Ghana. But, I suspect I got lucky in getting here before the competition realized that there are universities outside of the US, Canada and Europe.

I Love International Students

I did not realize it until recently, but we get paid a nice bonus for grading the final exams of our international students. I had two international students in my class. Both of them did quite well. When I turned in the marking sheet with their grades into the International Programs Office today I just had to sign two forms and they gave me 50 cedis in cash. That is not bad at all.

Classes

We had a department meeting today. Among the items on the agenda were class assignments for next year. Nobody has more than two classes to teach each semester. Since we get paid a straight salary rather than on a per class basis,  I am very pleased with this teaching load.

Comments

I am pretty sure this blog has the fewest number of comments per a reader of any blog in the history of the Internet. I am not exactly sure why. Is it because nothing I write is interesting enough to comment on?