New faculty in the department

This semester we are scheduled to have eight full time faculty teaching. Six of us are old timers including myself and two are new people. I met one of the new people today.

Is there still a Third World? Was there ever one?

The term Third World originally signified those states that were neither part of the Soviet led socialist bloc or the US led alliance of NATO and Japan. It was meant to categorize the political position of states such as Ghana, India, Indonesia, Egypt, and Yugoslavia that led the Nonaligned Movement. Later on this became quite fuzzy as Soviet allies such as Cuba and Vietnam joined the Nonaligned Movement. The term Third World itself came to mean any country with a lower level of economic development than the US or USSR regardless of its political orientation in the Cold War. Thus countries as radically different as Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Angola, Pakistan, and Indonesia all became classified as Third World.

From 1989 through 1991 the Second World collapsed and ceased to exist. Making the term Third World even more of an anachronism. Presumably the richer European states of the former Second World like the Czech Republic and Hungary became First World and the poorer Asian ones such as Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan became Third World. Although this reclassification hardly seems satisfactory. Is Russia really a First World country at the same level of development as Belgium? The tripartite division which was really only useful for a brief time as a political not an economic classification during the 1950s and 1960s appears to have outlived all of its usefulness. Yet, Third World still remains the favorite term by US commentators to describe the entire planet outside of Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.

Colonialism and Post-Colonialism in the Soviet Union

To my mind a colony is an ethnically distinct territory ruled by a state dominated by a different ethnicity and economically exploited by that state against the will of the indigenous population of the politically subordinated entity. The classic examples of such territories are the former European ruled countries in Africa and Asia. The Gold Coast from 1874 to 1957 for instance meets all the criteria listed above for being a colony and nobody disputes its former colonial and present post-colonial status.

In regards to the USSR I think it is clear that some of the territories ruled by Moscow such as the Baltic States clearly constituted colonies in the classic sense described above. They were completely politically subordinated to a Russian dominated state, provided far more resources to that state than they received, and the indigenous Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians strongly resisted Soviet rule. In the case of Central Asia, Michael Voslensky's term semi-colonies appears more appropriate. There was complete political control over these republics by Moscow and very few Central Asians represented in the central apparatus of the Soviet state. So they meet the first part of my definition of colonies. But, they do not meet the next two criteria. The central Soviet government invested considerably more resources into Central Asia than they extracted, the exact opposite of its policy in the Baltic states. There was also very little opposition to Soviet rule by the indigenous Central Asian population. For the most part most Central Asians had favorable opinions about being citizens of the Soviet Union. This was due in large part to the economic benefits provided by the Soviet government to the inhabitants of Central Asia. I would categorize the USSR as a colonial empire that had both colonies such as Latvia and Estonia and semi-colonies such as Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

This brings up the question of whether the former Soviet states are post-colonial. Or as David Chioni Moore put it, "Is the Post- in Postcolonial the Post in Post-Soviet?." I would argue that the post is indeed the same, but that a semi-colony only conforms to the political and not the economic forms of a classic colony. In both cases the "post" is also the same as in post-polio in that there are long term negative consequences to both colonialism and Soviet rule that can be crippling.

Russian-German Heroes of the Soviet Union

Over 33,500 Russian-Germans, most of them from the Volga region, served in the Soviet military fighting against Nazi Germany during World War II. Almost all of them were removed from the ranks of the Soviet armed forces before the end of 1941 and mobilized into forced labor detachments during 1942. Despite this prohibition on military service a large number of Russian-Germans managed to earn prestigious medals and orders from the Soviet government for their role in defending the USSR against Nazi Germany. Ethnic Germans in the Red Army bravely fought against the Nazis during the first months of the war before their almost complete purge from the military. A total of eight Russian-Germans received the award Hero of the Soviet Union. I have listed their names below.

A. Bohrmann
W. Wentzel
S. Wolkenstein
A. Hermann
N. Gastello
I. Garwahrt
R. Klein
N. Okhmann

Sources:

A.A. German, 2011, "Rossiskie nemtsy v gody Velikoi Otechestsvennoi Voiny: Vklad v Pobedy", in A.A. German (ed.), Grazhdanskaia identichnost' i vnuternnii mir rossiskikh nemtsev v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny i v istoricheskoi pamiati potomkov, Moscow: MSNK-Press, p. 14, fn. 6.

I.I. Shulga, 2011, "Massovye geroism rossiskikh nemtsev na fronte i v tylu protivnika kak proiavlenie patriotizma i grazhdanskoi identichnosti", in A.A. German (ed), Grazhdanskia identichnost' i vnuternii mir rossiskikh nemtsev v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny i v istoricheskoi pamiati potomkov, Moscow: MSNK-Press, pp. 22-25.

A Funeral in Ghana

Today I went to my first Ghanaian funeral ever. The mother of one of my colleagues died while I was in Kyrgyzstan. There was a lot more music than in most US funerals.

New Office

They are remodeling the History Department. While I was away my office got converted into a temporary storage room. So now I have been moved upstairs to a smaller, but much more modern office.

Russian-Germans Buried at Chon Tash

At Chon Tash in Kyrgyzstan there is a mass grave of 137 people murdered by the Stalin regime in 1938. A disproportionate number of these victims were ethnic Germans. Despite making up less than one percent of the population of the Kyrgyz SSR at this time they constituted a full dozen, over eight percent, of the people shot by the NKVD and buried at Chon Tash. I have listed their names below.

Fedor Egorovich Bengard
Petr Yulisovich Bergmann
Wilhelm Davidovich Wall
Friedrich Gottfriedovich Deitz
Vladimir Augustovich Litzenmeyer
Egor Emelianovich Lofink
Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Luft
Konstantin Aleksandrovich Luft
Josef Ivanovich Meldenburger
Teodor Teodorovich Miller
Mikhail Eduardovich Richter
Heinrich Heinrichovich Janzen

Source: A. Shtraus and S. Pankrats. 1997. Svidetel'stva prestuplenii. Bishkek: Ilim.  pp. 103-104.

Humidity

While Kyrgyzstan is hotter than Ghana in early August it is not nearly as humid. I have found myself sweating a lot more today than I was a few days ago. I have been drinking lots of beverages to offset this including a green coconut and the spicy light soup that accompanied my fufu and goat.

Back in Ghana

I arrived back in Ghana last night after almost two months in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Despite being on the equator the temperature is a lot cooler here than in Kyrgyzstan.

New Publication on Soviet Apartheid Now in Print

My article, "Soviet Apartheid: Stalin's Ethnic Deportations, Special Settlement Restrictions, and the Labor Army: The Case of the Ethnic Germans in the USSR" is now in print in volume 13,  no. 2 (2012) of Human Rights Review, pp. 205-224.

Update on Ghana

The transition of power in Ghana to the sitting vice president appears to have gone smoothly. Ghana has established itself as a mature and stable democratic republic in recent years. Unlike the US endeavours to export democracy to places like Afghanistan and Iraq, Ghana has been remarkably successful in establishing a vibrant free market economy, stable democratic political system, and respect for human rights. It did all this on its own without any foreign intervention from the US.

Vefa Centre 2012

Yesterday I went to the Vefa Centre for the first time in two years. It has some new additions including a new coffee shop, a central fountain, and a sushi bar that were not there two years ago. Betastores Three which took over Ramstor as the anchor grocery store is now closed. But, there is a sign in Russian saying that a supermarket is coming to the vacated space soon.

News from Ghana

The current president of Ghana died Tuesday. I am still in Kyrgyzstan, but will return to Accra in August to teach. Consider this an open thread on how the death of Mills will affect the presidential elections in Ghana this year.

More on Yeti

I saw another billboard for Yeti on Moskovska today. Evidently it is an energy drink of some sort.

Yeti

Yesterday I saw a billboard on Chui advertising a beverage called Yeti. I have no idea what type of beverage it is. But, I like the name.

Thank God for small favors

The more I read about the sheer stupidity of academics in universities in the White English speaking world the happier I am to be working at the University Ghana. There are a few exceptions like SOAS. But, for the most part the people working at universities in the US, UK, and Australia as faculty are absolutely horrible people. Nowhere else can one find such egotistical, thin skinned, blowhards.  I am not sure what went wrong, but the domination of the industry in the above countries by complete jerks does appear to be a major problem.

Indians in Bishkek

I have noticed there are a lot more Indians in Bishkek now than there were even last year. It especially hit home when I went to pick up my visa extension at OVIR and noticed that my passport was the lone US one among a veritable sea of Indian passports. Despite their increased presence here there are still very few Indian restaurants in town.

Beverages

Kyrgyzstan has a number of beverages that are not available in Ghana. Most of these are sold at stands on the sidewalk similar to the traditional US lemonade stand. The most common stands are Shoro and Tan. They each sell a version of sour milk mixed with soda water and salt, iced tea with lemon flavor, and a grain based beverage. I generally either get the sour milk drink from Shoro or the iced tea from Tan. Other beverages one sometimes sees on the street are kvass and compot.

Happy Independence Day

To my family, friends, and any other readers I may have in the US, Happy Independence Day.

Television

In Ghana I don't watch much local television. I don't pay much attention to it here either. But, sometimes I notice programs playing in the background. Kyrgyzstan gets a variety of channels from neighboring countries such as Russia, Kazakhstan, and China in addition to local fare. The other day I noticed that a movie from China dubbed in Russian was playing on a station based in Kazakhstan. For some reason that struck me as funny.

Current Writing Project

Yesterday I had a pretty good idea for a journal article. I started writing it out and I have got 16 pages double spaced finished so far. I even managed to work some of the material I found in the archives here into the footnotes. The article is a comparison of African diasporic populations to other similar diasporic groups in the USSR such as the ethnic Germans, Koreans, Jews, Greeks, Finns, and other nationalities with ancestral origins in Europe and East Asia. There is not a whole lot written on Soviet citizens of African ancestry, but I think I have enough to write a solid comparative article. It certainly continues my development along a path of doing more comparative scholarship with regards to Africa.

Russian-Germans in the Central State Archives of the Kyrgyz Republic

The staff at the Central State Archives of the Kyrgyz Republic in Bishkek are very nice and helpful. It has a nice reading room that is quite accessible to foreign scholars. Unfortunately, most of what I was looking for has apparently been reclassified as secret, a total of eight registries (opisi) that I requested. I was told there was no possible way for me to access them. Ironically a number of works published before I first arrived in Bishkek in the summer of 2007 cite these secret document and some were even reproduced verbatim in 2000. Another five registries with material dealing with Russian-Germans have been moved to the archives in Talas. So I got to look at four files from four different fonds that had a little over 50 individual documents that were of some interest. Among these was a greeting from the Executive Committee of the Volga German ASSR to the Germans in Leninfeld from 1924 written in German and a protocol of a 1926 meeting of 28 Germans in Gruenfeld outside Tokmak on the issue of redistricting the Kyrgyz Autonomous Oblast. But, as I suspected I did not find anything earth shattering.

Imperialism

I am not sure where the idea that the US relationship with every developing country in the world was the exact same phenomenon as the British, French, and Portuguese colonization of Africa came from. But, calling everything the US does abroad imperialism and referring to America's projection of power abroad an empire as if it was the same thing as British rule over India or the Gold Coast is not very helpful. To my mind there has to be some sort of political control over the foreign territory involved, economic exploitation of the ruled population, and a subjective feeling of being colonized by the inhabitants of the peripheral region for a relationship to be imperial. All three of these things for instance exist in Israel's rule over the West Bank. But, it is hard to find a single place where all three exist with regards to the US to any similar degree.

Mushroom salad

Last night I had a fried mushroom and tomato salad with onions and mayonnaise for dinner. It was quite good. I do not remember ever eating fried fresh mushrooms prepared as a salad before. Unfortunately, tonight's dinner will be pelmeni, edible, but not anything new and exciting.

Things to remember about Archives

First, things get reclassified. Stuff that was freely available fifteen years ago and even published verbatim twelve years ago can again be marked as secret and top secret and locked away for decades. This apparently can happen to whole fonds, not to mention opisi. The archives available today may be a very sanitized version of the official history as one comes across numerous pages simply marked "Secret" or finds lots of little s marks on one's requests for documents.

Two, things get moved. Archives that were at one time in a central location may be moved to outlaying provincial or regional archives. Unlike in the case above they are theoretically still accessible if one can get another letter of introduction from a local university director and can travel several hundred miles to the new location.

Three, some stuff just gets lost. That is they can not find the file and there is no record of it being ever classified as secret or top secret or moved to another archive. 

Four, a lot of stuff before the 1940s is not typed. Instead it is written out by hand and is extremely difficult to read. Even though typewriters existed in the 1920s they evidently were not in widespread use in many parts of the world. 

Archives

Recently I have been spending some time in the State Archives of the Kyrgyz Republic. I have not found any earth shattering revelations. Nor do I expect to find any. But, it is always interesting to see how institutions organize their records. So far what I have not found and what is missing from the available records has been far more intriguing than what I have actually seen.

It stays light a lot longer here

I have gotten used to it being dark every night before 7:00 living in equatorial Africa. I had forgotten how long it stays light during the summer in Central Asia. Although, I have not forgotten how cold and short the days in the winter are here and I don't miss that at all.

Update

I do not have anything of great importance to report. Very little seems to have happened in Bishkek since I was last here about a year ago. It is nice not to have any papers to grade.

Back in Bishkek

I made it to Bishkek where I am spending most of the summer. I won't be posting a lot until I get back to Ghana. But, in case anybody wondered where I had gone I thought I should post that I had gone to Kyrgyzstan. I will be back in Legon in early August.

Slow Blogging Ahead

I have to go tomorrow and take care of some stuff. Blogging will be  light if at all for the next two months. If anybody wants to know what I am up to during this time send me an e-mail. Otherwise the next semester at the University of Ghana starts in August. I will be back here then.

Cotton Paper Sent Off

Today my co-author and I went over the final corrections to our paper comparing colonial cotton cultivation in German Togoland, Russian Turkestan, British India, and the Northern Territories of what is now Ghana in the early 20th Century. Our argument is that the Germans failed in achieving their goal of replacing cotton from the US and British colonies and protectorates with cotton from its own colonies. In contrast the Russians managed to largely replace US cotton with Central Asian cotton in the years immediately before World War One. The British also managed to replace imported US cotton with cotton from their colony in India. The German textile industry never got more than one half of one percent of its cotton from German colonies and protectorates. The vast majority was imported from the US or the British Empire.

In Between

The time between finishing grading and starting vacation is always a strange one. Fortunately, it only has a few more days. Next semester I am going to aim to finish my grading faster than I did this one. If I can avoid unexpected delays I should be able to cut a few days off. But, right now the campus is pretty quiet and I am spending my evenings reading mystery novels rather than grading final exams.

A trip to the Market

Today I took a tro tro down to Makola Market. It has been a while since I have been there and I had almost forgotten just what chaos feels like. But, I did enjoy the walk from Nkrumah Circle down Nkrumah Avenue to the market. In some ways Accra reminds me of Los Angeles without the crime and graffiti. Although LA is a bit more diverse due to Asian and Latino influences.

Finished Cotton Paper Revisions

I have now finished revising my book chapter on cotton in German Togoland. As soon as my co-author gives me his assent I will send it back to the editor. Then I can get back to mundane things like getting laundry done and buying blood pressure medicine.

More Work

Just when I thought I was finished. I now have to revise my cotton in German Togoland chapter. I am going to try and finish it tonight. It will be second publication dealing with an aspect of African history. While there are a lot of corrections to be made. A total of 62. They are all relatively minor. So I should be able to get it done quickly.

Walt Richmond Finally has a Blog!

My good friend and talented scholar Walt Richmond finally has a blog. He has a lot of interesting posts up on genocide, the undead, and other such topics. You can reach his blog on this link. Go check it out.

Next semester's classes

I have now finished revising my syllabi for my classes next semester. I am teaching Historiography and World History 1914-1945. Tomorrow I will print them out. Then I should be done working for this semester.

Grades now entered

I have now entered all my grades for this last semester. The only work I have left to do before I can begin my summer break now is get my syllabi and reading material for my courses next semester to the Head of the Department. I should be finished with that by tomorrow morning.

Lessons I learned this semester part I

Grading is my least favorite part of being a lecturer. I am glad it is over for a while now. By the end of tomorrow I have will completed entering all my grades for the semester. I have, however, learned a few small minor things. First, I am going to put it in my syllabi especially for my 200 and 300 level courses that no student will be allowed to make up the mid-term test without a valid medical excuse. Further more students will have to get this documentation to me within a week of the originally scheduled date of the test. Otherwise I am just going to give them automatic zeros. If I spell it out explicitly in the syllabus I should have fewer problems. I have never had any problems with my 400 level classes. But, I had a lot of funny business on missing the mid term in my 300 level class this last semester. So no make up assignments without proper medical documentation.

Finally getting things under control

I have now entered my grades for my classes in Legon. Tomorrow I will calculate and enter the ones for Accra. I finally got to the book store to refresh my supply of mystery paperbacks. So I tonight I will have something entertaining to read

Finished Marking

I have now finished marking all my exams. Now I just have to calculate grades and enter them. I hope to be completely done with the semester before I go to bed tomorrow.

Reflections on the semester

I have now just about finished working three whole semesters at the University of Ghana. In that time I have taught almost 300 students. I feel I probably could have taught a smaller number of students better. I have still not figured out any way to teach other than lecturing and assigning readings. I know many people say lecturing is an ineffective way of teaching. But, with classes ranging from 83 to 120 students and everything geared towards the final exam I have still not figured out any viable alternatives.

Getting closer

I only have 30 more scripts to grade now. I will definitely finish marking them all before Monday. Then I can calculate the grades and enter them into the system.

Inching Forward

I have now finished my scripts for Legon. I now have 53 more scripts for City Campus to grade. I hope to have everything finished by Monday. I am going to be very unhappy if I have anybody else show up this weekend to complain about the mid term I gave seven weeks ago.

A little progress

Not only do I have a lot of grading to do, but now I am getting students I don't remember asking for letters of recommendation and trying to turn in late assignments after the final exam. To top it off today is supposed to be a national holiday, Africa Unity Day. At any rate I have finished grading 146 final exams of three essays each out of 224. So I only have 78 more to go.

Open Thread on Pan-Africanism

Africa Unity Day is May 25th and commemorates the founding of the Organization of African Unity in 1963. Since Nkrumah's overthrow in 1966 Pan-Africanism seems to have been in serious decline on the continent. But, it is hard to argue that what replaced Nkrumah and his vision were better in the long term. Greater economic cooperation aimed at developing the physical and human infrastructure of Africa still appears to be the best way forward. If the University of Ghana is going to be a world class university its history department can not focus solely on Ghanaian history and only cater to students from Ghana. It has to expand and the natural direction of that expansion is in a Pan-African direction. I think we are starting to move in this direction now, but it has been a long time since Nkrumah fell so there is a lot of catching up to do.

Still plugging away

I have no graded 72 final scripts. I am almost one third the way through the total. I really do wish we had smaller classes.

Still moving through the pile

I have now finished grading 60 scripts. Out of 83 students registered for my 400 level class only 58 showed up for the test. So that is 25 less exams I have to mark. I am going to go home and plow through some more of the 400 level exams. I have done seven so far. I need a break from the 300 level scripts.

Making my way through the pile

I have now graded 45 final exams consisting of three essays each. I have to go give my second test now. It only has 83 students.

Progress so far

Today despite a very long committee meeting and other commitments I managed to get 20 final exams graded. I am hoping I can get another 20 or so graded before I go to bed tonignt. My goal is to finish grading all 112 before Wednesday.

Very Busy Week

This week my students take their final exams. I will have about 250 finals to grade in the next two weeks. I am hoping to do them as fast as possible. I really envy people who have classes of 30-50 students rather than over 100. To be honest that is just far too many students for 300 and 400 level classes.

68 years since the deportation of the Crimean Tatars

Today marks the 68th anniversary of Stalin's deportation of the Crimean Tatars. I do not have anything new to say on this issue that I have not already stated. My posts on this topic for 2006, 2007, and 2009 can still be viewed. This post deals with the Stalinist claims of endemic treason by the Crimean Tatars. Other pieces on the Crimean Tatars can be found here,  here, and here. Finally, here is a short English language bibliography on the Crimean Tatars.

Garden Egg Stew

Today I had garden egg stew with yam for lunch. Garden egg is Ghanaian for eggplant. It was really tasty. It reminded me of an Indian style puree with onions in it.

I thought we resolved this in 1989

Apparently the standard western left wing orthodox view on the Internet is that all of Stalin's crimes were perfectly justified because of the Allied Intervention from 1918-1920. I don't even think Stalinists in Russia use this excuse anymore, but I could be wrong.

Help with Historiography Again

I am thinking of assigning John Tosh's The Pursuit of History to my historiography class next semester. It was one of the books that Dr. Frank Dikotter used when he taught the historical methods class I took for my MA at SOAS. I have been rereading it and it looks like it is accessible enough to use for undergraduates here. But, I am wondering if anybody has any experience with assigning it to first or second year undergraduates and what were the results?

The Subjectivity of Colonialism

While there are objective criteria that define colonial relationships such as alien political control and economic exploitation there is also a subjective element. That is a group of people have to feel that they are colonized and  demonstrate opposition to their political rule by outsiders. Hence far more people have argued that the relationship between England and Ireland was colonial than have posited a colonial relationship between England and Scotland. The existence of systems where outside political domination of ethnically distinct territories exists, but other defining factors of colonialism such as economic exploitation or a subjective view of being colonized do not exist might be defined as semi-colonial. The remaining US territories in the Pacific and the Caribbean such as Guam, Samoa, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands seem to be semi-colonial.

Summer Time

I have a lot of real world stuff to do in the next couple of weeks. Then I have a lot more real world stuff to do over the next couple of months. So until August or so blogging will probably be lighter than normal. In particular I will probably not be posting any heavy academic pieces during that time. Instead posts are far more likely to deal with my personal observations.

Comparative History

There are not too many people who do comparative history. Yet, I think when done well comparative history is a lot more interesting than the traditional focus on a single "nation state." I have been trying to do more comparative work. My last couple of publications have comparisons between Africa and Eurasia and I would like to continue in this vein. But, I do realize there is a strong bias against comparative work in favor of more narrow foci. Does anybody else see any merit in comparative history?

Life

Sometimes I think my life is way harder than it should be. But, then I remember that a lot of other people have it a lot worse than me. Still it would be nice if every little thing was not such a colossal struggle all the time.

Haircut

I finally got my long hippie hair cut short today. It was down past my shoulders this morning. It is now a military style buzz cut. I will say that the barber really did earn his four cedis. He spent a lot of effort clipping off the locks.

Open Thread on what is happening in the US

It is hard to believe, but it has been almost five years since I left Arivaca. Since that time I have not spent much time in the US. The longer I have been gone the more difficult I have found it has been to keep up with events in the US.

Weather in Legon

The weather is beautiful in Legon today. It is the rainy season and a couple night ago we had a massive rain storm with strong winds, lightening, and thunder. The storm knocked over a number of trees and fences on campus. But, now everything is bright and sunny here.

More Literature

I have started reading in no particular order Jonathan Kellerman's series of mysteries staring Milo Sturgis and Alex Delaware. They are not great literature, but they are entertaining. So far no Estonians have shown up in the books.

Spring Cleaning

Today I did some spring cleaning. I got the small bathroom cleaner. The sink and toilet are okay now, but the floor still needs another washing.I will give it another cleaning next week.

Help with historiography?

The two people who taught Historiography here last time have told me that they found it very challenging due to the fact that the students had difficulty grasping abstract concepts. I went to the library today and most of what they had on historiography on the shelves was several decades old. There was one book published in the mid-1980s, but it had not been entered in the system yet so I could not check it out. So I got two books from the early 1970s that appear to deal mostly with the challenge of structuralism as borrowed from French sociology to the traditional reliance of history upon narrating events. I think that these debates might be a bit outdated for 2012. Does anybody have any suggestions on what I should cover in the class? Bear in mind hat this is a 200 level class so the only history the students will have had are Introduction to Earliest Civilizations and Selected Topics in World History both of which are pretty broad and basic introductory courses. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Wrapping up the semester

Today we had our last departmental meeting of the semester. It lasted four hours. But, we did get a fair amount of work accomplished. I have my new class assignments for next year. The first semester I will be teaching Aspects of World History 1914-1945 and Historiography. The next semester I will be teaching Aspects of World History since 1945, Methodology of History as well as a MPhil course on race and ethnicity. In August we will also be getting four new people. That makes a net gain of eight full time faculty since I arrived here.

Water

It is now day three and we still have no running water. Eventually I will get used to walking across the street every morning to get a bucket of water so I can wash. But, right now it seems like an annoyance.

Life in Legon

It is reading week so there is not much happening other than students coming into my office asking for clarification in preparation of the final exams later this month. We also still have no running water.

Happy May Day

May Day is celebrated in Ghana. But, it is not a huge holiday. The dining hall was still open. The running water, however, decided not to come to work today. I had to go across the road to fill a bucket up from a polytank this morning. The first tank was empty, the second one locked, and only the third one gave me any water. Which proves my claim that nothing ever works in the Third World on the first or second tries. That is why it is called the Third World.

Heavy Metal

Last night I saw a documentary on Judas Priest. In a case of life imitating art it did seem to be quite similar to This is Spinal Tap. It is true that unlike AC/DC or Led Zeppelin that the band's drummer did not die of alcohol poisoning. It is also true that Rob Halford's coming out of the closet seems to be unique to metal bands. All those big haired metal groupies and he did not even care, so sad. :-( However, other than that it did have all the same plot lines. The origins in the UK during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the early years of struggle and poverty, the massive success in the US, the problems with drugs and alcohol, the split between the band and the lead singer, and the reunification of the band and the lead singer were all there. Evidently they have no plans of retiring even though they are all in their 50s now. Maybe I can book them for my retirement party in 19 years?

Literature

I am currently reading Smiley's People and I am struck by the large number of Estonians in the book. There are not that many Estonians in the world and Stalin reduced their population by a significant degree. But, they do seem to find their way everywhere.

Classes are over for the semester

I have now finished all my lectures for the semester. My next class is not until August. I hope that I do not ever have any more 7:30 am Monday classes or 6:30 pm Friday classes. Having both this semester made my weekends seem really short.

Definitions

I have come to the conclusion that most people have fundamental disagreements with me over basic definitions. So here is what I mean when I use these words. I don't expect anybody to ever agree with me. But, at least people should know what I mean.

1. Citizenship: A legal category granted by the state providing a person defined as a citizen with certain rights and documentation of their status, most notably in the form of a passport.

2. Nationality: A political category representing a group of people with certain commonalities who aspire to obtain self determination. Usually nationalities are ethnic groups that have become politicized and desire some form of at least symbolic control over their ancestral territory.

3. Ethnicity: A cultural category representing people who believe they have a common heritage and certain shared signifiers such as language, religion, and way of life.

4. Race: Any immutable category based upon ancestry and inherited at birth. Generally racial categories are imposed upon populations by the state. In contrast ethnic categories are more fluid, have elements of voluntary association, and are formed by elements of society on the basis of cultural commonalities independent of the state. However, it is very easy to racialize national and ethnic categories.

I would still like to know.

I am still curious about the demographic make up of what appears to be my recently enlarged readership. I already knew about Walt and Tanja. But, I have been getting a lot more hits than two a day recently.

Russian-German Settlers in Africa

I just found out that a number of Russian-Germans settled in German East Africa (today Tanzania) during 1906-1907 as part of an Imperial German government program to settle Europeans in the colony. By 1908 there were 67 Russian-German families in the colony out of a total European population of 2845 people (pp. 577-578). I was unaware that there had been any substantial settlement of Russian-Germans anywhere in Africa.

Source: V. Schmidt, "Emigratsiia rossiskikh nemtsev v Vostochnuiu Afriku (1906-1907 gg.): iz kolonial'nogo proshlogo Germanii" in Ethnicheskie nemtsy Rossii: Istoricheskii fenomen. Materialy XII mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii. Moskva, 18-20 sentiambria 2008 g. M., 2009,  pp. 561-580.

Time to Delurk

Strangely enough my site meter says I have been getting lots of hits recently. Since most of them are coming from the US and UK I am assuming some of them are real humans rather than spam bots. Who are you people? Please leave a note in the comments to identify yourself so that I can better cater to the interests of my potential audience.

Finishing up lectures

Today I taught my last 7:30 am class of the semester. I hope I do not have to teach any more ever. Monday morning at 7:30 am is the worst possible time slot to teach a class.

Optimism

Someday, somebody will inadvertently come here, see the 'graffiti', and agree with something I have written. I have faith now that it will happen. Even though my ideas are way beyond the extreme edge of orthodox academia in America, I think there must be some people out there who agree with me. Eventually one of these people will find their way here and leave a comment. Maybe it won't be this year or next year, but it will happen eventually.

The Power of the Powerless

I had an interesting conversation last night. Strangely enough it put things in a rather different perspective for me. It is true that my work and ideas are largely excluded from orthodox academia. A google scholar search shows that the only other scholar to refer to the special settlement regime as an apartheid system is Galina Ivanova. But, Russian scholarship in the 1990s was considerably more diverse than the reigning orthodoxy in the US today on Soviet nationality policies established by people like Francine Hirsch. It was certainly far, far more critical of the Soviet regime. It is also true that this exclusion gets reinforced on the Internet where most academics refuse to even consider the application of negative terms such as racism, apartheid, colonialism, and genocide to any action ever taken by the government of the USSR. But, it is precisely because much of American academia strives towards a totalitarian model that my marginalization may be less than the total dismissal that I had previously thought.

The argument is that the less room that a regime makes for dissenting ideas the more dangerous it perceives any dissenting ideas. Hence the spectacle of the Soviet and other dictatorships arresting and persecuting people for rather innocuous opposition activities. Now American academia is not anywhere near that level of ideological control, but it is far less diverse than American society as a whole in terms of the acceptance of unorthodox ideas.  So just as the presence of graffiti calling for the overthrow of an authoritarian regime has more meaning than political graffiti in a truly liberal and tolerant society, my dissent has some meaning by the very fact that there is a reigning academic orthodoxy enforced through hiring practices and peer review. Although I have found that it is still possible to surmount this last instrument of control, it has gotten ideologically much tighter in the last couple of years.  However, just like political graffiti in the capital of an authoritarian regime my writing on this blog does indicate that there is not complete overt consent and compliance with the ruling dogma. In a completely open system it is meaningless. But, the more the system attempts to shut out or even just ignore alternative ideas the more potential such graffiti has to be an ideological irritant to the people who enforce the ruling orthodoxy. This is the gist of the argument I got from the person I was debating last night. I initially had a lot of doubts about its veracity. I would have thought that the more closed the system became the easier it was for everybody to completely ignore me. I am guessing that 99.9% of historians in the US teaching Soviet history have never heard of me or read any of my published works. However, I did like his optimism. So from now on I am going to act as if my words might very well serve the same type of function as opposition graffiti in an illiberal state. It greatly increases my status from being a complete nobody.

Soviet Colonialism in the Baltic Again

Scholars that actually study the Baltic States such as Violeta Kelertas and Karlis Racevskis and in an earlier era V. Stanley Vardys have long maintained that Soviet rule over Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia definitely qualified as colonialism. Likewise scholars of colonialism and postcolonialism such as David Chioni Moore have also noted its colonial nature. But, now it appears that a substantial number of western intellectuals with a presence on the Internet now cling to a variation of the old Soviet line on this issue. They claim that by having given Soviet citizenship to the Baltic peoples that there was no difference between Soviet rule over Latvia and the incorporation of Vermont into the US. This unwanted grant of  Soviet citizenship is supposed to mean that there was equality between the population of the occupying power and the Baltic peoples and thus no colonial relationship. This argument is even stupider than the old Soviet claim that the Baltic States voluntarily joined the USSR. But, it is evidently the mainstream view of left-wing western intellectuals on the Internet now. I think the summary by Racevskis is appropriate here.

There are indeed excellent reasons why the Baltic countries should be and always should have been seen as the victims of colonization. It is a conclusion made inescapable in terms of some basic definitions. Colonialism involves, after all, a condition of domination, of territorial occupation and control. As Stephen Slemon puts it, "colonialism oppresses through direct political and economic control." This control materializes in the form of an "ideological regulation of colonial subjects, of subordination through the manufacture of consent." The manufacture in turn, can take many forms. It can be more or less subtle and its strategies can be carried out on various levels of coercion. Generally speaking, however, the fabrication of consent involves such areas of contention as language, history, and education. In this regard, if the Soviet form of colonialism differed from other kinds it was perhaps in the brutality and thoroughness of its oppression (pp. 167-168).

He sums up the basic argument pretty well. But, the intellectual work of burying Stalinism appears to be something that will never end. The corpse keeps coming back in zombie form.

Source: Karlis Racevskis, "Toward A Postcolonial Perspective on the Baltic States" in Violeta Kelertas Baltic Postcolonialism (NY: Rodopi, 2006), pp. 165-186.

Marginality

I got a message today from a former student who is currently doing post-graduate work who asked if he could use my "blog as an example of marginal discourse in mainstream academics."  I am not sure, however, if the type of stuff I put on this blog would even be considered on the most extreme margins of "mainstream academics" in the US. Looking at the fact that many western intellectuals are now defending the Soviet invasion and occupation of the Baltic states I do not think there is much at all in common between academics in Africa and America. One reason that communism was so weak in Africa is that African intellectuals are just not as stupid as American and European ones.

More very controversial things I believe

Apparently my ideas are being shared by fewer and fewer people on the Internet and among western intellectuals every day. Here are some that seem to be rejected by most of the group described above.

1. That the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states was a modern example of colonialism.

2. That from 1938 on that ethnic categories rather than class ones increasingly became the primary targets of Soviet repression under Stalin reaching a peak on 26 November 1948.

3. That the revival of the cult of Stalin in Russia is just as morally troubling as a similar revival of Hitler's cult in Germany would be.

4. That the USSR should be judged using the same standards as other countries and does not get a free pass on discrimination because they used the term natsionalnost rather than race to describe categories of people.

5. Maybe someday somebody outside of Africa will take my ideas seriously. This is more of a hope than a belief.

Race and Ethnicity

We are drafting a new PhD program in history here. The Head of the Department has assigned me to teach the class on Ethnicity and Race. I just found out this morning that I have to have the course description and reading list done by tomorrow. But, I managed to put together both before lunch today.

New Blogger Format

They have now switched my blogger format to their new format. So I am testing to see if I can make it work. I don't yet see any advantages of the new format over the old format. I am used to the aesthetics of the old format, but other than purely stylistic changes I don't see any differences. It just looks different and things are in different places. I am sure in a couple of weeks I will have gotten used to the new formatting just like I did with Gmail.

Class coverage

A lot classes we teach here cover entire continents over multiple centuries. I find it difficult to adequately cover such a large amount of material adequately in a mere semester. Right now I am wrapping up teaching two classes. One covers the time between the French Revolution and the end of World War II. The other covers from 1945 to 1991. The second one is a lot easier for me to teach in large part because it is only covering half the amount of time as the other class. Last semester I had a class covering from 1914-1945 which is probably the ideal amount of time to cover during a one semester class. It certainly allows for a lot more in depth focus than does covering 1789 to 1945.

How did the Soviet regime survive for so long?

Today I finished up my last lecture for my world history class at city campus. It was on the collapse of the USSR. Rather than just look at why the USSR fell apart I think it is a useful approach to examine how it managed to survive for so long. If you had attempted to convert the British Empire into a similar union it would have failed miserably and rapidly. Of course a big part of this is geography alone. Nonetheless, the very concept applied to empires outside of the Russian Empire appears completely ludicrous. The Soviet experiment does not only because it was successful in many ways for so long. Of course this success was accompanied by the deliberate state murder of millions of people and the incarceration and internal deportation of tens of millions more. More so than any other ideology communism embodies the idea that material progress justifies any and every conceivable atrocity.

Class sizes

I think the raw material I have to work with here is pretty good. That is the over all intelligence of the student body is quite high. On the other hand it has not been cultivated to the extent it should be before it reaches me. A better background in academic writing for instance would be helpful. Other than lack of preparation, however, my biggest complaint would be the large size of the classes. Having 115 students in a 300 level class is just too much. The only way this is likely to change is if we hire more faculty. Right now the history department is hiring. So if you have a PhD in history I encourage you to come work with us so that we can reduce the size of classes here.

Another Answer

It appears there is a very famous and prominent academic in France who still glorifies the regime of Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution. His name is Alain Badiou. So I know where one academic Maoist went. He did not go anywhere. What is it about European philosophers that causes them to support left wing tyrants and why do they become academic superstars? Zizek with his defense of Stalin is another example of this trend.

More similarities between the Soviet special settlement regime and South African apartheid

The more I read about South African history the more I find their policies of apartheid towards Blacks to be very similar to Soviet policies towards the deported nationalities such as the Germans, Chechens, Kalmyks, Crimean Tatars and others during the Stalin regime. In both cases the stigmatized groups were essentially racial castes in which membership was determined by the state at birth and could not be escaped through assimilation. Only in the case of mixed parentage did the child acquire a different legal category than that of both his parents. In both cases the oppressed groups could not serve in the military, serve in most government posts, and most importantly had to live in designated areas assigned to them by the regime on the basis of their ancestry. Travel even for short distances and times was in both cases regulated by set of strictly enforced pass laws. Yet for all these similarities literally nobody in the field of Soviet history is willing to even admit that the official policies towards these groups were racist acts and that the institution of the special settlement regime was a racist institution. Certainly nobody in the US other than myself has stated that the special settlement regime was a system of apartheid.  Instead we are treated to Hirsch's claims about "sociohistorical groups" not being "racial biological groups." A claim echoed by people like Amir Weiner and others.  A claim that looks particularly weak when one notes that the South African concept of race during the apartheid era is almost always defined in terms of "sociohistorical groups" rather than biological ones.

I now have some answers to the question

After thinking it about some I have some possible ideas for what accounted for the dearth of communist movements in Africa during the 20th Century compared to their much stronger performance in Asia. I had a talk with this subject with the head of the department this morning since some of my students had been asking him about it. However, I am not going to put down my answers to the question until after final exams here in Legon.

What happened to all the Maoists in academia?

I wonder what happened to all those academics praising Mao Zedong in the late 1960s and early 1970s? I was just reading an essay by from that era  last night by a Jack Gray who was praising Mao's agricultural policies during the Cultural Revolution. Did all these people just kind of quietly pretend that nothing happened after the Chinese government itself tried the Gang of Four and introduced a long term program of capitalist reforms? Or did they still insist that Mao was right and all the problems were due to revisionists and counterrevolutionaries? Or did they change their tune and take a more critical line once the horrors of Maoism became apparent? Does anybody have any answers?

News in Ghana

There is a major cholera outbreak in Accra. About 4000 people have gotten sick including five here in Legon. UTAG is threatening to go back on strike over the back pay the administration still owes us. The coup in Mali has not had any effect on anything in Ghana.

Hanging out with royalty

This morning I went to a naming ceremony for the daughter of one of my PhD students. Out of about 30 people there I was the only PhD, but there were five chiefs. I got to sit up front at the table of honor with the chiefs. That was pretty cool.

Rain

We are starting to move into the rainy season. We are getting rain more and more frequently now. I am also seeing more mosquitoes around. But, I should have built up some resistance to malaria by now.

Good Friday

Today is a national Holiday in Ghana. As a result most of the students have left Legon. The campus is really quiet right now. I intend to enjoy it while it lasts.

The Never Ending War on Plagiarism

I am grading mid-terms for my European history class and so far out of 30 exams I have found five blatant cases of plagiarism off of the Internet including the always popular Wikipedia. Every case of plagiarism gets an automatic zero for the assignment now. Africa is not as bad as Asia due to switching from take home papers to in class exams. They have to do more logistic work upfront. But, still I spend most of my time and energy grading on looking for plagiarism. Crafting the assignments to try and minimize plagiarism does not seem to help at all. Students seem intent on copying no matter what questions I ask. Often they copy answers to questions I did not ask.

Easter Weekend

Easter weekend starts tomorrow here. A lot of the students will go back home for the Holiday. That means the campus will be very quiet. I hope everybody reading this has a good weekend.

More on why Hirsch is wrong

One of Hirsch's problems is her adherence to a definition of racism that only people intent on defending the USSR or other culprits from the charge of racism still use. Her definition of racism  is one that requires the categorization of population groups in purely biological and physical terms (Hirsch, pp. 30-36). As I have noted elsewhere modern scholars including John Rex, Kenan Malik, Saul Dubow, Etienne Balibar, Paul Gilroy, and many others reject this premise. They note that cultural traits can also be used to define racial groups.  Hirsch states, "But, to call Soviet population politics 'racial' - to insist that a state sees its population through a 'racial lens' if it ascribes cultural or behavioral traits to its population groups (that is, if it stereotypes) is to obscure important differences between the Soviet and Nazi regimes and their projects." (Hirsch, p. 37). I would argue that racism is in fact the ascription of negative cultural or behavioral traits to entire populations determined to be immutable and defined by ancestry. Even more bizarre, however, is Hirsch's apparent belief that the only form of racial discrimination to exist in world history was what existed in Nazi Germany. One of her claims is that the Soviet deportation of nationalities was not racist because the Stalin regime did not seek, "to eliminate their 'genetic material' altogether" and that this distinguished it from Nazi Germany (Hirsch, p. 40). It does in fact point to a difference between Nazi and Soviet forms of racism, but it does not clear the Soviets of the charge of racism itself. Hirsch, however, is unable to conceive of racism as anything other than the Nazi policies of total extermination based upon genetics. For instance she notes that the Soviet government did not treat the Chechens in the exact same manner as the Nazis treated Jews at places like Auschwitz as evidence that Soviet policies were not racist (Hirsch, pp. 40-41). Racism does not require genocide and genocide does not require an attempt to physically exterminate all members of a group based upon their genetic material.

There are a number of different models for the construction of racial categories and many of them such as apartheid in South Africa followed a model of racializing cultural groups such as ethnicities and nationalities similar to Stalin's practice in the USSR. Hirsch continues her defense of Stalin's USSR against the charge of racist practices by noting the differences between it and Nazi Germany, never bothering to note the similarities between the USSR and places like apartheid South Africa regarding nationality policy and ethnos theory. She states, "The Soviet regime did not persecute nationalities because of suspected 'biological weaknesses' or 'deficient inner constitutions.' It did not brand particular nationalities as inferior or degenerate races." (Hirsch, p. 37). To which it should be noted that on the basis of the same type of evidence that the South Africans did not either. Instead the official discourse justifying apartheid stressed that the differences in culture, history, geography, and material levels of development between separate ethnoses required 'separate development' of these different groups.

The South African volkekundiges were among the first post-war racists to grasp that "Volk and culture functioned as a useful substitute for a biological view of race." (Dubow, p. 283). Indeed in the official racial discourse in South Africa, "the diffuse language of cultural essentialism was preferred to the crude scientific racism drawn from the vocabulary of social Darwinism." (Dubow, p. 246). But, they were far from the only ones to define racial groups in a cultural rather than biological manner. As Kenan Malik has noted, "By divesting the concept of race of its biological heritage, and conceiving it in terms of cultural inheritance ('an endlessly transferable set of beliefs and burdens'), the new discourse of race has reshaped the concept into a form usable in the post-Nazi era." (Malik, p. 187). Note that Malik's definition of the new racism is very similar to what actually existed in the USSR. This culturally based racism has the great advantage that like Hirsch with the Soviet Union it allows its defenders to deny it is racist while performing the exact same function as the old biologically based racism (Malik, pp. 186-187). In this sense the USSR was way ahead of the rest of the world with replacing the discredited notions of biology with an exclusionary and primordial definition of ethnicity.

Hirsch, however, denies that racial categories can ever be constructed along cultural rather than biological and genetic lines. She notes, "For the NKVD and the party the issue was not an individual's biological (genetic or blood) membership in one or another group, but his or her cultural heritage and possible ties to other states." (Hirsch, p. 39) She neglects to note that 'cultural heritage' often serves as the basis for racializing a group and assuming political ties to foreign states based solely  upon that heritage is in fact a racist ascription.  Indeed she seems completely unaware of the vast body of work by people like John Rex, Kenan Malik, Paul Gilroy, George Fredrickson, and others precisely on the point of racial formation based upon 'cultural heritage' rather than genetics.

Sources:

Saul Dubow,  Scientific Racism in Modern South Africa, Cambridge University Press, 1995. 

Francine Hirsch, "Race without the Politics of Racial Politics," Slavic Review, vol. 61, no. 1, (spring 2002), pp. 30-43.

Kenan Malik, The Meaning of Race: Race, History and Culture in Western Society, London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1996.

John Rex on Race and Why Francine Hirsch is Wrong

John Rex is one of the world's  foremost scholars on race relations.  In a 1986 essay he notes contrary to Hirsch that ethnicity and cultural rather than phenological characteristics can be the basis of racism.  The scholarship of people like Rex which later influenced people like Kenan Malik is pretty mainstream regarding every region in the world except the USSR. It is only in Soviet history due to the distorting influence of people like Francine Hirsch that there is a complete denial of the existence of official racism because of the claim that ethnicity is not race and culture is not biology.

Hirsch states, "The mass deportation of targeted nationalities, along with other Soviet nationality policies, was premised on the conviction that nationalities (like classes) were sociohistorical groups with a shared consciousness and not racial-biological groups. This is not a trivial distinction." (Hirsch p. 30). In point of fact it is a trivial distinction because the "sociohistorical groups" perform the exact same role as "racial-biological groups" and both are primordial, essentialized, immutable, and based solely upon ancestry. As noted in earlier posts the South Africans used the "sociohistorical group" definition to define race in South Africa rather than the "racial-biological group" definition Hirsch believes is necessary for racism to exist (Ross, p. 116).  On the basis of Hirsch's logic there were thus never any "racial politics" in apartheid South Africa. But, since Hirsch has never examined racism in a comparative context outside of Nazi Germany and the USSR she fails to see the absurdity of her position. Rex notes  that ethnicity as a "sociohistorical group" to use Hirsch's terms or groups marked by "cultural characteristics" to use his term rather than  phenotypical ones can serve as the basis for racial oppression or exploitation (Rex, p. 72). What is important is not whether the justification of racial discrimination is in "terms of biological ideas." (Rex, p. 71). But, rather that the ethnic identity of a stigmatized group is "imposed upon them to restrict their mobility and to facilitate their exploitation and oppression." (Rex, p. 71). Rex states quite clearly, "I am quite happy to divert attention away from phenotype as such to that group of situations which, whether it rest upon phenotypical or upon cultural differences, actually involves exploitation and oppression."  (Rex, p. 72).  As an example he notes, "the essentially ethnic relations of Northern Ireland actually have much in common with black-white relations in other countries." (Rex, p. 72). That is the discrimination against Catholics by the dominant Protestants in Northern Ireland during the 20th century was racial discrimination even though the groups involved are "sociohistorical" ones rather than "racial-biological" ones.

I know that other than Eric Weitz and Walt Richmond I am the only US scholar who believes that Rex's definition of racism is applicable to the USSR and that everybody else follows the idiocy of Hirsch in believing that there must be some actual "biological" component defining the categories involved for "race relations situations" (Rex, p. 72) to exist. But, why is the USSR of all societies in world history exempt from the same sociological analysis that applies to the rest of the world? Nobody has ever been able to answer this question to my satisfaction. I do, however, encourage to people to try in the comments.

Sources:

Francine Hirsch, "Race without the Practice of Racial Politics," Slavic Review, vol. 61, no. 1, Spring 2002, pp. 30-43.

John Rex, "The Role of Class Analysis in the Study of Race Relations - A Weberian Perspective," in John Rex and David Mason, (eds.), Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations,Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 64-83.

Robert Ross, A Concise History of South Africa, Cambridge University Press, 1999.  

A partial explanation

It has been suggested to me by more than one person now that geographical proximity to the USSR played a key role in the relative success of communism in Asia compared to Africa. This seems to have merit as a partial explanation. It certainly explains a large part of the success of communist movements in North Korea, China, and Afghanistan and to a lesser extent in Vietnam.